Skip to main content

I'm still solid

Admittedly, I could have left the office at 5:30pm. But I was glued to my seat. The image of me dashing out of my apartment to catch the 3:50am bus to get to the office at 5am and my mom trying to hand me anonymously a banana out the front door, was at once hysterical and well, hysterical. Like a woman laced in the Victorian tradition, I feel at a loss for breath when I'm with my mother too long. She was sitting in semi-darkness waiting for me to leave, as if waiting to pounce, and I babbled something about leading orientation and meetings, and all the things I had to do at the office, when all I really wanted to say is, "you're stifling me, and it's beyond your control. We can't do this. We can't be together like this. We need space to love and live peacefully on earth together and I love you, and all the things you've done like scrub my kitchen floor, and buying me a kettle and gloves to hold hot pans, and the post-it suggestions on all my kitchen cabinets of where things go since you've used a kitchen for so many years...all of it, I love it all, and some things that you brought will have to go when you leave on Thursday. I'm allergic to apples; so the crisper filled with apples will have to be emptied, and I will have to wash the cover of the futon and burn my sage smudge. And I love you with all my heart, just skip the 5 day visit next time, and skip asking to do my laundry. I can wash my dirty underwear myself."

I did tell her that. It feels invasive when my 69 year old mother wants to wash her 37 year old son's underwear...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Writing through this

i will be ok this is so scary -- towards the end of the work day, i found out from my brother that San Francisco is going into almost lockdown. and David and I finished up the essential work items and took a break to get groceries for 2 weeks. NYC could be next. we're now prepared but worried about how this will impact our lives. we both treasure exercise -- cycling, long walks -- what if all that is essentially curbed? we came back, i took care of work pop ups and now am back to my personal life. i'm learning about this work from home thing that can take over all the hours in a paranoid panic of overdoing. i'm learning to slow down after the work day. allow the sunset to be the curtain to a focus on work and doing, and to shift to relax, let go, release the day. this will pass. we will be ok. we do the best we can and let go. the rest is up to something larger than all of us.
Post a Comment
Read more

It's been forever

And nothing significant has changed. Except, now I go back to Colgate to speak. And I'm terrified all over again, but now I'm swamped by this fear that I'm totally inadequate, balanced by my mother's encouragement to go with my head held high. She's written a book, and part of me feels drawn to call Jen and get it published. How come I never wrote my book? Maybe I can help her "finish" hers. But I'm talking about core values. And I'm thinking, but what kind of role model am I? OK, I've got thoughts about values and how to apply them, but I'm a coordinator...at 38 years old. Most of my classmates from Colgate are CEO's, WTF do I know about leadership? If they all got up in the middle of it, (if they showed up at all), and pointed at me and started laughing Carrie-style, I wouldn't blame them and I wouldn't telekinesis or Avada Kedavra because, they'd be right. I have nothing to offer but theory and speculation about ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Profitable Man

How do you define a successful life? I think, post-holidays, this idea of what this year should be comes to mind. What if it's in the quality of sleep each night, and the love you enjoy from those closest to you? What if any profit is really from having enough time, money, and other stuff to enjoy the love around you? Then, how do the actions you take this year, this month, this week align with that vision you have for yourself as a viable human being and then your career? Reminder: we spend the most time at work. How does work time move the dial forward for the total being of you. If it goes against, it detracts from what you want to be in the world. Is that a worthy sacrifice? Challenge. Write about it this year. Talk with trusted friends. If you need to adjust the work you do: mold the current work, find a new position within the current organization, or seek new frontiers, do it, for life is short and the years they roll along quickly. Happy New Year. Live and Work ...
Post a Comment
Read more