Giving up sugar makes me positively blow a gasket. It’s not like I appear overweight, so to be denied sugar because of the results of blood work seems like a sneaky ploy on behalf of my body to remind me that not looking old doesn’t have anything to do with being old. Cutting sugar out of my diet, it turns out, does not increase my energy level in any measurable way. I’m down to one good hour a day. An hour I would prefer to enjoy hopped up on a sugar high.
Internet passwords have the power to reduce me to a state of sheer madness. There’s just no way I can remember them all. This means I have to change my passwords on a regular basis. However, some of the sites I visit won’t accept the same password more than ten times, and if I pick something that isn’t a repeat of one I’ve already used, then I can’t remember the new one. Sometimes, I can’t remember my user name, so I have to create new email accounts just to access those sites, and if I forget the passwords to those new email addresses, I’ll never get back into them, if I can even remember what these new email addresses are in the first place. Recently, I was forced to resort to calling my cell phone provider when I couldn’t remember how to access my online account. When the operator asks why I don’t know my user name, I give what will no doubt become my new go-to excuse: “I’m fifty.” She tells me she can’t accept my payment unless I produce the information I entered on their website, something I can’t even remember doing in the first place.
“Are you saying that random people call and want to pay phone bills that aren’t their own?”
“Yes,” she replies, just to piss me off further.
“Really,” I say. “How do I get someone to do that? Because that sounds fantastic. Until then, will you please, please, please take my fucking money!”
I keep trying to remind myself to write down all the sites and the codes, and I can’t remember to do that, either. I’ve also gone paperless with my bank and investment accounts, so if my memory diminishes even further, no one, including me or my family, who has no idea where I even do my banking, will ever gain access to these accounts. This might be the point of all the rules and regulations surrounding gaining access to your own accounts—it might be a vast conspiracy by the banking industry. How many abandoned accounts of mine might already be languishing in cyberspace?
And why? Why? Why, if I am one of your most treasured women friends, are you sending me emails that require me to foist unwanted emails on ten friends within thirty minutes? What kind of invitation demands a response that is divisible by two? Can’t we meet up so I can “sit at your table” in person? I’ll bring a bottle of rosé or white—no red wine, since you might have reflux as well. Emails that threaten retribution from one deity or another should I break the chain might one day make me go postal.* What kind of God is so micromanaging that he/she/it would count the number of times I forwarded something before granting me any kind of luck or blessing? What if I send said email to ten people but one of the addresses is outdated or it lands in someone’s spam folder? Do I still get the good karma I am due for my effort? Is this Internet God the same deity called upon to stop genocides and famine, or is there a subcontractor supreme being whose purview is solely cyberspace? Does the same God monitor the innumerable variety of email providers? Lord, that’s an expansive kingdom to rule over. I just lost an entire cluster of brain cells on that one.
That’s why I’m writing out a check for five hundred dollars that I can’t afford. Bradley mentions that the five hundred dollars really doesn’t begin to cover our teacher’s expenses, and besides, “Maybe you can’t afford not to take this course,” adds Bradley. I mentally add his name to my things-that-make-me-enraged list.
The first thing I learn is that I have neglected to bring the offering of flowers that are traditional in the presence of a Vedic yoga teacher. Luckily, our teacher, Thom, doesn’t blanche when I place a few daisies in front of him that I’ve rescued from the lobby trash can. Five hundred dollars and flowers? He’s not a cheap date.
He informs us that the practice we are about to learn is an ancient form that TM, Transcendental Meditation, is based on. Uh-oh. TM, don’t they advertise yogic flying? Red alert, red alert! Stay away from things that promote levitating. It also seems like yogic flying is like something you’d have to dress for, and I’m in my now-standard everyday wear—a wrap dress—so even flapping could prove embarrassing.
He promises that we’ll be able to reverse the aging process. I feel dubious about this claim until he adds that Mick Jagger practices this form of meditation. I only hope Mick Jagger paid more than the five hundred dollars I paid, as I’d hate to be subsidizing our teacher’s travel bill to and from Mick’s pad in London.
Our teacher tells us that meditating will help us stay in the present moment. The sign of not being in the present, he goes on, is when you find yourself rehearsing the future and reviewing the past. His voice interrupts my strategizing how I will tell my husband that our son’s braces aren’t covered by our new dental plan and a wave of remorse over a job I turned down more than a decade ago. Teach’s got me on that account.
He further explains that when we’re not able to access our brain’s full capacity our reactions become ingrained and we’re no longer innocent to experience. Uh-oh, this is a problem, because it’s not my first time at this dance. I’ve torn through yoga practices like others sample tapas. Is this endeavor destined to become just another one of my failed attempts? But when Thom says this form is purely a practical technique and we don’t need any special spirituality, that we need to “just do it,” I decide I’ll give it a shot. Twenty minutes a day, twice a day. I hunker down.
We close our eyes and I instantly know I’m great at this. I might be the best meditator in the world. Exactly three and one-half minutes have passed.
I close my eyes again, and the remaining seventeen minutes pass quickly. Thom congratulates us on having completed the first meditation of the rest of our lives; only 14,600 minutes of sitting to go this year.
The next day, after a brief distraction about how silly it is to spell “Tom” with an “h,” I complete my first sitting and I feel, if not the bliss that Thom promised, an immense amount of joy. I receive a group email asking me to join in an intercessory prayer circle and though the addresses are not even bcc’ed, I lightheartedly chuckle and delete it. After my second meditation that day, another email arrives informing me that one of the recipients of that very missive has enlisted her horses into prayer and do any of us realize just how powerful those horses are at helping manifest healing, and the meditation must be working, because I simply hit reply all, with the response “Neigh-be not, but keep it up!”
Mistakes were made. I try meditating in a variety of locales, even in the subways of NYC, until I run into a YouTube video of a rat crawling up the face of a sleeping man on the train.
Our teacher tells us our children will be so happy to see us so relaxed. Not my son.
“Are you going to kill me in my sleep, Mom?”
“No, I’m going to do it while you’re awake. Why would you ask me that?”
“It’s like you had a psychotic break. You’re so weird.”
“It’s called calm.”
“Well, you seem stoned!”
One month into the practice, I become convinced I have been given a bad mantra. Why didn’t I get a good one? If I were younger and cuter, Thom would have given me a better mantra. Why is mine so boring? He said there are a number of mantras, and he’s chosen the one that is best for each of us, but maybe there is just one and that’s why the gurus always insist you keep it a secret.
I keep at it, because with meditation when I am handed a flyer by a person in flip-flops and a T-shirt that reads I SEE DUMB PEOPLE outside a natural-foods store, I say, “Thanks.” I look down and see that it says “Hi, I’m David. I’d love to tell you about Herbalife supplements.” I politely return it.
“You’re missing an opportunity
to learn something.”
“I know.” I smile and keep walking.
Without meditation, I’d find it irresistible not to answer, Really? Really, you want to teach me something? You, who are a grown man who leaves the house in flip-flops and derivative T-shirts, want to tell me about becoming an Herbalife dealer? I’m in Bill Ackman’s camp, mister!* I’m not going to end up with bottles of pseudo-supplements rotting in my garage and knowingly enlist my friends in a scam just so I can earn a commission. No, thank you, I would rather be filleted than take your flyer! I still think this, but I don’t say it out loud. See why I need to sit every day?
Since then I’ve meditated while trapped in a car during a blizzard, in planes, in bathrooms, in a photo booth in a mall, and while having dental surgery. Closing my eyes and repeating my dreary mantra turns out to be as reliable an antidote to a Parent- Teacher Association treasurer’s report as I’ve yet to find. As it turns out, I am not the best meditator in the world; in fact, I suck at it. I don’t expect to ever get better at it, but I’m doing it anyway. Sucking is one of the unexpected gifts aging has given me. As a younger person I was a perfectionist. I was an inveterate cheater at anything that required patience, like board games, math and monogamy. There’s something wonderfully satisfying about acknowledging your mediocrity and still persevering, except in sudoku. I don’t understand sudoku. I never have, I never will, I can’t even look at it without getting a headache, and the fact that it’s been shown to ward off Alzheimer’s fills me with a fury that even meditation can’t cure.
Here is the inner monologue of the mediocre meditator:
Pablo Escobar. What ever happened to him, and what’s the name of that Latino actor who plays both drug lords and cops?
What time is it?
I can’t believe I bought a house that you can hear the freeway from even though it’s over a mile away. Damn it. Never buy a house without checking it out at night when the neighborhood is quiet.
Foot falling asleep. Again. What percentage of people meditating have a foot that falls asleep? A lot. A lot percent.
Neck is thrusting forward. Need to work on posture. I’ve got to hang on to every bit of my five foot four and three-quarters as long as I can. My grandmother Frances shrank to the size of a ladybug.
Buy calcium supplements. With magnesium for better absorption.
I wonder how many students at five hundred dollars a head Teach needs to rope in for him to relax during his meditation?
I love the weight of the cat sleeping on me. I miss my son sleeping on me. Scratching a cat’s head has been shown to produce alpha waves. I loved scratching my son’s head. I hope I didn’t cause his bald spot with my enthusiastic cradle cap-picking.
Why can’t I make chicken marsala? I should have a signature dish before I die. Even my mother, who rarely cooked, made a well-regarded beef wellington. If I could make a gluten-free beef wellington, I could open a food truck and corner the market on comfort food that has fallen out of fashion. We will need to serve chicken kiev, shrimp scampi and a tuna casserole topped with fried onions from a can. Must perfect recipe before son goes to college, because it’s not a signature dish unless you’ve made it for your kids.
Why did I only have one kid? Who will he be able to laugh about me with when I am gone? Need to do more embarrassing things in front of his friends to create shared memories for him. Try leaving door open when getting out of shower next time one of his friends comes over. No. That is wrong. Very wrong. Very icky. Don’t do that. Don’t think that. What time is it? Lord, how can twenty minutes pass so slowly?
Muffins are not cake. They’re round, and that’s totally different.
Very few things stand the test of time. Nothing I do will be remembered when I am dead. My son asked me who Marilyn Monroe was the other day. How many more minutes until I can Google pictures of her before her nose job? People always forget she had work done.
Only scientific inventions, Twinkies and Shakespeare have stood the test of time. I bet that actor whose name I can’t remember who plays drug kingpins trained in Shakespeare.
If I had thirty thousand dollars, I could build an extra bathroom.
How tiny are those tiny houses?
If my husband and I each had our own tiny house, we could have our own tiny bathrooms.
I don’t know what Susan Sarandon had done, but her neck looks fantastic.
I hope I don’t get a dowager’s hump.
If Suze Orman really does retire and goes sailing around the world, how many bathrooms will her boat have, and how tiny will they be?
Zucchini bread isn’t cake. It’s a loaf and that’s totally different.
Whose pink sock is that balled up in the corner and what am I supposed to do with it? My son loses so many socks and kids are always leaving single socks at our house, what am I supposed to do with them? Why can’t there be just one sock that everyone wears, like the Mao jacket for feet! The Universal Sock. Yes!
The Universal Sock will come in two colors, white and black. Surely we can all agree that socks don’t need to come in any other colors? If we need socks to express our individual flair, then we’ve got bigger problems, right? Isn’t that what beanies are for? And earrings? The sock will come in three fabrics: cashmere, wool and cotton. Sizes: small, medium and large. They will all look exactly the same so if you lose your job and need to downgrade, your old socks will still match any lesser socks you will purchase in the future. Totally egalitarian footwear. This will be a money saver, since you will need to purchase fewer socks as you will no doubt gain socks that are shed by kids and other houseguests. You’ll make better use of the socks you have as you fold together stray singletons. As the industry constricts, jobs will disappear, so we’ll create work for the unemployed collecting leftover colored socks to make into sweaters for the residents of Portland, clothing for dolls and leggings for cats. In the same way that people who don’t use the Internet will eventually die off, leaving a planet populated by humans who never have to wonder what people they went to high school with are having for dinner, most will forget there were any other socks and won’t miss them at all. Sure, in the distant future, bands of nonconformists determined to exercise their freedom to wear colorful socks will form a liberation movement: Free Our Colored Socks, FOCS, will become a rallying cry for the small population oppressed by the tyranny of dichromatic hosiery, but until then, we will be united and status equalized by our feet.
Miguel Sandoval! He was amazing in that movie about Pablo Escobar, Blow. Is it considered memory loss if you can eventually come up with the name you were trying to remember? What time is it?
Okay, it’s only been nineteen minutes but who’s counting? I’m just going to round up to twenty. Only 13,400-ish minutes of meditation to go this year.
I deserve some cake.
SANDWICHED
Dear God,
My sandwich is biting into me; isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?
I’m making a trip to Florida and it’s all because of the sandwich. Sandwich Generation, that is. That’s the label being given to those of us who are somewhere between boomer and Gen X who are hitting middle age and coping with declining parents while we’ve still got kids under our roofs. Every decision I make is an attempt to balance this equation. Do I squeeze out a contribution to my retirement account this year, help pay down some of my parents’ debts or keep my son from going full-on Steve Buscemi? Ultimately, I pony up for my son’s braces, because no matter what career path he takes, an exploding mouthful of teeth isn’t going to help him as he’s already made the fatal mistake of not having been born into the top 1 percent.*
At any given moment, one of my friends might be having a sandwich. We’ll be planning to get together for cocktails—after all, our kids are finally reaching the age when they should be able to spend an hour or two alone—when I’ll get a call. Ryan was trying to turn pa
per into parchment and almost burned the house down. We’re having a family meeting, wish us luck! Or, Mom fell and broke her hip. Or, Dad had a [fill in the blank with any number of ailments] and needs a [fill in the blank with any number of procedures] and I’m flying to [fill in the blank with any number of destinations], so let’s try again. How does four years from now work for you guys? If the NSA is wiretapping our phones, sadly the only pattern of note is how often the Mayo Clinic comes up in conversations.
We’re the meat. You want to get to the meat, but before you do, you have to chew through the bread. An indication of how much things have changed in the last few years is that I used to look forward to going to Miami for a very different kind of sandwich—a Cuban sandwich. Ham and slow-roasted pork smothered in melted cheese on grilled bread. At my age, I shouldn’t be indulging in this cholesterol festival, but I’ll need at least one of these to sustain me on this mission.
The timing is terrible. I don’t believe in any kind of universal law other than Randomness Happens, but it does seem like family emergencies, whopping credit card bills and bad skin always arrive at the worst possible moments. This is the second trip I will make to Florida this year. I was just there a few months ago.
The first emergency occurred before I’d had a chance to catch my breath after my son’s bar mitzvah. Planning and executing a bar mitzvah is never a walk in the park, but when you’re an atheist on a budget, you end up doing a lot of juggling.* There were several compelling reasons to have our son bar mitzvahed. Not only is it a time-honored tradition in our cultural, if not religious, heritage, but even more important our parents were getting so old that this could be one of the last big celebrations for their grandson they might be around to enjoy.
I See You Made an Effort: Compliments, Indignities, and Survival Stories from the Edge of 50 Page 15
