Almost everyone I know in my age group seems to be struggling mightily these days. Marriages are crumbling, parents are falling ill, children are morphing into terrifying teenagers, and upper arms are less tank-top-friendly than ever before, making the upcoming summer season a most mixed blessing. If anyone out there is happy and they know it, please do clap your hands (and let your arms jiggle joyfully) right now because there is not a whole lot of applause going on in my circle these days.
It almost makes one (me) want to seek something larger to believe in, something to make it all seem worthwhile. Something, dare I say, spiritual.
I’ve always been allergic to the arrogant we’re right, you’re not aspect of organized religion, having been raised by a lapsed-Catholic mother and Jewish-turned-Unitarian father (so, yeah, Christmas tree, but no menorah). Then I married an avowed atheist (who asked for a menorah for Christmas; go figure) and together we raised our two adorable little heathens. (The tradition continues!)
And now here I am, mired in midlife malaise, suffocated by cynicism. Given my spotty religious past, my god-seeking options are somewhat limited at this point. But there’s always the Buddha: Look at him, sitting there quietly, no crosses to bear, no persecution complex. Who wouldn’t want to have what he’s having? Plus he seems like a really nice guy, a total mensch.
My soul-searching fantasy is a month-long Visionquest involving bells and the Himalayas, but since that’s not feasible, I decided to try a meditation class advertised at a groovy, anything-goes church in my neighborhood called The Church of Gethsemane. (Bar mitzvah? Communion? Gay wedding? Some hybrid of all three? Nothing throws them, I promise.)
The South Slope meditation took place on a Monday evening in the church’s basement. In lieu of the Himalayas, I was hoping for low lighting, candles, incense, floor mats and liberal use of the word om. Instead, I entered a flourescently-lit basement with 3 rows of folding metal chairs and a table with a display of inspiring texts on meditation (which I misread twice–first as medication and then as mediation. Can you tell how fried I am?) A handful of blue-corn tortilla chip dregs sat unappetizingly on a cake-sized paper plate. I checked to make sure I hadn’t accidentally walked into a 12-step meeting. Nope. We were going to meditate.
The upshot? It’s not easy to sit silently for 20 minutes on a folding chair under glaring, buzzing lights–but maybe that’s the point. I kept thinking that if only the lights were dim and we were sitting on the floor in the lotus position, then I’d be able to fully concentrate on my breath and stop obsessing about how I’m going to afford to fix the leaks in the bathroom ceiling and why I’m so lame at meditating and why I thought for a minute that I, of all people, could calm my busy, busy brain.
After the sitting part, the woman who led us gave a little talk on how we’re all so in our own heads and how we mistakenly believe that if we could just tweak our external circumstances–swap this for that, finally get our ducks in a row–everything would be OK and contentment would prevail. During the brief Q&A that followed, I was the only one who spoke up. I asked if the chairs and the bright lights were intentional, a lesson in finding peace among harsh external circumstances, perhaps? (Apparently not. Pure coincidence.)
So, while I didn’t emerge whole and fixed, as I’d hoped, I might possibly be one or two breaths less cynical, which is a start. Next up: The “Meditation for Beginners” DVD I ordered from Amazon.
(Oh and I still want to rename my blog to reflect my new focus on midlife musings, but I don’t want to rush into anything I might regret. Some possibilities: Under Construction; Midlife-a-thon; Woman in Progress. I’m open to suggestions, so suggest away.)
Wow, I guess last summer is over, huh? Oops. I really did intend to resume my blog in the fall, but I guess that season slipped away from me too. Yikes. And winter has apparently been cancelled here in the Northeast this year, so now it’s been officially three seasons since I blogged.
Mea Culpa.
Frankly (get it?), I’m touched that a few of you have been on me about it. I am flattered that some of you have missed my musings. I miss them too, but I’ve been stuck. Allow me to be my neurotic, honest self and I’ll tell you a bit about my stuckness. I’m going to use the “deceptively simple bullet format” extolled by one of my most beloved pals/readers to explain my lengthy blog hiatus:
So that’s where things are at. If you were one of my loyal fans, thank you for urging me to resume blogging. And, um, not that I’m trying to get the milk for free, but if I were to start a new, post-Splitsville blog, what would the focus be and what would it be called?
(Oh, also, I am supposed to give credit for the image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=1152)
Even two-plus years into it, the 50/50 custody thing is hard to adjust to. In the beginning, it was necessary and therapeutic, even heady and thrilling to be granted days and days of kid-free time. It was one of the few things that compensated for the overall awfulness of the experience. Prior to that, whenever R& I unloaded the kids on grandparents or babysitters, we used it for “we” time–to see movies, go out to dinner, or take vacations. A true stint of solitude was a completely foreign concept.
There’s an established rhythm to the custody routine at this point–two days on, two off, five days on, five off–and as time passes, I become more and more estranged from my children’s other life. (The upside, I guess, is that I get to rehearse for the full-on empty nest slated for 2019.)
When the girls go for their 5-day stretch with R, here is what happens in my world:
Here’s what happens when they return to me after five long days away:
As we get to day four of the stretch, my nerves, reinforced by the days without them, begin their bi-monthly fray, even as it hurts to see them go. My daughters pack their bags, I send them on their way, and the cycle repeats.
Yeah, we're standing. Big deal.
Last night I lived another midlife cliche–that of the aging hipster who doesn’t realize just how aged she is until she revisits the kind of scene that in her younger days passed for fun times and she just doesn’t get it anymore.
I was at a night club (is that what they call them these days?) called the Mercury Lounge, where I went to see the band Urge Overkill. The guitarist/singer, Nash Kato, is a friend of mine from college and a very talented dude (not that I can use the word dude without sounding like an idiot, but that’s sort of the point here). I wanted to be supportive, but found that I needed to be supportED–like, physically.
It was a rainy Monday night at 10:30 pm–a time when I am usually asleep or catching up on Mad Men–and I was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a bunch of equally middle-aged UO fans–most of them male, portly, and balding– in a hot, dark room, waiting for the band to take the stage.
After about five minutes of this insanity, I realized that I can no longer stand like I used to, especially while simultaneously clutching my raincoat, an umbrella and a plastic cup of mediocre white wine. I’m 47 and I need a chair, dammit! And a little table on which to place my vino. And a piece of fine stemware instead of a plastic cup.
The longer we stood there, the more outraged I became. How could anyone expect a mob of moist, aging hipsters to stand and stand and stand right next to each other like this? I kept looking around, thinking there has to be a chair somewhere. Someone must be getting the chairs right now–at least one of those folding soccer-mom chairs with the cup holder in the arm. Right?
Wrong. No chairs; not even a stool. But the standing became the least of it once the band started playing. UO has a lot of energy. They are very, very loud. The kind of loud where emergency ear plugs fashioned from a ripped-up Kleenex do no good because the whole room is throbbing and it’s not about your hearing as much as your entire circulatory system.
I flashed back to my college days, when a Saturday night required this kind of loudness and chaos and endless standing in order to qualify as fun. In fact, I recalled seeing the band Black Flag with Nash and finding the whole slam-dancing thing slightly barbaric. At my age, I guess standing is the new slam-dancing.
I also started to worry about the band members, who were all sweaty and red-faced. I was concerned that one of them might have a stroke.Then, after the show, I couldn’t stop telling my pal K (Nash’s girlfriend) how he’s such a great performer with a wonderful voice and that it’s a shame we couldn’t hear him because of all the noise, not to mention the standing. I told her to suggest that he reinvent himself as a soothing folk-singer type. He could play in quiet, classy little venues with tables and chairs and decent wine. Nothing wrong with that, is there?
