Birthday List

Nearly a month ago, I noted that I needed a job before my birthday. Well (shuffle, shuffle) . . . ummmm . . . ahhhh . . . errr. Yeaaaaahhhhh.

In a week, it's. My. BIRTHDAY.

I've been joking around about this being the one week countdown to my midlife crisis (yes, yes, I know most people wait until their 40's to do this, but I figure a running start is warranted. I also think, as long as I'm freaking out, I should multi-task my anxiety and just package this in. And, a good friend pointed out to me today that Dante had his mid-life crisis at 35, so, there's precedent!) but I'll admit this is dfficult for me.

My birthday is also the anniversary of my becoming a Colorado resident, and, for anyone who has read this blog, you know that the story of how I came to live here isn't really a good one. I remember that first birthday here as a blur of unloading boxes and furniture after having been driving for close to a week (it feels like most of that week was spent in Nebraska. Ugh). Somewhere in there, there was a bad movie, and a broken promise. So, birthdays here in Colorado are always seem to come part and parcel with feeling a little tender and tentative.

And this year, my birthday also feels like it is bound up with other drama. My need to figure out my living situation. This arbitrary deadline I set for myself to get a job. The end of the month . . . yayyyyy, more bills due. And, well, 35 doesn't feel like a small number. I want to not have hang ups about that, and to be enlightened and to feel that age has made me better, but without a clear picture of where I'm headed, looking back and saying, "all of that got me here" doesn't work as well. Meh.

For many weeks, as this date approached, I had the ostrich reaction and my instinct was to stick my head in the sand and IGNORE. NEGLECT. And, if things got really bad, maybe uproot from the proverbial sand, RUN AWAY.

But the truth is, I will turn 35, and be unemployed, and wake up with these same unsettled questions whether or not I acknowledge this birthday. So, I'd better get on with it and acknowledge the impending arrival of my mid-life crisis. And as long as I'm acknowledging it, I should go ahead and celebrate. Sitting here, right at this moment, I'm not sure what there is to celebrate to be painfully honest. But I have always adored birthdays (yours, mine, birthdays are just great) so I'm trying to fall back on that.

Of course, what everyone has asked me is, What do you want for your birthday? I have some pretty phenomenal people in my life, both near and far. Some of them have settled this questions by telling me what they are doing to celebrate my day, and others have asked me. One of my smartest, funniest friends put it this way, "what do you want for your birthday aside from word peace and an awesome job?"

Actually, if those things could be gift wrapped, that would be just awesomesauce. Way to hit that nail on the head, RR!

I don't think Amazon has a category for those, so I've put some thought into what else I'd enjoy. My mom askes me to make two lists, each year. A Christmas list, and a Birthday list. I try really hard to make the first no longer than 10 items, and to ask for things that aren't things (Can you make lasagna? Can we go get pedicures?) and the later no longer than 5 things. This year, something about free-falling and not having my feet on any kind of solid ground means I feel free to ask for just EVERYTHING I want. Here goes:

• I would like to excise the parts of my head and heart that tell me, with searing repetition, that I have become "less than" in my weeks of unemployment.

• I want to be able to do the bound yoga poses without fear of losing my balance.
• I want someone to create head bands that don't slide off the back of my giant head

• I'd like for dresses that accommodate girls with GIRLS to be made more flattering.

• I want to put honey in my yogurt without the honey bottle getting all sticky.

• I want my friend to be released from prison and exonerated. I'm grateful that he still has a loving heart, and kindness, but I want him out sooner rather than later to keep it that way. 

• I want children to be wanted and planned. And loved beyond all belief. All of them. 

• I want all of my friends who love each other and are willing to risk everything to be allowed to get married and have those marriages be recognized by my government.
• I want for our country to stop thinking that separate but equal works. Because it never does.
• I want for the U.S. voters and leaders to remember that in a free society you need a reason to make something ILlegal, not a reason to make something legal. And, bee-tee-dub, "the bible" isn't a good thing to point to when it comes to our laws since we eat shrimp and don't sell our daughters.

• I want women to not feel so limited and judged that they treat life as a zero sum game, and learn, all too well, to tear each other down. 

• I want men to not feel so pigeon-holed and pressured that they feel competition and destructiveness are expected. Required even.
• I want a cure for cancer.
• I want to hear my dad read Brer Rabbit stories, with the killer accents and voices, one more time.
• I want more people to go to therapy prophylactically.
• I want more people to hold themselves accountable for their own issues, wounds, and baggage. I need people to be accountable for how their actions affect others.
• I need for us to realize how broken our education system is. How wrong it is that we will spend money to incarcerate, but not to educate. How forced into lock-step my teacher friends feel. How unhappy parents and students are. How wrong our curriculum is and how sticking with it is throwing good money after bad. And, why, oh why, do we think it is ok for us to require college in order to aim higher than Walmart in the job market, but then expect to pay them with no regard to the cost of that education . . .which keeps going up.
• I want people to be kind to each other. And if that's too much to ask, can we at least not be engaged in (and horrendously thrilled by)  being cruel to one another?
• I want things to stop being at this constant fever-pitch of black/white, right/wrong, good/evil where somehow we picket funerals, call women "sluts" on national broadcasts, and say that we wish certain groups of people would die out. (Can you believe it was a pastor who said this?! It actually made me physically ill.)
• I want a way to have all of my closest people at one dinner party - my Colorado people, my Florida, Maine, OK, Illinois, NY, Boston, and Jersey people. And my brother in New Haven for good measure. Then I want, as I once did with Heather, to come up with a curriculum so that people understand each other better, as David and Rob and I have, talked about how to actually do good for people in the world. Then, I'd put Wil in charge of implementation. The rest of us would be his minions. I'm sure I'd be hired on as a personal masseuse. (And if that comes with health insurance, that solves my job problem. La!)
• For just ONE day (it would have to be limited for reasons of will power) I want Dunkin Donuts to be down the street from me so I can spend $3 or less on really good coffee and a donut.
• I want more choices available for streaming on Netflix. Don't you?
• I want popcorn to be magically carb free. Especially when I eat it at 11pm

Barring all of that, because, really, I think it will be hard to get Dunkin Donuts to set up shop here on time, and because none of us know what to do about the crazy people who take it so lightly to propose concentration camps for gay people, I'll take some beer, a burger, and a nice quiet birthday with a few of the people who I think of as teachers and friends and loved ones. But, you know, if you happen on some carb-free popcorn that tastes as good as the stuff I make at home . . . send it on over.

Expectation

Suffering is the result of attachment.

This is something my therapist reminds me of a lot, and he freely attributes it to the writings of Buddhism. He's an equal opportunity user of religious tenants in our session and has mentioned, among other things: Buddhism, Christianity, and Judaism. (It's kind of nice to sit on a couch that welcomes science and logic, feelings and things that are less than rational, and world religion in equal measure.)

What he's really saying though is, when you get attached to something, you place expectation on it. You make plans based on the idea of counting on something that will hold those plans up. And since each thing you build on top of this foundation is contingent upon the thing before it, and since the foundation may or may not live up to the expectation, if any of this goes against the grain of the wood you're laying on this foundation or if the foundation itself wobbles . . .  the expectations come crashing down. Unmet. And then what you have on your hands is a mess to clean up, and something akin to a bruise on your ego with a healthy dose of disappointment. Frustration, kicking yourself, sadness for what could have been but wasn't. Suffering.

Expectation leads to suffering.

And I am the queen of expectation. Mostly, I hold myself to painfully high standards, which is another way of saying I create expectation and the accompanying suffering for myself. I owe a lot of what I've accomplished to setting the bar high, and then going above and beyond to get there, but along the way I also have signed up for more than my fair share of being hard on myself. In fact, just today I was telling a story that I often tell when I'm remembering how hard work-life balance was for me in my old job (or alternatively if I'm looking to make fun of myself) about a time when I was trying to support an entire branch's worth of centers by my lonesome and working well over 80 hours a week. It meant eating a lot of Subway and being on the road from 7 am until often well past 8 or 9pm. It meant that this chic, the one who hates speaking out loud (to anyone if I can help it) before 8 or 9am, and has low blood sugar (especially in the mornings) was trying to work out at 5am and then on the road for 10-14 hours a day. I was saying how I came home on a Wednesday at 10pm and realized my choices were to stay up until past 1am doing laundry or get up at 4am to do laundry.  Orrrrrr secret door number three: iron and re-wear my pants and drive 4 blocks to Walgreens and buy new underwear. I took secret door number three but as I was driving the 4 blocks there and back I was mentally consumed by the feeling I was (and I quote) failing life.

That's right: not working too much, or sacrificing for my team and my job, or going above and beyond for the clients and centers I supported. But failing basic life 101. It's funny, but it isn't. 20/20 hindsight took so long to sink in that it was literally more than a year before I looked back on that night (which I have vivid memories of) and realized that if there was any failure it was in the planning that left me as the only consultant in a territory covering three states, or on the part of the expectations set by my employer.

This is related to, but not the same as my musings on failure. Abstractly, I understand the uses of failure. The importance of failure. Even the necessity of failure. But I see it in terms of how successful people (Ali, Steve Jobs, JK Rowling, and Einstein come to mind) carved a path, picked themselves up, and learned what not to do. Even my own failures are best viewed from a safe distance. The time I didn't get cast in a show, but discovered my passion for stage managing as a result, the time I failed a class at a college that didn't have grades (oh, yeah. It takes someone really spesh like me to fail even in the absence of grades), the time I moved across the country for my fiance only to find myself alone knowing no one at the worst, most emotionally raw moment I've ever experienced. Sitting where I sit now, 20 years, 14 years, 4 years after those hard, weak, disappointing moments and outcomes I see how those hardships, those mistakes, those speed bumps opened my eyes, made me grow, bent me in a new or even better direction. From this safe perspective, I can be grateful for my expectations not being met, for those failures, and I can even see how they lead to successes.

From here. But never ever from the moment. Really. Never.

A lot of people SAY they're their own worst critic. But for me in the moment of defeat, I become a poor, abused child. I don't just beat myself up, I beat myself up, followed by kicking myself while I'm down (from the beating), then, while I'm lower than low (from the beating followed by kicking) I bring on the flogging and torture, and then I ask my wounded, limping, inner self to write "I am a terrible, miserable failure. I am not worthy" on the proverbial blackboard 100 times. Then I ask that poor child to write an essay about what she's learned from all of this  ( . . . hence this blog).

It's ironic, because I'm told I'm a good person to have on hand when things aren't working out as planned. I'm compassionate and I often even say things that aren't just supportive, but are smart and understanding. I get it, I let people feel their feelings, but then I also help them see the road ahead. this is what I'm told. So . . . why can't I tell myself these things?

Well, hey, this is what therapy is for, and so we've come full circle to where I started - my therapist says attachment leads to suffering. There's a multifaceted idea he and I are working on . . . ways to notice how much I judge myself, ways to work on it without setting the expectation of banishing it too high . . . leading to more judgement and suffering. Ways to pick myself up when I do find myself rolling on the ground taking kicks.

But, I've had a lot of speed bumps this year. If I'm honest, my expectation was that I would have a job long before now. That my feet would be back on the road of figuring out how I want things to align in my life, and what I'm going to be putting my passion and energy and drive and killer work-ethic towards. I truly never expected to be just a few days away from turning 35 still wondering what opportunities I might have, and how the pieces would fit together.

I've realized lately that standards are one thing, and judgement, expectation, and self-flogging are completely another. I was in the process of discussing a job that, frankly, had more liabilities than assets. It very likely would have held me in place, for not enough money or challenge, while making it nigh to impossible to job hunt for anything else. We mutually reached the conclusion that when she moves her business forward, she will be ready for my higher skill set, but until then, she needs to hire to fill the need she has now. It was perfectly reasonable, and more than that, self-preservational (even, gasp, hopeful and optimistic of me) for me to reach the conclusions that this job didn't meet my standards and might create as many issues as it solved if there wasn't a clear path for me to move onto greater things (and there wasn't). The problem that I avoided was getting attached to this interview as the solution to my rapidly scary problem.

I've learned this lesson the hard way a few times over this year. I've worked so hard to apply only for jobs I really want, so this means that when I get an interview, or worse, a second interview, I feel, well, attached. And what follows is expectation. And over and over, that has lead to disappointment and suffering.

My therapist is of the opinion that when I figure out how to let go, when I stop white-knuckling, when I can be truly and authentically OK without slotting everything into a plan, a design, a structure (all disguises for expectation, by the way) that is when I will find and land the right opportunity.

I have some significant reservations about attaching my job search results to something mystical. Of the jobs I've been most excited about and not gotten, one of them was really hiring from within. Another changed the details of the job as well as the salary after I had already interviewed several times. A third turned out not to have the budget for another full time employee. A fourth re-wrote the position significantly around another candidate, and that wasn't the job I had applied for so I was just not in the running anymore. I'm not sure that not getting any of those jobs had to do with the cloud of judgement and expectation I let mushroom around me.

But I can't deny the fact that I have this desire for all of the struggle and emotional work and mis-steps to lead to something amazing. Some job that is better, less commute, better for my life outside of work, contributing to the greater good, thrilling, worthy of my passion and skills. You know, all around SHINY. And If I can't deny that desire, I also can't ignore that that is expectation setting me up for pain again.

That is the truth, though. I want things. I want to know if I am going to be able to swing it to go to my dear friend's long overdue wedding celebration in August.  I want to have the ability to feel secure enough on my own path that I have some sense of how I would walk that way with my person . . . if it turned out we both wanted that. I want to fly to New Jersey and meet the beautiful happy baby some of my best friends' had. I want to work out with my trainer again. I want to not have to tell people, "I'm not sure I can do that. We'll see what I can afford." I want to go hiking without worrying what would happen if my knees blew out again and I had no insurance. I want to not have my answer to almost everything be, "I have NOOOOOOOOOO idea what my life will look like in three months so . . ."

I want things. I want them two months ago. and I think what I really want is a smidge of stability and some predictability. I think I want some safety and I want some relief from doubt. It's like my favorite Toad the Wet Sprocket song,"I spend too much time seeking shelter. World without end couldn't hold her."

I don't know if getting better at free-falling will help me get a job, but as long as I'm out here, falling fast without a chute, it probably pays to get better at it anyways. Lord knows I'm not working, soooooo, if not now, when?! (A little unemployment humor goes a long way.)

Three minutes - Day one, take two

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about meditation.

Meditation is really, really hard for me. I know you all heard this all before but it is harder than making myself work out, harder than passing up cake, harder than pull-ups. and pull-ups are really hard.

The thing for me, about meditation, is that I can sit. And I can breathe . . . usually. Maybe not for long, and I may or may not actually fully empty myself out. And all of that is fine. I agree with my therapist that it's a practice, and that's it's called practice for a reason. It is whatever it can be on any given day - some days it's a constant process of hearing the voices and judgements in my head, and other days it's a chance to slow my brain down and feel something like approaching peace, some days it's a chance to process. Most days, whatever has happened "on the mat" so to speak, I feel good about having done it at all. Most days, when I open my eyes up after sitting and breathing, colors look brighter and my vision seems to be sharper. Life seems a little more in focus from how it was.

This is funny, because I've been sitting for three minutes at a time. No more, no less.

You may remember that when I wrote about ADD I talked about following a plan of 2 minutes a day, then ramping up to 5 minutes a day. But the truth is, it took two tries to get 2 minutes a day consistent for a week at a time. Two minutes seems like so little, but just as I discovered when I was taking pictures of myself every day for a year, and posting them, the list of things we do EVERY DAY without fail, never missing them, for any reason, is really, really finitely small. For me, now that I am not longer doing a 365 days photo project the list is this long:

1. Breathe
2. Drink Water
3. Brush my teeth ( I never don't do this. Because I am very, very into clean teeth)

That's the entire list, plus now, trying to sit and breathe every day. I don't eat every day. Almost every day, of course, but since doing a 365 I am very aware that thinking you do something every day is not the same as doing things every day. So, I know, for instance, that three times in the last 3 years I've been sick enough to skip eating for a day. I may, if I can succeed at sitting and breathing every day, add writing every day, or even do another 365, but for now, four things is enough to try for because I have a tendency to over-commit and even to over-commit plus then beating myself up for not being able to maintain everything.

So, here is the story of me trying to meditate every day, for just a few minutes.

Week 1. Objective: sit for two minutes every day. After a week of doing this, advance to 5 minutes a day.

The first three days were great. I got up each morning, sat for two minutes, and then had these peaceful and very contented breakfasts. I sat on my porch and noticed things. I had visions of photos I wanted to take and things I wanted to write. I felt good. Then, I started feeling . . . dragged around by unexpected feelings. Stress, judgment, expectation. I was so, so tired and found myself sleeping in. I had interviews. I felt . . . too full. So, I missed day 4 and 5. On day 6, I really needed my processing time and did my breathing on the couch, staring at my "processing ceiling." On day 7, I knew I needed another week of two minutes before "advancing."

Week 2. Objective: Sit for 2 minutes a day. Set no other goals regarding the practice of sitting and breathing.

Day 1 - I should read that book that Susan gave me. Actually, she loaned you two books. Maybe you should swim this week. And, Gabrielle loaned you a book too. Does she still have a copy of "All Families are psychotic?" Is this helping you with your family? Maybe, maybe not. If nothing else, then at least it makes you feel better at dealing with you. Shut up, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!
Day 2 - Breathe in. Breath out. Breathe in. Breathe out. That's all.

Day 3 - One in; one out. One, two, in; One, two, out. One, two, three, in; one, two, three, out. So, on and so forth.

Day 4 - I should make coffee this morning. Shut up brain. Breathe. Seriously, you breathe without thinking. why can't you JUST do this?

Day 5 - I wonder if there's any research about how asthmatics benefit from meditation and breathing practice? I need to blow my nose. This allergy season blows. 

Day 6 - crap. I almost forgot to do this! And then . . . emptiness. And relief.

Day 7 - I don't want to. But I refuse to mess this up. Try not to fall asleep!
Week 3. Objective: Sit for 3 minutes a day. Set no other goals regarding the practice of sitting and breathing.
Day 1: Let's try sitting in the afternoon = epic fail. My mind was EVERYWHERE at once, and nowhere fully, and importantly, nowhere near settled on sitting peacefully.

Day 2: Sitting in my car before an interview. Set a timer and used this technique from the article (which I used to use in high school and college):

If (following the breath) seems hard at first, you can substitute the method of counting your breath. As you breathe in, count 1 in your mind, and as you breathe out, count 1. Breathe in, count 2. Breathe out, count 2. Continue through 10, then return to 1 again. This counting is like a string which attaches your mindfulness to your breath. This exercise is the beginning point in the process of becoming continuously conscious of your breath. Without mindfulness, however, you will quickly lose count. When the count is lost, simply return to 1 and keep trying until you can keep the count correctly.
The timer went off before I realized it. It went wayyyyyy fast.

Day 3: whoooooooooooops! Totally forgot.

Day 4: see above

Day 5: Breathe in. Breath out. Breathe in. Breathe out. That's all.

Day 6: What if I don't get this job? What should I make for dinner? Did I eat enough protein today? It's hard to breathe through my nose right now. My knee hurts. Beer sounds good. I should substitute a carb at dinner for a beer. Should I start getting serious about part time jobs for the summer? How much time will that take away from my job hunt? Does that just prolong this issue rather than solving it? 
Day 7: whooooops! Totally forgot.

Thus, today is 3 minutes, day 1.2 - insert here me laughing at myself.

But gently.

As the article says, "If you're anything like me, meditation will help you realize just how far, and how fast, your mind can wander from what you're supposed to be doing at the moment. In an age of multitasking, hyper-scheduling, and instant internet distraction, that alone can be a huge help."The problem for me, is clearly that my mind wants to run right up against the glass separating me from the the big giant beastly things we look at safely, when they are in cages. And then it wants to run back as quickly as it came. And on the path back, it encounters other things. Things that are conveniently distracting like what to eat, drink, and read.

So, when I picked up "When things Fall Apart" by Pema Chodron, I knew I was onto something when she said,"Fear is a universal experience. Even the smallest insect feels it. We wade into the tidal pools and put our finger near the soft, open bodies of the sea anemones and they close up. Everything spontaneously does that. It's not a terrible thing that we feel fear when faced with the unknown. It is part of being alive, something we all share. We react against the possibility of loneliness, of death, of not having anything to hold onto. Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth. If we commit ourselves to staying right where we are, then our experience becomes very vivid. Things become very clear when we have nowhere to escape."

It's hard to pass by a mirror and not notice that it's you in there.

I am afraid. And fear is something I don't face very often because there is little I fear. I often proceed to do things that others think are hard without fear. It's not that I don't feel normal anxiety, it's that I don't have a lot of fears. I'm not afraid of elevators, heights, jumping from them, sparring big men, tunnels, moving to new places, or  meeting new people. Other people ask me to deal with their rodent and bug issues. I have not a second thought about blood or needles, and I have watched my own surgeries. I'm allergic to pain meds, so when I do have surgeries I deal with pain on my own. The list of things I'm afraid of is almost as short as the list of things I do daily without fail:

1. I am afraid of the dark. It's silly.
2. I am not exactly afraid of  but have some strong irrational reactions to anyone pushing on or pinning my neck.
3. I have some weird and not always logical concerns about meat and diseases. This is most often seen in how I shudder and wash my hands eight times after handling chicken. Bllleeeechhhh.
4. I secretly worry that all of this time I've spent thinking about raising kids won't translate into me actually being a good parent.

I've had this list for some time. I've operated under the idea that I walk through the world, mostly unafraid so long as I don't have to deal with chicken in the dark while someone is pointing out all of the flaws in my fictitious-as-of-yet parenting.

But, as it turns out, our friend Pema has me thinking. I recently told someone that we can't every know what someone thinks, how their mind actually computes something, or what we feel. As a psychologist I was trained deeply to understand that all we can see, all we can measure, is behavior. And my behavior suggest I am attracted to other unnamed things that frighten me, but that I am, in fact, scared.

And so my natural instinct is to "forget" to meditate, forget to sit with that discomfort, or to sit, and then instantly turn the spot light on other things (like beer, and books, and peanut butter).

My therapist said "don't you think it's about time that you stopped carrying all of that judgment around with you?"

And my person said, "maybe you need to get comfortable with being able to make decision without knowing all of the variables."

These are all ways of saying, what Pema says which is, "What we're talking about is getting to know fear,  becoming familiar with fear, looking it right in the eye - no, not as a way to solve problems, but as a complete undoing of old ways of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and thinking." 

I notice that I am changing. I sleep differently. I approach things differently. And though I can often be hear lamenting, "I have no way to plan what three months from now looks like, " I can also be heard saying that with reverence and wonder. I eat differently. I sometimes rationalize what I have done, accepted, or asked for help on; but I am also doing it without nearly as much pain as I previously experienced.

So, I will keep sitting. And seeing how up-close-and-personal I can get with my fears. you know, the ones I'm still getting acquainted with. when I know what they are, an update on that list will be forthcoming. (Duhn duhn duhhhnnnn) It may take me forever and a day to sit for 5 minutes a day, but I'm quite sure that however and whenever I get there I will know my insides better, and see the outside not just more sharply, as I do now after just 2 or 3 minutes, but with much less fear and judgment and much more vividness.

Pain

I'm in a little pain today. My knees have been hurting, and that has had some implications for my workouts, but mostly, I've accepted that this is what my knees do. Allowing pain to determine what I can do would mean to give up doing a lot of things I like. So, I go do them and keep a steady supply of ice packs in my freezer. I also have blisters on the soles of my feet, but this is not too awful either.

Today I'm in pain because it's my dad's birthday.

I'm not sure why this bothers me more than other meaningful days. I could get really sad on the anniversary of his death, and often, I do get a little introspective but not usually anything approaching full sadness.  It's possible that because I've attached some other things to that date, that August 9th and 10th mean different things to me now. I intentionally chose to start and end my Flickr 365 days photo project on these dates and so I think about my dad. I think about the hospice nurse coming to the house twice that night - once shortly before midnight, and then again, just a couple hours later. But I also think about managing to finish taking a self portrait every day for 365 unbroken days despite personal issues, a crazy work schedule, not one but two knee injuries, and a knee surgery RIGHT before finishing. I emptied that day out, and refilled it with triumph and closure and accomplishment. I could be bothered over Thanksgiving and Christmas, because I don't have the option to spend those holidays with my father anymore.

You'd think Father's Day would be the problem but, instead, it's this day, every year, that lurks and looms and makes March very problematic for me. I have taken to writing this day on my calendar, as if I'd forget. This is one of the vestiges of my relationship with my dad. I also kept his phone number in my phone (which is just silly, because his phone number was the phone number I grew up with and is imprinted on my DNA at this point. Keeping it in my phone isn't about remembering the number, of course, since I wouldn't need to use the phone number anyways. It's because taking him out of my phone feels wrong). I can't seem to listen to Dire Straits without laughing and then feeling melancholy. And, I write this date in each year, "Dad's Birthday" in the same way that my calendar is marked for "Rob's birthday" as a reminder to send a card or do whatever I do because I think birthdays are the best (mine, yours, everyone's - love birthdays).

There isn't anywhere to send a card. I can't pick up the phone and call my dad (using the number I've known since I knew there were phone numbers in the world) to say happy birthday. I can't make a plan to celebrate his birthday with him. I can't call my brother and see if he wants to join forces for a lunch, a present, anything. Why is it on my calendar? Because not putting it there makes the day feel even worse to me.

On March 26th, it doesn't matter if I'm working, or if it's the weekend. It doesn't matter if I'm alone, or with people. It doesn't matter if I drive up into the mountains or lie flat on my back on the couch and stare at the open canvass of my ceiling. It doesn't matter if I eat chicken and brussel sprouts or if I try to numb out with some really bad carbs. All I can think of is how, somehow, I was the only person who knew on his last birthday that it was his last birthday.

It was actually a great day, but with my moving cross-country two months later, and him going so severely down hill two months after that, it was the last time I got to do a family celebration of any kind with him. And the fact that it was for him made him that much more excited and pleased. We had a great day, but in a place that was nowhere near the back of my mind, I knew with deep certainty and some not insignificant sense of peace, that there wouldn't be another birthday with him, and that that almost surely meant we had already had our last Thanksgiving, Christmas, . . . I drank a shot with him and my brother and thought, "I hope this day is good enough to count for everything we won't have."

I think that there are days that I tell myself that death is part of life, and that I can live with that. And there are days that I tell not only myself, but others too, that if he hadn't died, we might not have gotten to the place we got to in our relationship . . . that it took to the end for my dad to be really honest, open, and to tell me what he loved about me in a way I believed it. And there are days where I am very relieved that he's not struggling, in pain, or fighting the demons he dealt with long before the cancer.

But I don't ever have those days on March 26th. On this day I am struck that I'm supposed to somehow be ok with 25 years of what can only be described as troubled and dysfunctional love with my dad followed by 2 weeks of him sharing under what can only be described as enormous pressure. On this day I can't help but think how sad it is that he never met his grandchildren, and that he'll never meet my future-and-hypothetical kids. On this day it's a little heartbreaking that he'll never see any of us get married. On this day I remember drinking that shot with him, but I also remember calling my Jewish family the morning after he died to make sure that when they were drinking wine that night on Shabat that they would change the prayer they had been saying for him and not waste it.

I was lucky today to spend the day with a smart, sensitive, interesting 10 year old and all-around cool kid. My friend thinks I gave her 6 hours of not struggling with what to do with him on spring break, but in reality she gave me 6 hours of talking about karma (with a 10 year old!! See, he is REALLY cool), helping him practice photography, getting some sunshine, and comparing thoughts on the pros and cons of being an oldest sibling. But . . . I have to then be at home and face the fact of this day.

Pain is there to keep us safe. And I know, in that way, pain is healthy. But on this day, pain doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I knew Knew KNEW that he was dying (maybe before he did), and I didn't just tell myself I was ok with it, I really was. But on this day, nothing feels exactly right because 4 years ago shots and salads and lazy conversation did have some unexpected rightness.

So, there it is. I have been writing all week, and unable to finish anything because this date has been clouding up a lot of things for me. A friend who also lost her father asked me a couple of months ago, "How long is it normal to grieve?" I said something ostensibly wise about how grief has no set timeline. I said that we all go through life with a collection of people we think we can count on, and when one goes missing, we can't expect that hole to not be a wound, and one that throbs. I told her however she felt her grief and sadness was "normal." And all of that is more easily said than done.

This is it for me. This 24 hours.