Light on Writing

Every January for the past 17 years, my friend Mary Ellen has hosted a women’s luncheon in which she serves a luxuriously flavorful winter soup and a refrigerator full of champagne.

As guests, our task is to bring an appetizer and an object that represents the year that has just ended. The afternoon is spent in an adult version of “Show and Tell,” taking turns telling the stories attached to the items. I look forward to it every year and haven’t missed a one.

Over the years, I find myself forgetting many of the details of the women’s stories but remembering what they brought. I can still see the magnifying mirror brought by the woman who just turned 50 and remember the conversation we all had about the ravages of aging. I remember the basketball, soccer ball and baseball from the mother of three athletic sons and the look on her face as she recounted how many games she goes to every week. I see the photographs from the woman just back from Cuba and can recall the travel envy I felt then. And the Mary Oliver poem from the woman who had lost several friends that year still hangs heavy in my heart.

Some five or six years into this ritual, I recognized the value of keeping some kind of record my own luncheon artifacts. A large box is now filled with envelopes, marked by year, with the object or record of it inside.

What’s interesting is how quickly the sight of these reconjur the year in question.

Objects are potent. Work them into your life stories. Readers see them. They are concrete. Usually universally understood. They are a shorthand for much larger ideas. And they can provide a way to move time along without referring to literal time. Objects age. They show wear and tear. They can be refurbished, too.

They can provide metaphor possibilities and the chance to layer your personal stories with visual heft – important in a form reliant on memory and feeling.

I’ve been sending out print or electronic family new year’s greetings since 1992 when my youngest daughter reached her first birthday. Every year, I struggle with what to say. I have yet to get into the year-in-review highlights letter (but never say never I always say) so I usually stick with one or two lines.

Here are some examples:

In 2011, under a photo of my husband and two daughters standing in front of a range of Colorado mountains:

May you reach your mountaintop with views that take your breath away in the year to come.

In 2000, under a photo of my husband and two, much younger daughters, bundled up in winter coats in our backyard:

Hoping this season finds you – and keeps you – warm and cozy. ‘Til we see you again…

In 1995, the four of us in an apple orchard:

Wishing you all things colorful, juicy and ripe for the picking this holiday season…

You get the idea.

In each of these, the season, setting and/or  stray details steered the language to link the photograph to the wish.

To help the reader, see.

That’s what we want to do with our writing. Go from the abstract to the concrete and back to the abstract again.

Here’s what I mean by that: Wishing someone a happy new year is in some ways an abstract concept. In what way do you want them  to be happy? What could that look like? There are so many choices!

It’s more concrete to wish them the chance to “reach their mountaintop” or stay “warm and cozy” or the option to pick things “ripe and juicy.” But these are also images that are imbued with multiple meanings. Metaphor.

So think about the abstract-concrete-abstract idea when you are looking to layer your pieces. And let me know how it goes. I’d love to post examples in this space.

There’s a lot of talk these days about our over-reliance on technology.

But that crazy, twenty-minute rain storm last week and the scorching heat this week here in Chicago have got me thinking that each time we get bent out of shape over how tangled up we are in our electronic devices – the laws of nature always show up to straighten us out.

Because my home had power, mine was the go-to house last week. Neighbors charged their cell phones and laptops, stuffed our frig with milk and yogurt and our freezer with meats. One neighbor came over to blow dry her hair. Arranging this meant actual knocks on the front door and chats on the grassy lawn.

The storm had may have pulled up tree roots and taken down branches, but it also brought my block together like the backyard fence conversations of yore.

After the storm, when it started to get really hot, I was sitting outside and reading the newspaper on my smart phone when the screen beeped and went blank.  A warning message popped up saying that the phone would soon overheat. Those casings may appear to be indestructibly thick, but the heat of the sun wins over plastic and metal every time.  I went inside and read a book.

On the second evening of her darkened, post-storm quiet home, a colleague of mine  told me that she lit a few candles and sat quietly in her living room enjoying the silence. Her college-age daughter strolled in carrying her guitar and, without a word, started to play. They sat together like that for a long while. The other options for the evening, unavailable. A moment, she said, that would not have happened if the power had not been outed.

Before we could exit from the present moment by checking email, surfing the web or texting a friend at super fast speed, quiet moments of clarity could occur. My friend tells the story about how it took one of those moments for her to realize that the guy she was dating was the One. It was in the pre-cell phone 80s. They got their signals crossed and she went to his apartment while he went to hers to meet for dinner. Waiting for him in the front hall of his Chicago apartment building, my friend thought process went a little something like this:

Hmm, he’s not here. I hope nothing happened to him.

Then: hmmmm… something better not have happened to him.

And finally: Wow. I really really like him. I think I may even … love him!

Something similar was happening to him over at her apartment. They were engaged soon after that hallway epiphany and have been married ever since.

I’m not implying that this love story would never have come to a happy end if they had working cell phones in their hands. What I am suggesting is that without the option to plug in – the option that Mother Nature has recently been taking from us with these electrical outages – we have fewer moments like they did. Or like my colleague had sitting, lit by a candle, with her guitar-playing daughter. My phone refusing to provide me with the contents of the newspaper, forcing me to read a book. A neighbor blowing her hair dry in my upstairs bathroom.

We may be dependant on technology – addicted even – but summer rainstorms and excessive heat waves will keep us from completely losing ourselves in wire and metal.

When the relationship is over, where does the romantic love go? Does it disappear like ice in a glass or the bubbles in champagne?

Or does it hang in the air, nearby, waiting to bond you to someone new? Turn into something else like anger or sadness, run a triathlon or an overwhelming desire to clean your closets? Simply move on?

I know it’s the season of candy hearts and paper affirmations, but I’ve been thinking about the path of love undone because so many people close to me have recently become uncoupled. One minute the love is there  — it’s your organizing principle – and then, it isn’t. You don’t feel it anymore. She doesn’t feel it anymore. You both can’t do it anymore. You have gone from a fluttering heart to a sigh and a yawn. From 90 miles an hour to neutral. Where did it go?

I’m certainly not the first to ask.

Diana Ross had a burning love that came into her heart so tenderly that it stung like a bee.

A yearning, burning deep inside her that it hurts so bad, Baby, baby, where did the love go? Don’t you want me no more? It was the first of the Supreme singles to hit number one on the charts. So many of us could relate.

When people fall in love, a little universe is created. A system is made. Energy is exchanged. Love is the motor that keeps everything steady. And when it works, it works exceedingly well.

There’s a concept in physics called The Law of Conservation of Energy. Energy is defined as the ability for something to produce a change in itself or in the world around it. Like the energy between two people in love.

According to this theory, energy cannot be created or destroyed and can’t absorb more than it does to start. It just exists. It doesn’t go anywhere; it is simply conserved.

Energy conservation has three unique characteristics: potential, thermal or kinetic. Seems to me that we could borrow these and learn something interesting about the nature of lost love.

So this Valentines’ Day, if you are feeling the pain from the hole that a lost love made to your heart, consider that the love, aka, energy, you have expended is not wasted. The laws of the universe suggest that the energy you put into that love and that relationship have been banked. And after the name calling and angry letter writing and tear shedding, consider that you have energy that’s convertible into something useful. Useful to you, a little wiser. Potential to love again.  Heated up energy to try something entirely new.  Or the not-so-gentle kinetic push that sets you into motion.

Ellen Blum Barish. February 2011.

Ten years ago, in the midst of a financial belt tightening, I decided to give more of my money away. I know that sounds anti-intuitive, but it’s a longish story that you can read about in my essay collection, “Views from the Home Office Window” (http://www.ellenblumbarish.com/ellensbook.html – see the piece titled “Money in Sight.”) The gist was that by letting  a little of it go – not gripping onto it so tightly – I’d move money into the currency of daily life. Surprisingly good things began to happen.

It was a fruitful exercise because in the decade since, I’ve integrated giving into my monthly budget. I regularly donate to a number of health-related charities; public radio, environmental groups, the local high school and for natural disasters (which feels far too frequently lately, doesn’t it?).

Yet, since I’m writing checks or paying through my credit card, these contributions feel more like paying bills than making donations. Even though I’m technically doing something good for other people – or so I am hoping -  I’m far removed from the people who will actually benefit.

And this doesn’t feel quite right.

Recently a friend sent me a link to a newspaper story about a 63-year-old unemployed man who is giving $10 a day for a year. At this writing he still didn’t have a job, but getting out there has kept him from going nuts from his job hunt. But most importantly, he was feeling really good about the giving part. In one case,  $10 was just what one of his grantees needed to get a bus ticket for a  job in another city.

Two things strike me about this. One is the amount: Ten bucks isn’t so much really; but you’d be pretty happy to find an Alexander Hamilton on the street, right? And two: the human part. He only gave a sawbuck to folks he could see, right there in front of him – people he felt could really use it. Sure he could have written a check for $3650 to one charity in one swoop  – but, he wouldn’t have seen the faces of the folks on whom he made his small, but oh so impactful, impression.

Years ago, when I taught religious school at my synagogue, giving – tzedakah – was a primary curriculum subject. The 12^th century Jewish rabbi, physician and philosopher Maimonides wrote that there were eight levels of giving. The lowest of these is when someone gives after being asked or solicited, especially if the person does so unwillingly or begrudgingly. Of highest merit, is giving an interest-free gift or loan, finding someone a job or entering into a partnership.

In the eyes of Maimonides, the ladder of giving looks something like this (from least merit to best):

8. Giving begrudgingly and inadequately.

7. Giving adequately after being asked.

6. Giving before being asked.

5. Giving publicly to someone you don’t know.

4. Giving anonymously to someone you do know.

3. Giving anonymously to someone you don’t know by way of a trustworthy person or public fund.

2. Giving a grant to a person in need.

1. Giving an interest-free loan to a person in need.

Maimonides believed that any kind of giving is good. But there’s giving and there’s Giving. Isn’t there a difference between asking for something and having it slammed down in front of you with a miffed look than someone offering to a loan – or a grant – to help you start the business you’ve always wanted?

I suppose my desire to give to people whom I meet, personally, fits somewhere near the top of that list. Perhaps I’ve simply grown out of my regular spot nearer to #6 and #7 (though I mostly have to be reminded.) It no longer feels like do-gooding.

If you are like me, fixated on the flow of money, most of the time –  it might be more productive to find ways to give that feel like Giving. Fretting over it, keeps it in one pot. Giving a little, even just $10, benefits two instead of one. Isn’t that what money was made for: to circulate?

Friends:

Writing is not only a heady endeavor, but a whole-body experience. That’s what I found out when I took some time off from these regular blog entries in the fall of 2008.

At first I thought I was creating more time for my teaching, tutoring and coaching. And it did allow for that. It also allowed for a few radio essays. (Links are below.) But what I also discovered was that my hiatus provided necessary rest and  space for the fluids to fill my body back up, to replenish my writerly well if you will.  Time well spent.

March 2010 is the formal relaunch of this e-space, a Personal Space to which I invite you each month. If you would like to be on an e-mail link list, let me know and I’ll send you a link every 30 days or so. If not, visit when you can. And feel free to leave your thoughts, responses, ideas, inspirations as they come.

To having one’s own personal space in which to dream, mull and create.

Peace,

Ellen

“Staving Off the Darkness”

December 14, 2009

http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=38797

“Finding the Real Meaning of Passover”

April 8, 2009

http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=33372

Some Thoughts Inspired by Women’s History Month

In the 1970s — after hearing Gloria Steinem speak — my mother found the women’s movement. She used her newly discovered voice to tell my brother and I to heat up frozen dinners so that she could attend evening support meetings. Later, as a career consultant, she used her strengthened voice to encourage other women to find their way in the work world.

Yet she was still a product of the 40s and 50s, so when she hit face-to-face roadblocks in her professional or personal life, my mother would write a well-crafted letter or take a lady-like bow. She was always polite and well mannered; she never showed her anger. Like so many women of her generation, she wasn’t practiced in navigating waves.

As the daughter of a women’s libber who encouraged truth telling, I captured my burgeoning voice with poetry and journaling. Later I professionalized my inclination to write by earning a journalism degree.

Compared to my mother, I was more comfortable with uncomfortable and I could say so, face to face. But I had been raised to be a good girl, and so I was sure to do it nicely, not over the line into what seemed at the time to be aggressive.

And so, because one’s voice was valued for the females in my family, I encouraged my daughters to find and use theirs.

But it became clear -  early on -  that my daughters were already living in a new era.

As young as 10 and 14, my daughters not only spoke their truth, they felt entitled to it. They were comfortable calling adults by their first name. They made spontaneous speeches to a roomful of people without rehearsal or a script. They freely offered their opinions on world events and questioned teacher’s policies and school dictums.

They weren’t just pleased that you listened to them, they insisted upon it. And if their opinions happened to trample on someone else’s truth or feelings, well, then, so be it. Where being heard is concerned, they feared not. They could be brusque, and if they felt something strongly enough, bulldozers.

When my eldest daughter, now a college senior, invited me to see her in “The Vagina Monologues,” I saw how very large that gap between us was.” It was my virgin “Vagina” experience and weeks later, I’m still recovering.

There she was, my 21-year-old, in pillow-stuffed stretch pants and grapefruit-filled panty hose draped around her neck, hunched over a walker as a 72-year-old woman telling the story her first sexual experience. She was talking about … female ejaculation. I can’t believe I just wrote that. And how after she was shamed by the boy, she never went “down there” again.

And that was just my daughter’s monologue. Others covered orgasms and rape and torture. One opened her monologue with “I’m angry! I’m angry about my vagina!” Another played with the c— version of the v-word, loudly and proudly, a word that I grew up thinking was not so nice.

What a leap from my grandmother, a strong, opinionated woman who would bite her lip before saying something that might be considered rude or disrespectful.

March is Women’s History Month and I can’t help wondering how much of the feminist flame lit by their grandmother and carried through by their mother impacted who they have become. So much of their sense of womanhood has come from their time.  How can they possibly comprehend the enormity of the jump from my grandmother’s lip biting to opining on the workings of a female body part? How could they ever really know how it felt to be a woman before?

Witnessing and hearing my daughter speak these words so confidently, so publicly, was potent, radical and attitude altering.

I wonder if that’s what Gloria Steinem’s speech must have sounded like to my mother in the 70s.

The feminist flame is, after all, fire, which has the ability to be passed back and forth.

Ellen Blum Barish. Copyright March 2010.

Morticia and Gomez Addams

This month of red heart-covered cards, jewelry advertisements and overpriced dinner packages got me thinking about how love is represented in popular culture. Just looking at what we see on television alone, you might think that true love is relegated to the young, the dating or the newly married.

How often do we see examples of people who have been together a long time  – say 25 years or more -  who show signs that they are still noticeably in love?

I can think of a small handful examples from the television sitcom archives:

Morticia and Gomez Addams (The Addams Family).

Cliff and Clair Huxtable (The Cosby Show).

Eric and Annie Camden (Seventh Heaven).

These couples were gentle, at time romantic. They were respectful to one another and even the teasing was tender.

But it seems to me that there are more TV examples of sniping, battling, put-up-your-dukes older marriages.

Fred and Ethel Mertz (I Love Lucy).

Ralph and Alice Kramden (The Honeymooners).

George and Louise Jefferson (The Jeffersons).

Edith and Archie Bunker (All in the Family).

Frank and Estelle Constanza (Seinfeld).

The elder Barones (Everybody Loves Raymond).

Al and Peg Bundy (Married With Children).

These long-time marrieds do more putting down than putting up with.

Are TV portrayals of longtime love  few and far between because they aren’t funny or airbrushed enough for a sitcom, or is it that we have little faith in the lifespan of a marriage?

There is so much that we can learn from the longtime marrieds – the ones who have been through the ringer with one another. The ones who have suffered health challenges and financial ups and downs and lost loved ones. These are the people who can show us what real love looks like because they know it’s hard work. They also know that intimacy comes with an emotional cost, but that it is in and of itself worthwhile.

Marriage expert John Gottman, author of numerous books on long-term relationships, writes that happily married couples behave like good friends, which includes respect, affection and empathy. They recognize that conflict is inevitable, and that some problems never get solved or go away. But they don’t get gridlocked in their separate positions. Instead, they keep talking with each other, listen respectfully and they find compromises.

But somehow these characteristics pale in comparison to Sandra Day O’Connor’s story.

Did you hear her story? This former Supreme Court Justice retired from her post in 2005 to care for her husband who has Alzheimer’s disease. She was the first woman Supreme Court Justice and, like so many women, when it came down to family, she put them over her career.

But in the assisted living facility where her husband is cared for fulltime, John, who forgets about his relationship with his family members,  found companionship with a female resident. They have reportedly been seen holding hands even with wife Sandra present.

Heartbreaking for Sandra, right? But here’s what grabbed my attention. O’Connor has said that as challenging as this is for her, she’s just glad he has found some happiness.

Now that’s a real-life love story.

Where are the TV versions?

 “I suck,” said my teenage soccer player after a recent soccer game, even though her team won by five goals.

“No you don’t,” answered her former coach who was also her father. “You just didn’t show up today. You were a ghost out there.”

“Players have bad days,” she volleyed back, her voice starting to crack. “But I feel like I’m losing my skills.”

“You’ve got the skills, Jen,” my husband said, reassuringly. “It’s just that you didn’t tap into them today.”

It’s always been fascinating for me to listen in on the post-game conversations between my husband and youngest daughter. After I got over the fact that my opinion wasn’t valued (because, says Jenny, I’m not “into sports”), I’ve come to see these after-game talks as something she and her dad share together; something which is theirs alone. But also, these after-game analyses contain a good bit of wisdom about life.

A few for instances:

In the early days of her soccer career, Jenny felt that wins and losses rested on her shoulders alone. During those post-game chats, she and her dad talked about being part of a team. That no game was ever won by one member.

Later she discovered that in spite of her best efforts to set up a goal, her teammates will sometimes let her down and that she, too, might let her teammates down. But a player should take pride in the moves that make the difference.

Over the years, she and her dad have talked about everything from what to do about ball hogs, optimizing one’s strengths and that it’s not the number at the neck but the fit of the uniform that’s most important.

Now that she is in high school soccer, they’ve been talking about getting more aggressive. She’s up against tougher competition and she needs to take more chances and more risks.

My husband’s advice has moved into the mental game now. The conversation after her game went something like this:

“You need to show up, Jen. Not be afraid to go for it – to not be tentative,” my husband said. “You’ve got to make more contact with the ball, acting like it’s the last piece of pizza and you want it, bad!”

“I know, I know. I was having an off day. Can’t a player have an off day?”

“Sure,” said my husband, “but today was not about that. It’s about effort. Even if you don’t make the shot, it’s the fact that you hustle. If you are 100 percent there, it can make up for physical mistakes. Your head wasn’t in the game – you were distracted.”

“Yeah. I was. I want to do better next game,” she replied. When we returned home, Jenny headed for the backyard to work on her ball skills.

The playing fields were never really a place where I worked out life lessons. Nor were they a huge part of my older daughter’s life.

But I have found these field notes to be quite useful on my own playing field at work.

For example, the success of a work project isn’t mine alone to bear. With the publication work I do, there are many moving parts. I have to remind myself that it isn’t only the writing that makes a publication good but the editing, design and printing, too. The look and feel of the publication is about more than one contribution. And it doesn’t always turn out like I think it will.

I’ve also learned that there will always be people wanting to take credit for the good work that their colleagues did. It’s just the nature of politics in the workplace – human nature. The desire to be seen.

Perhaps most profoundly, I am seeing how much of real life is in the mental game. Once you develop your skills, it’s all about your attitude. Your approach and how you access these. What you bring with you to the field or your desk.

It won’t be entirely clear what lessons Jenny takes from the field to her life until she gets out into the world. I hope a few will stick to more than her cleats. At least one thing is certain: they weren’t lost on her mother.

This piece was originally published November 2007. 

When I caught sight of the newspaper ad for one of my favorite folk mandolin musicians scheduled to play with the classical bassist my husband David really likes at the pitch-perfect university auditorium near our home, I called for tickets right away. I nabbed them in spite of its not-so-great mid-week time slot.

It was just the outing we needed to break the monotony of the winter workweek routine. So when we took our seats in the upper balcony, I sat down in my seat with happy anticipation of several hours of beautiful musical escape.

Once the lights dimmed and the low buzz of voices quieted, the duo began to strum their stringed instruments.

A minute or two into the first piece, I first heard it: a rhythmic clicking. I looked immediately for a drummer lightly touching a wooden stick to a drum skin, but stage left and right showed no signs of a drummer.

The clicking continued without a break for some time until I glanced over at David who indicated that he was hearing it, too.

Where was it coming from? The well-crafted hall was designed for sound to bounce around, and that was exactly what it was doing. I craned my neck and squinted to the far back of the auditorium to see if a lighting system might be responsible. Nothing and nobody was back there. Maybe it was a heating issue — it was cold, after all, and furnaces across the Midwest were all on full blast.

I made a pathetic attempt to block the sound from my ears by pulling my coat collar up and slinking down a bit in my seat. After 10 minutes, I could stand it no longer. I whispered to David that I was going to get up and talk to an usher — that someone needed to do something. But he was one step ahead. The moment the next piece ended, he exited the aisle toward the usher, tapped her gently on the shoulder and pointed in my direction.

She nodded, looked my way, but quickly crinkled her brow. She couldn’t hear the sound from where she was standing, but headed out of the auditorium to talk to a building manager, or so I later learned. David took a seat at the end of the aisle, staking an easy getaway location if that’s ultimately what we needed to do.

Those minutes felt endless as I lost the ability to ignore the sound. I was getting angrier and started a rant in my head that went something like this: A rare night of music; we don’t do it often; just our luck that the night we choose to go, the most acoustically perfect venue in the area has a building malfunction and we are the only ones who seem to be hearing it.  If only it were rock and roll – I’d be dancing in my seat about now.

Finally, the usher returned and whispered something to David. He nodded and made his way back to our seats. When he sat down beside me, he leaned in and said, “There is an older fellow sitting in the row right behind us who is connected to a breathing device. We are hearing the sound of air being forced into his lungs.”

What that’s you say?

I didn’t have to twist my head back to look very far to see a man of about 75 sitting beside a boy of about 12 or 13 (his grandson?) with a tube attached to his nose and a tank beside him. They were there,  like we were, to enjoy an evening of luscious sounds.

After the show, David and I talked about how speedily we recovered from our private huff once we thought about how this man struggles for every breath and has every right to listen to this concert, too. I have to admit that I was still disappointed in the placement of our seats, but once I connected the sound to a person rather than a building, whatever was left of my own humanity clicked back into place.

How easy it is to jump head first into intolerance, personal comfort and entitlement. How hard it is to let them go. But once we do, then we might be able to sit back a little and enjoy the show.

Originally published by Adams Street Publishing, April 2007