To understand is to forgive, even oneself -- Alexander Chase

Necessary background: My life no longer clips by at the frantic pace described in my last post -- thank god! I'm tutoring an interesting assortment of kids instead.

"Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my neighbor sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus said to him, I say not to you, until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven."

No, I have not suddenly become religious (although I would like to read more of the bible -- there're some interesting stories in there). One of my students is, and this is what he has taped to his computer -- what he looks at every day.

It strikes me as a) impressive -- and a little sad -- that a middle school student chooses/ needs to remind himself to forgive others for trespassing against him and b) incredibly daunting a mandate.

I have a lot of patience for wounds -- I certainly won't toss you out for a first, second, or third offence -- but can I actually forgive? (please forgive that rhetorical question -- that was totally borderline Carrie from Sex in the City, a sin you can add to the tally detailed below).

I have a history of a seemingly out of character line-in-the-sand tipping point for intolerance.

In fourth grade, I made a girl in my class cry. She had complained over and over about how she wished she were popular. I told her that if being friends with us (the nerd herd) was so bad, she shouldn't be friends with us anymore. I may have said other not so nice things -- I honestly don't remember, but I do know I got in trouble. I sat across from her in the school counselor's office and refused to apologize even while she cried in front of me.

That is not a story I'm proud of. It would be easy enough to cast myself as an early crusader against conformity and the social status positioning and posturing that most children endure. But it actually kind of frightens me that I could be so hardened and unfeeling to someone vulnerable, as most fourth graders -- especially those foolish enough to say out loud that they wish they were popular (this will pretty much guarantee that they won't be) -- probably are.

Here is another story I'm not proud of: When I returned to NY as a 10th grader after a year in England, I set about changing myself. While I never aimed at Mean Girls style popularity -- tiny sweater wearing, field hockey playing, lip gloss wearing -- I tried to shed my old nerd-happy skin. I threw myself into cigarette smoking because I knew I couldn't do anything actually bad (I mean, come on -- I had read Go Ask Alice), but I didn't want to be quite so squeaky clean (and trust me, I am still ruing that dumb call -- I'm currently sucking on battery-operated fakes). In two years, I went from watching Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire and playdates pretending we were Jewish immigrants in the lower east side circa 1900 (hey, it was Scarsdale) to rolling my eyes watching other people drink and smoking furiously -- i.e. from an actually cool kid to a terribly bored one.

That's not the story. The story is, that when I first came back after my year overseas, my former playmate sat behind me in Spanish class and told me how happy she was were in class together. I leaned over to pick up a dropped pencil and pretended I didn't hear her. She never sat near me again, and I don't think we ever spoke after that day.

I have been feeling guilty about that moment in my life for more than fifteen years. Of all the selfish, shitty things I've done, that one burns pretty brightly in the catalog of things that I think should send me downstairs at the end, if I believed in stairs at the end.

I could say, like Lear (my fave Shakespearean ranter) that "I am a man more sinned against than sinning." But either way, whether it is myself I am trying to forgive, or my dad, or the friend I haven't spoken to in seven years for sleeping with my ex (actually, for trying to tell me she had done me a favor for showing me what a scumbag he was) -- no matter whom I'm working on forgiving, the emphasis must be on the progressive tense of that verb.

Catholics have forgiveness built right in to their world view. Although much has been made of Catholic guilt -- after all, you have to feel guilty before you can be forgiven -- the fact remains that absolution is a possibility for those who believe that Jesus has taken on the burden of their sins and lifted it from them (solve: to loosen). I can't even imagine how good it would feel to have some absolute authority tell me my repentance was enough -- and to show me how to truly release that sense of "sinned against" that stops forgiving from becoming forgiven.

Unfortunately for my (somewhat needy) spiritual angst, I do not believe in Jesus, or God, or any other moral absolute. Is this my punishment for moral relativism? If nothing can be completely wrong, and no one completely evil (or good), we are left to live with our discomfort over what we have done and what we have yet to forgive in others? Yikes.

At least Hillary can joke about it: “In the bible it says you have to forgive seventy times seven. I want you all to know, I'm keeping a chart" - Hillary Clinton

Warning: this blog contains the "V" word

Dear blog,

Let me begin by offering my apologies. It has now been almost eight months since I last fed you. If you were a cat, you would be a very dead cat.

Second, let me add that I should not be playing with you right now. I should be studying math problems I happily forgot how to do ten years ago -- twelve years ago -- and cramming pointless vocabulary into my head (the toady vowed never to write an encomium in favor of apostasy again). That sentence probably makes little sense, but even if it does, I don't actually need to know what those words mean (toady, I admit, is kind of a gem). And now I have a small circuit of neurons devoted to those words, and many others like them. Damn you, ETS and your stupid general GRE!

The good news is that I am facing all my insecurities, which are no longer being allowed to slowly attenuate my confidence while studying for the  Truly Evil Exam (that not-so-clever sobriquet refers to the Literature in English exam that ETS, the darlings, are also responsible for).

Would you like to hear about a typical day for me these days, then? Try: wake up at 7:30, go to work by 9, file, call, organize, and stress non-stop until 3, then drive to the library, tutor until 6, then either drive to next tutoring job till eight, or go to personal trainer to have ass kicked by a very kind, sadistic man. Then go home, watch Rachel Maddow, read three pages of Emma, and pass out. Oh, and try to sneak in a few minutes to review words like meretricious and paean.

My dad recently emailed me my horoscope, as he sometimes likes to do in lieu of writing me an actual note, and it stated: "You need to offload some of your more demanding commitments. You are doing too many things for too many people and not enough for yourself, so learn to say "no" and say it every chance you get."  Which is actually pretty good advice. But the question is, how? How do I refuse the mom who won't let me quit tutoring her son? (she begged me, said she would accommodate my schedule however I could do it, and as a consequence I am now tutoring him Wednesday nights from 7:30 to 9). The spoiled rich college girl I should be able to leave in the dust, right? The merest hint that she might want to find someone closer to where she lives set off seven text messages to me saying I was doing a 'fine' job (as in ok, not as in awesome) and that she didn't want to switch tutors again. Now, that one was way less of a compliment, but her desperation was too depressing to disappoint.

I am going to finish, little bloggie, by distracting myself from the temporary insanity of my life by totally randomly giving you a few menstrual-dream treats to ruminate on (I don't know if this happens to all menstruating females, but I get the CRAZIEST dreams):

• I discover my friend Barbara is mad at me, and it kills me. I find her, shake her, and, after asking her why she didn't tell me what she was mad about, desperately yell at her that she is "a good person trapped in a bad communicator's body!" Then I hug her tight and roll down a hill with her, and rapturously point out how beautiful the rotating pink sky/green grass is. 

• I marry my high-school boyfriend, who morphs into my last-year-of-college boyfriend/ can't-date-you-or-stay-away-from-you-for-a-few-years ex. My sister announces she is getting divorced from her real-life husband, which makes me pathetically weepy. Then I sleep with a mysterious stranger, and feel guilty about having a husband rather than about cheating on the husband.

• My latest ex-boyfriend -- now seven months behind me -- tells me he is pregnant with our baby. I watch him with concern as, about to give birth, he squats down, and gives birth out of a vagina. I empathize with his pain until I see the baby's head pop out, from which moment on I can do nothing but think about my amazing new daughter and walk around oblivious to anything else and breastfeeding in public.

Pretty damn freaky, huh? 

Cable a Tierra – Throw down the reins

For someone who likes to be right, being wrong really sucks. Worse still is behaving as you don’t WANT to behave – watching yourself while your mind says, what the hell are you thinking?? – but of course you aren’t thinking at all. You’re just – behaving. Hardest of all not to shudder at this lack of control. But perhaps instead of fighting against these spastic moments, it would be easier to “throw down the reins” and just go with the flow.

Ha. Go with the flow is not something I really know how to do – so I watch myself be grumpy, or irritable, or just flat out bitchy, and writhe inside because I KNOW it’s the wrong thing to do, but still more or less helpless to stop myself… and the talking/ thinking/ reflecting/ understanding comes later, after the damage is done, and I can retreat back to my cerebral haven with a sigh of relief. 

It would be SO much simpler if instead of these interludes of “Badly Behaved Sister/ Daughter/ Best Friend/ Girlfriend” and subsequent light-bulb moments, my emotions could send a telegram to my frontal cortex about what is churning down in my limbic system. “Emotions roiled. Passive Aggressive Bitchiness lurking.  Proceed with caution. Temporary isolation recommended.” So very much simpler!

It doesn’t always show, but I DO strive to be a better person than I have been or than I am. This is complicated, of course, as it is for most humanoids, by my many accumulated complexes and over-sensitivities, most of which can be traced right back to my parents (Sorry, mom and dad, but let’s face it – Freud was right. It’s all your fault!). I have a lurking fear that I am an emasculating ball-buster. I am terrified of showing emotional weakness. When I think someone I love may be angry at me, I become almost simpering in my need for reassurance and emotional security. I could go on and on, but I won’t (and not only because my parents are probably reading this!).

The point is, we all have our hang-ups, right? Now if only they wouldn’t get in the way quite so eagerly, and if only the advice of caring friends didn’t seem so insipid at the moment of truth – it just isn’t that easy to breathe and take a step back and re-evaluate with a clear head. Inner Defense Mechanism shouts: "This shit is about to blow up in your face! Iceberg ahead! Run!" (severely mixing its metaphors). And apparently, the best way to climb into a rowboat and haul ass away from the impending wreckage is to be a bitch. Wouldn’t it be nice if every time I felt threatened I suddenly wanted to bake cookies? That would be a reaction everyone around me would be happy to tolerate!

But, let’s be honest – the empirical evidence states that I have been known to date “men” who suck. So, experientially, it really makes complete sense that when a new relationship faces “rough weather at sea” (Hey, I know it's cheesy but I've decided to like this metaphor and I’m gonna go with it), I assume the worst and prepare to bail. 

But I don’t want to be that kind of person, or maybe I’m just too stubborn or too terrified to admit the facts to myself, so I pretend that I’m imagining the signs or that I’m being a hypochondriac and usually just when I get myself breathing normally again, the break-up hits (“love is like a balloon. It pops when a break-up hits. BAM! That is the end to that balloon, and to that relationship.” – this poem was really and truly written by a 7^th grader. Don't be deceived by the simplicity. It's a very wise poem!) 

So can anyone, in all fairness, blame me for being a wreck at the slightest signs of turbulence? Especially when it is so very easy for fear and awkwardness to combine to make the let’s-be-honest-about-how-we-really-feel conversation seem like you’re both high and paranoid-as-fuck and terrified to say what you really mean but determined to bring things to a conclusion and not leave things hanging. Maybe in those cases the best thing to do is not speak at all but just get naked and see if you can work things out that way. If, in the sweet aftermath, you still feel distant and scared, then you can imagine the conversation would have been pretty freaking awful. If, on the other hand, you feel warm and reassured, then it’s better you skipped the conversation in the first place, right?

But all that is assuming that you are aware enough of your emotions to know whether to have or skip the conversation in the first place. If all you have to go on is lingering irritability… you see how the telegram could really be useful!? “Dear brain. Shut the fuck up.  Signed, the rest of you.”

Here are the lyrics of the song "Cable a Tierra" by Fito Paez, from whom I stole the title of this post:

Si estás entre volver y no volver
si ya metiste demasiado en tu nariz
si estás como cegado de poder
tira tu cable a tierra.

Y si tu corazón ya no da más
si ya no existe conexión con los demás
si estás igual que un barco en altamar
tira tu cable a tierra.

Y yo estoy acercándome hasta vos
bajo la luna, bajo la luna.

Las cosas son asi,
tengo el teléfono del freak
que está deseoso de volarte la cabeza.

En un par de minutos sale el sol
si ya no hay nada que anestesie tu dolor
si no llegas, si no alcanzas a verme
tira tu cable a tierra.

No creas que perdió sentido todo
no dificultes la llegada del amor;
no hables de más, escucha al corazón
ese es el cable a tierra.

Y yo estoy acercandome hasta vos
bajo la luna, bajo la luna.

Las cosas son asi,
tengo el teléfono del freak
que está deseoso de volarte la cabeza.

Si estás entre volver y no volver
si ya metiste demasiado en tu nariz
si estás como cegado de poder
tira tu cable a tierra.

The world according to Desmond Tutu

“A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.” 

I’m not going to pretend that I really understand the concept of ubuntu, or that it is part of my philosophical or cultural tradition. Nope, I am just straight up appropriating – or just admiring (are we still allowed to do that?).  To seek to be open and affirming is to seek to be a better person. The other day, I woke up and snuggled in the bed with two sweet little girls (at least, at seven in the morning they are very sweet!), my visiting Irish cousins. As we lay in bed, we talked about our resolutions for the year, how to make them achievable and yet aspirational. Here are mine:

·         To write. I meant to write stories, but to write, period, will do for now.

·         To be more patient with my mother. She deserves it, no matter how much she drives me crazy.

·         To be less bossy when I don’t need to be. This leaves me plenty of wiggle room to be bossy, but there are some clear boundaries. For example, while there are plenty of times when I “need” to be bossy with my six year old sister, I probably don’t need to tell my 22 year old brother what time he should get out bed. Probably.

·         To focus on the good in people, rather than on the bad (especially at work). You’re work peeps are a bit like your family: you don’t choose them. But unlike your family, you don’t have to love and respect them. I should, however, if what I truly value is productivity and progress. Lucy may be seriously lacking in skills, tact, and creativity, but if I focus on how she annoys and impedes me, she will only continue to annoy and impede me. If I focus on how we can work together, maybe we will actually be able to work together.

“You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them.” 

One of things I most admire about my Peruvian family is how they prove the elasticity of the bonds of love. No matter how hard you try to pull away, you will always snap right back. You can fight, insult, cry, scream, etc. – almost limitlessly – but you are FAMILY. All capital letters. You take care of each other when it is needed, and sometimes even when it isn’t. But in spite of the great respect I have for this way of living in the world, I’ve learned something else in these past few years of my Saturn return. You cannot hold yourself hostage to the love and neediness of your family. The fact is that your family will always need more from you than you can possibly give – all human beings do – and, just as you cherish a gift because of its special meaning and symbolic importance, I need to learn to cherish my family – not allow feelings of guilt or obligation to dictate my life path. I didn’t realize until I left New York how much I shaped my life according to what I “should” be doing or according to how accessible I could be to my family. Finally, I stopped and said to myself, “Hey. I’m almost thirty and I don’t know what the fuck it means to live a happy, productive, aspirational life. I want to be brave, and open-hearted, and to know inner peace. So I’m going to “do me” now, ok, universe?” As much as I love my mother, I don’t need to call her every day, or even every other day. I need to live my own life, in which I love and cherish my family, but am free to do that and to love and cherish myself, too.

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”  

I’ve been thinking a lot about the reasons people separate themselves into public and private personas, and about how this feeds into a duality (or triplicity) that is not necessarily manifested in reality. I am not actually an either/or in practically any aspect of my life, yet having a public self forces me to align myself with one or the other. To the world, I must be either gay or straight or bi, depressed or happy, kind or powerful, sophisticated or a bumpkin – where the reality is that I am none, all, and every gradient in between – sometimes.
 

I think we are afraid that if we share who we really are, we make ourselves vulnerable to the ignorant and the abusive. There are many people who would gladly take our private lives and use them against us in our public ones.  That’s the reason, I guess, why I never disclose “dysthymia” (commonly known as chronic depression, which is longer lasting but less severe than “clinical depression”) on the teaching applications I submit. I assume, probably rightly, that my prospective employers will perceive this as a weakness – and sometimes, they would be right. Depression has definitely made me a worse teacher – at times. At other times, it has heightened my sensibilities to the needs of my most vulnerable students and allowed me to feel compassion, empathy, and hope for them. I know not to give up on them just as I have never given up on myself – no matter how bleak, dulled, or frozen I may have felt. I also know that a huge part of my never giving up is the dedication and patience of those who love me – and therefore, I offer perseverance, patience, and love to my most “difficult” students. I may not have saved their lives or their academic futures, but I am sure I have given them a small piece of myself (Here we cycle back to the point above, of course, about needing to make sure you cherish yourself as much as you cherish others – that you put on your own oxygen mask first before the dependents sitting next to you on the crashing plane) that will help them to know who they are. 

A few weeks ago, I was sitting with a few teachers having lunch when we began talking about embassy receptions. I asked if one of the teachers, the wife of an ambassador, was attending an upcoming reception about which I had heard there would be good food available (and in Cuba, you jump at any chance for good food!). She scoffed, and said she didn’t like attending functions because you quickly bore of all the small talk with all the same people. Now, this makes perfect sense to me as the perspective of someone who is forced to go to countless events (even if I personally am not and therefore enjoy the hors d’oeuvres and the mojitos and the random conversations). But then she started talking some crazy talk about how you have to be careful who you talk to because you might end up talking to someone who is homosexual, and how that is against her religion as a Rastafarian, and how she had a sister who decided to try out the lesbian lifestyle whom she no longer spoke to, and who was trapped in her sinful life by an older, wealthy sugar mama. I almost choked on my food, I was so shocked, and I escaped by claiming a meeting I had forgotten. Later, I felt so guilty about not confronting her, even if that would probably have been against my best interests as a member of the school community. I mean, she was obviously crazy and nothing I said would have changed her kind of crazy. 

But that’s a rationalization. The truth is, I should have said to her, “Hey – I’m not straight.” The fact that I don’t actually identify as gay is a public truth, for I’ve had a few gay relationships that were happy and fulfilling while they lasted (ok, no they weren't – but none of my relationships were!). I didn’t feel the need then, or now, to therefore claim any labels – whether gay, straight, bisexual, lesbian, or whatever. But the fact remains that, in the public domain, not claiming a label means defaulting to a heterosexual identity. Most straight people don’t feel the need to tell others they are straight; it’s just publically assumed. Do I have a responsibility, then, to tell the world I’m not straight (at least not in the sense that the Rastafarian teacher meant it)? By letting people think I’m a “regular,” run-of-the-mill heterosexual, am I silently complicit with all the rabid homophobes of the world? Can I really say it’s my business and no one else’s?

“When we see others as the enemy, we risk becoming what we hate. When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves.

All of our humanity is dependent upon recognizing the humanity in others.” 

In some ways, this sums up my resolutions for the new year. To be patient rather than abrupt, to be gentle rather than demanding, to be encouraging rather than critical – these are all different ways of saying the same thing. Thanks, Desmond!

By Reader Demand...

There has been some noise from the peanut gallery – apparently some persons do not want to read every nuanced detail of my various lingering illnesses, but hey, there’s no accounting for taste! – so this entry is dedicated to all of you out there who’ve made your voices heard; you know who you are…

Prologue: In order for you to appreciate the upcoming story, you need some material for comparison. Let us say this – last Saturday was typical of a weekend here for me. I spent the morning at the school on the internet, mostly catching up on email, g-chatting, and reading Gail Collins of the New York Times. After some serious internet gluttony, I rode my moped home where I was accosted by pleas to “come with me, I want you play with my ninjas” from Jimmy. Luckily it is possible to zone out and read your own book while occasionally emitting a “bwhaha” (don't make fun of my stock evil laugh) and pretending to attack his lego ninjagos – 3 year olds have amazingly self-centered personalities and therefore hardly pay attention to you, anyway. Finally, I took a distinctly tepid bath during which I promised myself yet again I would boil hot water to add to the tub next time and continued to re-read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for the second time. Then I cursed the rain and sprinted down the road to a friend’s house where I was part of a lovely dinner party of four, ate delicious couscous and steak (and cows here are like agricultural gold, so it was a truly amazing treat!), discussed where it was possible to buy cheese, drank moderately copious amounts of beer, red wine, and finally aged rum, watched and almost died laughing at the movie Bridesmaids, and returned home by midnight. A stellar night! Throw in a little tennis and a little teaching (both awesome, by the way, but to be discussed at a later date) and you pretty much have a full picture of my life here…

The scene: An evening reception at the British Embassy, Havana. I have received an invitation originally intended for my father, who twisted someone’s arm (or, more likely, asked politely) to transfer the invite my way. Therefore, it says “Mrs. Elizabeth White and spouse” on the invitation, and when I RSVP that I shall be attending alone, the very nice gentleman on the line consoles me with, “what a shame” (to be fair, in Spanish “que lastima” sounds slightly less obnoxious than it does in English – but not much).

The attire: After stressing about what to wear to an event at the British Embassy, I decide on something classy and a tiny bit boring, with a sharp grey pencil skirt and a black, sleeveless silk shirt. The most exciting thing on me are my earrings, which are long and thin and made of grayish looking rhinestones (trust me, they are a lot prettier than they sound!), and possibly my eye makeup, which is pink and gold and calculated to bring out the green in my eyes (the school newspaper, of which I am co-advisor, ran an article on makeup tips I had to edit for this month’s edition, but again, more tales about school later).

The arrival: By taxi, ten minutes early. The guard outside the gate has the balls to tell me “It’s at 7:30” when I walk up and I have to ask coldly, “You’re seriously not going to let me in?” He opens up (but only after informing me I must stay in his sight) and I wait awkwardly by the fountain until the events coordinator, the very same “what a shame” utterer, waves me in. I walk in to a quite empty British embassy, where I find an elegant woman waiting with outstretched hand at the threshold. She looks at me quizzically and asks me to please tell her again my name, and I reassure her that she has never met me. When I explain how I have come to be here, she croons, “Oh, yes, William, of R****lic Bank.” Then she leads the way to a group of three men, one of whom, she informs me, is an ex-minister, Lord Wilson. When we arrive at the group of three, which includes one noticeable tall man in a business suit, they turn to each other, then back to me and excuse themselves for needing to finish their conversation about “a meeting earlier.” In fact, I am shooed away in that politely rude way that only the British have mastered! Turning back to the main hall, (why did she bother walking me out of the main hall in the first place?!)  I chat to the events coordinator for a while because, hey, at least he is willing to talk to me!

The night wears on: Two mojitos later, I’m having a grand old time. From these inauspicious beginnings, I talk to a random, sweet, and as it turns out slightly boring Cuban couple, in which we awkwardly avoid the subtext of communist regime in our effusions of how much we like Cuba; I see a few of my dad’s friends, one of whom I especially like and greet as a life-saving floatation device – but to my credit, I only greet and chat with him briefly before I move on; he turns out to be talking to the tall fellow (see above, “the arrival”) whom I tease mercilessly by recounting the tale of the polite English brush-off; I later meet a few Peruvian expats who promise to invite me to their monthly luncheons with the one Peruvian chef in Havana; I then find myself chatting to the ex-minister, whom I also tease, and only later realize how incredibly impudent this is (the guy was apparently good buddies with Fidel, plus being a Lord, plus being a minister… meanwhile, a part-time tennis-playing high school teacher is gleefully ripping him apart and probably laughing over-enthusiastically (as per usual). Best of all, afore mentioned favorite friend of dad’s offers me a ride home so no awkward waiting for taxi! Woohoo!

The aftermath: Although I have only consumed my three beverages and am home by half past nine (seriously, all weekday parties should be as whirlwind), I do not sleep well and wake up distinctly groggy. A stunning sky-wide rainbow – only my third ever – streaks through the clouds during tennis this morning and I work hard, sweating out my tiredness and any residual toxins. My tennis coach’s son, who’s taught me once before and who I considered really quiet, turns out to have a stutter. I talk nearly non-stop, laughing and joking, until he likely thinks I am a total ditz – but a warm, friendly ditz. He finally starts talking, despite the stutter, so the character assassination turns out to be worth it (besides, let’s face it – I sort of am a ditz with diarrhea of the mouth, anyway). 

Isn't turpentine a known carcinogen, or am I making that up??

My internet silence these past few weeks is not to be taken as a sign either that I have been unusually happy and therefore too busy to write or that I have been unusually despondent and therefore too depressed to share any news. Rather, I have been unusually – even for me! – ill and too pathetic to stay out of a prone position long enough to make use of the internet, my verticality being preserved for essentials like teaching and playing tennis (actually, I only managed to play seven hours of tennis in the last three weeks compared to a typical fifteen, and three of those seven hours occurred on one blissfully, if temporarily, healthy day). 

Anyone who knows me well is probably not shocked, as I have a reputation for catching every cold and flu that even considers flitting past, but this time it’s ridonkulous. I mean, seriously – twenty two days of phlegm, cough drops, and mysterious pains in my elbows and knees… not to mention other unpleasant symptoms, like a splitting headache and tonsils the size of golf balls (tennis balls would have made for a more fitting, if hyperbolic, metaphor). As my Dad would say, I’ve been sick as a dog.

Putting aside both the weirdness of this idiom (if I had internet access at home I would so be googling that right now!) and the various folk wisdoms I’ve been told about how foreigners always catch this particularly virulent flu (I feel reverse kinship with the native Peruvians upon first contact with the germ-bringing Europeans), the change of seasons always makes people sick, and drinking pineapple juice is bad for the flu because it makes you cold (regardless of the temperature at which it is drunk) – and that’s a lot to put aside – let me make the profound statement that being sick really sucks. There were a few moments when I almost abandoned my anti-antibiotics stance in my desperation to feel better, especially for the five days when I was coughing about fifty percent of the time I was conscious and my lungs were tight little knots in my chest (just as I was about to break, my chest loosened at last and I could breathe, praise jesus). But don’t worry, all ye believers in the antibiotic, and especially my mother – the doctor came to see me today and he pronounced my lungs to be of sound health, free of pneumonia or bronchitis, and prescribed something to help open my bronchial tubes. I have never been so excited about taking deep breaths! 

Also they sell something called “Vapor Rub” here but one of the ingredients is turpentine… please tell me that Vick’s does not have paint thinner in it and that this is a sad third-world poisoning only. I slathered that stuff on and even dissolved it in hot water and inhaled the fumes, as per the directions, before it occurred to me to check the ingredients out of curiosity. Turpentine!

Anyway last week we were on vacation, although as I only enjoyed three days of good health it was not quite the song and dance it should have been. But I had a few moments of real joy – a healthy afternoon with teacher friends in Havana Vieja, drinking beer and sangria and having real conversations in Spanish (which only included minimal lapses into English on my part when I really did not know how to describe something any other way); teaching my sister to play pool and watching her beat my brother, who wins at nearly everything; kicking said brother’s butt at ping pong (ok, it was a two point win so “kicking his butt” might be an exaggeration. And I am ashamed to admit it but he is eight); re-reading Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince in four days; my brother Jimmy telling me in English “you a bad sister because you farts smell really bad” (add the little kid Cuban accent and the fact that he is three, and you can see how this shocking insult transforms into pure cuteness); actually winning a game of Spider Solitaire on the Medium difficulty setting!!

It’s the little things in life. 

In short, I am happy and well – or at least, I should be in three more days according to the doctor – and the only thing to dampen my spirits is the distinct lack of email from certain parties (emails that only say “tell me what you’re up to” don’t count – it’s a back and forth, people!). If I fall into that category myself, let me only say, “oops.” I’ll write soon, I promise.

I’m flying to Miami this Friday for a few days with my mother and brothers – cannot wait to see them! – with a list I have been compiling of “things I really really want to bring back to Havana from the non-embargoed world.” 

Top of my list is Nyquil – you would not believe how difficult it is to get your hands on a bottle of cough syrup! Ooh, and an electric tea kettle – a little piece of England in Havana…

My rational/irrational mind

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot about astrology – my natal chart, which planets were in which house, which angles were formed between which planets at the moment I was born. If you’ve known me for years, this won’t surprise you, because it’s an interest that goes back a few decades – I can remember going over my chart with my dad as a ten year old – and it’s not a secret. I mean, read the title of this blog.

Perhaps by now you are used to this quirk of mine, and put it in the same category as my dislike of ice cream and chocolate – weird, but not that important in real life. But yesterday I read something that made me stop and consider. I’m not generally thought to be irrational (at least, if so, you haven’t told me). I’m not superstitious about shoes on the bed or keeping wishes to yourself (I remember the bewilderment I felt when my drugged, post-appendectomied sister, who could barely sit up and say her name, mumbled a stern reproach at me for daring to rest her flip-flops on the hospital bed for a minute, as a sign not of poor hygiene but bad luck – and even more so, when I related her bizarre behavior to my mother and she responded with, “You never put shoes on the bed!” – I mean, did I grow up in the same family as these people? When did we learn that?). I have a perhaps too intense interest in evolution and am an agnostic because I see neither concrete evidence for nor against the existence of God. My mother once woke up in the middle of the night back when I was in high school, convinced my spirit had come to her as a sign I was in trouble. My predominant reaction was not gratitude or sympathy but excruciating embarrassment, since she had called all my friends' parents at one o’clock in the morning. I did not for one second believe that my “essence” had communicated with my mother (the fact that I was home watching TV in the basement while this happened didn’t help).

Having firmly established myself, then, as a rational and logical thinker, how do I explain my belief – or, more accurately, my absence of disbelief – that the location of the planets at the moment I was born can possibly reflect my sense of self, emotional temperament, and social maneuverings? I mean, logically looked at, that’s just crazy talk.

This morning, I randomly picked up Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink and started to read it. It’s about our “adaptive unconscious” – AKA our intuition – and how it makes accurate judgments before we have sorted and analyzed information to form a conclusion. This is the part of myself I am most uncomfortable with. Often, I ignore my intuition because I don’t want to face what it is telling me. I remember a few moments with Alex, for example, when I just knew that the emotions between us would not keep us together. Raising this point to him one night, he insisted I was wrong, and pointed to our many mutual interests in writing, language, travel, family, etc. as evidence that we had every reason to expect our paths to continue running together. And of course, less than a month later, we were as emotionally distant as I’ve ever been from an ex-partner. 

This is not to say that I think I can solve my problems through my birth chart. But maybe I can learn something about myself, even if the most important thing I learn is to accept myself both as a logical, rational thinker and as a feeling, sensitive, intuiter – someone who is interested in both fossils and the rising sign at the same time. Rather than seeing these things as oppositions within me, I can see them as existing side by side – maybe even harmoniously. That I can be emotional and irrational is uncomfortable for me. This whole weekend, in fact, I have felt in desperate flux, as if I were vibrating along an out of tune piano string. I didn’t feel “grounded” – my stomach was in knots – I felt “off.” These metaphors are difficult to analyze logically (How can a person feel or not feel grounded? What exactly does that mean?) and the disconnect between my prefrontal cortex and my hyperactive limbic system left me jittering like someone on a caffeine high. I am therefore attempting to breathe deeply, watch the ocean, and get out of the house today. Do regular, normal things that put you in contact with friendly strangers. I should really go play tennis, but I don’t own a racket myself (nor do I have a tennis partner, come to think of it) so the strenuous exercise therapy will have to continue tomorrow when Mr. Gelli sends me jogging around the court and tortures me with practicing my forehand (side-note: Learning to play tennis is just as difficult for me as learning to drive a manual car was. It is SO hard for someone with my lack of multi-tasking ability to concentrate on that many different things at once! Keep your elbow out! Finish the stroke! Keep your body side-ways! Keep the racket parallel to the net! Distance yourself from the ball! Don’t move your body forward! Do hit the ball with the racket forward! I mean, ahhhhhhhh!!!!! Fortunately, I have the experience of eventually becoming a proficient manual driver behind me to give me hope that one day it will all “come together” and I’ll be able to do all this crap automatically and just focus on hitting the damn ball!).

My point, I think, is that I am not an entirely rational person and rather than scorning that side of myself as contemptible (in my first year of college, I actually articulated a belief that needing others made you weak and pathetic . No wonder I was single that year!), I should try, instead, to understand it, accept it, and breathe through the psychic discomfort. 

In case you’re interested, below are a few of the passages from the book that made me start this rambling…

North Node in Cancer:

This lifetime is about your emotions and intuition. You’re here to discover what makes you feel secure and how to establish that base so that you can fulfill your potential. When you work from a centered place within your own feelings, your life unfolds right on track. Open your heart. You probably feel that it’s a sign of weakness to depend on other people or reveal too much about your feelings. But it’s to your advantage to look inward and tend to your inner life.

Sun Square Moon:

Your feelings and sense of identity pull in differing directions. This challenges the ego. It is difficult to feel good emotionally and achieve ego satisfaction simultaneously. What satisfies the emotions pulls at the ego, and vice versa. This may create inner restlessness… A big enough vision of life must be created to include satisfaction of all needs rather than alternatively choosing some needs and then others. 

Neptune in the 4^th House:

You have close emotional ties to family, coupled with an idealized picture of how family life should be. This is the way you see your own family – as better than or worse than they are, but not realistically. As a child, you may have been placed in a care-giving role. As an adult, you have a compelling sense of obligation. You are loving and nurturing towards family. A part of you feels the need to mother the world… Living by, or being near, the ocean can provide much needed tranquility.

Saturn in Libra:

Relationships are taken seriously, and you may have fears of relational loss or social disapproval. This can make setting appropriate boundaries with people difficult. The tendency is to either inappropriately go along with other people’s demands, or to set rigid standards of relational behavior. It is important to distinguish when compromise and acceptance represent the best course of action and when standing up for principles is more appropriate.

Moon in Taurus in the 9^th House:

You value harmony and dislike conflict. In most situations, you are easygoing and avoid disagreements. However, you are much more stubborn than you appear to be, and once you make up your mind you are unlikely to change it, even when you should… You are emotionally comfortable any place in the world. You have a yearning to experience different cultures and a desire to know what is around the next corner. Your worldview, including religious, ethical, moral, and philosophical beliefs, is influenced by your travels. Yet this worldview is also colored by your emotions.

Jupiter in Scorpio in the 3^rd House:

You value justice and admire truth. You are intense about your standards. There is an attraction to the mysteries of life, getting to the underlying meaning of situations, and uncovering the true motivations of people. Your thinking is expansive and your outlook broad. This placement conveys intelligence and expands your interest in intellectual horizons. Interests may lie in writing, publishing, and communicating. At the very least, you are a good talker.

A Day in the Life...

2nd September, 2011 (Havana, Cuba)
06.45 -- Wake up, shower under pathetic water pressure, get dressed
07.05 -- Promise myself yet again that TONIGHT I really will unpack all my clothes and hang them up
07.25 -- Take breakfast orders from Johnny and Babi, but ignore Babi´s as too complicated. Make toast with grape jelly for Johnny and let someone else make Babi´s vanilla milk breakfast drink thing
07.30 -- Shove chunks of papaya (not to be called such here, where the word pretty much means ¨pussy¨, say fruita bomba instead) hurriedly into mouth. Savour the amazingness that is the ripe papaya...
07.35 -- Hop on mo-ped and speed off to ISH  (International School Havana)
07.38 -- Beam at self over how awesome my moped parking skills have gotten. Beam exceptionally brightly over ability to stand it up by myself (sounds easy but requires strange hefting motion to operate the stand -- sadly no kicking simplicity)
07.40 -- Fill mini-mug with super strong, super sweet Cuban coffee, available for all in the staff room. Mmmmm, just the way I like it!
08.15 -- Teach double period grade 8 English with 12 amazing little people. Do NOT teach lesson I planned, however, as co-teacher both hijacks the lesson AND leaves me to deliver it while she works on something she forgot to do on her computer (Do I sound bitter? I´m not, I swear, but co-teaching with a slight personality disorder -- excessive defensiveness, excessive show of submission coupled with frequent interrupting and passive aggressive behaviours -- is not easy. But working on patience and inner zen.
09.30 -- Reflect how amazing it is that even when basically Chalk-and-Talk -ed at for an hour amazing little ones still making clever jokes and behaving beautifully
10.45 -- Meet the two 12th graders with whom I am leading an independent study. LeLe and KK are sweet, thoughtful, and try their best. They choose to read Animal Farm first, which is technically banned here
13.00 -- Get invited on a day-trip to a river tomorrow. Have officially made new friends!
14.15 -- Wonder how the hell everyone here has the emotional self-discipline not to scream when the internet keeps flashing in and out of service or loads suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuppppppppppppeeeeeerrrrrr slowly. GGGGGAAAAAAKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
15.00 -- Put up bulletin board paper and staple my favourite quotes up to make ¨my¨classroom -- not really mine at all, the spare room -- cozier
16.40 -- How the fuck did the time go by so fast?!! Am in serious danger of being late to tennis lesson.
16.45 -- Arrive at home and change double time into exercise friendly clothes. Johnny reminds me how ridiculous I look in my tight cotton shorts, but it´s these or jean ones
16.58 -- By some miracle arrive on time!
17.35 -- Thank god have not smoked in 33 days. Would be dead otherwise.
18.00 -- Have made real progress in only 3 days of tennis lessons. Today I only hit three balls outside the fenced-in perimeter!! Can switch smoothly between forehand and backhand grip. Know the difference between the two!
18.30 -- Eat yummy dinner of thin steak, brown rice, and string beans. I pretty much eat string beans for every meal, maybe because they´re in season right now??
19.30 -- Play three games of Spider on the computer. Best score an eh score of 112 (Dad says a good score is under 100 moves. Bah!)
20.00 -- Log on to Gmail. No new messages!! Intend to post guilt-inducing status on Facebook about why friends never email...
20.10 -- Think kind thoughts about all my many loved ones, family and friends. Miss my little chunkster Willie in particular

All bark and no bite (no matter what the judge claims...)

My arrivals in Florida are usually marked by the spastic, desperate, uncontrolled ecstasy of my brother´s cast-off pitbull mix, Phantom. This dog has been obsessed with me for eight years after I spent a summer walking and feeding him, conferring me with "human being who makes the world go around" status and leading to baby talk and bacon bribes in failed attempts by my brother to win back the dog's affection.

Last night, however, when I opened the door to the house and braced myself, throwing myself on the ground behind my suitcase to avoid death by mauling, I knew something was wrong when, despite the customary noise of dog nails scrabbling madly on tile, I was barely even injured. Phantom had run one measly celebratory loop around the kitchen and back. He sounded like a donkey with bronchitis. His posture was decidedly stiff and his tail was not beating me senseless but agitating like an electric toothbrush with half dead batteries. On my knees, his face in my hands, I realized that his brown and white speckles were now gray and white and the faintest blue ghosts of the cataracts of the future shone in his eyes.

My mother looked at my visible distress, shrugged, and pointed out rather brutally "He's old."

Eleven months ago, last September, he wasn't old. I KNOW he wasn't. He scratched the shit out of me when I walked through the door last year.

Calculating the years, I realize that Phantom is now over 9 years old. It was nine years ago almost to the day when he first came padding in to our living room on too-big feet, sniffed around, and peed on the floor.

This was the dog who followed me around the house shadow-like and whose eyes widened accusingly when I so much as took a shower, much less went out to buy coffee. He slept with me, even on my twin-sized mattress, my body twisted in the shape of the number four to fit on the bed around him. It was my job to take him to the vet once a year, risking death by dog fight when he savagely tried to attack (slash was deathly afraid of) everything on four legs. I trained him to sit and to come here, instructions he followed in the house only, and then only if he was sure he was not in trouble. If he was worried he was being asked to come because he had done something wrong, he patheticaly scrabbled onto his back to show me his pink and naked belly skin, thus proving how utterly at my mercy he was. Or pretended to be to avoid getting in trouble.

This was the dog who ripped the leash out of my hand (back before I wised up and bought the indispensable Gentle Leader) one Christmas morning in a brave attempt to protect us from the elderly man fishing on the bank of the fake lake behind our house. Phantom scratched him with his teeth (ok, some people would call it a "bite" but that implies a depth to the injury that was not inflicted in this case) and circled him while barking menacingly. Unfortunately, the grandafther had just gotten out of surgery the day before and his son wasn't pleased by Phantom's vigilance. When he turned to me, pointed at the dog and boomed, "that dog needs to be put to sleep," I locked myself in my room with Phantom, reassuring him in whispered hysterics that I wouldn't let anyone touch him and planning wild escapes to New York involving the theft of my mother's car. Once there we would live in some desolate part of the south Bronx or in New Jersey so that we could afford a yard. My mother screamed impatiently at me through the door -- "You care more about that damn dog than the old man! He could have had a heart attack." But when I was still sobbing three hours later behind the locked door, she finally reassured me the police weren't there to take him away to die but only to photograph him and charge her a huge fine.

This dog cannot get old and die! I love him, and no one I love has ever died on me in my twenty nine years of life. He can't! He can't! He can't!

Trauma at Atlantic Terminal

Inspired by nagging from my lovely sister, I finally agreed to replace the pre-teen mono-boob style bras I purchased a couple of years ago from American Apparel. Granted, they were clearly meant to contain boobs of the minuscule proportions found on 12 year olds, but they were so comfortable. And you didn't need to try them on -- just buy the largest size on offer. I guess the people at AA didn't consider the possibility that actual grown up women would be so lazy.

So I walked in to the Victoria's Secret at Atlantic Terminal, determined to buy my first under-wire bra since I rejected these as hideously uncomfortable at age 15, when my bra size was a paltry 32 A. Upon being directed to the Bra Dressing room to be fitted, I was met so enthusiastically by a nineteen year old saleslady that I had a severe paranoid attack that I was about to have my boobs measured by a former student. Careful scrutiny of her face, however, reassured me that I had never taught her Kafka's the Metamorphosis, and therefore I could be completely honest about my lack of bra knowledge without feeling embarrassed. Sort of.

I rejected out of hand the "full coverage" option she first presented me with -- I'm 29, not 49 -- even though she warned me I would need a larger size if I wanted to go with the less-grandmotherly Demi bra option. I nodded in understanding, although this did not prepare me for the fact that I was being handed a bra sized 36 D and even more astoundingly, that it did indeed fit me perfectly. Cup size D?? My former mono-boob bra shrivelled in embarrassment that it had ever been forced to contend with such over-sized boobs.

All of which further served to confirm the dire need for ten pounds of weight loss on my five feet three inch frame. But then, will my newly purchased cotton-lingerie line bras no longer fit, effectively wasting an hour of effort and a hundred dollars (sale -- two for $49.99)?

Bah, I miss the sixties when a pair of swinging boobs barely incited a second glance...

Now would be the time for me to write profoundly obvious statements.

My last published post, according to Blogger, was 29th of March, over two months ago. And yet, until Sunday, I would say that very little had changed. I felt very much the metaphorical cow in my favorite movie, The Flower of My Secret, when the old woman tells her daughter that a woman away from home is like a cow without a bell. Lost. Wandering aimlessly.

What is the purpose of being in this world? (Oh, yes, I know what you would say, Eleanor Roosevelt, and I'm sick of you! Yes, yes, to live it -- but what does that mean?). As far as I can tell, it is to find a way to bear it. And how to bear it? To find inner peace. What brings inner peace? Besides avoiding question and answer passages like this one, I think it must be to have a sense of purpose. Shit!

There has to be something to ground me here... which is a phrase I love. Because otherwise we would float away from ourselves, as if floating was some bad thing. People are very afraid of being lost, I think. I am petrified of it. I am more petrified that I will never find someone who laughs awkwardly, just like I do, or worse, find someone who does and who doesn't care! How ridiculous to have so little control over the most important part of life.

If life is going with the flow, if life is vibrating energy particles, if life is nebulous and opaque, and if, in spite of all these things, you can't quite say 'Fuck it!' -- well, I guess I'll take the ocean, and the sun, and mangoes. Definitely mangoes. (Guavas are tastier but the name gets stuck in your mouth.)

There will be ghosts there, I am under no illusions about that. I can already imagine them, in fact, and worse, I can imagine new ones that have yet to manifest themselves. But I'll manage.

Yes, I'll manage.

sputter, sputter, cough, cough

Ups and downs, ups and downs! It's amazing how much a cup of coffee can swing you up! Good ole caffeine...

Here are some things that have brought me up lately:

• A visit from cousin Toby and his lovely sidekick Anna May, aged 8 years. Highlights include lovely baby clam pasta, a game of I Spy wherein "Tube" does not count for "something beginning with a T" as it apparently starts with a "TCH" (damn you, England!), a fox crossing the road, many good laughs and perhaps too many pints...
• A trip to the countryside, thanks to my surrogate family, the Meeks, complete with beautiful japanese influenced garden (good that something green rather than nuclear meltdown comes to mind when thinking of Japan, if only briefly), a stunning white horse, and a five hundred year old tree
• A haircut! Yes, my thick matted frizz is gone... quite a shock to see six inches of your hair felled in one swoop. But I feel so free! My hair is soft and healthy! I can wash and dry it in minutes! No more obsessively looking for split ends!

On the other hand, my room is a total tip, I still haven't purged my laptop of its raging virus, I haven't exercised outside of walking to work in months, I got rejected from Oxford, I was thoroughly bored by the last two men I tried to date, grad school in October 2012 feels miles away, I haven't gotten laid in more than half a year, I miss my friends and I really miss a decent IPA... GAK!

I am a tad worried that I am in the danger zone of a mild depression, but the Easter Holiday is coming up soon which should include exercise, family, and a few trips around the British Isles, including a week in Cork with my favourite branch of the White family, the Simmonds of Ireland... so I am hoping to recharge the sputtering batteries soon enough.

And am getting hooked on Boardwalk Empire... always loved you, Steve Buscemi!

Not the most uplifting post in the world, but never mind!

On Saturday, I walked around London Zoo for a good five hours. I even enjoyed it, although the tiger was literally pacing back and forth in his enclosure, and the lions looked even more bored than they do on the Discovery Channel. I couldn't help feeling that these animals deserve a little hunting action. Aren't there too many deer in the suburbs, anyway?

But, although the baby gorilla was completely fascinating, I didn't really start writing this post to tell you about my adventures at the zoo, no matter how cute the Emperor Tamarinds are (they have mustaches! Great, big, long, droopy staches!). It was in fact my third date with A. By the end of the second date, I had already pretty much realized that I wasn't feeling it, but I was so desperate to avoid the "he seems like he likes me so therefore there must be something wrong with him" trap and it would have been so nice if I did like him that I went on one more date. But pretty quickly I realized that yes, he really is kind of boring, too ready to agree with everything I say (even if it contradicts what he had previously just said), and too desperate to fill any silence that even I could not handle the overload of bad jokes -- and I'll laugh at almost anything!

But for the last couple of weeks, the whole thing had made me so much more anxious than it warranted that I wondered what exactly was going on. Then on Saturday morning I woke up after an anxiety filled nightmare. I had dreamt that Alex and I were getting back together again, and then he was breaking up with me again. In this dream I screamed and pulled my hair and slapped him with that bottomless rage that I only ever experience in dreams -- that wild, desperate, I-know-I'm-making-this-worse-but-I-can't-stop-myself rage -- and I woke up sweaty and out of breath. And it all made sense, my reluctance to write off A and my simultaneous anxiety that he was a boring toad... Obviously, I am terrified of being hurt again. The fact that my subconscious had to give me night sweats for me to realize this is sad but telling... And, of course, it was too late then to back out of date number three, so I went anyway and tried to enjoy the Meet the Monkeys exhibit and shrug off the constant banter from the peanut gallery.

I'm being rather harsh but it feels so good to actually know what I feel, for sure, and to know that I'm not just over-reacting to a fear of intimacy but actually just not interested that I will allow myself this chance to be horrible.

I haven't been very kind to myself recently, looking in the mirror and frowning at the bulging over love handles and pot belly that I see... I have to remind myself that, no matter how much I really might need to lose ten (or even fifteen) pounds, I still need to be kind and gentle with myself, and not take every opportunity to look in the mirror and call myself fat. I had escaped this particular female pitfall for most of my life, partly because until five years ago I was always skinny and partly because I do genuinely love my body and the pleasures that it gives me -- the feeling of water on naked skin, the soft squishyness of plump boobs, the top of a foot rubbing against the back of a calf in a comforting repeated motion (it's like my version of sucking my thumb, I think!). I do love all those things, and going only on touch my pot belly is soft and comforting... but I can't help wanting to not bulge over my jeans in a bad case of muffin top. No more how feminist I may be, this is still true.

Sometimes I have to fight the paranoid feeling that someone is mad at me, or that I've disappointed in some way. But sometimes it's based on reality -- remember the friend who dumped me a few months ago? -- and that makes it hard not to be paranoid in all situations. I have another friend, whom I love dearly, and have done for almost fifteen years... she's been too busy to see me for the last two months. Is she really too busy? Or have I somehow mortally offended her? I try to check off all the usual friendship-ending acts a person can do and can't find any that apply (I haven't slept with her boyfriend, or brother, or father; I haven't tried to sabotage her job; I haven't spread malicious rumours or posted anything about her on the internet)... so what? Is she just bored of me? Have I somehow undermined our friendship with some selfish, unthinking, stupid act? A girl could go mad!!

Anyway, this has been rather a random assortment of not-very-cheerful thoughts! On the good news front, Paris was amazing, my friend Val at least is not mad at me, Noa is crawling already, I (yes, me!) taught a British person about the NBA, one of my little munchkins made some progress connecting vowel sounds with letters, and my head did not explode despite how stressful wednesday and thursday were... all very good things!

I miss many people, and of course my family very much, but today I miss my girls the most -- Maggie, Alyson, Ariella, Barbara, Erin, Rebecca (and her girls), Valentina, Mom -- I hope you are all well and smiling.

Love, E