Thank You For The Contrast

I've just come through a difficult few weeks where I had an unexpectedly challenging and painful recovery from some surgery that I expected to sail through. All the plans I had about getting back to work quickly or getting ready for Christmas were sacked. I needed to just let myself get well. Today, I'm grateful for those tough moments.

Here's why: this weekend, when I started to feel good - really good - I nearly cried from the relief of it. You've likely heard that joke about the fellow who keeps hitting his thumb with a hammer, and when asked why he's doing it, he replies, “Because it feels so good when I stop!” That's kind of where I was - I had been so miserable, so hopeless, and even though I knew I would get better soon, there were times I couldn't see it. But boy, did it feel good when all those complications ended!

It's the yang to the yin - the contrasts in life - that make us more appreciative. It's the quiet at the end of a hectic day, the smile of a child after the upset, the loveliness of a ladybug against a blade of grass.

It's good to have one's health, to have a comfortable home and clean clothes and the certainty of one's next meal. Many do not. It's good to have friends and family who get you to the other side when you don't have the strength to get there yourself. Many don't have that, either. And it's good to stop and be grateful for the things and the people that keep painting the picture of our lives; that give us the light to the dark; that provide the contrast that makes it all so stunning.

Thank you, my friends, for the light you bring to my world. The happiest of holiday seasons to you.

© 2017 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie

The Needle Whisperer

I found out tonight that I lost a friend. We didn't see each other a lot, but I always loved it when he was around, and he had a sweetness and grace that touched everyone. 

His name was Alberto. I first met him a number of years ago, when I started giving platelets after a lifetime of donating whole blood. My first platelet donation was pretty painful, and I cried because it hurt so badly when the nurses were setting it up, but I didn't want to fail. Alberto came over to see what was happening, and in a flash he slid the needle in, and I barely felt it. From then on, I requested him whenever I could. He was my Needle Whisperer.

He passed last week, of an apparent heart attack. I don't know much about his personal life, but he was on the young side, and I know that he had such a kindness and quiet competency about him that his was a very lucky family to have had him - and they must be experiencing that gaping space that's left when someone who was pure love and goodness is gone. 

I'm writing because I don't know what to do with all this sudden sadness, and I'm sitting here with a lump in my throat that I cannot seem to melt. Since I didn't know of his passing in time to honor him at his funeral, I'm putting this out to the Universe: Alberto B. was a wonderful, shining, perfect soul, and I hope you will take good care of my Needle Whisperer. 

© 2017 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie

If I Die Tomorrow, It Was Nice to Know Ya

I don't think I'm the only person who is business as usual in my frontal lobe, working and feeding the cat and running errands, while playing in the background is a horror-filled monologue informing me that we're all going to die.

Now I know what all those people on doomed trains and airplanes feel like, when there's nothing to do but wait and see whether the outcome is a last-minute miracle save, or a Hollywood-worthy crash and burn.  I went to bed last night, as those involved with the North Korean nuclear specter artfully changed the word "threat" to "rhetoric," thinking "What if I wake up just to go to sleep permanently?"

This isn't my usual slice-of-life post. I'm not feeling very cheerful today, and I can't see the humor in this experience. Except that I keep finding myself telling friends and family how much I love them, and then I acknowledge that if nothing catastrophic comes to pass, I'm going to feel awfully stupid about how goopy I got. It goes something like this: "This is why I love you, it was really great to have you in my life, and if nothing happens please forget how passionate this sounded."

I'm scared, because I have so little faith that cool heads will prevail. I'm terrified at the prospect of anyone getting hurt in this fiasco. There are people just as frightened as we are in a few other countries.

I'm ashamed, in advance, because I know that there will be some awful, disgraceful relief if something doesn't happen here, but happens someplace else. If we get to say "whew!" at someone else's expense.

I'm kicking myself for not using my life better, for not loving that one guy when I had the chance, for not letting go of anger when it would have been so easy to, for not apologizing when someone deserved it, for not learning two or three languages, for not volunteering more, for not adding a few more countries to the list of those I've visited, for not always being the person who is my best me, because some days my head and heart and soul are lazy. But this is good to know: when I look at my life from a "what if the worst happens" perspective, I'm pretty comfy in the loving and kind department. No regrets there.

Today I have one foot in a world where family and friends and my house and car are intact, and one foot in a scorched-earth dystopia. I can't jolly myself out of it. This is real. It's possible. And I just want to tell you - if I die tomorrow, it was nice knowing you.

© 2017 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie

Why, Oh WiFi?

My sister and her family were in from the West Coast last week, and I got to have three whole days and nights alone with my teenage nephew and preteen niece. Because they WANTED to be with me. Or so I thought.

While my sister and her husband stayed with our father, J and J happily packed their bags for what was supposed to be one sleepover. We went to the pool, did the mom tasks they were assigned (him: thank-you notes from his recent birthday; her: reading); and went out to dinner at a Japanese steakhouse (complete with open grill and startling flames and flying shrimp sometimes making it into a diner's gaping, expectant mouth). Then home to brush teeth, watch a movie and camp out in the living room, as we have always done; the tent-bedroom I set up when they were small giving way to him on a pull-out couch, her in a chair-plus-hassock bed she likes to cobble together, and me on the big sofa, until they fall asleep and I remove myself to one of the upstairs bedrooms they don't want to use. I love it - love the auntie-ness of it, watching them sleep, making them breakfast, the fact that they are so well-behaved for me even though they act differently with their parents... it's all good.

So I was delighted when they asked their parents if they could spend another night, and then another. Until the sibs started fighting, and the 14-year-old busted his 11-year-old sister: "She wants to be here for your wifi, you know." And then my sister/his mom, told me later: "He wants to be at your home because you have On Demand movies." Sigh. I know they love me. I just didn't know I would be sharing their love with my house.

© 2017 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie

Daddy Dearest

First the short-sleeved ones: yellow Chaps shirt with navy windowpanes. Thin beige-and-white striped. Two black print microfiber shirts. One red, light blue and white one (another Chaps - my favorite). Then the long sleeves: both periwinkle; one plain, one with a muted check. He only wears those on non-dialysis days, because he likes the technicians to have quick access to his fistula - the port midway up his left arm where they attach him to a machine that runs for hours and keeps him alive.

I'm doing my father's laundry, the same shirts every week, the tan chinos, the plaid boxers, white v-neck undershirts and black diabetic socks he prefers that are loosely woven at the ankles so they are both easy to put on and not pinch-y. Shirts on the hangers my departed mother lovingly wound with multicolored wool yarn while she was watching TV a million years ago. Pants, socks, underwear in the laundry basket, then into my car for the drop-off later. This dad-o'-mine, who was movie-star attractive in his youth, who loved suits and great ties and had a gorgeous head of black hair ... he's now resigned, at 91, to a uniform of ordinary fabrics and sensible scuffed brown shoes. His only accessory is a blue and light brown twill belt with a coppery Kodak logo on the clasp, shades of his day job selling equipment at Penn Camera for decades, and his side job as a wedding and bar mitzvah photographer when I was growing up. Occasionally I would go with him and stand, well-behaved and invisible, around the edges of the dancing and laughing and hugging, wearing a Sunday dress on a Saturday. It's how I, Catholic to the core then, learned all the words to Hava Nagila by the time I was seven. ("....hava neranena, venis mecha" and then the more exciting, "Uru achim, belev sameach - hey!")

My dad never expected to live this long - my sisters and I didn't think he would, either, after his cancer and then kidney disease, our mother's death nine years ago, and more cancer - though of course we love having him. My father simply refuses to accept his mortality, and thus defies the odds. He is stubborn and self-sufficient and sharp as a tack. And lonely. Deeply, sadly, consistently lonely.

I'm using this blog post as part late-Father's Day tribute; part confession. Sometimes I resent being the Caretaker Kid. I have spent a lot of time keeping him safe and hanging out with him and picking up groceries and driving to and from dialysis and doing things like laundry and such. Most of the time I do so with great love and selflessness - after all, he did that for us when we were defenseless, and now he is, and he needs this. But there are times I just want to stay home, or go out with friends, or just not have to be responsible... and even though I always do the right thing, make the right choice, I feel guilty when I've had those thoughts, as if he can see that I'd rather be someplace else. Sometimes I'm embarrassed that the conversation starter these days from my friends is often "How's your dad?," as if that is all I do now, even though I'm working and living a life. Still, I realize how kind that is, that people remember him, and maybe they're thinking they wish they had their fathers, too, and I feel awful that I'm making this about me, and not him.

But often following the guilt, I have a moment like I had the other day, when I was leaving my father after having dinner with him. I leaned over to kiss him, and he, with his huge 1980s glasses and thinning grey hair, with age spots dotting his skin and nothing but love on his still-handsome face, held on to both of my arms on the inside, just below my elbows, and looked at me with teary eyes, and said, "Be careful driving home. You're my link to the outside world, you know."

I do know, Dad. I'm your link.


© 2017 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie

Yeah, I Took It

I'm a thief. Not often, and not with any intent. The Mayo Clinic defines kleptomania as "the recurrent failure to resist urges to steal items that you generally don't really need and that usually have little value." They say it's a "serious mental health disorder that can cause much emotional pain to you and your loved ones if not treated." Before you call the cops on me, let me explain. 
I don't take things with any cognizance that I'm taking them. It's not uncommon for me to spend a day shopping and come home to find a big fat handful of pens in my purse from the stores I visited, because after signing my name with a flourish on various charge slips, I dropped each pen in my bag. I don't need pens. Geez! I have plenty of them from other shopping trips! I don't even notice that I'm taking them, I just do. But this will change. Pretty soon I'll find one of those little plastic screens in my purse after signing it with my fingertip.

Still, pens are small-time loot for me, unlike the day I ran some errands and looked at my passenger seat twenty minutes after leaving the bank drive-through to see the pneumatic tube capsule from which I'd retrieved my money and license.  I called the bank right away, and said, "Heh-heh, I kind of drove off with that capsule; I guess this happens a lot." And they said, "Uh, not really. How fast can you bring it back?" 

Or this week... when I went to the doctor's, and afterward spent a few hours working at Starbucks because I needed a change of scenery, and then fished in my purse for my car keys as I was getting ready to go, and ... what's this? The remote control from the doctor's waiting room TV? I scanned through several mental scenarios that were all designed not to reveal my identity as the remote burglar, like driving to my doctor's office late at night or early in the morning before they opened and leaving it tied to the front door (after I cleaned my fingerprints off of it, of course).

But seeing as how that was only going to punish the rest of the patients that wanted to flip channels as they were waiting, I drove it back and sheepishly gave it to the irritated nurse behind the front desk.  She wasn't very nice about it, so on my way out I took a few pens. 

© 2017 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie

Girls Rule

I know some amazing women.

Women who were second moms to me as I scrambled forward through the years, who came together in a blend with my own mother to offer life lessons, figuratively moving my face ever so slightly to make sure I looked up instead of down.

Women who listen to my dreams, who sit with me over coffee or adult beverages to talk about work and life, who make the right noises when I cry and then laugh moments later, who are happy for me when I'm in love, and get mad with me at the men who have wronged me. (Not all of them wrong me, but it sure seems like a disproportionate number of them have. At least, that's what me and my girls think.)

Women who rescue: who don't say "you'll have to let me know if I can help you" - they just show up and say "give me a job." Women who insist you cannot go through surgery by yourself and fly across states to take care of you, or help you move, or take care of tasks after someone has passed that you thought you could handle alone but ended up in complete, paralyzing overwhelm.

Women I've worked with, and some with whom I still do, who are so remarkably intelligent and meticulous about their work that I trust them implicitly with mine, who make me smarter and more curious just by being around them, who don't stop until they find solutions, who want to make their mark on the world through accomplishments earned with great talent and a good heart.

Women who are closing off a much-loved job with sadness but are less concerned about their own opportunities than they are about finding spots for their suddenly untethered team members. 

Women like my twenty-something niece, who craves adventure and pursues work in that field, knowing already what she wants - something that many of us don't find out until much later.

Women like my sisters, who, even though we may not always see eye to eye, show up in force when there's a crisis; no questions asked. (Well, to be fair - sometimes a few questions are asked, like "How did you let this happen?" or "What were you thinking?")

Women who faced grave illnesses with pragmatism and triumphed, or those with terminal cancer who had such moxie I would sob after I got off of a phone call with them, and even today re-read the emails they sent me, experiencing again their last words, which seem imbued with more gravitas and wisdom now that they are gone.

Yes - on this International Day of Women, when many will stay home from work to make a point (I cannot, because I work there already!), I'm adding my voice to this moment, because I really do think girls rule.

Boys: most of you are okay, too, but this is not your day. Oh - wait... I will represent you through the words of Eagles guitarist Glenn Frey: "Except for a few guitar chords, everything I've learned in my life that is of any value I've learned from women." Amen, Glenn.

© 2017 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie

Except for a few guitar chords, everything I've learned in my life that is of any value I've learned from women.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/g/glennfrey251756.html

Except for a few guitar chords, everything I've learned in my life that is of any value I've learned from women.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/g/glennfrey251756.html

Shut Your Eyes and Think of...Anything Else

It's my quarterly "money meeting," and I'm seated in an office with my accountant and my financial planner. I suspect I am a cliché in this practice: a word nerd who hates math. I wonder what percentage of their clientele are made up of people like me; creatives that shine well enough in their respective professions to have resources to protect and invest, but not a clue as to how to make that happen. Thank goodness for all those kids I hated in grade school who aced their math classes. They are saving whole communities of poets and writers and painters from ramen noodles after 60. 

I show up dutifully for these meetings, I write the tax checks required, I listen to reports on how my SEP and my personal accounts are doing, I sit as my female accountant and my male financial planner talk over me and plan my future like parents over a child at dinner. A child who has her index fingers in her ears while saying "lalalalala." 

Sometimes they give me paperwork that needs signing, and I pose a few questions just so they know I’m sharp enough not to let them get away with tricking me into anything (I’m not). When they ask me, as a courtesy, whether I want my money to go in this fund or that one, I furrow my brow and say, “What would you do if you were me?” and then zone out and think about what to get at the grocery store on my way home as they are answering.

Luckily, this works for all of us, and my trusty team of two has done a good job for me over the years. And when I'm feeling particularly unintelligent on my side of the table, or my head starts to hurt from too many numbers, I comfort myself with the knowledge that if they had to write an article or develop a communications strategy, they would be the ones feeling as if their brain was plugged with cotton balls, and they were surely going to fail the test. 
 
© 2017 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie

Love, Actually

Valentine's Day. It's a day that has changed for me over the years - sometimes it holds romantic love and surprises; sometimes not - and one year, sadly, it became the day my mother died. But no matter what, it's always a good day to spread some sugar around. And I'm not talking about the candy-related sweetness: I'm talking about the love kind.

To my family, which is, like most families, imperfectly perfect, I love the history we have, the heritage we share, the memories of childhood and awkward young adulthood and the grown-ups we have become. I love knowing that you have my back, no matter what. That one phone call from me will bring you running, no questions asked. And now that we're all getting older, I love seeing that we're letting more of the small stuff go in favor of the big things. In favor of love.

To my colleagues, I am honored to have so many business pals whose intelligence and savvy and overall kindness and decency and desire to do good work has strengthened my own professional abilities and values. Because of you, I have a network that is broader and deeper than I could ever have imagined; I have friends in places all over the world who are glad to hear from me when I write or call; I am connected, always, to someone who knows something about everything; and I know people I can call on to help other people who need a particular talent or knowledge or skill. Because work isn't just about work. Sometimes it's about love, too.

To "my" kids - the older ones and the young ones, the ones I'm related to or not...thank you for your openness and honesty and for letting me think, most of the time, that I'm the cool aunt in your lives. Even though you stop kissing and hugging and even speaking at times, I know you love me. I just know. Because I was you once. Love doesn't need to be talked about. I get it.

To my lost loves and last loves, thank you for seeing me at my best when I might not have deserved it, and thank you for the lessons, intentional or not, the great ones and the painful ones, that showed me what I want and need. You've helped me learn about how to love a little better the next time around.

To my friends, the ones I never see and always see, the ones who sit in my heart and pop into my head...thank you for being another family for me. You show up when I need a boost, you make me laugh with you and at myself, you meet me for coffee or dinner or drinks and as much conversation as I want, you join me on trips, you help me move, you take care of me and let me take care of you, and you never show up empty-handed. Because even if you can't see it, I can: you're always bringing love.

And to Suzie, the frazzled checker at my grocery store; and my mailman Ralph who brings my mail up to my door even though he doesn't have to; and Sandy, my neighbor who likes to stroll over and tell me all about the other neighbors and probably tells them about me; and to the thousands of other people I hear about or meet through the course of a year for a second or a minute or an hour... I love you too.

See? Today's not really just about flowers and candy and sweethearts. It's about love, actually.

Happy Valentine's Day.

© 2017 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie

Out of the Mouth of Baby

I am struggling lately. I struggle with whether to tamp down what I want to express in this changing environment because an individual will invariably make a comment I don't want to associate with. Then I worry about hurting the feelings of someone I care about or inviting a harsh conversation if I delete it, and on occasion I will remove my entire post just so I don't have to make that choice - I throw my post under the bus in the name of friendship!

But I have things to say. I have seen ultimatum-type posts from others who say "That's it! No more, and if a friend I am connected to posts something that says this or that I will unfriend you, and if you don't like it, you can unfriend me now." And sometimes I've done that, because if we censor each other for expressing concerns - as long as that happens with thought and integrity and honesty - then who are we? Not America. If that's your preference, to disengage, I will honor that: it likely means we were not real friends anyway. But nobody puts Baby in the corner.

That's why I loved the Women's March on Washington this past weekend, magnified in so many places, inside and outside our country. And I ask you: how can these numbers, this energy, this passion not make all global citizens sit up and take notice? It was a phenomenon for these times. Bravo to those who participated and those who supported this celebration of all the things that cannot be heard, or are not possible to say, if we're stuck in the corner.

Like the people in my life who are closest to me, and those who may not be in my immediate circle of influence but are wonderful role models and leaders, I demand openness and candor and transparency...and the option to speak my mind.

Nobody gets to tell me I should shut my pie hole and look the other way when there are lies openly, flagrantly spoon-fed to a waiting public, hoping to see something different. Well, different isn't better, folks. It can be, but I don't see it. I know what I expect from a coworker, a friend or boyfriend, a boss, a leader, a colleague... I expect to have a comfort level with the way they speak and act, and to respect them even when I don't agree. That's not an unusual assumption.

So if you want me to hold my tongue on the sidelines instead of speaking out when I simply cannot bear what I see and hear, then we should part ways with no rancor. Because Baby doesn't like the corner.  

© 2017 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie