Hungover. Out with a new person who claims, already, after one evening, to be madly in love. Serious red flag. It was fun. In a bar, after yoga, on very little food, I had two glasses of wine. He taught me to tango---very sexy. I love to dance, especially the tango. Not a good plan.

Yes, yes, I like him. But I'm not ready. I have to settle things, do this honestly. As honestly as possible.

It's not the right thing to do. Oy.

Nothing in particular went wrong yesterday, and yet, smack in the middle of it, as I was taking a series of letters having to do with my father's estate to the notary, the old, dark feeling, that heaviness at the bottom of my stomach, pulled me down again. I couldn't figure out what it was. Grief, merely? My mother and father are dead. I am now the Old One in the family.

I think it had to do with more than just me, though. I couldn't really explain it, because I love going to the notary, who is also a friendly Muslim butcher, cook, and grocer who runs a little place near the university where you can get fresh lamb or goat stew. His wife runs the cash register, which is pile high with sweets like sesame cakes and date- and fig-cookies. His sons cut the animals, which are skinned and hanging from hooks in the back, deliver, clean up, hang around. It always smells incredibly good in there, and its usually busy with regulars.

It feels like America because it's so Mom and Pop with the tiny, messy office where the father takes you to sign the documents; and it feels like the Middle East because of everything else. And when I'm in there I think--these are the kinds of people who are dying, every day, in Iraq. I also think about the soldiers, our children, the age of my youngest students, dying over there, three a day.

Yeah. Keep fighting, John Murtha.

I was telling this to a guy I went out with last night. A friend, a colleague. A really nice man, to whom I've been attracted for about six years, I guess. I'm not interested, not really. First of all, he's about 15 years younger than I am. Second of all, he's in my department, if only for a short while longer, before he goes out on the market and gets a job in some remote state. And thirdly, perhaps most importantly, he and I are both involved with other people.

He has a lot of friends in the department. I am trying to get out more, to propel myself into the world. I go for days without speaking to anyone except for the people in my yoga classes. And that's hardly a genuine social encounter. It's a few brief words on the elevator going up, going down. A "sorry" when you brush someone's hand and a "namaste" at the end of class. Actually, it's a lot. I shouldn't complain. There is also the good feeling of community that comes during Sivasana, when we're all meditating together.

And there are the cats, Big Cat and Little Cat, who greet me when I return to the house, swim around my feet at breakfast time, and skulk at the garage as I'm pulling out for the day.

The good thing about last night was that I made--I hope--a new friend. The bad thing--I drank three glasses of wine and ate, what...gluttenously, two bowls of cereal (I had to think to remember) while watching Lost on T.V.

I had worked hard, though---really hard at the library and I'm excited about the paper I'm finishing. Something that should have been published eons ago. But it's taken me all this time--and I don't exactly know why, or whether, had I not come through this long depression, I would have come to its meaning before now. It is not really important to ask about what might have happened. The important thing is that this is happening. The brain--when not drowning in alcohol--is functioning.

I'm also painting. My boyfriend (last night I dreamt that I was embarrassed by him, that I was introducing him sheepishly as 'the man I'm dating") has been gone for over a week and I don't really miss him. I love sleeping alone. I love not having to kiss him or explain why I don't want to have sex. I have started a painting, a self portrait, a nude. The colors of the background are all wrong but it is coming in.

Not unlike the paper I'm finishing. I can tell...I'm growing...and there is promise, like the little buds, the first buds ever, on the ....bush in my back yard, the one that has, year after year after year, put forth only leaves, no flowers.. There is potential for beauty here. But it will not be easy to give him up.

I was talking about this with R last night. He said, basically, "It's in his kiss," you know, that wonderful song? What he actually said was, "if they can't kiss, it's a deal breaker." And it's true.

I only ENDURE the kisses of The Man I'm Dating. I've tried to give him pointers. My friend last night said he thought it was inherent. And I found myself thinking about what it would be like to kiss him, and feeling fairly certain that it would be wonderful. Then I arduously pushed the idea from my mind. Truth is, I don't want to be unfaithful, or break up. I like his friendship. I worry about how I'll get on without it.

I miss my son. As ever. As ever and ever and ever.

It doesn't really get easier. Last night we saw a Bosnian film about a woman living with her daughter, the spawn of one of multiple war-rapes. And even though I know, from experience, how terrible it is to be raped...and could see how hard her life was, how lonely, how penurious...still I envied her. She, after all, got to sit down every night with the person she loves most in the world.

Here is the inspiring thought of the day, which came to me while I was still waking up. and petting Little Cat, who is jet black. Actually this came to me last night, while talking with R, my friend, who is also black. We Americans, we the people of this continent, who have been living with each other for three of four hundred years now, especially those of us whose ancestors come from the same general areas--we're like the Palestinians and the Jews.

We're basically the same people and we have more in common with each other, in blood and culture and understanding, than we do with people from, say, Asia...we are the same people. And yet we go around acting as though we're completely different from one another. Those of us who think at all know full well that it's an artificial construction, race, a preposterous category that is real in the mind only. Chromosonally, surely we are more alike one another, having intermarried with one another, lived with one another for all thesee years, than we are with millions of other people, who are also just people, all descended from the first people on the planet, whom, if we were to see them, we would call animals.

Happy Birthday

So it was my son's 16th birthday last week. We had a plan, in place for over a month, to go out to dinner together. We were both looking forward to it. The day before the big day, I made a reservation at a hotel in his town. I called him the morning of his birthday, to wish many happy returns and to tell him how excited I was about coming down. This was his response:
"Uh,.....choke." Exactly his words.
"What?" I asked.
"Uh...my uh dad and K (his stepmother) are having a kind of party for me tonight."
"Oh." I said, not getting it. "Oh!" again, I said, starting to get it, and then a very meaningful "Oooh!!!! " A balloon letting the last of its air escape.
Maternal care kicked irritation that was beginning to take over my brain out of my voice, which brightened, slightly strained...."Not a problem! I'll come tomorrow!" I didn't want him to feel caught, as he always does, in the middle of parents who can't seem to communicate with one another, to show common courtesy. I hadn't told his father (who, apparently, expected to be asked....) what our plans were. I assumed that B would let him know, but that was asking B to do something that, if you understood the situation, was really too hard for me. My bad.
But of course I wasn't invited to the party, either.
So. Care for my son, love, really, temporarily overruled anger, but then irritation flared up every so slightly in my next question: "Did you tell your dad that we had a plan?" "Yes." "When?" "This morning." "Oh." Another balloon deflating. "What did he say?" "He said he didn't want to cause me any trouble..."
For the moment I was willing to give his father the benefit of the doubt--he meant well, as I did, but he was there and I was here and he had geographical dominance. What could I do but bow out gracefully?
"So," I said, "I will come down but I am not sure that I can undo tonight's reservation. And if not then I'll come tonight and stay over and we'll do something tomorrow." No point in forcing Brendan to make a painful choice, as his father did, on his birthday of all days. I didn't want him to feel more awkward and miserable than he already did. His father should have bowed out. Would have, had he been more gracious.
I long ago learned that, in this relationship with my beloved, my only child, there was no winning, no keeping score, no battle to be won with his father. Even though it often felt like a battle. Even if I had, again and again and again, to bend and give in, that this would be the way to survive. I had to be like the willow in the wind, whose roots hold firmly in the ground, who, even after bending down to the ground, rises up again and again and again.
In times of greatest struggle, I have looked to the Tao te Ching, as translated by Stephen Mitchell. It is the best guide to life I know. Consider verse 76:

Men are born soft and supple;
dead, they are stiff and hard.
Plants are born tender and pliant;
dead, they are brittle and dry.

Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible
is a disciple of death.
Whoever is soft and yielding
is a disciple of life.

The hard and stiff will be broken.
The soft and supple will prevail.

or verse 78:

Nothing in the world
is as soft and yielding as water.
Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible,
nothing can surpass it.

The soft overcomes the hard;
the gentle overcomes the rigid.
Everyone knows this is true,
but few can put it into practice.

Therefore the Master remains
serene in the midst of sorrow.
Evil cannot enter her heart.
Because she has given up helping,
She is her peopl's greatest help.

True words seem paradoxical.

I should carry the Tao around with me. I should send a copy to my son. Reverse that. Strike it.
My therapist's words remind me: "Let go of shoulds" and "trys". When you say "I will try" or "I should" you have distancing yourself from the task, you are giving yourself permission not to do it. Say "I will; I have done" Perhaps the Tao would say, don't make any promises.
So I won't. But I did just order Ursula K. LeGuin's translation, which I am eager to read and compare to Mitchell's.

I was telling you about what happened. This is the task I have set for myself this morning.

So, B went off to school and I changed my hotel reservation to the following night. That evening I got a phone call from him.
"So at school today I got high with C and it really messed me up and my dad could tell at dinner and he yelled at me and got really mad and now everything is ruined."
"What did you take?" (First question--a question, you might be interested to know, that his father never bothered to ask him).
"Something that is supposed to stop motion sickness."
"What? Why did you do that?"
"I don't know. I was with C. and it was my birthday and I just wanted to do something that would be like escaping from responsiblity for a little while."
"What did it do to you?"
"At first it made me really awake and buzzed and it was terrible. Then it made me really, really tired. I didn't think it would this long. It ruined the entire day. At dinner, F [his 2-year old sister, adopted] kept asking, "B what's wrong? What's wrong, B?"
"Okay. so, what did your father do?"
"He just got really really mad and said I had pissed all over the table and my birthday. I went to my room and he came down and yelled some more. He said he was really embarrassed and ashamed and really angry. And now he won't talk to me."
My ex's temper is frightening, irrational, all-destroying. I had hoped that he had mellowed out over the years, but that was foolish of me. Most of the time he is a nice guy, smart, funny, caring, affectionate. But he lets things that bother him build up in him, he doesn't know how to be forthright and talk about stuff that upsets him at the time...the anger builds and builds and builds, and then it explodes. Like a Volcano. One minute he's Dr. Jekyll, witty, charming, rational, and the next minute--you never know what will set him off--he's turned into Mr. Hyde, hideous, hulking and towering even taller than his six feet five inches over your head, shouting, banging, storming, throwing. He can manage it briefly--I imagine he did as he sent B to his room--but then when it unleashes, it overwhelms him and everyone in his path. After a wild, nasty outburst of profanity and personal insults calculated to shame, to belittle, to hurt--he storms off and punishes further with the silent treatment. He'll slam the door, turn away, and refuse to acknowledge his victim. And the worst of it--he feels entirely justified in behaving this way. He believes that whatever provokes his anger deserves what comes, and that people who have crossed him have committed moral crimes that need to be punished. He is judge, jury, and executioner. He will persistently hold to this rigid position for weeks, months, years, at times. And you won't even know he's doing it--because he hides it under a mask of Dr. Jekyll-like calm, reason, and charismatic humor.
So, I told B. that I was very sorry that this had happened to him, that I thought his father had overreacted, and that his behavior was reprehensible.
What I didn't say to him was--why didn't your father bother to find out what you had taken? I got an email the next day, in which M, my ex, reported that B. was "wasted---probably on LSD or shrooms..." a complete fabrication, and not at all in keeping with the fairly rational, although very miserable B. I had spoken to just after this event. If indeed B. had looked as bad as his father reported, then, had I been there, I would have determined what he was on and taken action from there. What if it had been life-threatening? What if B. had gone into some sort of medically dangerous state? Screaming at him and refusing to speak to him seemed like the worst possible response.
And hardly the way to encourage B. to trust him, or to convince him not to experiment with drugs of any kinds.
I asked him how he was feeling now. Sleepy, he said. 'So, find a book to take your mind off painful thoughts and try to let yourself fall asleep. Tomorrow's another day. I'll come down and we'll go out for a nice dinner."

So. The next day I called while on my way down to visit him--and he told me that he was okay but that his father was still not speaking to him. Worse, his father had ripped his birthday card in half and left it on his birthday cake.

A very mature response, wouldn't you say?

I picked him up from school. He looked incredibly handsome, as so often these days. He cuts his own hair in a rather interesting, neither long nor short fashion, and today it was brownish. Sometimes it's green or blue. He's also very tall--over 6' 2'', broad-shouldered and very thin.

He wanted to go down to the local teen gathering spot--a starbuck's in a nice strip mall--to meet some friends of his. he wanted me to me them, and for them to meet me. I was flattered. So we went, and had ice cream while sitting outside. He told me the whole story--and also said that he didn't want to go home that night. That he felt so alieanated and angry with his dad that he felt like staying out all night with his friends and not telling him where he was. An understandable desire which I didn't contradict. I was in listening mode, not governing mode. When his friends arrived I remained in listening, non-judgemental mode, trying to draw them out, trying to hear them, to understand them. It was fun. I like them.

Later that evening, as we were walking around the city together, he told me that he was never going to do that again--and I said that his father, had he been rational, would not have exploded but would rather have told him that he was worried about him and that he didn't want him messing around with stupid substances because he loved him. And I also encouraged him to avoid making a bad situation worse by following through on his plan to stay out all night.

Of course I offered to let him stay with me--"You saw how cool my room is. We could sit on the couch and watch DVDs (the hotel had a huge collection, free) and eat popcorn and candy.." He was tempted, he said, but really wanted to see his friends--the ones we had met earlier. I understood. So, with some prodding from me, he called his father and said he would be coming home at around 11.30--and that he was with me...

We had a beautiful dinner at a nice restaruant===we ate outside in a part of town that neither of us had ever been to before. I let him direct the conversation. We talked about his dad, his family, his friends, the girl he loves in vain...his friends. It was one of the best conversations we've ever had. We laughed, we mused, we reminisced about our travels in Poland last year. He talked about how beautiful the girls were...it was light and healthy and clean and good. I gazed at him with love and admiration and delight in his being. I could not have been happier with anyone else, in any other place. It was perfect. Curious thing about giving to someone you love--the more you give, the more love within you seem to have. As though the well fills itself by exhausting itself.

I'm sure his father would love to have such a dinner with his son. If only he could.

That night I left him at his friend's house--they were going to watch some silly horror film they had all seen a hundred times together--and he promised to call me when he was ready to go home. I was going to come to drive him if he needed a ride. But he got one with his friend's dad. He was so happy--our conversation, our time together had so bouyed him, had so clearly shored up his faith in himself--that he was giddy on the phone, talking to his friend. He was a child again, and happy, and safe.

A few hours later he called me from his house. Still safe. At home, where he belonged. He was going to go to bed. He told me that he loved me and that it had been really good to see me. I felt very close to him.

Oy.

So, I went back to him. I convinced myself that I would be better off with him than without him. But I am not so sure now. He's in China. I miss him, yes, but...not very much. Not as much as I thought I would. Actually, I did miss him at first. But then he called and I blurted out all the stories I thought I needed to tell him.Then I stopped, and waited for him to say the comforting words that I was certain he had to tell me. But they didn't come. There was silence. And then he started to tell me about his travels and so forth. And he complained that he hasn't been able to speak to me every single day since he's been gone.

Today there were two messages from him on my cell phone. In both of them he complains that it is hard to get hold of me. And he sounds irritated. I actually feel harrassed. Or suffocated. If you are feeling suffocated by someone who is in CHINA, for god's sake... I want to tell him, and will tell him: Look, B., you're in CHINA. Enjoy the experience! Don't be so tied to me! Let go a little, have a life! Give me some space. I'm actually feeling the need to get some space from someone who is in China. All because I don't happen to carry my cell phone with me 24 hours a day.

Not good, not good.

there is more to tell, but not now.