Falling In and Out of Love

I've listened to many of Krista Tippet's interviews--this one is with Alain de Botton on the meaning of love:

https://onbeing.org/programs/alain-de-botton-the-true-hard-work-of-love-and-relationships/ 

There are two versions of each of Krista's shows (On Being)--the edited version and the uncut version; I always prefer the latter as it's more like eavesdropping on a complete conversation.

***

I hadn't seen Amanda since her wedding a few months ago, so it was good to have an evening together, just us two.  We chose Italian (Edera's) to evoke memories of our trip to Tuscany together.  She looked stunning all dressed in black--and the more she told me about Mike, how they met, how happy they are, the more I knew that the shine all over her came from the happiness of being in love "with her best friend."

Amanda is in her late-thirties; her parents are younger than I am--yet we did what women of all ages all over the world were doing last night--talking about love.  She mentioned casually that she had gotten her master's degree since we last visited, that she's been working at USAA for 18 years, that she's published a book, and that her mother has moved to San Antonio.  But the bulk of our conversation was about love, romance, and all the stories we tell about ourselves about love.

She told me with great animation about how she met Mike, how they negotiated thorny issues, and how they fell headlong into love.   She recounted several early conversations verbatim.  When I've been in love, I've done the same thing.

"We so often read each other's minds," she said.  "I'll be thinking about something and he will call at that very moment and talk about that very thing....We don't even have to talk to know what each other is thinking...."

"Wherever I go, I call him on the way home and tell him all about what I've been doing," she said.  (Men may not know this, but this is one of the things we women treasure most about being in love.) "Or I'll see something and know he'd love it, and I'll buy it for him, or take a picture of it."

I was entranced by Amanda's story. No genre of stories enchant and cheer listeners more than love stories. When a friend tells her love story, we are vicariously in love again ourselves, ready to hope with the teller that all will stay magical until the end of time.

I wondered: were there any tables anywhere, in any restaurant, at which two men were having conversations about love?  Losing love?  Breaking up?  Being married to their best friends?

Sure, men (like Alain de Botton) write about love.  And men talk about love to their partners and women friends.  But can you imagine a couple of men sharing every detail of their love lives for two hours, over pasta and wine?

Pretzeling for the truth

Florida Scott-Maxwell (in her 80s) wrote these words:

"I wonder if old people want truth more than anything else...."

I was born with a thirst for truth, and now I can join the ranks of old people who "want it more than anything else."  Mutual honesty is my touchstone for friendship and love, and I'm lucky to be surrounded (mostly) by truth-tellers.

I'd prefer a stranger take cash from my wallet than to be the recipient of BLTs.  ("Being Lied To.")  I keep re-reading Maxwell's words about love and hate, nodding yes yes yes.

From childhood truth sessions, to a lifetime immersion in literature, to conversations with like-minded seekers, I'm like a dog with a bone after truth.  You'd think that would make me savvier than I am, but sometimes I miss the clues for an appallingly long time!

Here's what I do after a theft or deception:

First, I'm incredulous.  "Why would someone do that? Why would he/she intentionally withhold a truth that affects me? How dare he/she steal what's mine? "

Then, I go into detective mode, trying to figure out who, what, when, where, and why.  Until I have solid evidence, I refuse to accuse--even at the risk of appearing naive. I question every clue, turn them over and over in my mind, even when the answer seems obvious.

The person (who steals or deceives) may be charming, caring and decent.  If I care a great deal for that person, I'm capable of doing Denial Back Flips!  If I want things to be a certain way, I can turn my head so hard in the other direction I'll literally get a crick in my neck. And here's the kicker: I can take the blame, 100%, and rationalize the wrong done by the other person.

Taking the blame is not an act of magnanimity or generosity of spirit--let's be clear; it's a typically female way of dealing with deception, and we should all stop doing it asap!

All these stages may take weeks, months, even years--but one day the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. When I face the truth, my crazy ends, and I can call a spade a spade.  As much as I hate losing what I wanted, I feel liberated because I'm finally standing on solid ground instead of quicksand.

This must be what Florida Maxwell-Scott meant when she talked about "hate."  To decide what you're unwilling to accept  means letting yourself feel such complete disgust at the behavior that you're no longer willing to pretend orange is purple.

Two Beautiful Days in A Row

Yesterday, I swam with Jan at the gym (or did our the equivalent: took a water class), then joined Alison and Pam for a group qigong class taught by Renae, then had a lively writing group with lots of laughter--which is, I hear, good for the soul and body.

Today, in spite of the noise of road machines all day and a broken gas line at Jan's, I had a quiet inside day with my jigsaw puzzle--which was tremendously relaxing as puzzles are.

Pam and I discovered a wonderful place for dinner on Main: Periphery is a mix of Southern cuisine and Italian.  We shared barbecued catfish and risotto and real cast iron cornbread with herb butter--every bite delicious!

Driving home, we passed a big red lighted heart in somebody's yard on Main:

I love this city and the people in it!

The Measure of My Days

This little book written by Florida Scott-Maxwell (1883-1979)  literally fell off the shelf into my hands when I reached for another one.  It said, "Read me, Read me!" the way books do.

Love is something we all want, above all, she says--but love is not love without trust and honesty, is it?  Every love teaches us things of value, but sometimes the difficulties overshadow the love.

Here is what Florida Scott-Maxwell has to say about love and hate:

I wonder why love is so often equated with joy when it is everything else as well.  Devastation, balm, obsession, granting and receiving excessive value, and losing it again. It is recognition often of what you are not but might be. It sears and it heals. It is beyond pity and above law.  It can seem like truth. But what is truth? Oh this mysterious world in which we know nothing, nothing.  At times love seems clarity, beyond judgment. But this is a place that can also be reached alone, an impersonal place, found and lost again.  

Love is asked to carry intolerable burdens, not seen from outside.  Love can be hard service, giving your all, and it may be finding your all. It is sometimes a discipline allowing you to do the impossible. It may be your glimpse of transcendence.....But it is all the pains as well, the small pains as well as the great. It is baffling to be loved by someone incapable of seeing you. It is pain to have your love claimed as a cloak that another may hide from himself. 

(The bold print indicates what I underlined and wrote WOW to when I first read this book a few years ago.)

Love may have blind facets in its all-seeing eyes, but it is we who are blind to what we ask it to bear. Of course it is the heights and the depths, the follies and the glories, but being loving is not always love, and hate can be more cleansing.  Why are love and hate near each other, opposite, and alike, and quickly interchangeable?

Love is honored and hate is condemned, but love can do harm. It can soften, distort, maintain the unreal and cover hate.  Hate can be nature's way of forcing honesty on us, and finding the strength to follow a truer way....Hate is part of truth.

When I was young, I knew inside me what I could and could not accept, but I could not express opposition.  I had to bear the unacceptable a long time until I hated it.  Then I could protest but with the scalding accompaniment of hate....Heat brings change, and so anger can be the right weapon if one is clean enough to use it.

Make-Up Advice for Older Women

Every woman over fifty should read this: http://murrbrewster.blogspot.com/2017/03/makeup-for-crones.html

*I wore lipstick to the party.  Nathan's first question was, "Are you wearing lipstick?"

Little kids notice everything!

Nathan's Nerf Gun Party

Even in the rain, a couple of dozen boys and girls ran around shooting Nerf guns and having a good time.

I met the new puppy, Charlie--which brings the grand total to three, now that they've given Abby (the golden Lab) to Nando--aka Papi.

Conway Twitty is an Australian Shepherd, Skippy a rat terrier, and this little mutt looks like a mix of poodle and terrier.

A messy happy day in Birthday Land!

The Birthday Boy

Elena and Charlie--or Carlos to some

Elena and Cousin Sage

Our little Ten-Year-Old Nathan
lighting the candles on the cake his mom made
decorated with Nerf bullets

Nathan's Early Birthday

This little fourth grader is really something!  When I picked him up from school at 11:30, he ran to me with a great big hug.

Nathan is not as exuberant as his little sister; he's mellower and more measured in what he has to say. Though he has made all A's in fourth grade so far and won the math trophy, he says he doesn't like school; it's boring.

What this boy likes is building things.  We went to Bricks and Minifigs and he chose two Star War Lego sets, then we went to Build a Bear where he continued the Star Wars theme.  When given choices of what to do (movie or museum or zoo), he chose to come to my house and make Legos together--which we did until 7:00.

He's very intent when building, so I asked him if he'd like a little music, maybe the Beatles?

"What are the Beatles?" he asked.

So I played about twenty songs and he loved them!  While I was making nachos, he was listening to the music and said, "Hey, Yenna!  Today is a day I will always remember!"

He will be ten on Thursday.

At Bricks with his money from Nana and me.
"This store is like a paradise to me," he said.

Here he is at Build A Bear putting his mojo on the
hearts for his bears. 

Both sets assembled!  Here he is showing off one of them.

When Sebastien and Makken came over to wish him a happy birthday (and bring two pieces of birthday cake), they played Star Wars games until it was time to drive him home to Helotes, Nathan singing "We can work it out."

"I like Beatles songs because they can help you out in real life," he said.  "Like how we can work out everything."

Today is Dr. Suess' birthday

So the whole Primrose School celebrated all day.  I went to pick up Elena at 2:30, but she wanted me to stay for the party, so we stayed two hours more.

I read a Suess book to the precious class, all--including the teachers--dressed in pajamas.  When I read the book about ears to the class, they all shouted the rhyming words and interrupted me to contribute comments and questions: My daddy snores; my dog snores and it sounds like this; why do dogs understand what people are saying?

Five-year-olds are adorable.  Two little boys told me they were the fastest runners in the class and showed me how fast they could run when we went outside.

Then Elena and I had dinner at "Crackleberry" because she wanted pancakes and a toy.

Elena has no fear of balls!
She can dribble surprisingly well. 

Ixcanul (Volcano)--Netflix

Thank you, Gerlinde, for recommending this movie!

A young Mayan girl working on a Guatemalan coffee plantation dreams of escaping her destiny (marrying the man of her parents' choice) and starting a new life in America.  She doesn't actually know anything about America, but she wants to follow the boy she likes, maybe loves, when he goes there.

Maria is a girl of few words who lives on the slopes of an active volcano.  She works hard with her mother to scratch a living out of a snake-infested patch of ground.

The story is really about love--the powerful love between a peasant mother and her daughter.  It's fascinating from the lens of our culture to witness this particular kind of love.  Speech between mother and daughter is minimal, but the mother strokes and bathes and dresses her daughter as we do with our children only when they are babies.  The mother is un-self-conscious about her own aging body as she gets in the tub to bathe her daughter.  Self-conscousness doesn't seem part of their culture.

While all foreign movies give us a look into other lives, this one reveals daily life in one Mayan family so slowly and in such detail that it's almost as if we are watching in real time without the artifice of film-making. When their tribal beliefs lead to the near-death of her beloved daughter, the mother tells her, "Don't believe everything they tell you"--even though she herself has been part of transmitting the same messages to her.  

Catching Balls

Renae, my trainer/coach/mentor-in-movment, is teaching me qigong, as I've told you.  Yesterday, she brought a little crocheted  ball and asked me to toss it from one hand to another, then in arches.

Balls scare me, always have, ever since 8th grade P.E.  We called it P.E. but nobody ever taught us anything.  The teachers sat smoking under the trees and we divided up into teams and played softball.  Or maybe it was baseball.  The teachers were taking their break so we girls went through the motions on our own.  If by chance your bat connected with the mean ball, you'd  run to first base--although I don't recall ever getting that far.

"Divide up teams," one of the teachers said before taking her place under the trees, and we did.   Betty and I were bookish, introspective girls who'd probably never actually held a ball of any kind in our hands before 8th grade.  We stood together, last two to be chosen, feeling like the miserable undesirables we were.

My 8th grade self, still in there, quivers at the sight of a ball intended for me to catch--so when Renae extended the exercise to throwing the ball back and forth from her to me, I felt panic. I could still hear Cheryl Bullard shouting, "Linda Harris, can't you ever catch the ball?"

First, Renae stood close to me and I caught it most every time.  Then we moved further apart, and I missed it only twice.  She showed me how to pick up a dropped ball by putting one foot close to the ball and bending the other leg slightly.  (My previous way was to cringe, apologize profusely, and awkwardly sprawl every-which-way to pick up the damned errant ball!)

I didn't tell Renae about 8th grade baseball trauma, but I half-expected her to banish me from qigong hour for my pathetic catching and throwing skills.

When she asked me to take off my glasses and she took off hers, we continued throwing back and forth, and I threw and caught even better.  "Good!" she said--smiling encouragingly, to my disbelief and happiness.

All these years I've held on to Cheryl Bullard's assessment of my athletic ability, ducking inside to wash dishes or water the plants (anything!) if someone suggested a game of ping pong or anything else involving a ball.

"Without your glasses, your eyes see the bigger picture," Renae said, "without focusing on details."  Glasses train us to look in certain directions and see only what we can see through that portion of the lenses.  She said it's good to exercise the eye muscles from time to time and wear the glasses only when we really need them.  Doing that improves our balance and can actually prevent tripping so easily.

Walking out of the gym, all puffed up from my good catching and throwing, I realized I'd been wearing my 8th grade lenses  too long--the ones in which Cheryl and the other self-proclaimed athletes of softball hour were enlarged to gargantuan proportions!

Maybe I'll invite some friends over for a game of crocheted-ball-throwing sometime.  Maybe someone will say, "Wow, Linda Harris, you are an amazing ball catcher!"