all of the selves we Have ever been
I open my mailbox to a surprise. Inside is an actual letter. It is not from a credit card company, the IRS, or Social Security; it is from a friend. Paper mail is such a rare and treasured find in the digital age, especially during a pandemic, a kind of people-famine. I do not need to look at the return address. The handwriting is instantly recognizable. Though I’ve known my friend for 44 years, her handwriting has never changed. Each letter of the alphabet maintains its distinctive form with wide spaces between the words. The printing is confident and cheerful, the optimistic qualities I have grown to love and admire in my old friend. Having her handwriting on the paper before me is like having her here with me now. Filled with delight and anticipation, I do not wait to get inside my apartment before sliding my finger under the flap and tearing open the envelope. Her note to me is brief—her usual style—and contains an enclosure of an article she thought might interest me. And it does. Her letter gets me thinking, and I go to another container, a weary, sagging cardboard box in my storage closet. I lift the worn flaps and gather up a messy pile of aged cards and letters, the spirits of people loved asleep on a shelf. I gently begin to awaken them. There is an index card that contains the handwriting of my cousin Marcia. The card describes the town in Lebanon from which my grandparents came. My cousin names the place where our roots originate, hers and mine. We are branches on the same tree. The tip of her branch has touched heaven, and yet the sturdy tree with all of its branches ties us both to earth, to each other, and to that homeland so far away. It is the only sample of Marcia’s handwriting that I possess, making it seem as exotic as the place it describes. Next in the pile is my own handwriting on a note from teenage-me to my Aunt Lillie. The note was returned to me after Lillie’s death many years ago. The content recalls the weeks of a summer spent in my Aunt Lillie’s home. In a sweet, youthful penmanship, I see my self-conscious sixteen-year-old self, and I am reminded of the stresses and struggles of those teen years. The note is like a magical looking glass through which I can see the two of us sitting in the living room drinking Diet Pepsi, watching soap operas, Johnny Carson, and old Tammy movies. I find a short note from my father. The words are neatly printed in blue. The letters are all in caps: DEAR LIL...LOVE DAD. In the same envelope is an aged letter my father wrote to his mother when he was a teen. The letter is written in an unfamiliar, back-handed cursive. The contents and the signature assure me that the letter was written by my father, and yet it feels like the work of a stranger. It does not belong to MY DAD. This find reminds me that my father was a stranger to me and to himself for much of my life. There are a series of letters from my younger brother. Each recounts a different phase in his personal development as well as the nature of our bond. Each letter chronicles the dynamics in our changing family story. I gasp at how similar my brother’s handwriting is to that of my son. In the years since my brother’s early and unexpected death, more of him has emerged in my own child. I am reminded that the people we love come back to us in the most remarkable ways. There are so many other letters in the box, so many memories and pieces of myself and others. The news is a mixture of happy and sad. There is a letter from my other-mother, Jane, congratulating me on my engagement and offering motherly advice. There are notes from my artistic sister-in-law that contain photos of my niece and nephew. Letters from friends inform me of job losses, divorces and the deaths of parents and partners. A deeper pile chronicles my life as a mother and the growth of my children as their crude printing and misspellings morph into steady, fluid, adult script. Once again, I drink up all of the happy birthday and Mother’s Day wishes. Their great pride and their small, beaming faces return to me through this magic looking glass. The content of each card and note brings back the life I shared with others. The handwriting brings back the emotion. Something flowed through each writer’s hand, into the pen, onto the paper, and into my home and my heart like a long and precious thread. If I follow it, the thread will lead me back to them, from that long-ago place to wherever they are now, as though they have been hiding there, waiting for me to find them. We always assumed there would be more. More time. More mail. We did not anticipate the loss of familiar penmanship in a digital age. Life was full. We had no reason to imagine that days might come when we would hang onto our loved ones by a long and precious thread formed from the silk of their handwriting. On some ordinary day long ago, I opened my mailbox and found a card or a letter. As it sat on my desk, my nightstand, or my kitchen counter, I left it there. And then one day, for reasons unknown, instead of tossing it into the trashcan or the shredder, I moved the letter to a repository, a weary, sagging cardboard box on a shelf in my storage closet. The years passed, and with time and under the weight and pressures of life, as coal becomes diamonds, the mail turned to treasure, the handwriting to silk and a long and precious thread.
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In a year in which we have felt that everything we hold dear is in jeopardy, a final blow—we lost the man with all of the answers. Jeopardy! has been on the air since 1964 beginning as a daytime television show, but those first twenty years were just a warm-up for the real headliner, Alex Trebek, who stepped onto the set in 1984. Folks like Khloe Kardashian, Mark Zuckerberg, LeBron James, Mandy Moore, and Lindsey Vonn who were born in 1984 spent their entire lives with Alex Trebek. He was Jeopardy! Several generations have grown up or grown old with him in their living rooms each evening. Jeopardy! is the game that brought us all together. It was a TV trivial pursuit, but it didn’t feel trivial. We played along with those Jeopardy! contestants feeling scholarly and wise. Young and old, we shouted out answers. I knew my children were grown up when they became the ones with the correct responses. Unlike so many other contests in life, there were no losers on Jeopardy! It was an honor to play the game. To be chosen as a contestant elevated a person to the category of intellectual. For those of us playing from home, a single correct response gave us hope, elevating our own self-esteem. For those thirty minutes each evening, we experienced the power of engaged minds. There was nothing else in the universe. No worrying. No arguing. No ruminating. We played the game. This week, I have come to an aching acceptance of an empty chair in my living room. The game will go on, but there will always be someone missing. There will be dinner each evening, but no dessert. There was the game, and then there was Alex Trebek. He was handsome and recognizable at age 50 and still at age 80. Alex was a star in his own right, but not tabloid fodder. He was low key and projected a world that was better than we thought it could be. The most shocking thing he ever did was shave his mustache. He was not one to be outrageous for the purpose of seeking attention, but he was known for his sharp wit—even his humor was intelligent. He was a good sport and made an occasional appearance on Saturday Night Live and once traded places with Wheel of Fortune Host Pat Sajak as an April Fools Day joke. His gentle life was a lesson though he did not preach. We felt the lesson just as much as we could see it. He emanated decency and old-fashioned manners. Alex Trebek was smart, articulate, steady, graceful, and gracious. His presence was comforting and reassuring. A stickler for the rules, he was not a judge. If the clue was “Salt of the earth,” the correct response would be: “Who is Alex Trebek.” In spite of the popular advice to “find your passion,” we saw a man who had found his niche. He seemed to understand that life’s answers often come in the form of a question. Equipped with knowledge, a person can ask the right questions. As Jeopardy’s Executive Producer Mike Richards recently stated, Alex Trebek “made being smart cool.” A Holocaust survivor once told me that he looked forward to heaven because “that’s where all the answers will be.” I smile now as I recall those words that this week became a prophecy. Heaven is where all the answers will be. Alex Trebek will be our host. “I’ll take ‘Enlightenment’ for a $1,000, Alex.” our It has been a stressful week. Our citizen-selves seemed fully engaged. With all eyes on the presidential election results, it was difficult to get any shut-eye. We all rejoice when we our team wins, but every American can relate to the agony of defeat. Each of us has a history of disappointments, losses, and experiences that wound and hurt. For all of us, it begins in childhood, and we navigate those waters throughout our lives. No matter our age or accomplishments, a loss can makes us feel like that scolded child who could never do anything right in the eyes of his father, or like the rejected school girl who never got picked for the teams, or, perhaps, like the humiliated teen who wets his pants as he runs from a snarling dog while his friends stand on the sidewalk and laugh. We each have our defining stories. I can’t say we always get over them, but most of us get through them. Some keep reliving those experiences to feed their anger, hatred, and retaliation. Others become paralyzed with self-doubt, anxiety, and withdrawal. For most of us, the hurts eventually lead to insight, empathy, and resilience. Thankfully, most of us lick our wounds in private. Our losses are not on public display for the entire world to see and exploit for entertainment value. I have heard President Trump poke fun at empathy, and yet, I imagine he could use some today. The agony of defeat can cloud our thinking, but losing the game does not make us losers. Sometimes we have to put on our magnanimous hats to restore normalcy and reach for greatness. Each of us would like to be remembered not for those silly moments when we were real characters, but for the important moments when we revealed our real characters. Most of us survive our falls by getting up before the bus runs over us. Even with our legs broken, we eventually find a way to put our best foot forward and keep walking. As Dr. Claire Weekes once counseled an anxious client who was afraid to cross the street, “Even rubber legs will get you there.” That has been my mantra in the thirty years since I first read those words. I have tried many things in my life. None of them made me rich or famous. By objective assessments, many of them were failures. But all of them made me friends. That is the currency with which I measure my success, and friendship is the ointment that has healed all of my wounds. If you are suffering some agony, Dr. Weekes would say, “It is never too late to give yourself another chance.” * * * * Some other tips for coping with anxiety from Dr. Claire Weeks in Hope and Help for Your Nerves (1990):
I have failed the American people. It was not for a lack of trying. I sat on the couch with my eyes glued to the TV for 24 straight hours. Still, I could not bring in those election returns. Perhaps the Russians jammed my thought broadcasting network. Or maybe I toyed with the forces when I prayed that nothing would change while I ran to the bathroom. Or maybe after a day without a shower the forces abandoned me. Whatever… I decide to nudge things along. I make a cap out of tin foil and begin communing with the universe. Leave the house. That will do it! The minute I turn my eyes or divert my attention, there will be big news, and I will be the last to know--a sacrifice I am willing to make for the greater good. So, I shower and run a few errands. I leave my tin foil cap at home. Upon return to my apartment, I try to act casual. Despite my hungry obsession with the news, I hang up my sweater, blow my nose, and wash my hands. I preheat the oven in preparation for lunch. Then I nonchalantly walk to the TV remote and fire up my connection to the universe. The channel surfing begins...commercial…commercial…commercial. Good grief! More surfing and I hit on an update. In the hour and fifteen minutes that I have been away from my screen, Sharpiegate, and dead voters emerged. Initial election results in one critical state may not be known until November 12th. I groan. When will I cease to be surprised? We are living is the Age of Incredulous. No wonder Botox is big business—all those furrowed brows and slack jaws. Where’s my tin foil cap? Properly attired once again, I try to channel Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis out in the Fifth Dimension. “Incredulous to Aquarius. Over.” Nothing. “Incredulous to Aquarius. Over.” Still nothing. “Can you hear me, Aquarius? This is urgent!” I receive a crystal revelation, mental liberation. I grab a Sharpie and take notes: “harmony and understanding…sympathy and trust…no more falsehoods or derisions…then peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars…” Wow! This is big! “Incredulous to Aquarius: when? When can we expect this heavenly resolution to our earthly madness?” “When the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars. In the meantime, get off the couch and let the sunshine in.” “Copy that Aquarius. Copy that.” I know that we are all weary--weary of this pandemic and of politics. But we are so close to election day. Regardless of your political persuasion, please vote. Men and women have suffered beatings, incarceration, and death for the opportunity we have on Tuesday. Though it may not feel like it during this difficult time, we live inside the golden door. There are still so many places around the world where people have no voice, no power. I am re-posting a piece that ran months ago on this page. Let us celebrate our right to vote by remembering that very first time! Do you remember your first time? The passion of youth? Awakening to new feelings, a new type of energy? I was born in the late 1950s during a very proper time when girls who got pregnant disappeared without a trace. My youth was stained by tears following the assassination of a president. Later, everyone cried again as a man walked on the moon just as the slain, young president had predicted. As I grew into my teen years, propriety descended into chaos as the country became further embroiled in the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement. Some people gathered at peace rallies while others set fire to the streets. Love was free but people weren’t. Protesters shouted, “Down with the establishment!” It was an angry and contentious time. The women’s movement was picking up steam, and young women like me were reading Our Bodies Ourselves. Some of us were planning to marry right after high school graduation, but, for the first time, more of us were taking the SATs and thinking of college. As we tried to understand Watergate and the impeachment of a president, we also lived our high school years trying to understand a new lottery game in which there were no winners. I carried my transistor radio to school so my friends and I could hear the birth dates picked in the draft lottery. First prize was an all-expense-paid trip to Vietnam. The boys I knew were thinking of their futures. Many hoped it would not include Vietnam but maybe a union job at the steel mill where their fathers worked, or college—maybe even Ivy League. They grew their hair long. “Mercy,” grown-ups said. “What’s this world coming to?” I don’t recall adults really talking to us about issues of sex, self-protection, or any of the other important issues of the day. Children were seen and not heard. You went straight from that silent abyss into marriage, college, work, or war. There was a long list of don’ts,” but not much on “how to.” Some words were never uttered out loud, words like pregnant and cancer. Long before text messaging, adults described these conditions using acronyms like PG and CA. We had to learn from what we overheard and try to decipher the code. Despite all that, as teenagers do, we thought we knew everything, and we were passionate about what we did know. Prior to social media, we teens carried an invisible audience around in our heads, always seeking approval from those critical voices. And so that was the setting for my very first time. I faced it excited, passionate and involved even if a bit naïve. I tried to read up on it and get to know the person I chose. I was open about it and discussed it endlessly with my friends who were doing it, too. And so, on a pre-determined day, I looked into the eyes of my chosen one, and I saw myself reflected there--just as it should be. And then, I did it. I voted. For the first time, I elected a president. The entire process was exhilarating. Perhaps you have lost that lovin’ feeling since the very first time you voted. If so, I would recommend some love sonnets to get you back in the mood. Read The American Spirit by David McCullough. You will fall in love with America and democracy all over again. This time, when you decide to go for it, use protection—educate yourself. You’ll know he or she is the one if you can see yourself reflected in their eyes. |
AuthorLilli-ann Buffin Archives
April 2024
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