Anger

Growing up my mother and her mother were sticklers for good manners.  I made a point of saying please and thank you.  I was afraid they would view me as rude, and I didn’t want that moniker.  My grandmother would point out other children who might have been louder than us, or publicly whiny, and she’d use those children as cautionary tails of behavior we were to stringently avoid.  

What am I doing this weekend?  Nothing special and everything essential.  In an Instagram world of glamourous posts, my weekend is the antithesis of awesome.  I started early to ensure I could easily access the washing machines needed for the weekly laundry.  Luckily for me, it was a ghost town before 7 am, and I peacefully and quietly secured my machines and loaded them from the full hampers.  

I set out to go to The Brooklyn Museum to see the Africa Fashion exhibit.  I had intended to see it twice before but got waylaid, so my determination to get there yesterday was fierce.  My plan was to slowly jog in Prospect Park getting out at the arch and walking the few blocks to the museum.  Once I made it to Prospect Park at an unfamiliar entrance, I opened up Maps on my iPhone and set off.  

I was tired, it was hot, and I was happy to be at MOMA, the Museum of Modern Art, on West 53^rd Street.  The galleries were crowded, but I took my time enjoying new exhibitions and old favorites. After the slow perusal of four floors, I was spent.  But I still had almost an hour before our dinner reservation down the block.  

My son told me last weekend that he hoped he won’t have disagreements in his relationships like I have with my husband when he’s older.  It was interesting to hear, and as far as I understand he believes that with the amount of therapy, mindfulness practice, as well as the fact that I am a psychotherapist, I should be further along in my personal development, especially when it comes to my marriage.  There was a time I would have agreed.  I would have seen my defensiveness when my feelings are hurt, and that my feelings get hurt at all, as a fault in my character.  

Happy Father’s Day.  When I say that it conjures up so much for me and for so many others, I expect you included.  Many of us have had varied relationships with our fathers nothing like Father Knows Best, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, Blackish, or even Home Improvement.  If only we could tune in for 30 minutes a week and enjoy the comical moments that focus on the highlights of the best parts of them, with a little silly thrown in.  

It was a mere coincidence that we happen to be in Split, Croatia the same day the New York Times travel section featured 36 hours in Split.  It’s about the same amount of time we’ll be in Split, which is a beautiful port city on the coast of the Adriatic Sea.    

I noticed that by the end of my work week I was short on compassion.  My go to was frustration, impatience, or barely disguised anger.  It was simple things. I was missing paperwork that had been promised me.  A pair of reading glasses broke.  And then there were a string of simple annoyances.  

The Q train came to a halting stop.  An announcement immediately came on asking “Who pulled the emergency cord?”  At the end of our car, a good citizen thinking there was a request to pull the cord, got up from her seat, pulled the cord, even as the train stood idle.  She sat back down returning to her book.  A hardcover, old school, though she looked barely 25.  

It was a full moon this week.  I love looking up on a clear night and viewing the magical, mystical moon between the high rises.  Ever since I was a child I’ve found the moon an enchantress.  Myths have their place, and for many years I counted on myths to justify my outsized love of a full moon.  In times of feeling invisible I felt seen by the moon.  

I came home late last night after seeing a beautifully moving theater piece by Suzan-Lori Parks.  Retrieving our mail, I saw a broken glass and a brick on the lobby carpet.  Apparently, a group of teens were told to leave the area while smoking. So one of them in anger threw a brick through the window to show ‘them.”  It created more work for the porter and super who had to clean up and repair on their weekend off, when they were nowhere near the incident.  

I grew up with three siblings.  If you grew up with siblings, as I did, you are familiar with the age-old enterprise of tattling.  My younger sister, Susan, now Chova Sara, was the tattletale.  She was the one that thought it important to report to my parents, usually our mom, whatever misadventures we were enacting.  When I was six to her four, she ran to our mom to say I wasn’t letting her play with my Barbies.  This was true, but only because she cut their hair and drew on them with crayons.  Nonetheless, I had to release more dolls to her based on “fairness.”  This made no sense to me, but she got what she wanted, and it spurred her on for years.  

I just heard that The Museum of Failure in Brooklyn opened last week (https://museumoffailure.com).  It’s primarily a collection of product fails through the last 5 decades or so.  I’m happy to be celebrating failure.  Their slogan is “Innovation Needs Failure!”  I’m not so sure I can say I’ve been innovative, unless one considers resourcefulness as an innovation, but I can say with absolute certainty that I, too, have a history of failures.

I left my passport at the hotel two and half miles from Reykjavik.  I was leaving for JFK the next day.  We had had a magnificent trip, and my passport was in the safe where I left it along with U.S. dollars I wasn’t going to spend in Iceland.  Our driver, an adventure tour guide in his own right, was going to drop off some guests and pick up passengers to bring back to the capitol city the next morning.  He would be happy to bring back my passport and drive us to the airport.  The magnificent experience continued.  

I was walking downtown listening to a light novel, a quasi-romcom.  It had started off well and then it took a nose-dive from there.  About halfway to my destination I turned it off.  I simply wasn’t enjoying it anymore.  I had wanted a break from heavier subjects or professional readings.  This was not the break I needed.  

Wow! I just went out to walk Lucy.  It sure is cold out there.  A good portion of the country is very cold.  New York City is no exception this weekend.  Just taking Lucy out for a short walk means bundling up for a solid five minutes to make sure the least amount of skin is exposed to the frigid air.  

I swam for an hour, my head submerged in the warm pool with tiny, wavy prisms, iridescent in the sun-drenched water.  The luxury of having a pool to myself is priceless.  Being able to move seamlessly underwater, thanks to my swimmers’ mask, allows me to stay beneath the surface, enjoying what I’d describe as a meditation in motion.  

I was preparing dinner as I do many nights.  Last night was pesto glazed salmon and garlic-marinaded skirt steak with sauteed spinach, garlic bread, and a spicy salad.  Thanks to Marion Zinn, my mother-in-law, I have the best marinade for the steak.  She was a wonderful hostess and served many delicious dishes.  Conversely, my mother would get anxious when hosting guests.  Nonetheless she deserves a shout out as an excellent baker. All three of my siblings and I have fond memories of annual birthday cakes baked from scratch, stored on a glass cake plate with an aluminum cake dome.  I used to cook and bake regularly, but as life’s responsibilities expanded, my domestic duties dwindled.   

I subscribe to The New York Times.  As an online subscriber I often miss stories and articles that are of interest to me. However, I was fortunate enough to receive the Happiness Challenge of this last week.  It wasn’t an outsized commitment but small acts of recognition and gratitude.  

Here we are as we move away from 2022 to 2023.  It’s the weekend.  It’s also a milestone in the annual calendar.  

One thing I know for sure is that as much as we hope and try, mistakes will be made this coming year.  We might prefer to forget the hardships of the last three years, but we’re still recovering.  We may want to reach new goals, or old goals yet to be achieved.  Hopefully we’ll get there, but the challenges and lessons along the way may not be easy.  As we work on being better and doing better, they’ll be disappointments and setbacks.