Epiphany, etc

Today is January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany, Twelfth Night, El Dia de los Reyes, Three Kings Day. In my junior English class today we read T.S. Eliot's "Journey of the Magi." I told my students a version of the Christmas story, which included Herod's Slaughter of the Innocents. As stories go, there's a poignant..."symmetry": the birth of a Savior (or a miraculous birth) juxtaposed with the murders of toddlers. "Journey of the Magi" is a tough poem. You look at that last stanza -- death, birth, death...."I should be glad of another death." Poor Wise Man. His life changed by that epiphany, and he can't go back to the old ways....and for that particular Magus and his companions, they couldn't know what was ahead. The Easter story offers rebirth, but that story hadn't happened (yet)for the Magi. Wisdom in the face of Mystery? The only wise thing to do is wonder, in all the ways that that word offers.

"Journey of the Magi" by T.S. Eliot

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,

Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;

With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,

And three trees on the low sky,

And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,

And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.



All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down

This set down
This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

Defending My Disease

While I was reading The Washington Post Book Review one Saturday afternoon in 2000, my hands started to tingle.. “Hm . . . weird" I thought, "isn’t that a symptom of a heart attack?” My inner judge piped up: “Only you, Jan, would think you were having a heart attack because you feel a little tingling . . . you're only forty-two."
*****
I had just completed my first of year of teaching after a hiatus of staying home with my kids through their pre-school years. At a graduation party that afternoon, I had eaten rich stuff -- buttery hors d’oeuvres and chocolate cake. Maybe I had overdone it.
When I heard the EMT folks at the door, I decided I had to get down the stairs by myself. I got out to the hallway and, feeling weak, started to crawl to the landing. At the landing, I sat down and descended the staircase by sitting, pulling myself forward, and sitting again.
“I’ll be all right,” I said to my children and managed a smile as I was wheeled out on the stretcher.
Lying in the back of the ambulance, I tried to figure out the driver’s route by counting the lights and paying attention to the swerves the vehicle made, and I thought to myself, “This is so stupid. I’m probably having a panic attack . .”
At the hospital, outfitted with a nitrogen patch, I started to feel better. Someone brought me a heated blanket. “This is like a spa,” I thought and fell asleep. The next morning I learned that I had had a heart attack, or what would have been a heart attack if I hadn’t gotten oxygen so quickly
In the hospital bed that afternoon I told myself, "You don't have to get up at any time tomorrow. You don't have to think about anything. All you're supposed to do is rest." I was tired, but I was happy. When I’d been this tired before, I knew that I would be expected to get up the next day and grade papers, drive my kids to lessons, fix supper, fold laundry. In the hospital, all anyone expected me to do was rest, eat, and submit to thermometers, needles, and tests.
The concern of family and friends, and even people we hardly knew, began to come in waves of kindness. People brought meals and sent flowers; they scooped up our children for whole afternoons; they did our grocery shopping, brought magazines, walked our dog . . .
Months later, as I recuperated, sometimes I thought, “Wow, in those years when the kids were so little and I was struggling with depression, I really could have used the lasagnas and casseroles, the cards and flowers and phone calls, the offers to baby sit.”
*****
Until recently, a depressive outlook seemed natural and normal to me. I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t depressed to some degree. Guilt motivated me. I thought self-effacement was attractive. Expecting the worst was my world view. I had interests -- reading, swimming, and singing -- but pleasing people and winning others’ affection was what really mattered.
I had been in therapy before I got married, and I started seeing a therapist again when I was pregnant with my second child. She began to train me to examine my negative and sweeping assumptions (“He never listens to me,” “Everyone thinks I’m too sensitive”). She gently suggested that I consider trying an antidepressant. I resisted, but I finally followed her advice. I had gotten to the point where I was thinking, all the time, of leaving my husband and children. I owed it to them to at least try the medication before I took such drastic action.
The difference pre- and post-medication was dramatic. Willpower or insightful talks with a therapist could not have effected this healing. I had been in therapy with three different people for five years before I tried medication, and the results had been unsatisfying. My vision was impaired by negativity and self-loathing. The sky might be blue, but I saw gray. A stranger might smile, and I assumed she was mocking me. “You look tired” might be an expression of concern, yet I heard it as a disparagement of my appearance. The medication enabled me to exchange the pair of old, dark eyeglasses for a new pair, through which I saw life with more clarity. I could see that good, as well as bad, was a part of reality. Kindness could be as real as cruelty. Joy could be as real and true as sorrow. During the time I was considering trying the medication, I asked a spiritual mentor for advice. She told me that she herself was taking anti-depressants, and then she said, “The crucifixion is only half the story. There was a resurrection, too, you know."
Because of the stigma of depression, I haven’t let people know that I suffer from it or that I’m on medication. I’ve heard too many people talk glibly about prozac as if it were a happy pill or the flavor of the month. A man I admired once said something like “Now we use chemicals as another form of dulling the pain, another form of denial.” So, I was the kind of person who didn't want to face reality? The problem was that I was too willing to face negative realities, and I was in denial about the reality of good things in my life. Before I used anti-depressants, I exaggerated dangers and slights. I was in denial about the reality that life isn’t just about pain.
The condition of depression isn’t recognized as warranting the same kind of help that a heart condition does. For a long time, I hardly believed myself that depression was a life-threatening disease. It took me years to justify seeking out therapy and then five more years to justify taking anti-depressants. On some level I thought it was my fault that I was depressed, or at least, it was my fault that I couldn’t pull myself out of the hole.
Not for a minute have I thought that I don’t need my beta blockers, ace inhibitors or cholesterol pills. No one expects me to just push through the heart weakness. The medications are there, and they make me better, less at risk for another heart attack. The anti-depressants make me better, but I have wondered if using them is a weakness in character.
Everyone knew about my hospitalization for a heart condition and, once they found out about it, they responded. Far fewer people knew I was depressed, but they, like me, didn’t treat it as a disease. It was, at best, a personality trait, at worst, a character flaw or failure of will.
When I had my heart attack, I didn’t feel the need to justify. No one judged me. Everyone accepted my fatigue. All the support and affection I could have wanted was provided. What’s more, I felt entitled to it. The heart condition was rewarded. The depression was hidden, and I felt judged whenever someone minimized the reality or effect of depression. Going back to work after my heart crisis was viewed as heroic, but the real heroism had been getting up every day when I was in the throes of self-disgust and pessimism.
The fear of judgment made me hide my depression and kept me from getting the help that I needed. After the close call with my heart, I saw how supportive people want to be. But people don’t always understand depression, and it can make them uncomfortable. They don’t know what to do to help, so they tend to say or do nothing. The silence reinforces the shame.
Many people have outed themselves as sufferers of depression or mental illness since I had that heart attack: Alma Powell, Jane Pauley, and William Styron were pioneers. There is still, though, some deep rooted belief that depression isn't quite a legitimate illness. Many years ago, I offered to talk about my experience with depression at an assembly at the school where I worked.
But I backed out.

Stealth Cool

I am claiming coinage of this expression before anyone else can.

I just used it in a facebook status. I wrote that to teach Abercrombie & Fitch a lesson about targeting an audience of young, skinny, rich buyers -- and thereby reinforcing a whole bunch of awful prejudices in our culture -- a bunch of us middle-aged women should go to A & F stores and look frumpy and hang out and hum "Peter, Paul, and Mary" songs. A friend commented and said, "And Mamas and Papas songs." But.

"The Mamas and the Papas" are stealth cool. That is, they are so cool that most people don't really know it. They fly, in their coolness, below the radar. I mean, really. Consider "Dream a Little Dream of Me," "I Call Your Name," "Creeque Alley."

With my penchant for lists, I might start a list of Stealth Cool things:

1. A beach shack on the WEST end of Long Island (as opposed to the Hamptons), aka, Oak Island
2. rotary phones
3. hand written, USPS delivered thank you notes
4. Hoboken
5. politeness
6. a body without any piercings

Now this is a post just BEGGING FOR COMMENTS. Add to the list....

Lists. Goals. Ugh.

I love to make lists.

It is three in the morning and I have just rearranged my blog. I have been attending to neglected responsibilities since my formal work at school ended two weeks ago: visiting my elderly, feisty mother in North Carolina, registering my scandalously long unregistered car, and having a routine medical procedure that shall go unnamed and kept me up all night so that I napped this afternoon and can't sleep now.

It's satisfying to have a list of goals that you can really, fully accomplish. You might not make your mother completely happy while you're there, but you can get to Winston-Salem and back; you can eventually leave the Registry of Motor Vehicles with Massachusetts license plates; you can emerge from the medical center with a piece of paper that says you got that screening you were supposed to get.

Unlike the list of goals I made at the beginning of the school year: to return papers more quickly; not to lose my temper; to be on time for class. The problem with those goals are that they aren't one time things. I have to achieve them over and over again. I'm bound to slip up. Failure is inevitable.

And then there are the goals that depend on other people. The vague goal to teach someone. Really? How do I ever cross that one off the list? " Teach my students." I'm counting on my memory working; I'm counting on developing a good rapport with a variety of kids; I'm counting on their brains working (their ability to read, to listen, to remember); I'm counting on them doing their homework; I'm counting on them listening.

Finally there are the two goals that cancel each other out: Care deeply. And -- Don't care so much. The thing that makes me a good teacher, when I am a good teacher, is the thing that makes me unhappy as a teacher. I invest a lot -- for whatever reasons, not all of them noble. I get frustrated when my students aren't invested or when others (students, parents, administrators, the world) don't appreciate my investment. Frustrated, unhappy teachers are not usually effective. But I don't know how to do a really good job without caring, and I don't know how to care without taking things personally. It's a pretty personal world.

"Live with contradictions" might need to be on the list. And it might never get crossed off.

What Romeo and Juliet Can Teach Me about The Boston Marathon Bombings

As someone who has been teaching high school English for over twenty years, I have taught Romeo and Juliet many times. I happen to be teaching it right now at a small school five miles away from the Boston Marathon finish line. Last weekend my eleventh grade students were supposed to be reading Act four, scene three.
Romeo and Juliet is helping me understand how an enlightened society might react to events like those that took place in Boston last week.

When we started the play I introduced my students to six lines that I wanted them to memorize by the end of our study:
For naught so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special good doth give;
Nor aught so good but, strained from that fair use,
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse.
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied,
And vice sometime by action dignified. (2.3.17-22)

It is a snatch of Friar Lawrence’s soliloquy just before Romeo tells him that he has fallen in love with Juliet. The friar is gathering herbs and musing on the presence of good and evil, on and in the earth and in plants and flowers. Like most priests in his time, he is one of the learned and scientific. He knows that, depending on their use, some plants and flowers can be medicinal or poisonous. He believes that there’s nothing so bad that it can’t produce something good, and there’s nothing so good that it can’t be twisted to a destructive use.

He is not talking only about weeds.

As people rejoice over the death of one young man and the capture of another, I am relieved that the Tsarnaeva brothers are no longer able to do harm, I grieve for their victims, and I trust our system to bring Dzhokhar to justice. I also imagine them sitting in classrooms not far from my own a few years ago. I see those young men as plants that were distilled into poison instead of medicine. They were strained from their fair use and stumbled on abuse.

I think of the incredible horror of the spray of nails and ball bearings on a beautiful Monday afternoon, and I try to see some action dignifying that horror. I see the flowering of some special good in marathon runners who ran to hospitals to donate blood and in first responders who dove into the danger to rescue others. There’s nothing so evil that it doesn’t reveal some human grace. Look for the helpers, Mister Rogers told us.

In Shakespeare’s tragedies, as in this one, there are many victims and no winners. His stage is full of dead and maimed bodies, weeping parents and friends. There is usually one sane voice to point out the pointlessness of violence. In Romeo and Juliet, the prince, who has lost two relatives, says: “All are punished.” No one wins.

Every time I teach Romeo and Juliet, someone asks me, “What was the feud between the Montagues and Capulets about?” It’s important that Shakespeare doesn’t tell us. Early in the play, the prince chastises the noble families for engaging in “three civil brawls bred of an airy word.” The brawls start over -- nothing.
If you look at the language in the fatal duel between Mercutio and Tybalt, you will see lots of anger. Romeo tries to break the cycle of vengeance, but both Mercutio and Tybalt are too worried about saving face, too drunk on the feeling of “Get him!” Mercutio calls Romeo’s peace-making overtures to Tybalt “calm, dishonourable, vile submission.” And, after Romeo kills Tybalt to show that he is, after all, a loyal (patriotic), brave Montague, he cries, “Oh, I am Fortune’s Fool!”

The feuds of this world – between families, countries, ideologues -- keep running on vengeance and anger. They carry the same tone of the Montague-Capulet enmity: “Get him! Destroy the ones who hurt and humiliated us!” Some of the language in the media in response to the capture of Dzhokhar Tsarvaeva is a lot like Mercutio and Tybalt’s. It is that tone, that compulsion to have the last word and to save face that contributes to the death of Mercutio, Tybalt, and eventually Romeo and Juliet.

The play ends with this speech by the prince. A lamentation, it promises justice, but it conveys no desire for more violence.
A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished:
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

I wish there were a Prince Escales, who would stand before us, strike the right note, and say “All are punished.”

Jimmy's Hat

I had the privilege of delivering a eulogy at my father's funeral last week. I had an impulse to wear one of his hats – a brown fedora. I don't know. I thought it would be a talisman or something. He always looked so dapper, and he was one of those people who can wear a hat and look good in it. I asked my step-mother if I could borrow one of Dad's hats for the funeral. She fetched his signature fedora from the front hall closet, I tried it on, and it was too small and slid up my head and looked ridiculous, so I thanked her, but no, it wouldn't work, I told her.

Then I decided to email my friend Jimmy. A couple of years ago I was at his house for dinner, and when I left, it was raining hard. He insisted on giving me a hat to wear since I didn't have one of my own or an umbrella. I got kind of lazy about returning the hat -- when I wore it, people would stop me on the street and say, "That's a great hat." After about a year, I brought it back to him. In some kind of mysterious, manipulative move, I left the house with not only the original hat, which was brown, but also one of Jimmy's black hats. The guilt eventually got to me. I found a hat store in Georgetown and I got the hat cleaned and blocked, and I returned it to Jimmy. My conscience was clear, plus I had a pretty cool, black hat.

But I hadn't brought it with me when I headed up to New York for my father's funeral. Jimmy was coming up a few days later. I emailed him and asked him to lend me a hat. "Black or brown?" he asked. "Either," I replied.


The day before the funeral I realized that a brown hat was what I associated with my father, not a black one. I texted Jimmy that morning, "If you're still at home, would you bring a brown hat? DON'T WORRY IF YOU'VE ALREADY LEFT." "Okay," he texted back.

That evening Jimmy walked into the funeral home with a big hatbox. He was grinning, and told me to make sure not to forget the medication he's also brought with him that he picked up from my pharmacist. During the course of the evening, my former husband (Jimmy's his best friend) told me that Jimmy was planning to give me the hat, but that it was supposed to be a surprise. I was touched, but I also felt slightly dirty, like I'd wheedled something out of someone.

The next day, I wore the beautiful, brown hat to the funeral and delivered my eulogy. Everyone loved the hat. It was perfect. It evoked the spirit of Dad. Later at the reception, Jimmy's wife, Lisa, said something to me about Jimmy having bought the hat for me. I was flabbergasted. This went beyond wheedling. This was like larceny.

Jimmy laughed and said, "I asked Lisa for her advice about whether to bring a black or brown hat, and she told me black. So I'm wearing this black hat up on the train, feeling like a damn funeral director or something, and then I get your text. So I get to my appointment and I ask where there's a hat store, and they say, 'You've got to go to Worth and Worth.' So I go there, and the guy shows me this hat and asks me if I want him to steam it. And I tell him it's not for me. 'You're buying a hat for someone else? Well, what's his size?' I answer, 'Well, I think she's about the same size as me.' So we find something that we think will work. I didn't want you to know I'd bought it because I didn't want you to feel guilty during the entire funeral."

So, that's the story of the hat. And now I have a hat.

Eulogy for my Father

ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S CHURCH, NEW YORK CITY, AUGUST 20, 2010

There is something powerful about looking out at this audience. Something holy. Here are people from the two different universes that Dad inhabited and that meant so much to him: The religious world and the world of advertising. Those worlds clashed, yet he was shaped by both worlds, and both worlds were mightily affected by him. I really think that often what people loved about him was the part of him that represented that other world. I imagine that people at Bethany Chapel loved him because he was so cool and sophisticated; with his long hair and his Peter, Paul and Mary records, and I also imagine that people at Young and Rubicam loved him because he was refreshing and had the courage of his convictions, could quote the Bible, and liked to sing hymns. He operated in these two different worlds with incredible ease and grace --- and he always created a parade of people who loved him and wanted to be with him. And, at the head of that parade, of course is the love of his life, Bernadette.

Dad in so many ways embodied contradictions. He was sophisticated and refined, but he also told gross jokes. He was tolerant and laid back, but he could be a perfectionist who went around straightening all the pictures hanging on one's wall. He was a man with whom you could feel instant intimacy, and yet there often seemed to be a part of him that was held back, mysterious, reserved, and unknowable.

In the last few days some people have written or called and said that Dad was their hero. He was easy to put on a pedestal, easy to idolize. The tasteful thing to say would be that he didn't like that, but I suspect he loved being adored. Even so, I think he would much rather that I talked about his heroes. They were often artists like Ray Charles, Graham Greene, Alan Paton. People who spoke hard truths and saw the messiness of being human. Dad was deeply human and deeply in love with humanity and human-ness. He had great compassion for people who got themselves into messes.

But the two heroes I think Dad would most want me to talk about are lesser known: Henry Hart, who sadly died a few years ago, and Sam Fink, who I hope was able to make it here today. Dad had known Henry Hart since the late 50's when Henry joined the youth group that Mom and Dad welcomed into their home every Sunday. Henry suffered from arthritis almost all his life. Dad often talked about how Henry endured the pain silently and cheerfully and gratefully. Sam Fink exemplifies for Dad authenticity, creative energy, and delightedness. What Dad loved in both of these men was kindness and humility. I think he saw kindness and humility as the same thing. All I know – and this is really the main thing he taught us – is that you could have all the money, power, talent, good looks in the world, but if you couldn't be courteous to a cab driver or a waiter or a kid, you were – in Dad's eyes -- …. a loser.

As I said, Dad had compassion for people who screwed up. One of my most enduring memories involves Dad, Georgie, and a couple of neighborhood friends, Pauly Richards and Mike Kulsha, I think. He took us to a football game, and Pauly and Mike tried to sneak in without paying admission. Dad, who was scrupulous about money, saw this and called them back to him. But he didn’t scold them. Without comment, he simply paid for them and then sent them on their way to enjoy the game. I was outraged. Daddy PAID for them? You mean these guys weren't going to get in trouble? I had been getting all excited about the prospect of their getting yelled at.
But this is one of the most beautiful things about my father. He took no pleasure in seeing people screw up or in catching them doing something wrong. He really enjoyed seeing people be their best selves, and what he wanted to do was enable them to be their best selves.

When my rage subsided after the Pauly and Mike incident, a little voice inside me said, "I want to be like that. I want to be the guy who pays for somebody's admission rather than the guy who yells at the person who snuck in."

I'm going to leave you with an image of my father that goes beyond words and thoughts. When I asked my sister what she might want communicated in this eulogy, she mentioned the same memory I'd been thinking of. When we were little we would run down to the end of our block at about six o'clock to meet Dad coming home from the train station and a day at work. Mom wouldn't allow us to go beyond the intersection of Maple Avenue and North Street until Dad came into our view, and then we could go further down Maple Avenue to join him. Joy remembers his stride being so long that she couldn't keep up with him. I remember running to him, hugging him and breathing in that unique smell of his suit and the smoke from the smoking car that clung to it. Over the years that scent has come back to me as vividly as anything I have ever smelled, and it evokes for me the pure delight of a child who knows that she is cherished. Of all his talents he was best at doing that. Jack Sidebotham knew how to cherish people.