This changes everything July 16, 2021

I got the job. The one teaching at a local high school. Not just any local high school, but the one my daughter attended. The only school in the US to be located in a National Park, and a school with Buddhist precepts, at that. 

Kindly, the associate head of school reached out to me the day before my decision was due to address any concerns I might have. My biggest issue: I wanted to work part-time, specifically, I wanted to teach only Bio 2. I knew that it would be a challenge to adjust to high school teaching, especially at a progressive school, and I wanted to do a good job while still having some freedom. After all, I’ve just turned 68, for God’s sake! 

You could have knocked my socks off (if I wore any), but she found someone to teach the two sections of regular Bio. She asked if I’d like to be the sponsor for the Science Club – are you kidding me? Of course.

What a turn-around this job offer has given me. I feel as though I have a structure and a challenge going forward; I might even have a purpose. I will make some new friends. 

The spillover to the rest of my life has been remarkable. I don’t think it’s just being vaccinated against COVID or seeing my daughter more often that has put a spring in my step. I think it’s knowing there is something that needs me in the near future. 

Max Cowan, the late and exacting vice-president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, seemed to have a fondness for me, possibly because he knew my late husband. He once told me that in life one needs someone to love, something to do, and something to look forward to. I am still missing the partner, but I suddenly feel less lonely because I feel less despair. I have something to do and something to look forward to. Two out of three ain’t bad.

The home stretch June 20, 2021

Last August I wrote about my 101 Books Project, and I am now on the home stretch. It looks like I will have completed my goal of reading Yann Martel’s 101 recommendations to a Prime Minister within the year. Excepting those books that I couldn’t find at a local library or cheaply online - about a dozen - or those that I had already read and chose not to re-read - another dozen or so -, I will have polished off the remaining few within the week. They are pretty short, and I have nothing else to do. 

I am already sad that this journey is ending. Just within the last few weeks, the books I’ve devoured are explosions of creativity and meaning: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Solzhenitsyn, Chess Story by Stefan Zweig, and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. Added to that were three captivating plays, Caligula by Camus, Six Characters in Search of an Author by Pirandello, and Scorched by Wajdi Mouawad, and one quirky “novel in verse”, Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson. 

Yet, how I wish that another person would have been game for this literary adventure and savored these books with me. Somewhat understandably, my friends and family pooh-poohed the idea of plowing through someone else’s list of recommendations, but for me, during COVID especially, Martel’s guidance was a godsend. 

One never knows the impact one might have on another, so thank you, Yann Martel for reaching out from Saskatoon to Point Reyes Station. You may not have made a dent on the Prime Minister, but you’ve led me on a book odyssey, and I’m all the better for it.

To Teach June 16, 2021

Following the ordeal of architecture school, I intended to take off six months to recover my energy and to chart a course for my future, presumably one that involved an actual job in architecture. But the advent of COVID and its staying power edged me into a suspended state of inaction. 

I used the lull to reflect on the arc of my life and how I might best and productively employ whatever time I have left. I started to notice that my intellectual interest still lay in science, not architecture. I came to appreciate what a uniquely good fit science was for me and considered how I might exploit my expertise. More and more, teaching high school science or math emerged as a path forward, and I applied for a few positions in private schools (as public schools require a teaching credential). 

I was drawn to high-school teaching as a job worthy of my diminishing time. I remember one of my daughter’s elementary school teachers passing away (after 23 years on the job) and thinking to myself, “That was a life worth living.” During my stint as an interviews editor, I noticed a recurring theme of my interviewees, namely, the influence of a high school science teacher. I, too, had been strongly supported by two outstanding math teachers. 

Luckily, this spring I was offered the chance to help out with the science curriculum in a local high school, and I grabbed it. It was indeed as good as I had hoped for, with friendly and encouraging colleagues, students alert and ready for business, and my own mind stimulated. Coincidentally, one of the biology teachers opted not to return for the fall, and suddenly there was a real possibility of joining the faculty, including the opportunity to develop my own curriculum in advanced biology. Stay tuned.

Blind on one side, deaf on the other April 12, 2021

Yesterday I made it to the front of the serpentine, single-file line at the neighborhood Whole Foods when the man behind me started yelling and gesticulating. “The cashier up there is waiting for you!” he vented in a Scottish accent. “What, where?” I asked, ashamed that I had missed whatever visual or acoustic signals the clerk had sent. Even though I was on alert, I simply didn’t catch on. 

It was an old-lady mistake, one I pride myself in not making, but the aging body is starting to let me down. My vision is cloudy as a cataract obscures my right eye, and my hearing is impaired from repeated damage to the left ear. I’m just not ready to commit to lens replacement or a hearing aide, but I see it is folly to ignore the problems. 

The experience was yet another sign that I am not as equipped for even the little things in life as I once was. My decline has been haunting me for the past few weeks as I have been helping out at a local high-school, where diffident students struggle to communicate with me, their masks muffling their sound and depriving me of the visual backup of lip-reading. 

I have become my father, in fact. He was blind in one eye and deaf in the opposite ear. I can see now how these deteriorations, though neither painful nor life-threatening, can erode self-confidence and eat away at connection.

One year out March 7, 2021

On the Friday evening of March 6, 2020, I went to hear Mahler’s 6th at the San Francisco Symphony. I sat in my usual Terrace perch, peering down upon our conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, feeling almost like a part of the orchestra. But this was no ordinary night out - it was the last night out. 

By the time I came home, an email was waiting for me: the Symphony would be shuttered for the remainder of the season and their tour was cancelled.  A similar notice from the San Francisco Ballet arrived, too. Within a day or two, everyone over 65 was advised to stay home. And so it began, this year of isolation and tragedy. 

None of us could have imagined that COVID would drag on for so long, and yet it has. When the “new normal” began, I really had only one goal in mind, and it wasn’t the one you’d think. Sure, I didn’t want to get COVID; like everyone else in San Francisco, I wore a mask and hunkered down, limited myself to lonely walks, lunch in the backyard, and the occasional visit to the grocery store. Given my precautions and my privilege (good health, a stable home, food security, and a major medical center just up the street), it seemed unlikely that I might die of the disease. 

No, my big concern was how I would survive the months ahead without falling into a major depression. Depression has engulfed me at least four times in my life, and it can take years to climb back out. So it was no small worry on my part. And yet, by letting go of any expectations, by slowing down to a lazy retired woman’s pace, by just putting one foot before another each day, I somehow made it. And though I was incredibly lonely, I didn’t make it all on my own. It really did take a village. 

So thank you Annie and Jordan for our holidays together. Thank you Laura and Kathy for our weekly walks. Thank you Sue for our art projects 6000 miles apart, and thank you Gail for those closer by. Thank you Jeannette and Yang and Kevin for weekends together, yet at a distance. Thank you Caroline and Ari and Cypress for short visits to Pi. Thank you ZOOM for book clubs and conversations, and thank you family and friends for keeping in touch. Thank you Pogo for trusting me with the last few months of your life. Thank you Trader Joes for your efficient and thoughtful service. Thank you supporters of trails and parks for allowing me to dip into nature. Thank you puzzle makers at the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and “Out of Left Field”, and thank you Mike for our thrice-weekly puzzle discussions. Thank you Yann Martel for your inspirational book on reading and the many authors I’ve explored this year. Thank you Point Reyes Yoga – Amanda and Nick, Katie, Devi, Mary, Maile, and Maya –  (and Wendy, too) for our daily practice. Thank you Marin County Library and local librarians for delivering book upon book upon book upon book. Thank you Netflix and Amazon for binge watching. Thank you Coursera for free online courses.  Thank you PBS Newshour for proffering hope that rational minds still inhabit our country. Thank you UCSF for weekly Grand Rounds and vaccine delivery. Thank you first responders of all sorts for fire control and medical assistance. Thank you New York Times delivery person. Thank you John and Anna and Juana for looking after my home in San Francisco. Thank you Spirit Rock and Zen Center for wisdom and resources. Thank you Bovine Bakery for bear claws. Thank you San Francisco Bach Choir for our weekly rehearsals and outreach. Thank you Julia Nielsen and delightful Co-Vo sessions. Together, you have made it possible for me to survive this year.

Meditations November 20, 2020

I have just finished reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, part of my self-imposed 101 books project.  I had purchased a copy a few years ago, based on the recommendation of my friend Carl, but I couldn’t get into it at the time.  Now, with nothing but time, I decided to dig in again, and what a goldmine it is!

Marcus Aurelius was considered one of the greatest Roman Emperors, but he was also a philosopher in the Stoic school. Meditations are his musings to himself, written in Greek, often while on a campaign in the dying days of Pax Romana.  Marcus continuously challenges himself on how to be a better man, a question that all leaders, and indeed all people, should explore.

What struck me is the similarity between Marcus’ principles and Buddhist dharma.  

Let’s begin with “everything changes”.  Marcus returns to this theme again and again, embracing change as part of nature and accepting death.  He goes even one step further, reiterating that as we are tiny specks in the continuum of time, it matters not whether we live one year or a hundred, because we will still be dead in the end and ultimately fall into obscurity.  (Of course, he didn’t!)

To this point, he invites us to imagine that we are now deceased and to view all our subsequent days as a gift to live in accordance with nature.  Given that life is brief, there is also an urgency; he says, “While you live, while you can, become good,” and “Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last.”  Since life can be interrupted at anytime, we must live in a continual act of goodness.

Marcus uses a story to illustrate his point: To the actor who is dismissed from the stage and complains, “But I have not played my five acts, only three,” he responds, “True, but in life three acts can be the whole play.” 

Not only is life transient, so too are the stages of life, and we must accept that. “Only a madman looks for figs in winter: just as mad to hope for a child when the time of this gift is past.” 

Like the Buddha, Marcus talks about the need for a steadfast mind.  Retreat into yourself, he advises, as it is always available to you. (I swear I can feel him meditating!)  He refers to hindrances of the mind, that anxieties come only from internal judgments. To Marcus, life is a continual process of honing the mind.  He advises us to “See things for what they are.”  And he adds an extra perspective, that humans uniquely benefit from a rational mind, so we must follow reason in all things. (Leaders, are you listening?)

Another repeated theme is the harmony of nature and the existence of a world order, that everything is connected and that one must always consider the common good.  “What does not benefit the hive does not benefit the bee either.”

So much of Marcus’ Meditations is right out of the Eightfold Path playbook.  He talks about “right” acts and “right” path.  “If it is not right, don’t do it. If it is not true, don’t say it.”

And though it is the first of his twelve “books” that comprise Meditations, I will close with a recommendation to read his treatise on gratitude, a catalog of people who have influenced him throughout his life and why.  It is a moving reflection of the people who have made him him.  One of these days – soon – I will endeavor to take stock in the same manner and commit to paper my gratitude for the scores of people who have threaded their way into the fabric of my life and made it all the richer.

Reflections on a childhood November 7, 2020

This year, COVID has shattered lives for people all across the planet.  I was thinking the other day about the particular long-term repercussions for our children, who can no longer play with friends or participate in classroom learning.  Some of these children will have lost parents, aunts and uncles, or beloved grandparents to the disease.  Some will be victims of physical, psychological, or sexual abuse at the hands of their family members.  For many, whose parents have lost their jobs and source of income, there may be food insecurity and the threat of homelessness.  Surely most children have also internalized the fear of either contracting or spreading the disease, with constant mask-wearing and incessant hand-washing.  

This pandemic will be one of the defining features of their childhood, a time when the world stopped functioning, when stress soared, when existence seemed fragile.  And what of the murder of young black men and women at the hands of police?  Or the terror wrought by armed vigilantes and white supremacists, egged on by presidential provocation and rhetoric?  Or the threat of evacuation due to fires or hurricanes? Or even the threat to the rule of law and democracy in our country?  Surely our children sense that, too.

These ruminations led me to reflect on my own childhood and how incredibly safe it felt in comparison.  Yes, we boomers grew up with a lot of bad stuff: the continual threat of a nuclear war, the Cuban missile crisis, assassinations of three beloved leaders, and the Vietnam War, not to mention racial violence.  As kids, we saw all this on the nightly news, with Walter Cronkite or David Brinkley on a black-and-white TV.

But the truth is that my own childhood - as a white girl growing up in a middle class family in a small industrial town in southeastern Pennsylvania  - was incredibly stable.  I lived in the same house during my entire childhood, and I went to the same neighborhood schools from kindergarten through 12th grade.  My parents were kind to each other and never spoke harshly to us kids.  They never abused drugs or alcohol. They budgeted and saved their money.  My father had a good job as a structural engineer with Bethlehem Steel Corporation; my mother ran the household.  To my knowledge they never cheated on each other, and they stayed together for five decades until my mother passed away. 

I’m not saying it was a perfect existence.  It was a bit boring, one-dimensional, and far too conservative.  I always knew I wanted to fledge.

But last week I came to appreciate how very safe and secure I felt in my home with my family, in my particular neighborhood, in the United States, at that moment in time.  I am so very grateful for this childhood.  For me, on reflection, that stability is the foundation for all I have become.  Would that every child throughout the world could have the same.  

Wednesday night November 7, 2020

I hadn’t realized how stressful these past years had been until I crept under my covers on Wednesday night.  It was little more than 24 hours after the polls closed and election data were slowly dripping in, but I was confident that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would emerge as the winners.  Data from Nevada and Arizona were looking good and their full count would surely push him over the top to 270.  Many votes from the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh areas were still waiting to be entered in Pennsylvania, and Georgia was still too close to call.  There, Stacy Abrams had worked her magic and the two Senate races would move to a run-off in January, determining the fate of the Senate.  

For four years our country has lived under the boot of a madman.  Our current president lacks the bandwidth, the curiosity, the introspection, the consistency, and the empathy required for leadership of a nation born of revolution for democracy.  We have lived on the cusp of fascism, as more and more governmental officials have bent to his will and the ugliness of hate and violence has been given free rein.

On Wednesday night, I exhaled.  I felt the coolness of my pillow and the breeze through the open window, the firmness of my mattress, the quiet of the night. I started to feel safe once again.

The 101 Books Project August 3, 2020

Several years ago, I purchased a book entitled 101 Letters to a Prime Minister by Canadian author Yann Martel.  Martel had gained fame with Life of Pi; with Letters he turned his attention to Stephen Harper, who was Prime Minister at the time of its writing.  Every two weeks, Martel sent Harper, an anti-intellectual in the vein of our current President, a short work of great literature along with a letter of recommendation for it.

“One of these days,” I thought to myself when I perused Martel’s pages, “I am going to read all of these.”

That day has come.  What better time to delve into a book project than when one is stranded by COVID?  I have nothing if not time these days – no job, no family living nearby, no destinations.  So in late-June, after our public library opened up for curbside pickup, I launched into the COVID reading project.

To date, I’ve read 20 of Martel’s recommendations, not counting the ones I had read in the past.  What I like about this process is that I’ve committed to reading all of them, regardless of whether I think I will like them in advance.  This isn’t the usual way I would select a book (more on that another time, perhaps), but it has the virtue that it is opening my eyes to new authors, approaches, and ideas.  Also, since the books are generally short, reading each one isn’t a huge investment in time if it fails to excite. 

And what a rich collection it is!  Martel’s commentary tells me why he chose the book and what to look out for, and this is all part of the adventure. I know that you might not want to take on this kind of a crazy challenge, so I’ll recommend a few to you:  Bonjour Tristesse by Francois Sagan, Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Cellist of Sarajevo, by Steven Galloway.  There were books I somehow had missed in school, like To Kill a Mockingbird (what a great read!), or somehow avoided because they just seemed too out-there (Kafka’s Metamorphosis or Becket’s Waiting for Godot).  It’s quite a literary marathon, and I wish there were someone doing it with me.  Any takers?

Athena to the Rescue June 13, 2020

In a previous post, I alluded to a book entitled “Goddesses in Every Woman” by Jean Shinoda Bolen.  I discovered it on my daughter’s bookshelf while prowling around for something to read.  After my “well-being” course and after spending some time trying to make sense of the enneagram, I was intrigued by the idea of archetypes and what makes each of us tick.  I was starting to appreciate how very different we all are from each other in terms of our motivations and what brings meaning to our lives. This realization was beginning to have a deep effect on me and on my relationships with those closest to me.

Bolen explores seven Greek goddesses, and I immediately saw my reflection in Athena.  Athena, who sprang fully formed from the head of Zeus, knows what she wants, and she knows what other people want – or should want – and dons her amour, ready to assist.  She is the ultimate strategist, a force to be reckoned with.

I hadn’t realized I was so Athena-like, but certainly people around me can see it.  My friend Yang commented on a hike recently that I’ll never be happy until my daughter Annie finishes college or my friend Jeannette finishes her will.  These are no wispy wishes on my part; I inflate myself with the wind of logic and try to breathe sense and motion into family and friends.

Now that I recognize Athena, I see her in so many of my interactions. Injustice? Let me help you!  Can’t decide about a retirement community? Let’s sit down with a cup of tea.  Painting your house? Here’s a palette that would look nice.  You voted Republican?  I will lead you out of the dark side.

I am comfortable being an Athena, but I wish I could invoke her for myself.  I need someone fearless at my side to guide me in making decisions.  But I have to say, once I pick up that spear and shield and don that helmet, I do know how to fight for myself.