Dr. Kathy McCoy: Living Fully in Midlife and Beyond

Life Lessons From A Class Pariah

2012-02-24T20:11:00.004-07:00

It's an interesting concept: my high school recently sent me a "Giving Forward" fundraising letter, inviting me to donate to the school's scholarship fund in honor of someone in the Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy community-- past or present -- who has given a gift of themselves to me in some way over the years.

I immediately thought of my beloved Sister Ramona, who brought such joy to my senior year of high school and to my life thereafter, as an inspired teacher and, to this day, a treasured friend.

Sister Ramona Bascom in 1963

Of course, I'll make a donation in her honor.

And then I thought of someone else, someone less obvious, but no less important: my former classmate Janet Zieschang.

Janet was the pariah in my class of 44 girls. She was a new sophomore -- joining our class a year after the rest of us had arrived and made friends. She was obese at a time when that was rare in an adolescent. She was shy and could be truculent when she anticipated rejection or ridicule. She had a November birthday and had also skipped a grade early in elementary school. So she was, at a time when this mattered, nearly two years younger than the rest of us. She was, inside, still a little girl, still wanting to hold a classmate's hand on the gym court, inspiring an avalanche of snarky comments about being a lesbian. No one wanted to be her friend.

I felt empathy for her situation early on because I had had a brief experience being a pariah only a few years before and knew it meant daily heartbreak. My own introduction to pariah-dom was in seventh grade. As far as I'm concerned, seventh grade -- indeed, all of middle school -- is the most powerful argument against reincarnation that I can imagine.

My particular seventh grade angst played out at my Catholic parish grade school and started when the principal, Mother Ronan, remarked to my class one day that my parents weren't properly married (e.g. in the Catholic Church) and suggested that people stay away from me.

It didn't take much urging for the "in" group -- a snotty bunch of girls from the parish's major Catholic family dynasties -- to excise me from all social circles. They planned a big party for our class and everyone was invited except me. I found out about it when there was a fracas on the playground: my friend Pat Hill told the "in group" ringleader that she would not attend the party because I was not invited. I was warmed by her loyalty, impressed by her courage and puzzled by my exclusion. My parents' marriage in a Protestant church didn't seem sufficient grounds for pariah status. But, for a time, it was. And purposely being left out of everything felt terrible.

That's why my heart went out to Janet immediately. I saw the pain in her eyes, the sag of her shoulders as she passed by giggling or dismissive classmates. I weighed the consequences: if I befriended her, would I be a pariah again, too? Worse, if I stood by in silence, would I be just as culpable as those who more actively taunted her? I decided to reach out in friendship.

It wasn't always easy. We had few interests in common. She was reflexively testy. But we shared many values in common and that was enough.

We were both passionate in our interests. My passions were writing, acting and dance. Hers were music, photography and sewing. I respected her for the hours she spent at the piano in the music conservatory, for her appreciation of all kinds of good music and her eye for color and design in her fashion creations. She was heavy when the rest of us were not. But her clothes were lovely and original. And she had an unerring eye for beauty in her photographs.

I marveled at how calmly she accepted what I saw as a pretty grim life history. Her parents had divorced when she was a baby and her father subsequently showed little interest in her. She had been pretty and slim until she was 9 years old. After suffering serious injuries in a horseback riding accident, Janet's eyes didn't track well together and during her long convalescence, she began to put on weight. Her mother was a slim, attractive registered nurse who sacrificed to send Janet to boarding school -- both for a good education and to have a regular, supervised routine with no access to junk food. Janet loved the independence of being away from her mother -- albeit on a hilltop campus with a moat around it. She dreamed of being just another kid in our class, hanging out easily with others. But what seemed a very ordinary dream proved elusive for Janet.

But, to my surprise, she was happy much of the time. From Janet's perspective, the kindness of the nuns, the peace and beauty of the surroundings and a few friendly faces among her classmates all combined to make these the best years of her life. No one loved our school quite as intensely as Janet did.

And I had this dream for her back then: that she would morph into a great beauty with the grace of Loretta Young descending the staircase at the opening of her show. I dreamed that Janet would become a famous fashion designer and appear -- gorgeous and successful -- at, say, our 30th high school reunion and everyone would be sorry they were mean to her in high school.

Janet never became a fashion designer or famous or lithe and lovely like Loretta Young.

But she did become my friend.

She didn't become my best friend but Janet was a good person who was a loyal and caring friend for the rest of her life.

So when I urged her to attend our 30th reunion, she did. And the same people who mistreated her in our teens were quick to mistreat her again the minute she arrived, even more dangerously obese, using a walker at the age of 46. People didn't want to sit with her at lunch, turned their backs on her and giggled the old saying "Goodyear Blimp at 7 o'clock high!". I sat and talked with her the whole afternoon as others melted away from us. As she was leaving, Janet embraced me "I came to see you anyway," she said. "I don't care about the others." But I was angry and heartbroken that some people, even in midlife, could be so cruel.

As her health worsened in her late fifties, and after her mother's death, Janet was confined to assisted living and, finally, a nursing home. She wrote plaintive letters about how she wanted her life back. And sometimes she focused her anger on me, telling me that, with my blessed life, I couldn't ever truly understand what it meant to be deprived of everything, including her beloved cat and her treasured piano and, most of all, her freedom to come and go. She was past lamenting that she had never had a date, let alone been embraced and cherished by someone special. She just wanted her normal life back. But, as her physical and mental health deteriorated, her freedom slipped further and further away.

"Promise me that you'll take me to our 50th reunion," she said one day. "I want to stand up and be recognized and get that golden diploma."

"We'll do it, Janet. The golden diploma will be yours," I said, quietly wondering how she -- how we -- would manage.

Soon afterwards, I discussed the situation with several of our former classmates -- my dear friend Pat Hill and several others who happened to be in town one weekend. We met at a McDonald's -- and stayed for hours, talking, laughing and making tentative plans for our 50th reunion several years hence. (No one there but me had attended the awful 30th reunion and they looked horrified during my recounting of the event.)

I handed Janet's latest plaintive letter to Pennie Eiban, who had been one of Janet's roommates and one of the other friendly faces for Janet among our classmates. Pennie's eyes filled with tears as she read the letter. "How can we help her?" she asked. Pennie, Julie, Mary Agnes and Pat all agreed that we'd do everything we could to get Janet to that reunion and make it special and welcoming for her.

In the meantime, we all agreed to write to her, to shower her with cards and flowers for her birthday, to call her, to plan a visit. But even as we were planning, it was too late. Janet passed away a few days later -- on February 26, 2009. Everyone on our class' Facebook page -- even those who had once made fun of her -- expressed sorrow and regret at her demise.

In the wake of her loss, I have looked back and been grateful that I had the chance to know her as a friend. Though our lives were very different, we touched each other's hearts repeatedly through the decades and I felt that I learned and grew in positive ways from knowing her well.

The lesson has endured.

Not long after we moved here to Arizona, we began hearing stories about a crazy lady who lived a few blocks away: how she was frightening all the neighbors by her erratic behavior, how she had threatened neighbors with a gun, how she could seem reasonable one day and would be raving the next. Her across the street neighbor -- a nasty blowhard as far as I could see -- taunted her in the gym one day and the resulting conflict brought several police cars screeching up to our community center. I shuddered when I heard the story, glad that we lived a safe distance away.

One day, Bob and I were among the last in the community to board a bus for a day trip to Jerome, a hilltop artists' colony and historic mining town about three hours from our home. Only one person was behind us -- and slid into the last seat of the three person seat we were occupying at the back of the bus.

She smiled and told us her name. She lived in our neighborhood. I asked which street. She told me and I caught my breath -- linking the first name and the street name with the notorious crazy lady. The shower music from Psycho played in my head. Bob looked similarly stunned. But then we started talking and the three hour trip seemed incredibly short. We covered an incredible array of topics. We laughed. And I watched carefully between the congenial talk and laughter. Yes, her speech was pressured. Yes, she was anxious. Yes, she was intense. But she was bright and funny and kind.

After all the horrific tales that had circulated about her, she had nothing negative to say about anyone. She was lonely after a recent divorce. Her church meant everything to her. She was starting to join clubs and get acquainted after a year of hiding out and mourning her lost marriage. She was just looking for a chance to blend in, to be accepted. And whenever we've seen her since, she has been friendly, optimistic and eager to share good news: she has met someone she likes a lot. She's getting in shape. She's feeling much better. And the neighbor who used to taunt her from across the street has moved away. Life is, at last, looking good for her -- and her neighbors.

It was yet another part of the life lesson I started learning so many years ago: that no matter how reviled the pariah, there is a worthwhile, loving person there underneath the label. And embracing someone burdened with pariah status can teach one many lessons.

Janet taught me that everyone has a story, has dreams and yearnings -- and, quite often, these are as simple as casual acceptance and a friendly smile.

Janet taught me that behind every taunt there is a cost -- not only to the object of the taunt, but also to the person who ridicules another.

Janet taught me that, even when things look unpromising, there are little joys to celebrate: a piece of exquisite music, peaceful surroundings, a good talk.

Janet taught me that enduring friendships are possible even when friends lead very different lives.

Janet taught me this -- and so much more. I am sad that she will not be standing with us a year from now to get that golden diploma she wanted so much. But she will be very much with us in memory and in life lessons learned.

And so I'll be "giving forward" to my high school for two very dear people -- Sister Ramona Bascom and Janet Zieschang. Both have taught me so many life lessons and have been, each in her own way, great gifts to my life for the past 50 years.

Janet Marie Zieschang (1946-2009) in 1963

Sometimes Life Needs to Slow Down

2012-02-17T01:06:00.001-07:00

We talk about smelling the roses.

We think about mindfulness.

But, all too often, we get swept along by the unyielding rhythm of modern life, even in retirement, and it takes a major change of routine or a shock to the system to make us stop on our tracks.

I've had both in the past few weeks.

During a visit to Los Angeles to see my dear friend Mary and her husband John, whose disability due to his traumatic brain injury is stealing him away little by little every day, I saw how they savored his increasingly rare moments of lucidity to express their love and devotion. Those brief times each day were a rare treasure not to be missed as both felt their time together, the life they have shared for 26 years, slipping away.

A few days later, during a visit with my brother and his family, I realized just how much time seems to go in slow motion when it comes to building and refreshing relationships. This visit, I had some long and lovely conversations with Mike. I got to know my sister-in-law Amp better, appreciating not only the sweet, peaceful Thai Buddhist soul I've come to know, but also the feisty, fiercely loyal and courageous woman I'm in the process of discovering as I spend more time with her. And Maggie, my niece, is only two years old. There is so much I want to share with her. But it's a relationship that can't be rushed. The bond with this smart, passionate, edgy little girl needs time and gentle nurturing. We made progress this time around. The first night, she approached me, threw a book in my direction and vanished. The second night, she handed me a book and hung around to hear the story. The day after, she stood on my feet and stared into my face intently as I read to her. The last night, she wiggled onto my lap to show me stories on her iPad. Trust and comfort and love take time.

So does healing, as I've learned this week. I returned from L.A. with a cold/flu and fever. These symptoms evolved into a ferverish tooth and jaw ache over last weekend. By Sunday, I desperately made the first dental appointment I could for Monday. Monday morning, I got up, took my blood pressure medication and got into a hot shower -- unwittingly unleashing the perfect storm on my system as my blood pressure dropped precipitously and I passed out, with no warning, in the shower.

I came to with the water running over me and total dental havoc: My mouth had slammed into a wrap-around marble seat/ledge in the shower as I fell, knocking out one of my front teeth and seriously damaging the other three teeth front and center in my mouth. My lower jaw still throbbed with the raging infection.

I spent more than three hours in the dental chair Monday. What was left of the knocked out tooth was extracted, the three others filed down and a four-tooth bridge installed. For the infection, the dentist referred me out to an experienced oral surgeon an hour away -- who couldn't see me until Tuesday. So Tuesday I spent another two hours in oral surgery -- with the difficult removal of the lower molar, the scraping of my jawbone and a bone graft inserted. Now I'm lying low and taking big doses of antibiotics and taking my time to heal.

There are so many posts I want to write -- and many more blogs I love I want to catch up on.

But, for now, it's time for healing.

And, in my healing, I've come to appreciate anew the blessing of a true partner: my husband Bob who can take charge when I can't, pick me up and hold me tight, let me know that -- however miserable and in pain and exceedingly non-stoic I'm being -- I am dearly loved.

Healing and partnerships and losses and knowing oneself and others well and love itself -- all take time.

First story with Maggie and last picture of my old smile

Maggie snuggling -- at last -- February 5, 2012

Living with Regrets

2012-01-30T01:25:00.004-07:00

When the music came over the sound system at the gym this morning, I was transported from the sweaty, striving for fitness present to a long ago time:

Come Saturday morning,
I'm going away with my friend....

My mind traveled back to 1969 -- when Michael Lynn and I saw the movie "The Sterile Cuckoo" on one of our first dates. This song -- "Come Saturday Morning" was the theme music from that movie and it became a special song for us as well as our sweet relationship of hundreds of Saturdays was first beginning. He was an incredibly gentle, good-looking man with sandy blond hair, kind blue eyes and a sparkling smile. We shared a cautious approach to life, having largely deferred romance and relationships in college -- he at USC, me at Northwestern -- because we were so concentrated on completing our degrees and getting established in the workplace. He was a design engineer at Lockheed. I was beginning my writing career specializing in self-help psychology and health articles for 'TEEN Magazine.

We didn't take stability for granted: my father had lost his career years before to alcoholism. His father had left his mother for another woman when Michael was a toddler and his brother Jeff a newborn infant. And when Michael's father died of a heart attack some years later, he was already a distant memory to his two sons. Growing up with a single mother, Michael knew a lot about financial constraints and early responsibility.

And so we learned to play together -- going to the beach, going out for dinner at nice restaurants -- a first for both of us -- and traveling to places we had never dreamed we would go. It was with Michael that I first came to love Maui. It was with Michael, my first post-college boyfriend, that I started to become an adult. He was not my first love, but we were each other's first lovers and our time together was incredibly sweet and fun and memorable. My parents were fond of him. His wonderful mother showered me with love and kindness.

My only regret is not that we didn't end up together: we both married some years later to others who were both better matches for the people we had become and who continue to bless our lives with love both cherished and abiding.

No, my regret, looking back, is that I wasn't a nicer person then.

My immaturity and my residual anger over a failed relationship with my first love in college could, at times, darken our days together. These were times when I was critical and shrewish and a general pain in the ass. My youthful self-absorption and my anger about my unrequited college love, so unfairly displaced onto Michael, made me a trying companion at best. But Michael's patience, kindness and decency allowed our relationship to survive much longer than it would have with a less generous man.

What does one do with regrets?

Some people are consumed by them. Some people experience them as bittersweet recurring thoughts. Some see them as learning experiences.

And what do we tend to regret most?

A recent study revealed that people carry the most regrets in the areas of education, career and romance -- with few of us, even in these economically uneasy times, expressing financial regrets.

So what can you do with such regrets?

Explore the possibilities of changing your life to ease some regrets. My husband Bob regrets not getting more out of college, his years at Berkeley being ones of enthusiastic protesting, folk singing and exploring hedonistic pleasures uneasily coupled with times of deep loneliness. Academics were a somewhat lower priority. A brilliant man with a thirst for learning, he deals with some of his long-time regrets by making learning a daily activity -- taking courses online, on video and at the ASU center here in our community -- in physics, economics, history, philosophy and a myriad of other interests.

My cousin Caron, who passed up college for a happy marriage to her high school sweetheart, went to community college after her children were grown and found that she loved science -- and graduated with a 4.0 GPA. The experience hasn't caused her to try to forge a career in science -- she wouldn't change anything about her life as a wife, mother and, later on, as a nurturing school secretary to several generations of elementary school kids. But she loves discovering at this stage of life just how smart she is and how exciting science can be.

Do you regret career choices -- or making a choice by default? Career changes have become the norm these days -- often out of economic necessity, but sometimes because people are putting more value on finding work that is meaningful.

When she was young, my sister Tai worked a series of jobs she did well but hated. She regretted not taking our mother's advice to go into nursing, but didn't see a way to change her situation.

Then she had a major medical emergency -- an aneurysm that nearly ended her life -- and, as she lay recovering, the thought occurred to her that "This is not a dress rehearsal!" and she resolved to find a way to go back to school and get a nursing degree.

It was far from easy. She was a newly single mother of a toddler. Money was tight. She worked nights as a nursing aide and went to school days, entrusting her daughter to the community college day care center by day and to her soon-to-be ex-husband at night for several years. But, in the end, she had a career she loved -- and still loves -- as a labor and delivery nurse and a means to support her daughter on her own.

I know of some romantic regrets that have been resolved in surprising ways. My college friend Lisa always felt a pang of regret that she broke up with her high school sweetheart, whom she also dated her first two years of college. But life went on. She got married shortly after graduation to a man she loved and with whom she had two daughters. They were married more than 40 years and built a life together that came apart after his drinking escalated post-retirement. Once alone, Lisa explored the Internet and found her long-lost love, now widowed. They happily re-discovered their love and were married this past fall.

You may not happen to, or even desire to, re-discover a lost love or go back to school but you can ease the sting of regret by doing what you can in the present to learn something new or explore a career shift or to take lessons learned from past relationships and use these to improve or enhance your current one.

Start forgiving yourself. Forgiving yourself is critical to moving on with your life. Allowing yourself to ruminate, to beat yourself up, to continue to mourn what might have been keeps you locked in an unchangeable past. It also precludes making the regret a positive force in your life by learning from it and then moving on, wiser and more compassionate for your experience.

Ask yourself what your regrets can teach you now. When you find yourself looking back with regret, you're looking at a variety of chances to learn from your life experiences. Perhaps one can learn to think over choices more carefully, or to be open to change and new opportunities, or to be kind.

The latter is my takeaway from my own regret over the young woman I was when I darkened some of Michael Lynn's days. I am a kinder person now.

Some of this is due to growing maturity and insight.

Some of it is due to life's humbling experiences that have exorcised my youthful arrogance.

And some of my better self has evolved from knowing a loving young man with a sparkling smile who was so kind then and whose gentle friendship through the years -- with birthdays always remembered and Christmas cards that always make the season merry and phone calls at critical times like when my parents died, when his mother died, when I faced thoracic surgery -- has taught me a great deal about kindness and forgiveness.

We'll travel for miles with our Saturday smiles
And then we'll move on
But we will remember
Long after Saturday's gone....

When our romantic relationship was coming apart so many years ago, there was an anguished moment when Michael asked me "The years we've been together, the experiences we've had, the love we've shared....doesn't any of that mean anything to you?"

I don't remember what I replied then.

But now I look back and think that all those long ago Saturdays and other days with Michael Lynn mattered immensely. Learning lessons in playing, in love and in forgiveness from my sweet friend has meant so very much.

A Change in Fantasies

2012-01-27T16:14:00.006-07:00

I remember it with the clarity of yesterday: the moment when, as a junior in college, I was sitting around a dorm room with some friends and my roommate Ruth suddenly asked the group: "If you could have sex with a movie star, which one would you choose?"

This fired imaginations all around and, as I remember, Sean Connery and Paul Newman emerged as the most popular fantasy lovers. When my turn came, I shrugged. "I wouldn't want to have sex with a movie star," I said. "Actors are so self-centered in general. I don't find them appealing."

The others looked at each other and rolled their eyes. "But if you HAD to," Ruth insisted. "If you absolutely HAD to have sex with a movie star, who would it be?"

I thought the options over and finally said "Jack Lemmon."

The group erupted with derisive laughter. "Jack Lemmon???" Ruth gasped between convulsions of mirth. "Why in the world would you pick him? He's not sexy at all!"

"Yes, but he looks like he'd be a nice person," I said, a bit defensively. "That means a lot to me: a guy being thoughtful and good to me -- movie star or not."

My dorm mates snickered.

How times change.

Movies stars are less on my mind these days than thoughts about the times ahead. Fantasies about movie star sex -- fueled by youth and the vast expanse of endless possibilities on the horizon -- have given way to reality-fueled fears and fantasies about what future remains and what it may hold.

I talked with my friend Mary -- whom I'm going to visit again next week -- yesterday and she told me the sad news that her husband John has gone downhill alarmingly -- both physically and cognitively -- in the two months since I last saw them.

My dear friend Sister Rita -- whom I will also visit next week -- is fighting cancer.

My friend and neighbor Phyllis is having a very difficult recovery from thyroid surgery two weeks ago. She has lived with cancer for some years now and is a champion at bouncing back. But this surgery -- which did not involve cancer -- has laid her low. She is in pain and has no energy. Her voice is weak and raspy, words coming between gasps. She called me last night and said something I've never heard her utter before: "I feel like I could die. I've never felt so bad before."

And it makes my heart ache for these friends I love so much. And it makes me think about my own future as well.

How many healthy years do I have left? Will there be enough time to write the books I long to write? To do the traveling we still want to do? To enjoy the ordinary, everyday routines of life: exercise, errands, going to the movies and the library and just having great conversations with Bob?

I have fantasies of racing the clock to do and enjoy it all. And a new take on the word "when..." has crept into our conversations. It came up after we cleaned the house today. Leaning against the kitchen counter, suddenly weary from his efforts, Bob said "I suppose there will come a time -- not yet, but someday -- when we will probably hire someone to do our housecleaning."

I nodded, thinking of a time when arthritis and age would preclude the sweeping, mopping and vacuuming we had just finished.

"But I always want to do our own laundry," Bob added. "I can't imagine asking anyone else to wash our clothes, can you?"

"We'll keep on doing the laundry," I agreed.

Unspoken as yet are some fleeting thoughts about the future: will we be able to manage taking care of our home and ourselves for the rest of our lives? Will we outlive all our pets? And, if so, when is too late -- in all fairness -- to adopt another cat? When we finally trade in our 10-year-old car for a new one -- hopefully, not for another few years -- will that car be our last? How will we manage at some future time if neither of us can drive anymore?

And death, which seemed so impossibly far away in youth, has become something we can readily imagine these days. When I think of dying, I hope it will be as my parents, my aunts and my grandmother died -- suddenly, while fully living life. My preference, of course, is that this quick demise will come at a much older age -- like Aunt Molly or my grandmother -- rather than my parents, who were my present age when they died.

Such musings have prompted us to update our wills, health directives and power of attorney documents. There is a list of people to contact, our wishes regarding funeral arrangements and provisions for any surviving pets.

Such thoughts also highlight the wisdom of not putting off what's important -- whether it's writing those books I've always wanted to write or taking those trips to see ailing dear ones or to go on faraway adventures or simply saying "I love you so much!" to those who matter most to me.

Yes, as the years have passed, my fantasies have changed. I haven't thought about Jack Lemmon for ages.

On the other hand, if George Clooney -- who is sexy and seems like a nice guy, too -- made me an offer...well, I could be persuaded.

Memories to Keep -- and a Giveaway!

2012-01-26T11:50:00.001-07:00

Our memories live in so many places: in musty photo albums and diaries, in boxes full of the memorabilia of generations before us. Our memories live in stories we tell each other about the past and about family members no longer alive. Our memories live in our hearts.

My brother Mike called me not long ago to ask me to start a project: to bring to life some of the people his children will know only in old photos. "You know so many of the stories and the people in those photos," he said. "I wish you would do more than just label them -- although that's important, too. Could you maybe make little memory books so my children will have some idea about who these people were? I want them to know Aunt Molly from her childhood on -- and how we loved her and what an impact she had on our lives."

He's right that I know a lot of the stories our parents, Aunt Molly and other long-departed relatives told. When I was a little girl, my favorite stories were the true ones. I would pester my mother, my father, Aunt Molly, Grandma, Aunt Evelyn and Aunt Ruth for stories about when they were children.

For my mother, her mother and her sisters Evelyn and Ruth, these were stories about close family life on a Kansas farm, in the days when farming was a family tradition not a corporate enterprise and in a small town where friendships spanned generations.

For my father and his sister Molly, childhood stories revolved around early loss -- their father died when they were very young -- and early hardship as my father struggled to support the family as a child actor in Hollywood films and vaudeville. They lost their mother when Molly was a teenager and my father a young college student -- and they both worked their way through UCLA -- and shared a lifelong bond forged in hardship and in love, despite their considerable personal differences.

While planning (and procrastinating) on this family memories project, I came across some wonderful digital scrapbook software that is making my task much easier. It is called MyMemories.com and it offers wonderful software suites (not only for memories in general but also for weddings and for photo albums with a special flair) and templates for scrapbooks, and memory books for all occasions. I'm using the My Memories Suite software for my photo and text memory book. For the truly creative, music and videos can be added to the mix. You can even record your own narration for your family's story to go along with the photos and videos!

I've started small -- with a test memory book on Aunt Molly who was, of course, my very favorite family member. I'm using a lovely, nostalgic template -- but have removed some of the beautiful art flourishes in order to have more room for text. (It's very flexible that way.) Here are my first test pages. Those of you who have read my previous writings about my beloved Aunt Molly will understand how much this fledgling memory book will mean to me and my family. I'm going to be adding a lot more pages and more decorative flourishes to this book as I get more confident and inspired. But this is my tentative beginning.

As I've been working on these pages, I've been thinking of so many of you who are so much more artistically talented than I am and all the beautiful projects you might like to make. There is a lot you can do with this software, I'm finding. You can keep a memory book or scrapbook as an online project or you can arrange to have it printed into family treasure to hand down through the generations.

If you feel inclined to try such a project, too, I'm offering a Giveaway: one reader will win a My Memories software package, valued at $39.97. How do you enter? It's easy.

1. Just go to the My Memories website and check it out. You can access the site via this link:
(http://www.mymemories.com/digital_scrapbooking_software)

2. Pick your favorite digital paper pack or template.

3. Come back to this blog post and leave a comment about your favorite template and what kind of a project you envision doing with it. That's all it takes to participate in the Giveaway!

For those of you who are interested in buying the software right now, My Memories is offering a special discount to my readers: $10 off the regular price.

How do you get the discount? Go to www.MyMemories.com and click on the software suite you wish to buy. On check-out, enter the following code for your discount: STMMMS26291

This software is a user-friendly, high tech approach to keeping your family memories alive -- not only for you, but also for your children, grandchildren and those who come after. It's a great way to make sure that those old photos sitting around in boxes can tell a story about you and your family for generations to come.

My brother and I have been coming up with all kinds of ways we want to introduce his young children -- and my sister's child as well -- to those we knew -- and a few we didn't -- who lived large in life and in our memories. If the the new baby they're expecting this summer turns out to be a boy, Mike and Amp are thinking of naming him Henry Patrick after the grandfather and great-grandfather we never knew in life, but who has lived on in our imaginations as we've heard the stories and studied the pictures of him from nearly a century ago.

The very best memories of all, of course, come from spending treasured time with someone who will always live on in our hearts. The next generation can't possibly know what a delight it was to run into the ocean holding Aunt Molly's hand or to hear the sound of her laughter, feel the warmth of her embrace or spend the enchanting times with her when she would spin poetry for us as easily as making conversation. But maybe, with our stories, through our memory books and through the love and laughter we pass on to them, Aunt Molly will live on as a very special family member in their loving memories for many years to come.

Looking at Youth From the Other Side of the Timeline

2012-01-23T02:45:00.004-07:00

A 23-year-old writer for the teenage magazine Twist did a phone interview with me the other day.

Hearing her nervous adherence to a list of questions, her earnestness, and the youthful exuberance in her voice made me smile and took me back to a very different time and place.

I remember turning 23 just before finishing graduate school at Northwestern. I walked along the campus lakeshore that birthday and pondered my future. I wondered if I could be happy working at a teenage girls' magazine. It wasn't an idle question: that, in fact, was what was looking like my best job prospect and I was feeling disappointed, anxious and unsure of the future.

My parents had begged me to come back to Los Angeles after I finished my Master's degree instead of heading to New York as I had dreamed. They were aging fast and still had a teenager at home. The teenager, my sister Tai, was depressed, distraught and defiant. They needed help. "Just give us two years," my mother said. "Besides, it's cheaper to live in L.A. You can get a head start in paying off your student loan."

The only female-oriented national consumer magazine edited from Los Angeles at the time was 'TEEN. I had decided, a year in advance, to learn all I could about this magazine and its competitors. I did my final graduate research project on the evolution of teenage girls' magazines post World War II: a comparative analysis of SEVENTEEN, INGENUE and 'TEEN, the biggest circulation leaders at the time. Now, my move back to L.A. looming, I thought and fantasized about how it might be to start my career at 'TEEN, to give advice to young girls, to help smooth the rough spots of these vital growing years -- not to mention giving help and support as well to my distressed teenage sister. I decided that it all might be well worth my time.

And so it was: I spent the first nine years of my career at 'TEEN as Feature Editor, writing self-help articles and columns, giving advice to an uncommonly responsive audience, working with a wonderful staff of peers -- some of whom have become lifelong friends. As jobs go, it was not only my first, but also my best employment experience -- and the best possible beginning for my working life.

Of course, I didn't know it at the time. I wanted more. I aspired to write books. And I did. I aspired to do television -- either as an actress or as a talk show guest. And I did. I thought it might be nice to be rich and famous. Well. I learned to be satisfied being solvent. And sort of semi-famous. But the career dreams that mattered most to me did come true.

And so it was funny, the other day, to time travel back for a moment: to be -- at once -- that 23-year-old grad student imagining a future and the 66-year-old looking back on a career largely in the past while talking with another eager 23- year-old working for a new magazine for teenage girls. This is, to be sure, a very different time to be 23. But some things are simply timeless.

Being on the other side of life's timeline -- beyond the dreams of a great career, beyond the major demands of such a career -- keeps giving me chances to reflect back on lessons learned.

What did I learn from my adventures out into the world of work? If we had been having coffee and talking casually, what advice would I have given that sweet 23-year-old reporter?

I think I would emphasize the following:

What looks like an obstacle may be an opportunity. It's harder than ever these days for young people to get a career foothold. So many opportunities seem to be tenuous and disappointing financially -- endless internships and low-paying jobs. But going for the experience and living on a sparse budget may be well worth one's time. And good experience, prestige and big money do not invariably go together.

It's hard to overstate how disappointed I was to be returning to L.A. when I was 23 instead of following my dreams to New York. I was mortified to be planning to work at a teenage magazine -- something I wouldn't have been caught dead reading as an intellectually snobbish teenager (but came to enjoy as a more free-spirited twentysomething). My best friend among my journalism school classmates was headed to the Wall Street Journal, where, in just a few years, he began to cover the White House and travel with Presidents. Other classmates landed at The Chicago Tribune, Newsweek, McCall's and The New York Times. 'TEEN seemed a singularly unpromising beginning. Except it wasn't. Even though the pay was ridiculously low, even by 1968 standards, and I lived in a one room studio for years, it was worth the financial sacrifices. The staff was young and we were given much more responsibility and editorial freedom than our peers at other publications. In time, I developed the writing specialties -- psychology and health -- that have defined my entire career. I had the opportunity to travel the world on assignment and to write to a wonderfully responsive audience. 'TEEN was exactly where I needed to be.

I guess I would advise a young counterpart to seize an opportunity, even if it isn't your ultimate dream, and make a resolution to learn everything you can from that experience. That is quite often how careers in competitive fields and particularly in these times tend to grow.

You'll discover some of life's greatest adventures and treasures when you're not looking for them. It's a matter of saying "Yes!" to growth, to learning new skills, to going in a new direction. If the career you thought you had always wanted isn't working out or if fate or changing interests seem to be taking you in a different direction, go with the flow -- and just see what happens.

I learned so much and grew tremendously from taking every assignment the publisher at 'TEEN doled out to me -- and it all led to some memorable life experiences -- spending a week in a wilderness prison camp for young male first time offenders in British Columbia, following a group of aspiring teenage models on a whirlwind trip of the fashion capitals of Europe, interviewing young Native Americans on the reservations and in urban areas just before the historic occupation of Alcatraz, spending a day in a mortuary with a young funeral director in rural Ohio who was co-teaching a high school class in death education. The memories and the growth experiences were endless.

And I found my career in psychotherapy in the course of one of the most horrible job experiences I've ever had. During a low period in my writing career, I took a day job as a research co-ordinator at a psychiatric hospital where the top administrator arbitrarily fired people depending on the hospital census. Pink slips were issued with paychecks every week. There was little team spirit and lots of back-biting. One of my supervisors made cruel comments daily about my weight. There were days when I cried throughout my 68-mile commute home.

But, in the midst of all this misery, I made an interesting discovery: I seemed to have a knack for connecting with and calming seriously mentally ill patients -- even though I wasn't a therapist at the time. Several of the doctors noticed and urged me to go back to school for a clinical degree. They wrote recommendations for my applications to graduate school. And within a year, I was on my way - working full-time during the day, going to school at night -- to a graduate degree in clinical psychology -- something I might never have pursued if not for the experience with patients at this hospital -- and the encouragement of some wonderful psychiatrists and psychologists whom I remember with gratitude to this day. So, even when things look unpromising, you never know.

Life can have many other surprises in store for us. I have seen friends -- or clients -- so desperate to meet that one special person only to have the prize elude them time after time. It happened to me, too, at least once or twice. And then, when I least expected it, when I went half-heartedly to a conference at USC, I met Bob, now my husband of nearly 35 years. I was burned out on love at the time. I was sick of dating. I couldn't bear the possibility of more heart-break. My hair was a mess. I was in a bad mood. I had a prominent pimple on my nose. And yet, there he was. And he noticed and came to love the imperfect, all-too-human person I happened to be. And I bounced back from my romantic burn-out to share his feelings.

So I guess I would tell the 23-year-old something like this: It makes sense to have a plan and goals and a direction for your life. But be prepared to be surprised, to have some plans replaced by new ones, to have completely unexpected adventures and experiences, friendships and love enrich your life as the years go by.

You can learn even more from failure than from success. At 23, I would have had a hard time hearing and truly believing this. I so feared failure then, feeling one wrong step would send me into an endless spiral down to professional oblivion. It took time and maturity to realize that challenges and failures are as much a part of life's rhythm as success.

I've certainly enjoyed success when it has happened. One can become quickly accustomed to the attention and acclaim that come with a well-reviewed or best-selling or award-winning book -- and my first book (and several others later on) was all that. I can look at old video-tapes of me talking with Oprah, Matt Lauer, Deborah Norville, Geraldo Rivera, Sally Jessy Raphael, Richard Simmons or Bryant Gumbel and recall that I accepted such attention simply as my due. I enjoyed the perks of success a lot, but I don't remember learning much from all the hoopla.

I learned much more from my books that didn't sell, from the times I didn't get a role as an actress or was passed over as a talk show guest. I learned a tremendous amount from failed romantic relationships and friendships -- lessons about the value of authenticity, of embracing a setback instead of being devastated by it, of accepting another person as is instead of trying to change him, of not losing my self in the thrill of a new relationship or in what I came to see as the temporary high of a moment of success.

And my failures have taught me that I'm not entitled to an easy life -- even if I'm talented and even if I've worked hard. I've learned during the rough times that success isn't a given or an endless loop, that life offers no guarantees -- only challenges and as much happiness as one decides to have.

You find your greatest triumphs not by chasing success, but by following your heart. I realized this with new clarity some years ago during a conversation with a very wise young editor/publisher in New York. Gene Brissie was the editor of my very successful first book at Simon and Schuster and was later editor or publisher of five of my books for Simon and Schuster and Putnam's. One day, when I was experiencing one of the low points in my career, when some of my book ideas had crashed and burned and I was feeling discouraged, Gene asked me one question: "Of all the books you've written, which ones did you have to write? Which ones came from your heart?"

I thought for a moment about the eight books I had written and had published at that time. "There were two," I replied.

"And how did those two do?" he asked.

"They did the best," I said, the realization dawning. "Those two books have been my most successful."

"So ask yourself what else you really have to write," he said gently. "Listen to your heart."

Gene followed his own heart into a career change not long ago and is now a literary agent -- my literary agent -- and he is still encouraging me to write from the heart.

Following your heart in pursuing a career or a passion can keep you motivated through the tough times -- through some disappointments or some crummy day jobs that sustain you financially on the way to making your dream reality or experiences with cranky supervisors or people who are only too happy to tell you that you can't do what you want to do or the setbacks that come to everyone. If you love what you're doing or what you hope to do eventually, if you have a sustaining dream for your life, you'll find success. It may be somewhat different from the success you originally envisioned. The dream may change over time. But when you're living life congruent with your passions, success will happen in so many ways for you.

And, from the vantage point of 66, I think back on my life and see a timeline filled with hard work, wonderful people and experiences, heartbreak and challenges, many tears and enormous good fortune. Overall, I look with wonder at the joy I've had in following my heart, living my passions and encountering success and happiness and love -- sometimes when I least expected.

And what would I say to that 23-year-old reporter today? "Use times of trouble, frustration and disappointment to grow and enjoy your life as it unfolds, day by day, moment by moment. Don't miss the joy of today by focusing only on the next step. Follow your heart and your passions -- and be open to all of life's surprises!"

Would she listen? Could she understand? Perhaps she simply has to live her own dreams and disappointments in the unique rhythm of her own life. I can only quietly wish her much happiness and wisdom and great adventures along the way.

Psychological Immobility

2012-01-20T22:29:00.000-07:00

Sometimes friends and acquaintances, knowing I'm a psychotherapist, will ask me what I most disliked hearing in therapy sessions. I've been thinking about this lately. There are, of course, situations that raise major concerns for therapists -- like admitted or suspected child abuse, domestic violence or threats of violence against the therapist. And, through the years, I've seen those -- from a court-ordered pedophile to a client pulling a knife on me during a session.

But day to day, in most practices, such instances are unusual. In the daily practice of helping people who are sad, anxious or in conflict, several phrases that set my teeth on edge do occur to me. I can't speak for all therapists, but the ones topping my own list are:

That's just the way I am.
That's just the way I was raised.
It's my parents' fault because...

I dread hearing these phrases because they tell me that this is a person who may be allergic to new ideas, to the hard work of therapy, to real change.

That's just the way I am is often uttered by a spouse in marriage counseling. It communicates some unpromising sentiments such as "I don't love you enough to make an effort to change behavior that is contributing to our marital problems" or "I'm not changing for you -- so take me as I am or get out!" or "This is not MY problem. I don't have a problem with my behavior. You don't like it? Then you've got a problem."

This pronouncement signals a near certain immobility in therapeutic progress. The fact is, relationship problems are most often fueled by habits and miscommunication by both partners. For marriage therapy to work best, both partners need to be willing to make changes in the way they behave or react to each other's behavior. Both need to want the relationship to work enough to endure the temporary discomfort of changes in attitude, behavior or ways of thinking. Some stall out of fright, some out of anger and eventually come around to making some marriage-enhancing compromises. Those who take a stand and refuse to budge, however, are destined for rough times ahead -- either with conflicts recurring in an endless loop or with the loss of a partner who decides that he or she has had enough.

That's just the way I was raised: While it can be charming to hear that someone was raised to be gracious and thoughtful and giving, carrying on the emotional generosity of a parent or grandparent as a living legacy, that's not usually the context in which this phrase is uttered in therapy. When a therapist hears this, it is usually an excuse not to make a positive change or take responsibility for one's own world view. Too often, it is an excuse for perpetuating some of the least desirable traits of parents -- an excuse for snobbery or racism or toxic pretensions or reactionary thinking.

Once you're in midlife or beyond, you have both experience and perspective. You have some wonderful opportunities to create the authentic, mature you. While you'll always be influenced by your past, you have a choice to sift through what seemed true back then and either embrace it or discard it. You have the opportunity to examine what makes sense in this time and place in your life.

My friend Pat, for example, has come to this point in her life embracing the Catholic faith of her childhood -- faith that meant so much to both her parents as she was growing up -- with greater fervor and joy than ever before -- while, at the same time, being comfortably at odds with her family of origin's political beliefs. She has created her own unique persona by building on what continues to be meaningful to her while questioning the rest.

While it's quite possible to be your own person and share many traits, interests and opinions with parents and other family members, making conscious choices in these areas instead of simply adopting familial inclinations by default can bring more satisfaction and joy to your life in these years.

It's my parents' fault because.... This is a tip-off that a person is not willing to own or take responsibility for behavior that is proving problematic in the present. Very few of us had childhoods that bore even scant resemblance to "Leave It To Beaver" or "Father Knows Best" or the Huxtables. Some of us had alcoholic, drug-abusing, child-bashing parents. Some of us suffered from neglect. Some of us felt the pain of being the non-preferred child in the family. Some of us were children of divorce. The list goes on.

The pain of the past can impact the present in many ways. Certainly, some of the major tasks of therapy include finding ways to soothe that early pain, to help resolve issues that still burn within and to help you move on to new possibilities. But when a therapist hears "It's my parents' fault because..." we're hearing that you don't want to -- or feel you can't -- change the trajectory of past pain to embrace a more promising future. It can be more comfortable, at least initially, to blame your parents' mistakes for all that ails you in the present. But even if they're still living and sorry for the misery of your childhood, they can't change what happened then or what will happen now.

While very few of our parents were ideal, very few were truly horrid, through and through. When we can allow ourselves to stop blaming our parents and to see the shades of gray and moments of happiness in our past as well, we're on the way to healing and growth.

One of the lovely aspects of adulthood is taking responsibility for your own life and taking the chance to re-invent yourself. Sometimes this means being mindful of a painful childhood when making adult choices. For example, I choose not to drink alcohol because I come from many generations of alcoholics. I know the havoc it can cause in one's life and I don't want to tempt my genetic fate. On the other hand, I cherish certain elements of my past -- my father's wonderful story-telling abilities and sense of humor, my mother's warmth -- and choose to emulate these positive aspects of the complicated people my parents were.

The fact is that taking a stand and not budging, never questioning early values or continuing to blame parents for present unhappiness all keeps you locked into behaviors and patterns that aren't working for you right now.

Taking the risk of change can feel scary, but it can bring new life to a troubled relationships and more energy, excitement and joy to your life than you ever imagined possible.

New Year's Wishes

2012-01-16T16:25:00.002-07:00

There are years when it's hard to let go of the holidays, to put away the ornaments that bring warm memories, to take down the tree and sift through the pictures and sweet messages sent by friends from far away.

This has been one of those years. We didn't take our tree down until a week ago because the sight of it so delighted us. Bob and I thought -- for about two minutes -- about just leaving it up as a permanent decoration. But we soon rejected that idea. We don't need any more evidence of our eccentricity on display. And maybe making that glowing tree permanent would make it somehow less special. So we packed it away.

And we started talking about whether to make New Year's resolutions.

Bob decided resolutions were unnecessary this year. He is living his dreams: he is slim and fit, having lost 35 pounds over the past year and is running again on a daily basis for the first time in years. He is more active than ever with his music. He is taking a fascinating array of courses on tape, online and in person at our ASU extension center here. He is going to the movies weekly and to the library more often, with an impressive reading list. He is meditating daily, eating healthy food, practicing Tai Chi -- in short, doing everything he set out to do in retirement. He is absolutely delighted with how retirement has turned out.

Bob jumping rope to warm up for gym workout

Bob and friend Theo English making music

Bob meditating in Maui....

..... And with Maggie!

Watching football - the big Alabama game -- with Gus

Studying neurological science on iPad with Maggie

And relaxing with SweetPea

Such a life!

I have to admit, I'm a bit behind Bob in all this. I weigh less than I did last January, but still have a way to go to reach a healthy weight. I'm exercising almost daily, but need to ramp it up a bit for maximum benefit. I'm writing again -- not only the blog, but also am working on some book proposals. I read a lot, meditate several times a week, am stumbling through the initial exercises of Tai Chi. I have fantasies of learning how to play the banjo and rediscovering Spanish. I'm eating healthy foods. So retirement is working well for me, too, but I have a way to go before I can catch up with Bob's healthy, active retirement lifestyle!

I've decided to skip the tyranny of specific resolutions in favor of ways I intend to pamper myself this year:

I want to take the risk of doing what I love. I found inspiration for this recently when our neighbor Hank, a Superior Court judge by day, a heavy metal rocker by night, invited us to a nearby gig. It was wonderful to watch him singing and playing his guitar in a local dive called The River Bottom Bar and Grill. Bob and I discovered that the River Bottom, a place we had been too afraid to try for the past two years (so many bikers and just a stone's throw across the Gila River from the massive Arizona State Prison complex), was really quite delightful and had excellent hamburgers. But the greatest joy of the evening was Hank's inimitable musical performance. Following his dreams day and night, Hank is a great role model for living fully in midlife.

Judge by day, rocker by night: my neighbor Hank Gooday

My version of this might be writing more and tackling -- with joy and excitement -- two memoirs so long deferred. It might also mean singing more often with Bob in the evenings, adding new songs and musical styles along the way. It might also include some self-pampering in the form of dance - however awkward, however basic in comparison to what I used to do, just because I love it.

I want to take time to cuddle and make warm contact with others. This may mean reaching out more to Bob or to a friend who needs a hug. It may mean not walking past a cat who stretches out before me or who meows for attention. My cats, in fact, are a wonderful example of the art of cuddling:

Gus and his late brother Timmy as cuddly kittens

SweetPea and Maggie cuddling

Bob getting a cuddle from Sweet Pea, Maggie and Gus

I want to savor the meaning of family. That means pampering myself with more contact not only with my brother Mike and sister Tai, but also with my dear sister-in-law Amp and also the next generation: Nick, now 22, and Maggie, 2 -- along with the new baby Mike and Amp are expecting this summer. When we can't get together in person, I'm going to send more emails and make more Facetime visits and, if it comes to that, I'll even do some texting. I was so excited to get a text from Nick last week! Okay, I can do this. I'll follow my friend Sharon's example. She became an expert texter in order to stay in touch with her two busy adult children. And I want to be in touch more often, too, with my wonderful cousins and have another Cousins' Reunion soon! I'll give myself the gift of contact with them all -- in whatever ways work best.

The next McCoy generation: Maggie, 2, and Nick, 22

Wonderful cousins: Caron, George and Jack

I want to celebrate each day with good friends - both old and new. I don't want a day to go by this year when I don't rejoice in friendships. Some span much of my lifetime -- like Pat Hill, who has been my playmate from kindergarten to my young old age and Mary Breiner, so dear to me for more than forty years and so many others from various life stages -- from college friends like Tim Schellhardt and friends from various workplaces like Betty Price, Rita Warren, Michael Scavio and Nora Valdiviezo.

My lovely friend Mary Connolly Breiner and me - 1977

Dear college friend Tim Schellhardt and me in 2006

Betty Price and Rita Warren at 40th 'TEEN Magazine Reunion

My last boss Nora Valdiviezo and me celebrating retirement

And I want to celebrate and thoroughly enjoy some of the new friends we've made in Arizona -- where neighbors have become a whole second family. Neighbors like:

Wally Skurda, Phyllis Skurda and Larry Putrick

Next door neighbor Louise Putrick

Bob and Larry with Pat and Joe Cosentino

And there are a number of others -- either camera shy or gone for the holidays -- not pictured but treasured daily! This coming year, I will pamper myself with memories and contacts with friends both old and new!

I want to create fun adventures -- whether traveling or at home. Every day is full of opportunities for new discoveries and adventures! I plan to pamper myself by taking the time to notice and enjoy both planned and totally unexpected fun and enlightening moments. Bob and I want to discover more of Arizona and its fascinating history. I want to have some fun adventures in learning -- maybe picking up a musical instrument for the first time in my life. I have fantasies of learning to play Bob's banjo -- a tall order, I'm sure. But it's worth a try. And I want to enjoy memories of past adventures -- like our trip to visit my brother Mike and his wife Amp at their home in Bangkok for a the holidays a few years back. Every moment was a delightful adventure -- including our memorable visit to the restaurant Cabbages and Condoms (where condoms replace after dinner mints and profits go to family planning clinics throughout Thailand).

Mike, Bob and me at Cabbages & Condoms Restaurant, Bangkok

I want to pay extra attention to health. That means healthy eating, careful flossing and daily exercise. It won't be a chore: I've come to prefer fresh fruits and vegetables to my old sugary treats. And the gym here has become a second home to me: wonderful exercise opportunities, fun socializing and all the best gossip -- all in one place!

Our Sun City Gym - great place for daily workouts

And a great place to socialize as well

I want to find new ways to let special people in my life know how very much I care. There are so many ways to communicate caring: the words we speak, the words we write, the time we take to notice, to listen, to try to understand another's point of view. I want to support family and friends I love -- as well as those in the blogosphere who have become dear to me -- in moments of challenge and pain, and moments of triumph. I want to empathize in rough times and celebrate the joyous times -- all the days of our lives in 2012!

Musing on New Year's Eve

2011-12-31T01:54:00.001-07:00

As other people party on New Year's Eve, I reflect and remember.

And right now, for some reason, my thoughts keep returning to a New Year's Eve 55 years ago.

New Year's Eve 1956 was like so many other New Years Eves of my childhood: my father, usually a night owl, would retire to his bed at 7 p.m., growling about the sad state of the world, the dreadful fate of mankind and the inherent foolishness of anyone who even thought about celebrating the passage from one year to the next. His grumblings were interrupted only by his occasional calls for snacks or for another rum and Coke, sipped as he lay abed bemoaning the year past and the year to come.

And we knew the scenario for New Year's Day as well: he would rise in time to watch the Rose Parade on television, still clad in his favorite thermal ski pajamas, and make caustic comments about every marching band, every float, and, especially, every equestrian unit in the lineup with the ornate, bejeweled costumes of the riders and silver trimmed saddles further weighing down the horses.

And there was a certain comfort in such predictability.

We sat quietly with Aunt Molly that evening. My mother occasionally joined us in between ferrying food and drink to my father's lair.

Suddenly, Aunt Molly announced that she felt some poems coming on. I ran for pen and paper to transcribe her latest inspirations.

And, as I wrote her words down, memorizing them as I went along, I realized something suddenly: that facing each day and each year with a family member who saw the world in a dark and completely different way offered Aunt Molly -- and us -- a unique opportunity. We could make his dark moods our own. Or we could offer him love and understanding despite our differences and bring laughter to a usually difficult night in our house.

I was struck by the affection and gentle humor in Aunt Molly's simple, spontaneous poems to and about her brother, my father. For all their differences, differences that ran deep and angry and as long as they both lived, there was much love between them. I felt it as I transcribed her words.

New Year's Eve - 1956

Oh Father on thy bed of pain
The New Year now rolls round again.
What words of joy you bring us all
Every time we hear you call.

Oh Father keep our spirits light
With tales of plague and death and blight.
Blithe spirit let us not forget
The present's black. Our doom is set.

But if thou wilt not rise, sweet pere,
Ring out wild bells! Let every hair
Stand upright as in earth and heaven
Fools of the world greet '57.

The Day Father Rode in the Rose Parade

The Rose Parade was at its height
The horses pranced, the floats rolled by
When suddenly an awesome sight
Appeared against the drizzly sky.

The crowd let out a mighty roar
And rose to cheer, each man and boy,
For larroping by on an old screen door
Was the one, the only James McCoy.

His ski pajamas blazed with jewels,
His legs were beautiful to see
He rode among the cheering fools
A king of eccentricity.

He passed the stand and there unfurled
A banner scrolled in plastic foam
That read for all the waiting world:
"Okay, you've had it! Fools go home!"

We laughed heartily and together over her efforts. Even Father, languishing in bed, laughed as he read the two poems. And then Aunt Molly, my mother, Mike and I celebrated the coming of midnight and the New Year 1957 by grabbing pots and pans and wooden spoons, running around the front yard banging on the pots and yelling "Happy New Year!" to our neighbors who were also running around their yards, setting off firecrackers and yelling with joy. But the four of us had even more to celebrate that night: we were united in our loving acceptance of what was and hopeful for what might be in the New Year.

What is to be in 2012?

I hope for love despite differences, shared laugher and much joy and gratitude as we greet yet another New Year.

Life According to Christmas Cards

2011-12-26T19:21:00.001-07:00

As I take one last look at this year's Christmas cards from friends far away -- relatives, high school and college friends, friends from my careers in publishing, in acting and in psychotherapy -- I'm suddenly struck with the thought that these have changed with the passage of time -- as have we.

From the heady reports of careers on the rise when we were in our twenties and thirties to the sweet letters of the parenting years: cute sayings and even cuter pictures of children. I've kept these holiday pictures of the children of dear friends in a special album, watching many grow up from across the miles in these annual Christmas photos. Now, in some instances, I am pasting the pictures of their children in my album.

As time went on, the cards and letters began to reflect the first losses -- the deaths of parents and the slowing of careers.

And now, as we ease into older age, the character of the holiday messages is changing yet again.

There are fewer cards now. Every year I cross the name of a deceased friend off my Christmas card list. Half of my most cherished female friends from college have passed away -- including two of my three college roommates. It's hard to realize how many years have gone by until I get a note from my deceased former roommate Lorri's daughter Sharon, now, at 43, older than her mother ever lived to be -- and starting to talk about her retirement planning strategies. How is that possible?

And the addresses are changing -- from long-time homes in the Midwest and Northeast to sunnier locations in Florida or Nevada or even here in Arizona. There are messages of happiness, of adjustment struggles, of life regrets, of new passions as the friends of my generation begin to retire.

And, along with the passage of time and the challenges of our changing world, there are messages of distress -- of illness, heightened sense of mortality and fear and of aspects of life and each other previously unknown.

A friend in his fifties, struggling to establish his own business after losing his job a few years ago, is now facing an expensive divorce. He is stressed, worried and heartbroken.

A recently retired college classmate wonders if her thirtysomething children will be able to keep their jobs, support their families and, essentially, stay launched in this troubling economy.

And some struggle a bit to reconcile what they once knew with what they're hearing now. My first lover, a very kind and gentle man whom I have not seen in nearly 40 years, sent a Christmas card as he always does, adding a note to let me know that he reads my blog enthusiastically, though finding himself puzzled and a bit distressed at times to learn of the abuse of my childhood. This is an aspect of my life that, in my youth, I was unable to share with most people, especially men I was trying to impress with a facade of cool sophistication. This man, now 70, remembers my father as a amiable, funny and charming person who used to tease him about the rivalries of their college football teams. My father once played varsity football for UCLA while this boyfriend was a proud graduate of USC. Their good-natured sports talk, when my father was in his reasonably healthy mid-fifties, led to the only positive relationship my father ever had with any of the men in my life. And his memories remind me of the complexity of my father's nature and the truth of all perceptions. And somehow it pleases me that, through the years, he has held good memories of my father.

Another college friend wonders if he will ever be able to retire as his talented, hard-working and ambitious children struggle, with varying degrees of success, to get a foothold in their chosen professions.

And a dear friend from my acting days calls to talk instead of sending a Christmas card this year. He needs a listening ear. I smile when I hear his voice on the phone.

My most vivid memories of him are as a dashing thirty and fortysomething actor fluent in nine languages, with an ethnic look that made him a shoo-in for a great variety of foreign character roles -- featured in movies here and in Europe and in many popular television shows. He also sang and danced in major stage musicals in Los Angeles. I greatly admired his talent and abundant energy as well as his warm friendship through the years. He is still a busy working actor doing regular film and television roles. In his early eighties, he has just had a banner year due to a frequently shown national television commercial that has earned him an outrageous sum of money so far -- more money than he has ever made for a single day's work -- and he doesn't speak a word in it, simply reacts with lovely authenticity.

But now, over the phone, I can hear both sadness and fear in his voice. His mother, whom he cared for during the many years since his father's death, recently died at 104. He misses her more than he ever imagined he would. Despite relationships with a number of wonderful women -- the best relationship of all spanning 18 years --he has never married or had children. And now his health is a worry: he recently had a recurrence of the colon cancer he thought he had conquered twenty years ago. He had a quadruple coronary bypass three years ago. He is diabetic. And recently, he has been having episodes of "brain fog" along with loss of balance that is causing him to turn down roles lest people in the industry begin to suspect that he can't handle his work anymore. Most of all, he is feeling very mortal, very sad and very alone.

I linger on the phone with him, promise to call and encourage him to call more often. And, having known him in his prime, I ache for the heartbreak and physical toll that the passage of time, life choices and chance have exacted. And I ache for the losses that we all share, to varying degrees, as we age.

And as I look over all the cards, I envision their senders in a series of snapshots in my mind -- as college kids, as young adults establishing their careers, as parents proudly holding babies, as a sweet first lover, as a busy actor filled with energy and big dreams. Wasn't that just last Christmas or a few holiday seasons ago? How could so many years fly by so fast?

There is a different rhythm to all our lives these days. And to this day, I love these long-time friends and savor their cards and their messages.

My favorite part of this season, indeed, any season -- is to share feelings with dear friends whether these feelings are joy in new passions and discoveries, in the delights of grandchildren and in the adventure of retirement or feelings of pain and fear and uncertainty as our bodies and our lives change with aging.

Whether the messages of this year's Christmas cards are hopeful or sad or somewhere in between, I feel blessed by the lives that have intersected with mine and the chance we have, yet again this year, to offer each other words of comfort and hope and love across the miles.

Christmas Memories

2011-12-24T03:56:00.001-07:00

As Christmas Eve dawns, I'm surrounded and warmed by Christmas memories.

And not just the memories of childhood Christmases with the eager anticipation of Santa, the warm presence of Aunt Molly with her gifts always chosen with such loving care or the beauty of the Latin Mass on Christmas morning and singing carols along with the liturgy.

But also tangible memories that are with us still.

Our Christmas tree is festive with the ornaments Bob's parents made with such care during the first decade of our marriage.

Our Christmas Tree - 2011

Each of the ornaments, handmade by Bob's parents, now gone many years, come in many varieties.

Some are tiny stuffed animals and dolls

Some are tiny and beautiful needlepoint creations.

Some were made to add sparkle to the tree

And one, made by Bob's mother the last Christmas of
her life, says a poignant "Goodbye"

And out in the casita, my writing office, that sits in front of our house, Aunt Molly's little fiber-optic Christmas tree that decorated her living room during the last decade of her life is ready to sparkle for all to see once again.

Molly's Little Christmas Tree

Our lives are filled with traditions and memories from our Christmas photo album:

Gus always inspects the tree, this picture from 1998

There is fun and laughter - in this picture, from 1999,
Aunt Molly, Timmy and I enjoy the holiday together

Friends come to carol - Christmas Eve 2010

Warmth. love and togetherness fill our happy home
Gus (l) with his late brother Timmy, Christmas 1998

May your holiday season be filled with warm memories, joy, friends, family and beloved pets and may your hearts be filled with love and peace!

Sex, Politics and Religion: Navigating Holiday Table Minefields

2011-12-21T20:43:00.003-07:00

Some of the most vivid holiday memories of my childhood revolve around fights about politics and social issues that Aunt Molly and her brother/my father used to have in the kitchen before and after holiday meals.

He was an Eisenhower Republican (though his loathing for Nixon would cause him to cast votes for Democratic presidential candidates for the next two decades). She was a liberal Democrat. He made scathing remarks about every ethnic group on earth --even the Irish ("incredibly stupid, shiftless, drunken, Church-hobbled people") -- but excluded the Chinese and Native Americans from his rancorous comments because his beloved late father, a lawyer, had worked with and befriended them. Aunt Molly called him on his unrepentant racism at every opportunity.

One of their most memorable battles began with a half-hearted skirmish about Adlai Stevenson and then began to heat up when Aunt Molly urged Father to stop drinking in the kitchen and come relax and watch televison with the family. We were mid-way through an episode of "Have Gun, Will Travel." Father sat down grumbling, just as a fight scene started onscreen. He snorted in disgust. "Goddam Hollywood judo!" he muttered.

In an instant, Aunt Molly was on her feet. "Can't you leave the Jews out of anything?" she yelled. "Do you always have to make horrible comments about such fine people?" And she stormed out of the living room, out the back door and to the workshop/guest room in the back yard, tossing her lit cigarette aside and slamming and locking the door of the workshop behind her.

"Judo! I said 'Judo!'" my father yelled after her, leaning out the back door.

Suddenly, he realized that a small dry bush under the kitchen window had been ignited by Aunt Molly's discarded cigarette. Frantic, he ran to the workshop to get his fire extinguisher and found the door locked. "Molly,' he screamed. "Let me in! The house is on fire! I need the fire extinguisher!"

"Go away!" she yelled back.

And, as they continued to yell at each other through the locked door, my mother extinguished the small blaze with the garden hose.

Most of their fights weren't quite so dramatic. Some seemed positively recreational. Still, they tended have their most impressive ones on major holidays. It was as predictable as cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie.

And after Father died in 1980, Molly seemed wistful but resigned on all holidays thereafter to forgo the fighting drama. It was impossible: we all agreed with her and each other on all the sensitive issues. Harmony was nice, but there were times, I think, when she longed for a good, screaming holiday fight.

There are many families for whom lively holiday table debates and family skirmishes are an integral and enjoyable part of the holiday. For many, nothing can beat a good recreational family battle. If the conflicts were taken away, the holidays would pale.

But not everyone thrives on holiday controversy.

For some families, less inclined to high drama, the comments can be quiet, but cutting: differences in religious beliefs or politics or sexual proclivities or lifestyles can take tense center stage.

And for some, family fights and hurtful comments can drive emotional wedges between family members that can last years, causing painful and unnecessary estrangements.

How can you dodge such minefields at your holiday table?

Make a decision to avoid touchy subjects. Just because you disagree on certain key topics, you don't have to air these differences when you're together. There are so many other things to talk about, laugh about and and share. Bob and I recently had a delightful two-hour dinner out with our neighbors Carl and Judith. We differ with each other, to varying degrees, on politics and religion. But that doesn't mean we can't be friends or have a wonderful evening together. Our evening was filled with lively conversation and much laughter. We had a terrific time.

Don't take the bait. If you've made a decision to avoid touchy subjects, but another family member or friend zeros in, don't bite. Deflect the conversation to something else. Say you're trying to be on good behavior and love everybody today. Joke in a cautionary way: "Let's not go there. You know how I get." And then change the subject. If you know that you and your mother-in-law will never agree on religious matters, don't get into the usual exchange. It isn't worth it. You won't change her mind. You'll get your blood pressure up. And your arguing could end up annoying everyone. Just for today, you can take a deep breath and stop the conflict before it starts.

Know the difference between recreational and serious fighting. Fighting is recreational only if both parties agree that it is. If one person starts a conflict just for the fun and excitement that ends up seriously upsetting another, that's a fight not worth starting or continuing. Play bickering, if part of a family/sibling tradition is one thing. But a fight that ends up with tears or with someone stomping away from the holiday table, this quite something else. You know from past experience how much teasing or play fighting another can take or whether it's appropriate at all. Take a cue from holidays past -- and aim to make this one happier for all.

If your skirmishes upset other family members, establish a conflict turf away from the holiday table. There are times when even a recreational fight can ruin a family holiday meal if others are bothered by bickering, barbs and conflict. If the holidays would be lame without a good recreational fight with a long-time opponent, indulge yourselves in a more private setting. Go to the den, to the patio in warmer climes, for a drive if you're so inclined -- anywhere you can argue to your hearts' content without upsetting anyone else.

Avoid or call out deliberate cruelty. Whatever the family dynamics, there is no excuse -- ever -- for deliberate cruelty. My husband Bob's younger brother Miles had grown up determined to make his way in the world by marrying a rich woman. And he hit the jackpot with Cyndi. Not only was she rich, coming from gracious Old Money, but also she was beautiful and kind. Both Bob and I liked her immensely. Miles became a stockbroker and increased their wealth. When they were 24, they were living in a gorgeous house overlooking the ocean in Corona del Mar/Newport Beach in Southern California. At the same time, Bob and I were in our early married lean years, slowly building toward the affluent life we were later to enjoy, living in an apartment and counting our pennies. We never begrudged them their lifestyle. However, Miles never missed an opportunity to humiliate us, especially during holiday gift-giving. He made fun of us the Christmas we had requested a low-key gift exchange and actually rejected our home made gifts while giving me a dime-store pair of outrageously over-sized panties at a time I was just starting to put on some weight, roaring with laughter as I opened the package. But he exceeded himself one Christmas not long after I had lost both my parents. Not only was I grieving my parents but I was also in my mid-thirties grieving Bob's and my involuntary childlessness even as Miles and Cyndi were having and nurturing their two sons. At the holiday table, Miles suddenly started making fun of me as the only "non-mother" at the table, saying that it was a joy I would never experience. I was stunned and stung by his cruelty -- and cried with anger, outrage and grief all the way home. Obviously, even today -- nearly 30 years after the fact -- I still feel a surge of anger thinking about it -- and it has been many years since Bob and I have shared a holiday meal -- or any time at all -- with his brother's family. The seeds of this estrangement were sown, at least in part, in the hurt of those long-ago holidays.

Give a holiday gift of flexibility and understanding. This can mean calling a truce, changing a stance, volunteering to be the one who makes peace. For example, it may mean going to church services without grumbling or complaining if it would mean a lot to someone you love, even if you no longer believe (or never did). Or make it easier for loved ones to attend services by offering to babysit or to prepare a post-services meal. Or give a family member or friend the gift of a listening ear without negative feedback. Or suggest doing something that you know would be meaningful for them even if it's something you wouldn't dream of doing on your own.

More than 50 years after the fact, I still smile when I think of Aunt Molly's suggestion one day during Christmas vacation that she drive me all the way into Hollywood (a 60 mile roundtrip with horrible traffic even then) to see "The Nun's Story." I was in the midst of the sanctimonious-religious phase of my adolescence, which she found more than a little trying. Yet she knew that I wanted more than anything to see that movie. And she volunteered to take me and sit through it without any caustic comments (of which she was quite capable) about the Catholic Church. I've never forgotten the love behind this holiday gift to me.

Perhaps the best way to navigate holiday conversational minefields is to remember the love that brings us together for the holidays. As a holiday gift to those you love, hold your tongue. Suspend judgement. Deflect inflammatory comments. Do something that may be inconvenient or hard or boring to you -- but is a joy to someone else.

If you do any or all of these things, you may make a major difference for someone you love this holiday season: a memory of kindness to be treasured for years to come.

Beating the Holiday Blues

2011-12-14T16:48:00.001-07:00

The melancholy may overwhelm you when you hear a certain Christmas song over the sound system at the gym, an elevator or a crowded store.

Your mood may change from joy to the doldrums of resentment and depression when you struggle to cover your growing holiday gift list on a shrinking budget.

Or sadness may make you want to close your eyes and ears to the holiday cheer as you cope with the loss of a loved one -- a first holiday without him or her.

The memories, the flashbacks, the turns your life has taken can all exacerbate feelings of loss, the yearning for warm connections and the loneliness of being emotionally stranded during a season devoted to the realities and fantasies of family togetherness.

It may seem that the best you can do is to simply endure the holiday season. But there are alternatives to grim endurance.

If music is flashback to the past -- and brings on the blues: Instead of dwelling on the sadness of holidays that will never be the same, let yourself return to that moment and feel the joy and excitement.

Religious Christmas music reminds me of the holidays of childhood and adolescence when I sang in our parish choir, so enjoying the religious traditions and rituals that have ceased, over time, to be part of my life. I feel the peace that was part of the faith that once came so easily, that was such a comfort in my bittersweet youth. And when I hear Gene Autry singing "Here Comes Santa Claus", I'm suddenly five years old again, excited about Santa and the promise of a surprise under the Christmas tree.

If a certain Christmas song brings back memories of a lost love, let yourself experience the joy of that love. Focus on the love you've experienced in your life, skipping for at least a moment any sad comparisons between then and now.

Each phase of life, each holiday season of our lives, can be joyous in different ways. Let yourself feel the gratitude for the blessings of Christmases past. And then look to the present. Sharing Christmas with an excited child or adding to a child's hope and happiness this year can help you to experience the holidays in a new and wonderful way. Reconnecting with your faith or with special people can bring peace and joy to this season. Celebrating with new friends can bring special pleasure to these days as wel.

If your family isn't co-operating with your holiday scenario. Maybe you want a big family celebration but your siblings are opting for smaller scale holidays with their own nuclear families or with in-laws. Or maybe you want the peace of your own holiday plans -- a getaway for two or simply cocooning with your significant other in the comfort of your own home, eating take-out and celebrating quietly -- and the rest of your extended family wants a blow-out traditional family Christmas and is guilting you into a full-fledged depression. What to do? Look for a timely compromise. Participate in a celebration with all or part of your family before or after your travel (or cocooning) plans or around their official holiday plans. The point is reaffirming love and enjoying time together -- whether you do this on December 24 or 25 or after.

I'll have to admit, I had a fantasy of hosting my brother and his family (and maybe my sister, too, though she prefers to work major holidays for the extra pay) here in Arizona for Christmas. So when my brother announced that he, Amp and Maggie were going to spend the holidays in Thailand with Amp's family instead, I felt a wave of disappointment. Even though I know my brother isn't into holidays the way I am, even though I know that Amp -- who is in her difficult first trimester of her second pregnancy -- was longing for time with her mother, even though I know that Maggie blossoms with happiness the minute she sets foot in Thailand, I pouted for few hours. Then I decided to reframe this new development as an opportunity. We will have a quiet Christmas with friends. I will revel in a lesser level of responsibility for the holiday meal: I'm bringing the dressing while my neighbor Louise cooks the turkey and another neighbor Padma brings her special gingered vegetables. Bob and I will come home to peace and an uncluttered house. And I'm happily anticipating a visit with my brother and his family in early February. Hearing the excitement in his voice about our February visit helped raise my spirits, too. We're spreading the holiday cheer of togetherness into an otherwise dull winter month.

Anytime there is love and family -- there is a special holiday whatever the date on the calendar!

If depression is a holiday habit. Change your behavior and your feelings may change as well. If you've spent years hating the holidays, saying "No" to every invitation and spending the time in dark brooding, now is the time to change. Start saying "Yes" to some invitations to celebrate with friends. If no one invites you anymore because you've always declined, throw a holiday open house. That may be less daunting than a sit-down meal. Schedule it for a before or just after the major holidays. Order sandwiches on trays, salads, shrimp cocktail and small desserts from your local deli and invite friends over for a couple of hours. Once they recover from their shock, they'll be happy to help you celebrate the season anew.

If you hate holiday music, find pleasure in music you do like. See people you enjoy. Spend time reflecting, meditating and giving thanks fot all the blessings of your life. Focus on what's going right for you instead of dwelling on what's going wrong. As the world around you pauses to enjoy the holidays, give yourself a break from the concerns and anxieties you feel and let yourself enjoy today. Just today. And then take it day by day, rejoicing in the blessings of your life each day, throughout the holiday season.

Obviously, you can't go from a Scrooge to a holiday Pollyanna in a day. But you can begin to make changes that bring you pleasure, lightening your mood and brightening your holiday season little by little.

If you are marking your first Christmas without a loved one -- that empty chair, that void left in your heart -- can be overwhelming. Let yourself feel the sadness and loss. Take time for yourself -- to cry, to grieve anew, to think with longing about past holidays enjoyed with this loved one. Then plan ways to reinvent the holiday rituals -- with some familiar traditions for comfort and new rituals as well.

The holidays will always accentuate that loss. You'll never not miss that special person during these times. But shared grief and celebration of this person can help make this first holiday season bearable.

One of the best Thanksgiving celebrations I've ever had was in the immediate wake of a terrible family loss: my cousin Jack lost his 35-year-old wife Tanzy to breast cancer just before Thanksgiving 1982. Her family and Jack's parents -- my Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Elmer -- were in town for the funeral. I invited them for Thanksgiving -- and, after a little hesitation, they decided to come. It was one of the sweetest, most loving holidays in my memory. We talked and cried about Tanzy, remembering her with humor, warmth and love. We cherished each other's company. I loved meeting Tanzy's mother and sister and kept in touch with her mom for the rest of her life. The pleasure of spending a holiday with my beloved Aunt Evelyn and watching her make some of her holiday favorites added very special joy to our quiet celebration. I enjoyed Uncle Elmer's unique humor and treasured the time with Jack. We missed Tanzy very much -- but we missed her together, with loving shared memories and the comfort of carrying on with the holiday as a family.

While your pain may not be quite as raw in subsequent years, you will always feel that pang of loss. It's important to acknowledge it, be with your feelings for a time and then look for ways to keep the joy in your holiday season.

We've spent 8 Christmas seasons now without Aunt Molly. It's hard to imagine. From my earliest childhood, she absolutely made our holidays merry. From hunting for the perfect Christmas tree, to giving us presents that we still cherish years later, from leading Christmas carols to savoring the holiday feast, she was the most joyous one of us. Since she passed away a few days into the New Year of 2004, Christmas has never been the same. But we have our memories, our stories, our rituals and some new traditions as well. We consider keeping the holidays joyous as a way to honor this wonderful woman who brought immeasurable joy to our lives, whatever the season.

If you're feeling resentful of commercialism and the expense of so many presents. Scale down. Draw names. Or agree with loved ones that there will be few or no presents -- just the joy you feel in being together, in special times shared. Bob and I haven't given each other Christmas gifts for more than 30 years. We have everything we need and consider each day we have together as a special gift. At holiday time, we rejoice in contributing to our favorite charities and buy gift cards for a few needy families we know. But most of all, we enjoy the gift of another year, another holiday season, together.

If you find yourself alone -- after a move, a divorce, the death of a spouse, a romantic breakup, or a family dispute, you can still have a happy holiday. Make your own Merry Christmas: sign up with a local church or charity group to serve a holiday meal for the homeless. Take gifts and holiday treats to a person or family you know who are worse off than you. Pamper yourself in the best way you know: with a day devoted to exactly what you want to do, listening to your favorite music, getting caught up on reading, taking a hot bath or shower and spending the day in a soft robe or fresh pajamas. Attend a family celebration virtually: via Skype or iChat or Facetime. Or gather a family of friends together for a special holiday feast. There are so many ways to be happy.

One of the most challenging holidays of my life was the one I spent in Chicago while in graduate school at Northwestern. I was living in a run-down, fourth floor walkup apartment with a bullet hole in the living room window and the only roommate I had ever had with whom I did not get along. I had just been dumped by the love of my life, was working my way through school and couldn't afford to go home for Christmas. After some time spent weeping whenever I heard the song "I'll Be Home for Christmas", I decided to take Aunt Molly's directive to "Get down off your cross and get your sense of humor back."

After my roommate left to spend the holidays with her family, I invited my dear friend Jeanne Nishida, who was a senior still living in the dorm, working her way through school and couldn't afford to go home to Hawaii for Christmas, to spend the holidays with me. We found the perfect tree at a lot in downtown Evanston and, since neither of us had a car, we carried and dragged our prize through the snow the mile-and-a-half home, laughing and planning our decoration theme. We transformed the dumpy apartment to a holiday wonderland, thanks to Jeanne's creativity with cut-out paper snowflakes and the sparkling lights of our festive tree. We baked cookies, talked story Hawaiian style and sang Christmas carols. We visited our friends Lorri and Bruce on Christmas Eve for much laughter and egg nog, then made a sumptuous Christmas day feast for us and our friends. My former roommate Ruth, who was in law school, and her friend Richard drove from Cleveland to spend the New Year's holiday with us. We sat on the living room floor -- Ruth, Richard, Jeanne and I -- eating take-out Chinese food, talking, laughing and watching the celebration in Times Square on television. And 44 years later, I still smile when I remember holiday season 1967 and the dear friends who shared it with me.

A major way to beat holiday blues is to stop expecting perfection and celebrate what is.

I was reading a newspaper story recently about family holiday minefields. One family has converted an annual argument between husband and wife over the consistency of the gravy for the turkey into a recreational event: the whole family gathers in the kitchen to witness and enjoy the annual "Gravy Fight" and now, laughing, the parents oblige them in a token battle.

Some of the holiday memories that make me smile are ones where something wasn't perfect -- like Christmas 1981 when Bob and I had just bought our first house and agreed to host three -- count them, three! - holiday meals at our house. On the 23rd, we hosted Aunt Molly and my brother Mike, who -- as a medical intern -- had to work on Christmas. On the 24th, we hosted Bob's family -- his parents, grandmother, brother and sister-in-law. On Christmas Day, we hosted my sister Tai and her then husband Larry and my cousins Jack and George and their families. By that third day, I was totally frazzled. And I forgot to put a cookie sheet under the turkey baking pan. Midway through roasting, the pan split, sending turkey drippings all over the oven. As a thick cloud of smoke roiled out of the oven, I went into a frenzy -- insisting everyone go out on the patio with a tray of cookies while I cleaned the oven and Bob rushed to turn off all the screeching smoke alarms in the house. We ended up having a lovely dinner, some time later, and many laughs about my self-imposed holiday ordeal and my wild-eyed admonition to my guests to "Take these cookies and go! Go out to the patio -- now!"

The holidays, after all, aren't about expensive presents or exotic trips or non-stop revelry. They're about us -- with our imperfections, quirks and good will. They're about those we love. They're about happy memories, counting our blessings, allowing pleasure into our lives and cherishing sweet moments and warm connections with family and friends.

Life Changes in An Instant

2011-12-08T21:49:00.003-07:00

It happened in an instant: carrying bags of groceries in both hands, John had started up the stairs to the townhouse when his left knee buckled and he fell backward so quickly he had no time to drop the groceries and grab the railing to stop his fall. The back of his head smacked the pavement and he lost consciousness.

What followed was a frantic attempt to save his life: the screaming siren of the ambulance, immediate brain surgery, a prayer vigil as his wife Mary and their three children Matt, Liz and Katie waited. He survived the night and the subsequent weeks, finally regaining consciousness and, little by little, the ability to recognize loved ones, to speak and to read.

But some aspects of the life of this smart and sophisticated man who once headed the international division of a major food corporation and traveled the world are gone forever. He can no longer drive. He walks with great difficulty. He has major cognitive deficits: he can no longer multi-task nor does he always process what is said to him. He has no reflexes that prompt him to notice or catch something falling from his lap nor does he realize that anything is the matter with him. He can't understand why Mary won't let him drive or buy a bicycle. He scoffs at his physical therapist's alternative suggestion of a three-wheeler. He alternately tells Mary, a gifted psychotherapist who retired from her practice to care for him full-time, how much he loves her and how angry he is with her, saying that he doesn't understand why she won't let him drive.

And their days together flow on, determined by the rhythm of his life: getting up mid-day, fixing his favorite meals, caring for their two devoted little dogs, sitting together in the sun on their ocean-view balcony, performing tasks of daily living once easy, now hard. Neither complains. They're united in love and in faith.

John and Mary Breiner

Having just spent several days visiting with Mary, one of my closest friends over the past 40 years, and John, her husband of 26 years, I have come away with a sense of awe of the difficulty and devotion of their shared lives.

And being with them has reminded me both of the blessings of long friendships and of how life can change so profoundly in a minute. A stumble, a missed step, an unstable knee. That's all it takes to change life forever.

And sometimes that life-changing moment can even be an exuberant moment gone wrong or an impulsive, if disastrous, gesture of love.

I just got a call tonight from my cousin Caron Roudebush, who lives in suburban Kansas City. She told me that a grandchild's loving and exuberant leap into her arms has led to a life-limiting back injury and then, additionally, life-changing respiratory distress, requiring oxygen, became part of Caron's daily life. She has suffered greatly and her life has changed from that of an eternally young, gently aging woman who loved to care for her family to a woman who now needs the constant daily care of her husband and family. Her husband Bud, her sweetheart since they were 14 years old and her spouse for nearly 53 years, retired to take care of her and even learned to cook all their favorite foods. "He has saved my life. Everything has changed with this injury," she said without a trace of bitterness. "But I am surrounded with so much love. How can I complain? Besides, I still feel incredibly young inside."

Bud and Caron Roudebush

And I wonder: would I be so loving, so accepting, so optimistic, so embracing of life were I the one injured or if I were a full-time caregiver? Watching the love and devotion of Mary and John and Caron and Bud, I'm both incredibly sad that bad things have happened to such good people and deeply moved by their mutual devotion.

It also reminds me that we have no guarantees in life. Each healthy moment, each opportunity to do for others, each day of independence is a blessing. Every day that we can walk or run or breathe easily is to be treasured. And every moment with a loved one is very special.

So let's embrace these moments and these loved ones today, this minute.

In just a moment, so much can change.

Couples Claustrophobia

2011-11-27T15:14:00.002-07:00

It's a common side effect of retirement: the emotional claustrophobia that happens when couples are thrown together for far more time than they have ever had together, sometimes in a smaller home than before.

A neighbor I'll call Leslie told me recently that she feels crowded now that her husband is home all the time. A former corporate project manager, he is restless, not sure what to do with himself. And he is driving her crazy He has been busy utilizing his project management skills in a new way: telling her how to load the dishwasher, how to organize the laundry room, more efficient ways to tackle housecleaning -- all things that were of no interest to him whatsoever in the 40 years of their marriage before retirement.

"We need to get away from each other," she told me. "I have this fantasy of us living in two small houses, side by side. Mine would be filled with books and cats. His would be spare and immaculate with a big screen t.v. tuned perpetually to sports. And we'd visit each other regularly, amorously and otherwise, but we would also enjoy solitary splendor in homes perfect for us."

Then there was my friend Beth and her husband: he had been corporate CEO, she had built life of volunteer and community leadership -- serving on the local school board and heading the board of directors of the local symphony. Life was full for both. However, when her husband was forced into retirement in a corporate merger, he sat around all day clutching the t.v. remote, calling from the couch "When's lunch?" or "What's for dinner?" or "Bring me a beer."

All that passive t.v. watching after such an active career made me think that he might be depressed.

"Depressed???" Beth was nearly screaming. "No, he's fine. He's happy as a clam. I'm the one who's depressed! I can't stand him being around all the time and expecting me to drop everything to wait on him!"

Not surprisingly, the 43-year marriage disintegrated two years into retirement.

While other marriages remain strong and frustration is less pronounced, I've heard other wives worry about husbands feeling lost and at loose ends after retirement. Many had no hobbies or interests outside of work. Some have become more dependent on their wives for entertainment, social planning and general activity management. And some of the wives report feeling tied down or crowded.

Sometimes old issues surface for the first time after retirement. Martha, a lifelong homemaker who says that her career prospects as a journalist were destroyed by her husband's highly mobile corporate career, has little patience with his grumbling about the inconveniences of their recent relocation to a retirement community. "I've had to adjust all these years, not being able to pursue my own interests and career ambitions," she says with more than a little bitterness. "Now it's your turn to adjust."

What can a couple do before and after retirement to minimize the possibility of relationship claustrophobia once full-time togetherness becomes a reality?

Taking steps to prepare for this major lifestyle change -- preferably well before retirement -- can help to prevent feeling overwhelmed and crowded when marital togetherness becomes full-time.

If you don't have any hobbies or interests outside of work, find some well before retirement. Don't expect your spouse to take full responsibility for keeping life interesting. Think about things you enjoyed as a child or young adult. Would any of these activities please you once more? What have you always thought you'd like to try if you only had the time? Try it now -- preferably before retirement. If you go into retirement with interests, hobbies and a plan for your leisure time, the transition is likely to be much smoother. Sleeping and television watching don't count. Look for activities that engage your interest and skills in a new way.

Discuss making positive lifestyle changes with your spouse. Maybe you can divide the household work to create more leisure for both. If you're both retired, is it fair that one person still gets stuck with the housework? Or all the cooking? Unless one of you prefers to take on or retain the total responsibility for these tasks, it might make sense to renegotiate.

Create little retreats for each of you. One couple told me that once they realized they were fighting to create space and alone time, they decided on a more peaceful solution: they made little retreats for themselves at opposite ends of the house. Even if you're planning to move and scale down, look for a new home with the possibilities of room for both of you to enjoy solitary pursuits as well as shared interests.

Give yourself some structure as well as freedom. Transitioning from the structure of work life to the freedom of retirement can be a shock. Ease the passage with some structure: a morning work-out, a walk, a time to read the newspaper. Bob and I make work-outs our first morning priority (before we change our minds or come up with excuses not to go to the gym) and after that is free time. We've retained our Wednesday major housecleaning time from our working years. Bob goes to the movies on Tuesdays. We take the golf cart out for a trip to the local McDonald's for a Sunday morning Egg McMuffin.The clear priorities and little scheduled treats ensure that we get daily exercise, have a clean house and always something to look forward to. In between is a lot of free time for shared interests, socializing and individual pursuits.

Give each other a break. You don't have to share all your interests. But it can help to be supportive of each other's choices. "My husband Joe loves golf and plays nearly every day," my friend Pat said the other day. "When he's playing golf, I love to sit down, read and just enjoy the quiet. The t.v. is never on when he's gone. As soon as he comes home, he turns on the t.v. That's okay. That's what he likes. What makes it work for us is that each of us gets to enjoy time alone and time together."

If you find you're not quite ready to retire -- after retiring -- look for new outlets of satisfaction. This might mean more community involvement, more volunteer work or part-time employment.

Don't expect your spouse to meet all your needs. Though your husband or wife may be your best friend, closest companion and true love throughout your marriage, it's quite likely that from youth to older age, friends and family members have enriched your days as well. Maybe there's a special ease sitting down to talk with a sister or close cousin. If your wife can't stand fishing or your husband hates shopping -- friends can come to the rescue. Think of how this has worked for you all your life. Why should things be different now? Even if you've moved to a new location, it's important to make an effort to make friends, reach out and connect with others.

Having more time together is a dream for those of us who had far too little time to enjoy each other when we were working. But it takes careful planning, personal reflection and talking together about daily tasks, activities and priorities to make sure that your time together reflects this dream of togetherness -- not a claustrophobic nightmare.

Living with Gratitude

2011-11-23T16:28:00.000-07:00

On the eve of another Thanksgiving, as I reflect on all the blessings of my life, past and present, I'm filled with the joy of living with gratitude.

Living with gratitude means happiness with what is, not what you wish life would be.

Living with gratitude means being thankful for the series of miracles greeting you every day: the dawn of a new day, the blessing of autonomy, the chance to spend yet another day doing whatever you can to improve your life and those of others.

Living with gratitude means noticing -- another's triumph, an unexpected kindness you accept as a blessing, not as your due, the bright blue of a morning sky, the soft yearning in your pet's eyes as he sits at your feet wanting attention, the sweet smell of a just bathed baby or the music of a young child's laughter.

Living with gratitude means being thankful for those who have brought happiness and growth and joy to your life. It also means giving thanks for those who brought challenges and obstacles and forced you to grow in resilience and determination.

Living with gratitude means savoring the moment -- a summer morning, an evening walk in the fall, a cold winter night by the fire, the first blossoms of spring, a smile from a stranger, a lingering look of love from someone dear.

Living with gratitude means loving what you have now-- your relationships, your home, your life -- instead of focusing solely on what you want for the future.

Living with gratitude means appreciating all the people, the times and all the experiences that have shaped and colored your life in all its uniqueness.

This Thanksgiving, my fondest wish for you is that you will spend the day -- and all the days that follow -- filled with the joy of loving gratitude!

Little Cruelties And Marital Unhappiness

2011-11-21T18:07:00.001-07:00

Many years ago, my friend Mary McVea was driving me to Chicago's O'Hare Airport after I had visited with her and her husband Robert, a close college friend. "A lot of our friends are getting divorced," she said. "And when I ask them why, they tell me something that sounds pretty minor to me. And I feel like saying 'That's it??? Maybe it's just the last straw or something. But I find it puzzling."

I did, too, until I went back to school to become a marriage and family therapist. In my internship and after I was licensed, I encountered many couples in distress. Some of them were in crisis because of an infidelity or a gambling habit that had emptied family coffers or, in a few cases, overt abuse. But many ended up in counseling -- or divorce court -- because of a string of little cruelties that added up to marital estrangement.

What are the little cruelties that add up to marital distress? They're as unique as the couples involved.

There was the couple I met when I arrived at their spacious home to interview the man, a prominent doctor, for a magazine article. His wife welcomed me warmly, brought coffee and was returning with a plate of pastries when her husband said brusquely "Just set that plate down and get out! We have work to do." Her face burned with humiliation and anger as she silently withdrew from the room. The doctor didn't miss a beat, turning on the charm for the interview as I sat there stunned.

Then there were the couples who came for therapy:

The wife who never let her husband forget that she had "married down" and who corrected every statement he made -- incorrect or not -- with a running commentary on what he was saying, questioning both his accuracy and intelligence.

The husband who belittled every interest and pursuit of his wife as "stupid and insignificant" and fondly called her an "airhead." When challenged by others, he would smile and say "Aw, she knows that I love her!"

The wife who escalated ordinary disagreements to major crises by giving her husband the silent treatment for days at a time.

The jazz musician husband who had married an exceptionally talented jazz singer and then never seemed to miss an opportunity to make negative comments about her talent, actually hiring another female singer for his band.

The wife who had a habit of blaming her husband every time anything went amiss -- from a balky computer to a rained out picnic -- with one phrase: "Can't you do anything right?"

And there was the husband who snapped at his wife whenever he had a bad day at work and then wondered why she tended to keep her distance.

Of course many of these "little cruelties" are not little at all and some indicate larger problems within the marital relationship. But the fact is that casual cruelty, careless words and thoughtless actions all add up to marital tensions and estrangements.

Working with couples, I used to stress the importance of being kind to each other, even when depressed, mad, exasperated, disappointed or otherwise challenged. So much more is possible if disagreements are resolved amicably, if spouses are as courteous to each other as they are to good friends. Some people talk to their spouses in a way they wouldn't dare with friends.

"Yeah," one husband in therapy told me. "If I talked to my friends the way I talk to my wife...well, I wouldn't because it would hurt their feelings."

And he thought his wife's feelings weren't hurt? He squirmed a bit. "Well, she's my wife. She should understand that I need to blow off steam. That's just the way I am."

Just the way I am. I can't count how many times I've heard that in couples counseling as a way to justify casual cruelty. It's a way to say "I don't intend to change" or "Pleasing you isn't worth any discomfort on my part." It's a relationship dead-end.

So what can change a relationship headed downhill?

Think before you speak. Is that "just kidding!" comment or barbed humor likely to hurt your spouse? Is that casual aside or that verbal victory worth the cost to your relationship? Consider that it's more important to be kind than to be relentlessly right.
Remember that your spouse is -- or could be -- your dearest friend -- and treat him or her that way. If you wouldn't say or do what you're about to do to a dear friend -- why in the world would you say or do that to your spouse?
Change established patterns. This is as necessary for the victim as well as the perpetrator. As long as you don't speak up, your spouse has little incentive to change. And for spouses who are casually cruel, this is a habit that needs to be broken if the marriage is to survive or thrive.
Work to eradicate hierarchical thinking in your relationship. Those married to people they consider beneath them in social status, intelligence, education or simply overall worthiness may not only inflict considerable pain and hurt on their spouses, but also miss the joy of realizing their spouse's unique strengths and talents. Growing up poor or middle class instead of rich doesn't mean a person lacks class. The absence of a college or professional degree is not an indication that a person lacks insight or intelligence (and the acquisition of such a degree is no guarantee that a person is smart, insightful or wise). Besides, there are many kinds of intelligence. In real life, emotional intelligence may far exceed intellectual ability in becoming a successful human being. Your spouse is your partner, not your personal joke punch line, not your verbal punching bag.
Don't minimize those little things. Maybe they're not so little to your spouse. Maybe the accumulated weight of small hurts, flashes of anger, and small betrayals is adding up to a big problem.

After all, it's the small things, the casual, passing, small cruelties that can erode love and good will.

And it's the small moments of connection and caring, of thoughtfulness and of kindness, one after another after another, that help love grow and flourish.

In marriage and in life, the small things can make a huge difference.

Family Secrets

2011-11-16T21:13:00.002-07:00

My father used to have a theory -- explained to me one night as he held a large ring of keys in the palm of his hand.

"No one will ever completely unravel the mystery of another person's key ring or his life," he said, turning the keys over in his hand. "It will be part of the eternal mystery one carries to his grave."

And so it was. For, among the items on my father's keychain were the keys to ten safe deposit boxes at ten different banks, scattered throughout the greater Los Angeles area. Accompanied by my parents' estate lawyer -- with his pricey meter running -- I had to visit every one of those banks and have the safe deposit boxes opened. Each and every one of them was empty.

I got another startling reminder of family lies/secrets/mysteries while going through some old family photos and brittle, near century old news clippings the other day. I picked up an obituary for my paternal grandfather, who died in 1921, and read that, among his list of survivors were his wife Elizabeth B. Lyons McCoy and his two children Molly, 4, and Mary, 8.

Mary?? My father James McCoy was eight years old when his father died and his sister Molly was 4. I looked for another obituary. Same thing. And I wondered why his mother would falsify the name and gender of her eldest child. I knew that she did everything she could to prevent her children from knowing about their father's death -- from telling them that he was on a business trip to moving from Tucson to Los Angeles as soon as possible. Perhaps disguising his name and gender, she hoped to prevent his classmates' parents from reading of the death and mentioning it to their children and their children passing the news on to James. But they did anyway, teasing him on the playground "Your Daddy's dead! Your Daddy's dead!"

When James insisted that his father was on a prolonged business trip, some of his classmates took him to the Catholic graveyard and showed him his father's grave. James fell on the grave screaming, the intensity of his grief driving his classmates away and causing him to break out in sobs, tears running down his cheeks, when he told me the story nearly 60 years later.

Or maybe the Mary designation was something a bit darker -- an inspiration for the times, years later, when our father would dress my brother Mike up in girl's clothing when he was a small child and call him "Michelle", usually as a punishment for not being as macho as he expected. Perhaps it was a form, as it was for Mike, of baffling, horrifying abuse.

We'll never know for sure.

Although I long had the impression that there were no secrets kept in my family of origin -- it surely seemed that every aspect of my life was open for examination and critique -- Mike and I learned in our early twenties of a major secret our father had kept from us.

It started as simply as a trip to the grocery store. Mike, who was visiting during a college spring break, and our father went to the grocery store because Father insisted that he could accomplish in minutes what took our mother an hour because she always met and talked with friends in the store. But once in the store, our father stopped short and stared at an attractive woman, about his age, pushing a basket in the same section. "Mary," he said. She looked at him startled, then smiled. And they talked there together for over an hour. Father introduced Mike as his son, but never indicated to Mike who this woman might be. As they left the store, Mike asked him. "Oh," my father said casually. "That was Mary, my first wife."

His first wife??? Mike couldn't wait to get home and call me with the news. And he had an extra scoop that he had extracted from our mother: our father and Mary had been married in the Catholic church, separated after less than a year of marriage and finally divorced two years later, after father had met our mother and wanted to get re-married. That was why our parents hadn't been -- couldn't have been -- married in the Catholic church.

Some years later, the day Father died, my mother gave me a transcript of his divorce proceedings that showed his abuse and general insanity -- which he had always linked with the stresses and drudgery of parenthood -- had been an issue long before he had any children. It lifted an enormous burden from my shoulders and my heart as I had, unwittingly, taken as fact his comments that having children totally destroyed his life.

Some family secrets are a matter of pride. Despite the fact that divorce was rampant among Bob's grandparents on both sides, his parents kept the fact of his mother's brief first marriage, which produced his older brother Don, a tightly guarded family secret. Even Don, who was only two years old when Bob's parents were married, had no real idea, though he sometimes wondered aloud where he fit in the family dynamic. After all, Bob -- Robert Miles Stover, Jr -- was the Junior and the youngest brother Miles was a sort of reverse junior -- Miles Ronald Stover. It wasn't until Don was 18 and enlisting in the Marines that he finally saw his birth certificate and found out that Bob, Sr. was not his father. He never forgave his parents for keeping the secret of his identity from him.

And Bob's parents never did come clean about the past. Bob learned of the family secrets above from his plain-spoken maternal grandmother who had little use for what she saw as the foolishness of family secrets.

Are family secrets always foolish? Always hurtful?

Most seem to start out with the intention of protecting oneself and/or others from shame or embarrassment. Many are rooted in conventions of the past: when divorce was a rare scandal, when cancer was a word never spoken, when "what will other people think?" had more power than it has for many of us now.

Some are meant to protect children from feeling excluded or different. It's quite possible that my in-laws didn't tell the eldest son Don that Bob Sr was not his father because they wanted him to feel comfortable and included as a member of the Stover family. I'm sure they had no idea what an emotional impact suddenly finding out the truth would have on Don when he was 18.

Some family secrets exist out of kindness and a desire to build positive relationships in the present.

Siblings who spent their growing years at each other's throats may choose to relegate those painful memories to the past in their adult years, never speaking of the rancor that once existed and choosing to focus on mutual forgiveness and warmer family ties.

Some parents prefer to let memories of their own youthful indiscretions stay within, never to be shared with their children. Whether this is simply a matter of shame or protection or a desire for personal privacy, this choice underscores the fact that we don't always owe our children or grandchildren or other kin a full account of our lives.

There may be parts of our parents' lives that will be forever unknown to us. There are secrets our children may keep from us for the same reason we chose to remain silent on certain aspects of the past. While we always hope that those close to us feel free to confide, the fact is, there are some things not meant to be shared.

We may wonder at the family secrets that, once revealed, seem inconsequential from our point of view. But, going back to a different time or a dramatically different place, we may begin to understand.

My maternal grandmother, for example, had a secret she jealously guarded from other residents of her small Kansas farming town: she liked to have a glass of red wine after dinner each evening. She would travel to Olpe, another small town about 20 miles from her home, to purchase a bottle of wine once a month. She would hide it in the trunk of her car, bringing it into the house only quickly, furtively and under cover of darkness. She would hide the bottle in the back of a kitchen cabinet. And when enjoying her glass of wine, she would draw the curtains, put her wine glass on a spinning spice carousel in the cupboard -- in case someone dropped by -- and would come into the kitchen for a sip every few minutes as the evening went on. During my visits over college spring breaks, I would join my brother -- who lived with her -- in laughing about this furtive behavior. But Grandma was convinced that a town scandal would erupt if her imbibing came to light and swore us to secrecy. And, having lived her entire life in small Kansas towns, she knew much more about the unique culture of these towns. She may well have been right in her concerns. For the rest of her life, her secret was safe with us.

We may feel hurt if a family secret is about us or about something we feel we should have known before it was revealed, intentionally or unintentionally. But the intention of keeping the secret was probably not meant to be hurtful. A parent was being protective. Or he or she was too ashamed to come clean. Or perhaps we were too young -- or considered to be too young -- to understand the complexity of what was kept secret and the importance of keeping the information within the family.

Or perhaps an adult child prefers not to discuss certain details of his or her life out of a desire to maintain a sense of boundaries and privacy. It isn't an indictment of you as a parent, but a sign that you have done your job well -- raising an adult with good emotional boundaries.

Family secrets can be hurtful, but looking at the often good intentions, the often time or culture-bound rationale or the personal foolishness behind these secrets can help explain the past and, perhaps, mitigate the pain these old secrets bring to the present.

We all have our secrets. We all have keychains or items or actions that may be forever mysterious to those who come after us.

We may forever puzzle at long-ago secrets that will never be unraveled, never be revealed. What's life without a little mystery?

My father's keychain and his 10 empty safe deposit boxes may have been a posthumous joke -- or a sign that whatever may have been in them will never be found -- or a sign, quite likely, that he meant to hide away bits and pieces of his life in all of them and simply never got around to it.

We'll never really know -- and that's just the way he wanted it.

Overcoming Painful Echoes of the Past

2011-11-14T22:29:00.000-07:00

They can linger in our memories as painfully close as yesterday, coloring our actions, our self-image and our view of the world. My mother's anguish when a classmate ridiculed her because she had only one school dress. My own distress and tarnished self-image when a boy in elementary school called me "Fats". The lasting power of such early pain can be measured in decades.

In commenting on this recent blog post, a number of readers had their own stories of painful echoes from the past and asked for a follow-up: what do you do when painful echoes still resonate?

While those old words may always be a part of your life experience, you can defuse their power by considering them in light of present day reality.

Question the authority of the speaker. A classmate from decades ago cannot judge you for life. You took in the pain of his or her words because you were young and vulnerable or in a situation that caused you to doubt yourself. Look back over time. The 11-year-old boy who called me "Fats" was being an 11-year-old showing off to his friends. He was also observing, in his clumsy way, that my body was different. Indeed, it was. While I wasn't fat, I was developing curves at a time when every other girl in my class still looked like a child. My self-consciousness about that made me especially vulnerable to his careless cruelty.

Consider the mental health of the person speaking hurtfully: a critical parent may have been criticized relentlessly himself or herself in the past or may have been in the self-hating mode of addiction and was displacing this pain onto you.

Or a person may have a mental illness. Sister Claudine, my second grade teacher, who made fun of my partial paralysis as I struggled to recover from polio and rejoin my classmates in school, was very young, very far from her home in Ireland, and so depressed that, even as a 7-year-old, I knew that her words were coming from a dark place within that had nothing to do with me. In fact, she soon had what was then called "a nervous breakdown" and, before the school year was finished, was sent back to Ireland.

The realization that the speaker may have been mentally ill or emotionally damaged or simply immature doesn't make what they said not hurt. It doesn't make his or her words okay. But it does diminish the authority of that hurtful voice. The person was speaking from his or her own pain or ignorance or immaturity -- not from fact.

And if what you were teased about was fact -- you were a chubby child or wore geeky clothing or stuttered -- the mind-set that made you an outcast then was an immature one. Chances are, those who teased you would not do the same today -- and if they did, there's some impairment there, some arrested development going on.

Consider your strengths now. You're bigger. You're stronger. You have more resources now. You aren't limited to one dress. You look, more or less, slim or zaftig, like most people now. You don't have to take in someone else's garbage. You can walk away. You can dismiss the verbal abuse. You can question motives, telling yourself that this person is damaged, unhinged or simply an asshole. You can tell yourself or, internally, speak to that long-ago tormentor through time: "Yes, I do look different. But it's terribly unkind of you to point that out in such a hurtful way." If the person who caused your painful echoes is still in your life, still ready with critical remarks, you can stop the pattern with the realization that you are no longer a powerless child, that you can break the pattern and speak up for yourself, even if your tormentor is a parent or sibling. You may gain more respect --self-respect and respect from the other person -- in the process. And if it causes greater distance -- maybe that distance needs to happen for the relationship pattern to adjust to your new strengths.

If you've thirsted for revenge, remember that living well is the best revenge. Living life as a loving, giving member of society is the best possible outcome from childhood pain.

When I was taunted or excluded by some classmates in elementary school, I used to tell myself angrily that "I'm going to be very famous and successful one day and they'll all be sorry!" I'm sure if any of those kids even knew of my later success, they didn't care much one way or another. I doubt that any of them felt a strong enough connection to me to be either sorry or glad. They may not remember being unkind. But I remember -- and being kind, being thoughtful, making an effort not to speak words that could wound another is my way of putting the past behind me.

Reconsider the words in the context of now. You can reframe your present. You are not chained to past victimhood. You call the shots now. If you spent a sad childhood feeling abused, left out, ridiculed, this doesn't have to follow you all the days of your life. Now you're in a different phase of life. If you weren't pretty or popular in school, this no longer has to limit you now as it did then. None of us is likely to be as conventionally cute or pretty as we once were -- or yearned to be. But we've grown into our own beauty, our own power, fashioning lives uniquely our own.

A Sweet But Cautious Victory

2011-11-13T11:04:00.000-07:00

The crowd was anxious, ready for a fight, mostly red-shirted in opposition to the copper mine. On November 7, several hundred citizens filled the bleachers at the Florence High School gymnasium, a last-minute substitute for the smaller Town Hall, for the critical Town Council vote on whether or not to allow an overlay of the community master plan to enable copper mining on residential land adjacent to the existing master planned community of Anthem Merrill Ranch.

Citizens gather for Town Council vote on November 7

It is a controversy that has riveted the town in the past year. A large Canadian multinational corporation set up a subsidiary company called Curis after acquiring a parcel of residential property within the town limits of Florence. They knew it was zoned for homes and commercial use. But they were confident that they could arrange an overlay of the voter-approved master plan to change the zoning to allow an in-situ copper mine, drilling dangerously close to the main water supply of Anthem and other communities downstream. The prospect of having sulfuric acid and other chemicals pumped through the water table and possibly having their water supply polluted and the ambiance of the community compromised by the presence of a copper mine so close to homes spurred many citizens to action -- picketing Arizona Governor Jan Brewer in August when she came to Florence to speak in support of the mine at a Curis-sponsored dinner; attending a meeting of the Planning and Zoning Commission in October, speaking passionately against the mine in a meeting that lasted until 2 a.m. and ended with a vote against the overlay.

But the long awaited critical vote was that of the Florence Town Council.

In the months leading up to the vote, Curis has worked incessantly to win the support of citizens and has had some success, cynically playing on the hopes of those living in the depressed, older areas of downtown Florence, who desperately need jobs and dream of tax revenues for schools and parks. Curis has fed those hopes and dreams -- despite the fact that no in-situ mine has ever been so close to a residential community nor has the land or water affected by in-situ mining ever been restored to pre-mining levels. There were also relatively few jobs actually slated for the project and many of these would be highly technical and not likely to be filled by locals. And, due to special tax breaks being sought by Curis, the tax revenue most likely would also fall short of community expectations.

Nevertheless, the promises by Curis have divided the town -- with a visible majority against the mine, but a vocal minority pleading for opportunity and, at the same time, expressing some bitterness toward the newer, generally more affluent citizens of the Anthem area of Florence. The divisiveness has been an additional stress on a town which -- like many across the U.S. -- is challenged by the recession.

In the weeks leading up to the Town Council vote, Curis, anticipating defeat, withdrew its application to use the land for mining. The game plan appeared to be that they were looking to start the mining operation on a parcel of state-owned land adjacent to the disputed parcel and planning to bring their application back to the Town Council next year, after elections had changed the composition of the Council, and a new roster of Council members might rule in their favor.

Anticipating a lawsuit if they didn't accept the withdrawal of Curis' application, the Town Council voted to allow it. However, they decided to go ahead with a vote on the overlay issue anyway. The overlay to permit the zoning change of the disputed land would be preliminary to what Curis wanted -- approval of the use of the land for mining. The Town Council vote was 7-0 to reject an overlay that would permit mining on residentially-zoned land.

The Town Council, here in session, voted 7-0 against mining in town

So, for now, the victory is sweet. Passionate and well-organized citizens have prevented what could have been an environmental catastrophe for the town. And it's heartening to see that people can still have a voice against large, multinational corporations seeking billions in profits while leaving a community possibly devastated both environmentally and in terms of future growth.

But the fight isn't over. The day after the hearing, its stock plunging, Curis issued a press release to reassure nervous stockholders, stating that they were going ahead with plans to hire a Tucson-based engineering firm to start the mining project on the adjacent state land as soon as they obtain approval from ADEQ and EPA. Hearings on the later approvals will be held in Florence early next year and town officials are determined to fight to prevent such approvals -- with a lawsuit if necessary.

In the meantime, victory is somewhat bittersweet as well. Citizens who hoped the mine would bring new employment opportunities and revenues to Florence are disappointed and angry. Many of them walked out of last week's meeting en mass after their speeches in support of the mine and as citizens against the mine began to speak.

So, while enjoying the victory of the moment, those of us who have opposed the mine are also becoming increasingly aware of the need to heal some of the wounds this passionate fight has produced, to find ways to reach out to fellow citizens and to discover new possibilities for job opportunities for people who are so in need of hope. Although the copper mine has seemed to many of us a greater risk than a potential benefit to the town, our greatest challenge now may be to work together to find ways to help Florence and its citizens to grow and prosper.

Celebrating Nuns

2011-11-06T10:45:00.009-07:00

Sister Ramona Bascom

They're a dying breed, the New York Times noted recently. Describing their declining numbers as "near extinction", the story said that the number of nuns in the U.S. has been declining since Vatican II reforms that gave more church leadership opportunities to lay people and since the sexual revolution and women's movement of the Sixties and Seventies. The estimated number of nuns has dropped from 180,000 in 1965 to 56,000 today according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. When these statistics were last published in 2009, 91 percent of all nuns were at least 60 years old.

They're not only dwindling, but they are, at times, not treated well by the Church they serve. For example, a community of nuns doing charitable work with the poor and disabled in Santa Barbara lost their convent not long ago when it was sold by Church officials to pay for settlements to the victims of priests' sexual abuse.

And I found myself fuming at the last Mass I attended -- during a reunion at my elementary school -- where the Church's tendency to take good care of priests, but not of nuns was glaringly apparent. A special collection was taken for the priests' retirement fund. At the same Mass, the officiating priest praised the elderly nuns who had gathered for the reunion, noting that they were all still working and highlighting one 95-year-old who was still teaching high school English. It underscored the inequality between priests -- who get comfortable retirements -- and nuns, who don't get to retire until they are too ill and/or disabled to continue working. Now, with shrinking memberships, there is even more pressure on aging nuns to keep working because the religious community simply can't afford to have the majority of its members retired. And yet most nuns carry on with devotion and with joy.

They may be a dying breed, but the elderly nuns I've seen lately are amazing women: bright, active, involved in their communities and working in a greater variety of settings than ever. One nun from my childhood is a dedicated peace activist. Another recently joined the counseling staff at Stanford University. Their numbers may be dwindling, but they're still making a wonderful difference.

And they leave a wealth of memories, especially for those of us who attended Catholic schools in the Fifties and Sixties.

I parted ways with the Catholic Church long ago. But I don't regret, for a minute, my education in Catholic schools. Most of my memories are loving and joyous.

Looking back at nuns of my youth, not all was sweetness and joy, of course. Some nuns were scary, had bad tempers and were too quick with the ruler. A few -- like the nun who made fun of my partial paralysis when I was still recovering from polio or the mother superior who announced to my class that my parents were not really married because they hadn't had a Catholic wedding -- were startlingly unkind. But most of the nuns I encountered were absolutely wonderful.

When I was in elementary school, they were young Sisters of St. Louis nuns fresh from Ireland who managed classrooms of 60 kids with energy and imagination. Their instruction had a certain hands on quality: nuns would swat you, hug you, stop you short with sarcasm (an Irish specialty) and make your day with well-earned praise.

In the Irish tradition, older siblings were held responsible for younger ones at all times. If, for example, a younger sibling threw up or became incontinent in class, the older sibling was called in to clean up. The day he started first grade at St. Bede's, I put my brother Mike on notice that if he puked or peed in class, his ass was grass. I was never called for bodily fluid detail, bless him, but I did get summoned to his classroom to retrieve a note for our mother when my brother was clowning around again and, another time, to explain the possible causes of his erratic behavior after one particularly horrific night of abuse from our father.

As soon as she was aware of what we were dealing with at home, Mike's teacher Sister Rita gave us an extra measure of love and affection, checked Mike daily for signs of physical violence and attempted to protect us by threatening to call the police if she saw any further signs of abuse.

Sister Rita aka Virginia in full habit - 1959

Sister Rita McCormack, who before Vatican II was known by her religious name of Sister Mary Virginia, didn't stop at protection. She took an active role in helping me to regain clear speech as my facial paralysis gradually diminished. In sessions after school, she would coach me, having me read and recite poems and we would act out plays together. This sparked my interest in acting, a passion that brought me much pleasure in high school, college and, in young adulthood, professionally.

She encouraged me to write -- and praised my efforts generously, advocating for me with other teachers, making them aware that this quiet, awkward kid had something special going for her.

And sometimes she taught me lessons I was reluctant, at least initially, to learn.

Substituting part-time for our cancer-stricken eighth grade teacher, Sister Rita pushed me relentlessly in algebra, urging me not to give up so easily, not to assume I couldn't do math, and taught me not only to enjoy algebra but also a great deal about persistence.

And on my eighth grade graduation day, she caught me acting like an ungrateful brat -- avoiding Aunt Molly, who had flown in from Ohio for the event, because I was mortified by the hat she was wearing: a large black broad-brimmed hat festooned with an array of red roses. Sister Rita wanted to know why I hadn't yet introduced her to the person she knew meant so much to me. "It's that hat, so embarrassing," I muttered, cringing. Sister Rita's eyes narrowed: "You're embarrassed by her hat?" she asked sharply. "After she flew all this way to see you graduate?? Just think about that while I go and introduce myself."
She rushed over to Aunt Molly with a lilting "Hello, Aunt Molly! It's so wonderful to meet you!" When I saw my two most beloved adults embracing, my ungrateful bratty little heart melted and I rushed over, smiling, to join them.

She was like Julie Andrews in "The Sound of Music": she sang beautifully and lead our school choir, ran and jumped and wrestled playfully with kids on the school grounds. She was tall, nearly six feet and the pockets of her habit were so long that sometimes one or two of her first grade students would try to crawl into them for the ultimate E ticket ride on the playground. She ran a tight ship in the classroom -- one does with 60 rambunctious kids -- but all she had to do was give you a look, say your full name with a certain lilt and you instantly fell into line.

Sometimes, outside of class, she would look at me and smile. "Ah, Kathleen," she would say in her soft Irish brogue. "Aren't you just wonderful?" And suddenly I would feel transformed from awkward adolescent to a young woman on top of the world. I loved her so much.

And I knew I would always love her, that we would be friends for life. And I was right. Sister Rita is still incredibly dear to me.

Sister Rita (l) and me during a visit in 2008

She is now 81 and retired only because she has been battling an often fatal cancer for the last few years. You would never know it to see her: she is youthful, vital, full of energy and purpose. She has picketed for peace and protested the war in Iraq. She has fought her cancer with quiet courage and persistence. She delights in each day. Her blue eyes still sparkle when she talks of my brother -- as a child and as the accomplished adult he has become.

We don't see each other often, but when we do, our visits become marathons -- talking, laughing, hugging and swapping stories.

I love hearing her stories about her family in Northern Ireland and the culture shock she experiences when she visits there after over half a century in the U.S. And I thoroughly enjoy her efforts to play matchmaker for a younger, still single friend -- never losing hope that somewhere out there is the perfect man for Barbara.

Sister Rita's gentle humor, her emotional honesty, strength of spirit and caring nature remain unchanged, undiminished by time and infirmity. She still radiates joy and love. Just thinking of her makes me smile and feel incredibly blessed.

I also smile and feel blessed when I think of Sister Ramona, whom I encountered in my senior year of high school. Like my other high school teachers, Ramona was an American-born Dominican sister. She was 27 at the time and new to high school teaching. One of the classes she taught was journalism -- and she joked that I taught her everything she knew. Not true at all, of course, but I was her most enthusiastic student.

Sister Ramona in full habit - 1962

I remember feeling, early in that wonderful school year, that Sister Ramona was very special, that she was someone I could trust, that she could hear and keep the painful secrets of my life. And I was right. I remember her staying away from her afternoon prayers one day to listen to me as I revealed some details of abuse that I was almost ashamed to speak aloud. I watched her face for shock and disgust. There was none. Only loving concern as she took my hand. "What you're describing is painful, but not all that unusual really," she said. "A lot of families have these issues. You are not alone. Not at all." I felt my shoulders sag with relief as the burden of sadness and shame lifted almost instantly. And I knew I would love Sister Ramona forever, too.

She has had an unerring instinct for making me feel special and for being there when I need her most.

Near the end of my senior year of high school, I arrived at school one morning feeling crushed because it was my 18th birthday and my parents had completely forgotten. I couldn't believe it. They forgot my 18th birthday!!! But Sister Ramona didn't. I opened my locker and found a bunch of cards and funny, hand-drawn cartoons had been squeezed inside. One of the notes directed me to the beginning of a treasure hunt throughout the school for little items and more cards celebrating my special birthday. She absolutely transformed the day for me.

She also made my graduation day extra special with a lovely letter -- which I still have -- telling me all she valued about me and her support for my dreams for the future. And seeing my disappointment when my parents told me that they were too busy to attend the graduation ceremony, Sister Ramona rallied some of the other nuns and they told me that they were going to be my "aunts for a day" and form a cheering squad for me. And they kept their word -- even after Aunt Molly appeared, dragging my penitent parents with her.

And she came for a fun dinner shortly after Bob and I started living together -- a year before we were married -- and calmed his nervousness (he had never met a nun before) with a couple of mildly ribald comments. And she was an especially welcome guest at our wedding, talking my depressed mother - my father boycotted the ceremony altogether -- into a celebratory mood. And, as if by magic, she appeared at my mother's funeral, her arm around me at the graveside, understanding in a way few others could the complicated love and loss I was feeling.

Sister Ramona visiting when Bob and I were first living together

Sister Ramona with my mother at my wedding

Having known my parents and our family situation well, Sister Ramona has a unique perspective on my life. Over dinner not long ago, she was talking about a mutual friend of ours who also came from a seriously dysfunctional family and who has suffered greatly all her life -- unable, for the past two decades to leave her home because of agoraphobia, having a host of mental and physical illnesses, and feeling estranged from those she loves and from life itself. We both noted sadly our unsuccessful moves to help.

"I've often wondered about the difference I see between the two of you," she said. "You're the same age, went to the same schools, grew up in the same community. And your family -- in terms of abuse and outrageous dysfunction -- was far worse as far as I could see. But then I realized a critical difference: you grew up feeling you were loved. As crazy as they were, your parents genuinely loved you. I could see it every time we spoke of you, every time they came to see you in a school play, even at graduation. They thought the world of you. And what a difference that makes."

I realized that it was true: my parents, for all their eccentricities, really did love me. And I truly felt their love. And that, indeed, has made a huge difference.

I have felt Sister Ramona's love not only for me, but also for countless others. She has spent years listening, reassuring, encouraging, pushing and, when necessary, challenging several generations of young girls through radically changing times. She has dried tears, mediated disputes, been there in countless crises. She has made hundreds, maybe thousands, of young women feel special.

Sister Ramona has more friends than anyone I know. So many people, including me, love her immensely and forever. When she was leaving her last stint as principal of Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy a few years back to move to Northern California and new adventures in curriculum development and, later, working as a counselor for students at Stanford, the community decided to hold a roast in her honor. It was a memorable combination of a celebratory Mass and a Sister Ramona Roast, held in the school's gymnasium. Ramona had a front row seat beside her mother, who was dying of brain cancer, but who was aglow with love and laughter that special day. The young priest -- a graduate of St. Francis High School, the boy's school just down the hill -- recounted in the middle of celebrating the Mass how he first met Sister Ramona. "It was at a school dance, when I was 16" he said smiling. "And I was out in back of the school auditorium kissing a girl. Suddenly, I felt a firm grip on my jacket and was yanked up to face a nun whose expression was stern, but her eyes were laughing. I think that's when I got my religious vocation to become a priest!" The crowd roared with laughter, no one laughing more heartily than Sister Ramona and her lovely mother.

I have tried to be there for her when she has felt challenged over the years. Sister Ramona had a talent for pulling troubled schools out of the red, including Flintridge Sacred Heart about 40 years ago. She revamped curriculum, inspired creative fund-raising (the picture at the top of this post was from a fund-raising event invitation), got parents more involved and made the school more solid academically and financially. And when she would accomplish that with one school, she'd be handed another. Once, she was assigned to an impoverished, inner-city girls high school with a primarily Spanish speaking population. After a short period of feeling overwhelmed, she threw herself into the challenge, spending the summer in Mexico for a total immersion in Spanish and then turning around that school's fortunes as well, falling in love with students and parents -- and they with her -- in the process.

I have listened when, at times, she has talked about her frustration at a stubbornly paternalistic hierarchy, one pope in particular. But she has never used that as an excuse -- as I did -- to leave her Church or her calling, but as a rallying point for greater commitment to change what she can and to live each day with faith and joy.

Once, when Bob and I were discussing the meaning of success and challenged each other to come up with the name of the most successful person we knew, Bob beat me to the punch. "That's easy," he said. "Sister Ramona is the most successful person, the most successful human being, I have ever met." And I was quick to second his choice, though maybe going for a tie between Sister Ramona and Sister Rita.

Nuns may, indeed, be a dying breed, but they're not gone yet. They're still very much with us, still contributing, still living with joy and with love.

Early this year, I was asked to come back to Flintridge Sacred Heart to address the Parents Guild on adolescent depression. None of the nuns of my youth were still at the school. In fact, I had never met the nuns who hurried up to Bob and me when we arrived. That didn't matter. Sisters Carolyn McCormack (no relation to sister Rita) and Sister Celeste Botello, the president and principal of the school respectively, enveloped us both in cozy, warm embraces.

"Welcome home," said Sister Carolyn softly and she embraced me again. And, even though we had just met, I felt very much at home in the warmth of her embrace.

Sisters Carolyn, Celeste and Me - 2011

November 1: A Precious Gift

2011-11-01T00:02:00.000-07:00

November 1 is a banner day for me, a day that has brought so much happiness to my life.

It marks the day 36 years ago that Bob and I first met. (The subject of a future post, for sure!)

It is the birthday of three very different but treasured friends: Barbara Ferrell, a longtime friend from acting days, Pat Cosentino, a new friend here in Arizona and actress Mary Kate Schellhardt, the beautiful and talented daughter of my dear friend Tim Schellhardt.

But the gift of November 1st that I'm highlighting today is my brother Mike, who was born on this day 63 years ago, ending my reign as an only child and giving me a wonderful companion through the often horrifying, bizarre and occasionally darkly humorous passage of our childhood and beyond.

James Michael McCoy in early 1949

He was a sunny, cuddly, joyous baby. Aunt Molly used to joke that he had the face of an Irish politician. Our mother adored him. I called him "My Precious Baby Brother" (after a brief period of confusion when I told my nursery school teacher that I had a new sister named Michelle). And when he could barely talk, he gave me a special name "TaTa" and his face shone when he said it. But our father, who had longed for a son, inexplicably rejected and abused him almost from the beginning.

But that didn't cloud Mike's loving nature as a child. One particularly poignant memory stands out. One day, when Mike was about three, our father struck him hard, more or less in passing as he walked out the door to go to work. Mike, who had fallen from the blow, got up immediately and ran after Father, his arms outstretched. "Father!" he cried, reaching out to him. "Father! Wait!"

Father spun around, impatient and angry. "What???"

Mike raised his arms, tears streaking his cheeks and cried: "You forgot to kiss me goodbye."

His yearning face melted even Father's heart for a moment and he bent down to kiss him. Mike wrapped his arms around our father's neck and kissed him back. The look on his face was pure bliss. He never lost his heartbreaking hope for love and acceptance from our father.

Mike in early 1950

But the abuse continued. One night, when Mike and I were talking and giggling after lights out, Father came in with a threat: "If you don't stop talking in here, I'm going to give Michael a shot that will make him sleep forever. He will die!"

Frightened, we conferred in whispers, wondering if he could possibly be serious.

In an instant, Father came raging into our bedroom with a hypodermic needle, plunging it into Michael's arm and screaming at me "Well, you couldn't shut up, could you? Now Michael is going to die and it will be all your fault!"

I took Mike in my arms and cuddled him tearfully, telling him over and over how sorry I was. We sat up all night sobbing and waiting for him to die. When dawn came and he was still alive, we got dressed and went to school. Once there, Mike was unusually jittery and upset. Sister Rita, his first grade teacher, noticed. Despite being only 23, a fairly recent arrival from Ireland and having 61 first graders in her class, she noticed. She summoned me from my fourth grade classroom for a conference. "What's going on at your home?" she asked quietly. "What's the matter?"

My face crumbled and I slid into her arms, telling her the story of the night before. She checked Michael's arm and found the needle mark. She looked for other marks and bruises on both of us. With angry tears in her eyes, she embraced and rocked both of us, whispering words of love and bits of prayer in her soft Irish brogue. Some years later, our mother told me that Sister Rita had phoned her that day, asking how she could allow this sort of abuse to happen, and threatening to call the police if she ever found another mark on Mike.

The abuse abated temporarily until our parents transferred Mike to the local public school for second grade. Then it continued -- and he continued to be a distracted, jittery student who was so focused on survival that studies went by the wayside.

Mike and Me - 1953

Through our childhood, Mike and I (joined later by our much younger sister Tai) were co-conspirators, trying to inject fun and laughter into a childhood that was fairly grim unless Aunt Molly happened to be around. We tried to create safety in our bond with each other to combat the terrors of life with a mentally ill, alcoholic and prescription drug-abusing father and a terrified, sometimes child-like mother.

But companionship wasn't enough when Mike was singled out for ridicule and abuse. Father said he was worthless, that he would never amount to anything. Mother kept insisting that she knew he was bright and that he did have potential. His early school record was undistinguished. He couldn't sit still to complete a test. His elementary school teachers doubted that he could read. When it came time to plan for high school, an educational counselor tested him and declared him "not college material" and recommended that he be tracked into a manual arts high school to train for a trade. He was signed up for offset printing.

Mike and me as teenagers before he moved to Kansas

But fate intervened. After a beating so severe that he was unconscious for a time, our mother called her recently widowed mother in Kansas. Grandma needed help on the farm. Michael needed a loving and supportive home. The arrangement worked wonderfully for both. With our grandmother's firm guidance and unconditional love, Mike began to shine. Suddenly, he was an "A" student, excelling in high school and at Kansas State as a math and physics major.

Mike graduated from college with highest honors and a horrendously low number in the draft lottery. He became an Air Force fighter pilot, flying F-4 Phantom jets in combat over North Vietnam. Somewhere in the air over Hanoi, he made a promise to himself that if he survived, he would make a positive contribution to the lives of others.

That promise eventually took him to medical school at Stanford, where, using his computer skills and his natural frugality, he got through on his own, debt-free. Our parents did not live to see him graduate at the top of his class as an M.D. or to see him treat patients, develop a specialty in medical informatics and to become CIO at UCLA Medical Center.

But through all the years of achievements, his heart was a world away. He had fallen in love with Thailand -- the people, the language and the land -- when he was stationed there during his years of combat in Vietnam. Many years later, after retiring from UCLA and becoming CIO of Bumrungrad International Medical Center in Bangkok, he met and fell in love with Jinjuta, whose nickname is Amp. They were married in July, 2007.

Mike and Amp in wedding attire - 2007

Still scarred by childhood pain and by our father's admonitions "Enjoy women, but if they start to talk marriage, disappear like the morning mist!" and "Marriage and children are the complete life catastrophe. A wife and children absolutely ruin a man's life", Mike had avoided commitment to some wonderful women over the years. But Amp was different. With her keen intelligence, her gentle nature and her frugality -- even more pronounced than his own -- she touched his heart more than anyone else ever had. Despite their age and cultural differences, they were simply meant to be together.

Mike and Amp - Every day a celebration!

After he accepted research and teaching positions at both Harvard Medical School and USC, Mike returned to the U.S. with Amp and, in 2009, they were blessed with a daughter they named Grace Elizabeth, nicknamed Maggie.

And he is finding that marriage and parenthood is not a catastrophe but an incredible joy, that the pains of childhood can be stilled by the presence of true love and the unabated joy and laughter of his own child who is growing up knowing only love and kindness and the warmth of extended family as they split their time between their homes in Los Angeles and Bangkok.

Mike and daughter Maggie in a playful moment

Amp and Maggie are the greatest gifts of his life, bringing him happiness, a sense of security and a love he never thought possible. Mike has enjoyed a myriad of accomplishments in his adult life -- his awards as a pilot, and international recognition as a physician, and as a pioneer in medical informatics. These professional achievements have helped to silence those hurtful pronouncements from our father that Mike was a worthless, hopeless human being. But he has achieved so much more within his accomplishments. He has been a physician who cares deeply about patients. As an administrator, he has always made the people who have worked for him a top priority. Wanda Hardin, his long-time assistant at UCLA Medical Center, recently wrote to me that "Dr. McCoy is the kindest person I have ever met. For the rest of my life, I will love and respect him and be so glad to have worked for him."

Beyond all these achievements, however, the life event, the accomplishment, that matters most to Mike is the blessing of his own family that is a world apart in so many ways from his family of origin.

Mike and me in May 2011

And yet, he reaches out warmly to me, and to Tai, and welcomes us into his life. He is generous with praise of our accomplishments, of our talents and is supportive of our dreams. All the hardship of his early life could not destroy the loving, sweet spirit of that little boy so quick to hug, to forgive, and to reach out with love.

Mike, Amp, Maggie, Bob and me - January 2011

So Happy Birthday, my Precious Baby Brother, and may you have many more! With love, TaTa.

Echoes of the Past

2011-10-26T10:15:00.000-07:00

My mother used to tell a story about being a senior in high school in a tiny Kansas farming community at the height of the Great Depression. Just before school started, her mother gave her a choice: she could have one store-bought dress for school or several made-over frocks handed down from her mother. Of course, my fashion-conscious mother chose the store-bought option and happily washed the dress out after school every day and hung it to dry in the kitchen.

One day, a classmate named Myoan Swilley (the name lived on forever in infamy with my mother) came up to her at lunch and loudly inquired in front of everyone there -- essentially the entire teenage population of Toronto, Kansas: "Don't you have any other dresses? Why do you wear the same dress every day?" Her words stung so deeply, that my mother flushed with anger more than 40 years later as she recounted her embarrassment and her mother's gentle consolation and quick alterations on a few hand-me-downs for her school wardrobe.

I'm sure that's one reason my mother was so determined to dress me up like an oversized doll when I was in kindergarten and to send me an endless variety of dresses when she worked as an industrial nurse for Robinson's department store in L.A. when I was in college. (The years in between kindergarten and college, I wore Catholic school uniforms -- which didn't discourage her from trying to get me to fix myself up on weekends and during the summer.) Looking back, I realize that she wasn't just putting a premium on good looks. She was also trying to spare me the pain she had experienced when a classmate ridiculed her for having only one dress to wear.

It's interesting what power that one remark had on her life --and, by extension, on mine.

What are the remarks that have stayed with you throughout life -- for better or for worse?

I remember, when I was in the 5th grade, I suddenly went from skinny child to curvy young woman way ahead of schedule. I was 5'5" and 112 pounds at the age of 10. I looked like I was in my late teens and was sometimes mistaken -- to my considerable chagrin -- for my baby sister Tai's mother. Although I was at an optimal weight for my height, I looked very different from my classmates. I felt awkward, clumsy and very self-conscious.

One morning at the beginning of a school day, after we had lined up on the playground in precise class rows and were marching, to military music, to our classrooms (this was a very strict parochial grade school), one of the 8th grade boys acting as a monitor snapped at me when I dawdled self-consciously under his even gaze. "Hey," he said roughly, giving me a shove. "Move it, fats!"

Fats! Tears trickled from the corners of my eyes and I wiped them furiously with the backs of my hands. Later, in the safety of home, I wept on my mother's shoulder as she reassured me over and over that I wasn't fat. But from that time on, I always felt that other people considered me fat and agonized about my weight and shape. I never starved or purged. But my body image was distorted as I hid my lithe young body under lose clothing whenever possible.

And in my forties, I did get fat -- very fat. But the strange thing was...until I got well into the territory of morbid obesity, I never felt any fatter than I did that day in 5th grade when some young adolescent boy in a thoughtless moment called me "Fats." He probably forgot all about it five minutes later, as my mother's old nemesis Myoan Swilley did. (Myoan, who stayed in their small town all her life, used to wonder aloud to my grandmother and aunts why my mother seemed distant with her at occasional class reunions.)

Many of my mother's echoes were negative. She could never please or impress her father. When, during her years as a highly publicized pioneer American Airlines flight attendant and representative for the airline, she sent him a picture of herself giving an award to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, his only comment to her was: "Well, they managed to get the two homeliest women in America together for a photo!" Other family members fretted that she had no social graces and could not carry on a good conversation. This was outrageously untrue but she believed it. I used to feel such sadness for this warm, gregarious woman who had so little confidence in her own beauty and ability to connect with others.

Despite the emotional, physical and economic hardships that Mike, Tai and I suffered in our family, I felt fortunate then and now that most of the comments and moments that lodged in my memory were positive and loving.

I remember my father giving me notebooks to write stories as soon as I learned to read -- and actively encouraging my early writing efforts. I remember him weeping and holding me tight, telling me how much he loved me the night I was diagnosed with polio at the age of six.

I remember my mother's loving arms and hopes for my future and her joyous encouragement at every new challenge.

I remember wonderful times with Aunt Molly, when I glimpsed my own future in her and felt so much hope for me and such love for her and pride in her many accomplishments.

I remember Sister Rita's remarks that I was very special and Sister Ramona saying she loved and valued me immensely.

I remember a boy in my class in 7th grade -- Roddy Boerger -- who slipped over to me one day as the boys were filing out of their side of the classroom for recess, just after our teacher had read one of my essays aloud to the class. Her reading was met with a series of sighs and rolled eyes from many of my classmates as I slid down in my desk, totally humiliated at being singled out. "I loved it!" Roddy whispered. "I love everything you write! You're going to be somebody, Kathy! Really!" He didn't live to see any of my successes as a writer -- dying in his early twenties of a genetic kidney disorder. But his kindness in the emotional wasteland that was 7th grade warms my heart to this day.

Knowing the power of words to wound or to warm -- especially in those tender childhood, adolescent and young adult years -- I wonder about my own remarks to classmates, friends and family.

And I hope that my own words over the years -- in the growing up years and beyond -- were kind more often than not. I hope that in some thoughtless moment or adolescent hormone-fueled snit, I didn't snap and say something hurtful to another. I hope I didn't inflict any wounding echoes that linger in another's heart all these years later. And if I did, I would love to make amends. But of course one can't.

The only thing we can do is to live mindfully, treating each other with care: speaking kindly and striving to make each encounter with another a comforting or joyous or loving one.

First Anniversary

2011-10-25T07:51:00.000-07:00

A year ago, I started this blog with an invitation to come together to celebrate midlife and beyond.

I had no idea what blogging would be like.

Oh, I had certain goals. My literary agent wanted me to blog to increase my online presence.

I wanted to find my own voice again as a writer after more than forty years of writing to assignment and to varying formulas.

In preparation for writing a memoir, I wanted to practice (and increase my comfort level) with writing in the first person after many years of keeping my own stories inside -- first as a journalist, then as a psychotherapist.

In preparation for writing a book about my therapy cats, I wanted to try writing occasionally about cats -- my own and others -- in a way that was heartfelt but not cloying.

To varying degrees, I've realized those objectives.

But there has been so much more.

I had no idea that my readership would be world-wide.

I had no idea how many wonderful writers, thinkers, humorists and new friends were in the blogosphere.

I had no idea how much I would come to treasure each one and the warmth of the blogging community.

I had no idea how much fun it would be!

I had no idea that blogging would come to be a pleasant and worthwhile experience on its own instead of merely a stepping stone to another goal.

I had no idea how much I would look forward to another year of blogging.

Thank you all for making this past year such a pleasure! I look forward to many more shared thoughts, stories and adventures in the next year!

Living with Differences

2011-10-24T00:27:00.004-07:00

We were standing around talking casually and laughing during a break in a class at our community center the other day when my next door neighbor Larry announced with a smile to the others that "Kathy and I are at opposite poles politically but I think we share a lot in our essence and that's what matters."

I stopped short -- and realized he was right.

Since moving from California to Arizona, I find myself surrounded by next door neighbors who differ dramatically from me in political and religious beliefs -- and yet that doesn't prevent warm friendships.

I admire Larry's openness to new ideas and his courage in running for and serving in political office in an area where he is a relative newcomer. I admire his wife Louise's artistic talents and ease with a great variety of people. Our differences aren't an issue in our enduring friendship.

There are instances, in fact, when differences prompt admiration and respect. I'm very impressed, for example, by both the religious and political commitments of my other next door neighbors Carl and Judith. They are conservative Christians and Republicans who don't just vote but who actively campaign for their candidates. One of their sons is a minister. Their beliefs have shaped their lives -- and those of others -- in a positive way. When they were younger, in addition to raising their own two sons, they nurtured a number of foster children who so needed the love and stability they offered. They live their faith. Even though I don't share their specific political or religious commitments, I admire their integrity and fervor.

And my immediate neighbors -- Carl and Judith on one side, Larry and Louise on the other -- are very gentle with our differences and respectful of my point of view. Although I know it takes considerable effort at times, they rarely dis Obama in my presence and I, in turn, make an effort to stifle my loathing for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, among others. These days, who knows who is right? Who knows who would be best equipped to lead this nation out of its current socioeconomic morass?

Even my husband Bob and I disagree over such things at times. He is much more moderate politically and has crossed party lines to vote a number of times. His views on religion differ somewhat from mine. But so what? Our differences don't diminish our love and respect for each other.

How much do such differences of opinion really matter?

When I look around at my neighbors, I see good, honest people who are caring and kind.

I see couples who have been married for decades, raised children together and are nurturing each other through retirement.

Even among those more likely to share my political leanings, there are some real differences in lifestyle and, for that matter, life stages.

I see Hank and Mary, Carl and Judith's other next door neighbors, still balancing demanding professional careers, watching their youngest child adjust to college life and settling in as empty nesters for the first time in their marriage.

I see Pat and Joe, high school sweethearts, who have known heartbreak, illness, adventure and joy in their many years together. They have loved each other dearly through all the seasons of their lives together.

I see Phyllis and Wally, the seventy-something newlyweds on the block, who met at a time of life when their religious differences -- she is Jewish, he was raised Catholic -- didn't matter anymore and they married 11 years ago. They focus on what they share -- a love of travel, of family, of good friends and conversations worth beginning, and they support each other through the stresses of serious health challenges, facing each day with courage, love and laughter.

It's an interesting place, this new neighborhood. We hail from a variety of far-flung hometowns. We have diverse opinions, life histories and personal interests. But, in our hearts, we're family.

And, as Larry said, that is what matters.