The Bering Blog

Criticism Is Like A Sticky Booger

We gave our son-in-law an electric hedge trimmers for his birthday last week. Today, he’s in the emergency room after nearly hacking off the ring finger on his left hand.

“He’ll be fine,” my daughter called to tell us. “He just takes back any bad thing he every thought about his mother-in-law.”

‘Bad things?’ I thought. ‘What bad things? I’m a model mother-in-law!’ (For the record, I did NOT put a curse on the hedge clippers. I really do love my son-in-law.)

Oh how perfect we think we are sometimes. How often do we justify our criticism of others and then turn around and cry foul when it’s launched at us?

I admit I’m acutely sensitive to criticism and my hackles rise at the slightest hint of criticism, particularly if it pertains to my children, my husband and my weight. I’m working on it, but I’ve got a feeling I’ll never attain enlightenment because of it. Perhaps in another life.

I often accuse my mother and my children of never letting things go, of their propensity of dredging up the past, either to throw it in someone’s face or to wallow in it or to take me down a notch or two. Hello, Lynn? You do it all the time!

….sigh….

It’s true. There’s not much that I’ve forgotten, particularly criticism. What is it about criticism that clings to our memory like a sticky booger?

The funny thing is, it’s not criticism from the outside as much as criticism from the inside that dogs me the most. While, to quote Queen, I’ve “had my share of sand kicked in my face,” much of that sand was kicked up from my own feet.

In my defense (Ego, are you listening?), I really am trying to keep my feet in the sand. This has been quite a “come to Jesus” year for me, filled with challenges and opportunities I never imagined. While I’m often my own worse critic, I’m also my own best friend, and she’s the one who doesn’t let me stray too far.

So my question to you is: Are you more a self-critic or your best friend?

I asked this on my other blog, too. (Click here to read it. You’re not obligated.) I’m really interested in hearing how you all deal with and think about criticism, particularly after I read about the hecklers during John McCain’s speech on energy policy Wednesday. I would never consider running for school board, let alone president. I’d be crying every time someone said they were voting for the other guy! Again, maybe I’ll work that out in another life.

I’m waiting for Cassie to call and tell me Matt got by with just a few stitches and a bruised ego. I will no doubt tease him a little tomorrow when I see him (I’m babysitting Claire so Matt and Larry can go to a baseball game. I hate when that happens – hehe). But I also acknowledge and respect the fact that not everything I do or say will make him happy, that he’ll be mad at me for some reason in the years to come. So will everyone else in my life. And I’ll try to take it like a champ, to hear it and either learn from it or let it go, but especially to see it in the light of my own criticisms of others.

Enlightenment, here I come.

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Here's my most favorite photo so far of my daughter and granddaughter. We were at the Pittsburgh Zoo on Thursday. Claire LOVES the trout and bass swimming around in the tanks. I saw dinner, she saw fun :)

The Permanence of Impermanence

When I was a kid and a friend said something hurtful or I felt bad because I’d struck out during a softball game or even when I had cramps,  my mother would always say, “This, too, shall pass.”

Mom understands impermanence. The weather, the price of gas, the baseball season, our joys, our sorrows and especially our bodies – nothing stays the same. Everything is in a constant state of change.

Since being introduced to the writings of Jon Kabat-Zinn and subsequently discovering Pema Chodron and other Buddhist teachers, I’m learning to observe and live within the present moment. Meditation and other mind practices cultivate change in how I adopt and express compassion and loving kindness toward myself and other sentient beings, even (and perhaps especially) the person I used to be.

I’m working on a project that has me poring over my journals from the early 1980s to now. I’ve spent hours reading about feelings I had in response to specific incidents and feelings in general about my life in that moment. One day I’d be on top of the world and the next day not. I have to constantly remind myself that I’m reading about my life as a 20-something- or 30-something-year-old woman from the perspective of a nearly 45-year-old woman, and to cut my younger self some slack.

Those times passed. They were impermanent. And I built, year after year, upon those experiences, those working out of problems and feelings – perhaps not always in the healthiest of ways, but the only ways I knew how at the time – to become the woman I am today, who, I’m sure will frustrate the 65-year-old me when I read today’s journals in 20 years.

The lighter side of my journals are the entries about my kids, particularly the things I’d forgotten – small things like I couldn’t remember how old they were when they got their ears pierced and poignant things like the at the hospital a few days after I had Cassie. She’d developed jaundice and was being  treated under bright lights for several hours a day. I couldn’t have her in my room as much as I wanted, but one night, after the nurse brought her to me for a short visit, the fire alarm went off and all the doors to the ward were shut. For 90 minutes I got to hold Cassie all alone in my room before the hubbub ended and they came to retrieve her and put her back under the lights.

There are entries about spelling tests and arguments, boyfriends and birthday parties, how unfair I was to not let Cassie shave her legs until she was in sixth grade, how awesome I was because I let Carlene go to homecoming in 10th grade…this, that and everything in between 

One of the funniest entries I’ve read to date was written November 23, 1990, when Carlene was 7 and Cassie was almost 6.

“Yesterday was Thanksgiving. Carly was going to take a picture of me across the table from her. There was a candle between us and, very seriously, she looked at me and asked if the camera would blow the candle out!

“Cassie said that the turkey was talking to her inside her tummy. She said he said he didn’t like to get eaten.”

I called Carlene last night and read this to her. I was laughing so hard I was crying. She laughed, too, and couldn’t believe she was such an air-head. I reminded her she was 7.

Laughter shall pass just as sorrow shall pass, but some things from the past are worth bringing into the present moment, whether it is for a good laugh or a chance to learn from our mistakes. Without my journals, these experiences would be permanently erased from memory, and I doubt I’d have this chance to learn to accept with loving kindness the person I was 5, 10, 25 years ago. It’s probably the nicest gift I’ve ever given myself.

A Running Revelation

My husband slept in a funny position Saturday night and still has a nasty crick in his neck. He can turn it a little to the left and a little to the right, but it’s obvious his neck isn’t working right. He’s got a smile on his face, thanks to Tramadol, but he’s still in pain.

Due to this neck mishap, we missed our weekly biking date yesterday, so I fell back on my typical summer Sunday workout: a bike ride around town and a walk around the university track.

I only ride my bike in town on Sunday because the traffic is light and the crazy drivers are all in church or sleeping off  a hangover. (Disclaimer: I’m not suggesting everyone who goes to church is a crazy driver. I’m just wary of little old men wearing thick lens glasses driving the large Cadillacs parked in the Presbyterian church lot.)

When I got to the track, I walked the first quarter mile the same old way I always do. Then I remembered the dream I had again the night before. It’s a recurring dream I have every few weeks of running around an obscure track being timed by a coach I’d never seen before. I got to thinking about that dream, and how as a kid I used to love to run just for the sake of running, and how long it had been since I’d run anywhere. Would I even remember how? It occurred to me that if this was thousands of years ago and I was one of the early humans who fell out of the trees and stood erect and went hunting? Yeah…I’d have been one of the first ones eaten by a predator.

But this was a Sunday morning in 2008. No one was around to critique or eat me. (Another  disclaimer: What I’m about to tell you is top secret, so please, I beg you, don’t tell my orthopedic surgeon, Bob, and especially not his assistant, Steve, who’d never call me “buddy” again and would jab me with my next injection of Synvisc rather than easing it in like he does so well.) I…well…kinda decided to run. Not far – a quarter to a half mile tops, and only in 100-yard spurts – but it was far enough to make me completely change my opinion of running and runners.

My husband’s been running for 30 years. Some of my best friends are runners. I never understood their passion. To me, running was nothing more than sending your knees and feet to an early grave. I walk a 12-minute mile and I figured that was close enough to running. Wrong!  Running is so much more than walking. It’s child-like! It’s a rush! Walking’s got nothing on running. Things rush by faster, the wind hits your face more sharply, you smell the air more readily and it’s so fresh as it hits your nostrils. I have a good idea now of what runner’s mean by a “runner’s high.”

Sadly, I’ll never get there completely. Ever. …*insert big sigh*… I won’t experience a true runner’s high because, while my knees and toes did just fine and I feel no lasting repercussions today, I know realistically I won’t be able to run more than a mile without my knees giving out. I felt every single ounce of my 128 pounds pounding my poor arthritic knees and toes.

But knowing I feel good today, I KNOW I’ll do it again next time. Why? Because running, for me, is like chocolate. A little taste goes a long way.  

Painted Toenails

One of my life’s simple pleasures is painting my toenails. My feet may not be the most attractive part of my body, but I owe them some respect, especially after that whole 300-pound ordeal.

Think about your own feet for a second and what you demand of them every day. Whether scrunched into 3-inch heels, molded into sweaty work boots or tennis shoes, or left barefoot to walk on concrete, these small physical marvels support us when we stand over the sink eating a peach while dinner heats up in the microwave and when we stumble to the bathroom in the middle of the night. At least that’s a few of the demands I put on my feet without thinking about it. The least I can do is be nice to them.

And so, on a beautiful evening last week, I brought outside to our back deck all the accoutrements necessary for an in-home pedicure – file, buffer, cuticle trimmer, base coat, color, top coat, quick dry spray and cotton balls to stick in between my toes.

I pulled my left knee up to my chest and started working on the left foot while talking to my husband who was sitting at the table across from me drinking a martini. I filed and buffed, got the crud out from under the nails, and proceeded on to the right foot. After carefully painting and sealing the color, I rested my legs on another chair and admired my work.

“There’s nothing like pretty toenails,” I sighed.

“But you don’t wear open-toed sandals, do you?” Larry asked.

I stared at him for a few seconds. 

“Um, no,” I said with my right eyebrow raised. “And your point is…?”

“Well, who’s gonna see them?” he said innocently. I think he might have actually laughed a little.

Larry and I talk about world politics, the upcoming election, his sons, my daughters, aging parents, how to treat our Golden Retrievers’ cyst, everything under the sun. You’d think by now, after 12 years together, we’d know each other inside out. And still, he asks about my toenails?

“Babe,” I said. “Stepping out of the shower and drying my feet and seeing my painted toes makes me smile. When I go to bed at night and I rub lotion on my feet and I see my painted toenails, I am happy. I don’t care if I’m the last person on this earth to see my toes. They are ruby red and look like a little party on my feet. That’s enough. That’s why I paint them.”

“OK,” he said, kind of tossing his hands in the air like I’d just told him his mother wears Army boots.

Is it all men or is it just my husband’s brain? I’m thinking most guys would not understand painted toenails. But I do know Larry probably filed away what I said for future use. He’s a Ph.D. by day and a husband by night. Painted toenails are hardly scientific. But if they make your wife happy, just smile and nod your head. I’m sure that’s what he told himself.

I have my computer on the deck right now, writing to you from a comfy chair with cardinals singing in the background. Larry is at some dinner meeting with some chemistry VIP. I’m barefoot and admiring my toenails. He’s knee deep in BS, no doubt. If he had pretty nails, he’d have something to distract him. All I have to do is look down. Reason #2,495,931 why I’m glad to be a woman and not a right-brained man.

Call me shallow, but I’m content.

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I want to send out a very big THANK YOU to my friend Gail Gedan Spencer at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel for thinking of me on her trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. She emailed me a few photos of Minnesota Twins memorabilia. Does she know me or what?

 Ah…the Twinkies. I don’t know a single one of them now since I live so far away, but back in the day….man….they rocked. I still have my Homer Hankie from 1987. I dug it out in 1991 when they did it again (won the World Series, that is). I was living in PA by that time and married to the wrong husband. I was all alone in our bedroom watching game seven. The kids were in bed, my husband was probably watching Nova or something in the living room. Maybe he was asleep. Anyway, the Twins won and I called my mother back home and celebrated. I was happier than painted toenails.

So thanks, Gail, for that memory today. It is a sweet one and it made me smile.

Another Perfect Day With Claire

Sitting on the porch last night and thinking about the day, I could still smell Claire on my arms – her wonderful Desitin/apple juice/cereal/baby smell. I spent three hours with her, half of it alone and the other half with my daughter Carlene. Cassie was working and Matt was at a funeral and so Grammy Lynn and Aunt Carly took a Claire shift.

We started by taking her poolside. I hauled three buckets of water to Claire’s blue and yellow blow-up pool while Carlene changed her into her bathing suit and lathered her up in sunscreen.

Even though I used warm water, Claire isn’t old enough to realize when she’s about to be set down in water, and the shock of it caused her to shudder and no doubt pee her diaper. She looked at us with her big brown eyes like she was studying her insides to understand what her body was feeling and then the light clicked. “This is water! I love water!” 

I put my feet in the pool and splashed her. She grabbed my big toe. I played peek-a-boo with her, hiding behind the blue and yellow tubes that form a tent above the pool. She could see me, but thought it was hysterical because my face was blue and yellow. I wish everyone was so easy to amuse.

Forget swimming and splashing. Claire’s all about standing in her pool. She stands everywhere now because she can. Well, she thinks she can. She doesn’t understand that blow-up plastic is flimsy and that water is slippery. So Carlene held her up when she was on her side and I hung on to her when she was on my side. Even though she wasn’t standing by herself, this arrangement made Claire happy.

 (FYI: This butt is really cute on an 8-month-old. It wasn’t so cute on Grammy Lynn a few years ago.)

It was soon time for Claire’s lunch so we brought her inside and got her dressed. Carlene left to do some shopping, so I put Claire in her highchair and started feeding her a jar of fruit and cereal.

Claire is a fancy pants with her three new teeth (two on the bottom and one on the top) and loves to grind them together. She decided to show off her new talent by skewing her face up like a bulldog and making a noise worse than fingernails scraping a chalkboard. It’s spine chilling but it mesmerizes Claire.

Halfway through her food, she decided she no longer wanted to sit in her highchair, but preferred to dine on Grammy’s lap. No problem. When the jar was empty, she laid back and enjoyed a bottle, and when she’d had enough of that, she sat up without making a sound and stretched her body straight – Claire’s way of saying “Put me on the floor, I’ve got an appointment with my toy box.”

Matt had picked up the living room before he left and the place looked great. Claire crawled over to the blue fabric box of toys and proceeded to dump the entire thing on the floor. She didn’t stop there. She spied three books on the bookshelf and had to see how they tasted before throwing them on the floor, too. She got a few things out of her diaper bag before crawling back to the toy box and the VCR tape/DVD stand behind it.

She’s so busted in this photo. 

A few minutes later, I smelled something really stinky. Claire thought I was a pretty mean G-ma when I picked her up and took her away from her toys, not understanding that the stinky culprit was in her diaper and squirting up her back. No sooner did I get her diaper off and was reaching for a wet wipe when she flipped herself over to a crawling position with her dirty bum in the air. Poo went everywhere. Wrestling her back to a reclined position, I managed to get her cleaned up, all the while laughing so hard I thought I’d choke. Safely back in a diaper and sans the dirty pants, I put her back on the floor where she entertained herself with a rubber spatula and a 1-quart saucepan.

When she decided she’d rearranged the living room the way she wanted, Claire crawled over to me and stood up near my legs.  I picked her up and gave her a nook. We turned on her mom’s computer and went to the Noggin website and watched Moose E. Moose videos.

Claire loves Moose E. Moose. She started off leaned over the arm of the couch with my arms wrapped around her chest so she couldn’t nose dive onto the computer, and she danced and laughed and sucked on her nook. Then she leaned back and rested in the crook of my arm. Sometimes she’d press her cheek against my mouth because I was softly singing. I don’t know the words to Moose E. Moose songs and I can’t sing my way out of a box, but she didn’t care. I rubbed her cool little thighs and kissed her head and told myself to never forget that moment. I don’t think I ever could.

We chilled on the couch for about 45 minutes before Carlene came back from shopping. Claire was pretty close to sleeping, and so I said goodbye and went home. It’s 24 hours later and I haven’t stopped smiling.

This grandma gig just keeps getting better all the time.

Real Letters, Real Photos

I received two letters today, the kind with stamps on the front and everything; real mail delivered to my house by our mailman Butch who has hot legs and who wore shorts even on the coldest winter days because he made a bet with another mailman over who would chicken out first and put on pants.

Anyway, not only did I get letters, but the senders sent pictures, too! Not links to Kodak or Snapfish or attached in an email, but real hold-‘em-in-my-hands pictures.

The first letter was from my mom. She sent photos of their rearranged living room. Since they live so far away, it’s important to me that I visualize where Mom watches her soaps and where Dad naps before going to bed. Like Archie and Edith Bunker, they have their own chairs – identical La-Z-Boys that you wouldn’t be able to tell apart except for the popcorn hidden in the cloth folds between the foot and arm rests. That would be my dad’s chair.

No one’s in the photos, but the furniture is like looking at family (not that my family physically resembles ready-to-assemble entertainment centers). Even though most of their furniture is new since I lived with them, it still has that Mom and Dad feel and I like seeing it from time to time. Sitting on end tables and the TV stand are photos of the grandkids and greatgrandkid, a few trinkets and knick knacks that Mom hasn’t passed on to the rest of us, and some candles and other familiar reminders of home. On the walls they’ve hung the scary drawing of Jesus my sister Emily sketched in high school, the painting of a crane my brother made in high school, another painting of my grandmother’s childhood home in Norway, and two handmade Norwegian tapestries.

When my parents moved out of the big house and downsized, they kept the things that mattered to them the most and sold or gave away the rest. I love the little surprises I find in their townhome when I visit, those things they chose to keep. Nothing is wasting space. Everything there has a purpose or meaning.

I can’t wait to see their new arrangement for myself when I visit them in August. For now, the photos will sustain me.

The second letter with photographs was from my friend, Pam (happy birthday!). Pam is my age, albeit two months and seven days older, and has a 25-year-old (same as me), a 23-year-old (same as me) and a grandbaby (same as me). However, Pam also has a 5-year-old son named Jack, who was a BIG surprise for her and her husband back in 2002.

Jack is the most articulate child I know. He’s like a 5-year-old Woody Allen with a little naiveté. Pam recently found a lump on Jack’s neck. Thinking it was leukemia and scared out of her mind, he assured her, “Mom, I’m going to be fine.” (Jack is fine. It was a reaction to a bug bite.) When I saw them last summer, we went out for lunch. We sat inside the restaurant, but on the patio were two women and a baby in a car seat. Jack politely asked our server if she would bring him the baby. “I have a baby nephew,” he explained. “I just want to see what that baby out there looks like.” He also asked me, when I got up to go to the bathroom, “Do you have to poop, Lynn?” He has a million more one-liners. I told Pam she should publish a book called “Jackisms.”

Like my parents, I can’t wait to see that kid in August.

Pam sent me photos of Jack and her grandbaby Robert. Robert’s life is so enriched because Jack is in it. Jack was a surprise, yes, but the best surprise I can imagine. I won’t, however, be enriching my own grandbaby’s life with a new aunt or uncle. I love Claire, but as Meatloaf sang, “I won’t do that.”

Unrelated to real photos or mail, there’s a photo I’ve been wanting to share with you all but I never remember to post it until those 3 a.m. nights when I can’t sleep.

When I was in California, my sister drove Carlene and me past “The Brady Bunch” house. The show wasn’t filmed there, but it’s the house they used for pans of what they wanted us to believe was the actual house. I’m such a back-end baby boomer and I reacted like that house was a celebrity. I was like a 10-year-old taking photos of the place, thinking my nasty little pre-teen thoughts about Peter yet knowing I was Jan and never Marcia. A woman was bent over and weeding the front garden and I wanted to yell out, “Are you Alice?” But I didn’t. I just took my photo and got back in the car.

This was a good day. Letters, photos, “The Brady Bunch”…just like the days of *gulp* old.

Karma and the DMV

When I woke up, the signs were all there: low humidity, light wind, no rain, and it wasn’t Wednesday. The moon must be in the seventh house and Jupiter aligned with Mars because today was the day to go to the DMV. 

Don’t hate me, but I was the only one there. In fact, it was after 11, they’d been open since 8:30, and I was the first customer of the day. I was in and out in seven minutes. It would have been four, but I got to chatting with the lady about politics. More on that in a minute.

My license expires this August, but I begged the DMV gods to issue me a new license in 2006 after I’d lost 140 pounds. I was having a hard time buying liquor, and even the cashier at WalMart was beginning to doubt I was who I said I was when I’d try to cash a check. God knows if I’d tried to fly anywhere with my 300-pound photo I’d probably not make it past the first security check point.

Unfortunately for me, though, karma wasn’t on my side and I didn’t plan that trip to the DMV real well. First of all it was a Wednesday – the only day 16-year-olds and people wanting their license back after serving time for DUI can take their road test. Second, I was wearing a flannel shirt. Third, my hair was in bad need of a color update. It wasn’t one of my better moments. Sadly, though, the photo that was supposed to reflect my metamorphosis from morbidly obese to normal looked enough like me that security personnel at O’Hare, LAX, and LaGuardia had no problem letting me through when I traveled recently. I’m such a boofer. Oh well. At least I stopped getting hassled when I tried to buy the Two Buck Chuck.

Back to today. I was ready for the photo this time. Dressed in a teal colored shirt and coiffed just the way I wanted, I started the computerized process of getting a new license. Did I want to be an organ donor? Yes. Did I understand I was signing up to be an organ donor? Yes. Are you sure? Yes.

Do you want to change your political party affiliation at this time?

“Really?” I asked the lady. “I can do that?”

Remember how I changed my party affiliation from Independent to Democrat back in April so I could vote in the primary? I’ve been meaning to get up to the courthouse to change it back, but I keep forgetting now that Barack and Hillary don’t call me anymore. How handy is it that I got to change it back at the DMV today?

“Yes,” she said. “What do you want to be?”

When I told the lady I wanted to be Independent, she asked, “Independent, Independent Democrat, Independent Republican, Independent American, or Independence party?”

“I guess just Independent,” I said. “I didn’t realize there were so many.”

“Oh honey, let me read you a few,” she laughed. “There’s the Good Neighbor, Halloween, Christmas, Birthday, Internet, Idealistic, Fusion, Guilty, Global Justice, Feline, Freedom…”

“Wait,” I stopped her. “Feline? Cats have a political party?”

“Ma’am, you’d be amazed what people believe in.”

I sat down and smiled at the little white dot. In three seconds, my photo was on the screen.

“Do you like it?” she asked.

“Like it? Can I get that in an 8x10 for my parents?” I asked.

It was by far the best DMV photo I’ve ever taken. My eyes were open, I had no gunk in my teeth, I remembered to take out my gum first, I had no zits, and none of my gray showed through. I must have done something really good in a past life.

I tucked my new license in my wallet on top of the old old one, the one of me at 300 pounds. It keeps me accountable. Whenever I’m tempted by Krispy Kreme’s or some such food disaster, I just look at that driver’s license and step away.

Maybe I should keep the one from 2006, too. Next time I’m tempted to wear flannel or wait 12 weeks to have my hair colored, I’ll take it out and change my clothes or call Ashley for an appointment. A girl can’t have too many reminders.