The partner question February 1, 2016

It has been a long time since I had a partner.  My husband Roy – Annie’s father - died eighteen and a half years ago, and though I dipped my toe into the dating scene and became close to someone in the interim, nothing took wings.  Logistics certainly got in the way: working full time in a fast-paced field combined with raising my daughter alone left almost no time to meet people, much less to forge the deep bond I would have liked. 

In truth, I was very hesitant to experiment with new relationships when I was raising Annie.  I had seen too many children whose affections were jerked around by a string of boyfriends or who were ignored or even abused by stepfathers.  I reasoned that Annie without a daddy, but with a fully engaged mom, was perhaps better off than Annie with a series of losses.  Sadly, I have come to question that decision many times in the past few years, as certainly Annie would have benefitted from the love of a father.  I failed to provide her with that.

Now that the high-pressure career is behind me, now that Annie has begun to settle into her own life and work, and now that I appreciate how much I need to attend to my own life, I have decided to revisit the partner question.  My young friend and colleague Laurie convinced me to try the online dating service OKCupid.  She also coached another colleague, Lindsey, who was getting a divorce, to do the same, and the three of us have been comparing notes in the process.  I think Lindsey will surely find a partner, as she has jumped in with great enthusiasm.  As for me, I’m just at the beginning, enjoying the journey a bit more than I thought I would, and finding the humor in our adventures.

The GCHQ Puzzle January 31, 2016

Sometime in December, I received an email from my friend Delia, who forwarded me a Christmas card in the form of a puzzle from Britain’s spy agency GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters).  The puzzle consisted of a grid with a series of numbers and one had to deduce the pattern it produced.  It was engaging and I sent it on to two friends of mine from Marin Oratorio, Julie and Mike, who I suspected would enjoy it too. 

It turns out, however, that the grid was just part 1 of a 5-part puzzle and that each subsequent part had multiple subparts.  I was clearly now out of my element, but fortunately Mike was in his!  He proved to be a good match for these geeky “spy guys”, because many of the puzzles involved computer codes and languages, Dr. Who, Lord of the Rings, John Le Carre, and some Harry Potter thrown into the mix – none of which I had read or knew anything about.  Mike and I egged each other on, but he is responsible for 95% of the success.  The deadline was today, and with a bit of cheating along the way (shall we call it reassurance?), we have made it to the end!  Now we need a new puzzle passion – any suggestions? 

The bucket list January 15, 2016

Two years have passed since Annie and I tramped in New Zealand.  It was that journey that compelled me to organize a bucket list, yet I’ve made only one dent in it so far: the French Open to watch Nadal.  Since then, I lost all track of the list in the midst of devastating family trauma, but now as we are healing, I am daring to pull it out once again.  The list is not impossibly long nor are the adventures overwhelmingly difficult, but each requires a bit of get up and go:  hiking in Iceland, a safari journey to the Olduvai Gorge and Serengeti, exploring Israel, Petra, and Turkey, trekking in Bhutan, bicycling in southeast Asia.  Well, one could go on and on. 

The new year rekindled my resolve, and I began with the top of my list: Machu Picchu.  Last week I booked a trip with REI for Annie and me to trek the Salkantay Trail next Christmas.  Now I am toying with a yoga-focused trip during the summer solstice in Reykjavik, and then there is ever-tantalizing RAGBRAI – the bicycle trip across Iowa.  My architecture teacher Bill does RAGBRAI every year and encouraged me to join in.  He commented, “It is the kind of thing where everybody is happy to be alive”. 

Music for a While November 19, 2015

In September, my energetic music teacher Trevor initiated an informal weekly session on composition, and my buddy Julie signed up for it.  Somehow, despite my taking three other classes, I got swept up into the fun, too.  Julie has now completed a lengthy theme and variations for piano, while I am still struggling with a few incredibly short vocal pieces, including, believe it or not, a Yogi Berra song cycle.  Actually, they are not horrible, but the process of working out the details on staff paper…well, tedious is the word.  Our works are going to be performed in two weeks!  As Yogi said, “When you see the fork in the road, take it.”  This was certainly a fork I did not see coming.

Sitting Still November 19, 2015

Following a surgery some dozen years ago, I stayed home for a few weeks to recuperate.  It was October.  I sat on the window seat in my living room, reading and just looking out over the neighborhood.  I was struck by the simplicity and the beauty of it all – leaves tumbling to the street, neighbors walking their dogs, birds flitting about the trees, the mail carrier hiking up and down our hill, the UPS delivery person just as the sun was setting.   And I thought to myself, “This must happen every day, but I never see it.”  A whole universe of routine and contentment within a few feet of my front door, and I always rushing too quickly to drink it in.

Today I scrapped my busy schedule to rest in my kitchen, write a few letters, and reflect on the past few months.  Sometimes, it seems, our most precious moments lie in just sitting still.

What comes in September 23, 2015

In my early days at UCSF, a bright and industrious young man named Scott joined our lab.  He worked as a technician for a year before continuing as a medical student and conducting his thesis research with me.  Scott was about to present his work at a meeting in San Antonio and we flew there together, sitting side-by-side.  He was studying for an exam, deep into memorization when I opined that it seemed likely that for every new fact that came in, an old one had to be dislodged.  He looked up at me seriously and said, “Turns out that’s not true.”

I’ve been reminded of this conversation during the past week as I’ve been trying to stuff my old brain with new information.  What a lot is getting shoved in there!  From Powhatan to Pontiac in Native American studies, from Timur to Taj in one architectural history class and Beaux Arts to Beardsley in another, who knows how much will stick, not to mention how much other stuff may fall out.  But I am indeed convinced that the net is still on the plus side.  Perhaps Scott was right.

Epiphany #3 August 31, 2015

I realized today (and you are saying, “You mean you just got that?”) that part of the reason I have so much trouble making decisions is that I attach such weight to them, as though there is one best solution and that I will only be content/successful/fulfilled (etc.) if I make the very best choice.  Much of this is learned behavior, as my parents were exceedingly cautious in many ways.  Some of it stems from the very real challenges of trying to build a career, to establish secure financial stability, to form and care for a family, to live in a safe and supportive environment.  It is a pattern I have established over a long lifetime.  And part of it is just who I am.

The corollary to this revelation is that now that I am retired, now that I have financial security, now that I realize I have no control over Annie, now that I have established a home in a part of the world that I love, how impactful can any of these small decisions that I grapple with truly be?  Whether I take this class or that, whether I sing with this group or that, I know that I will enjoy them all.  Sure, they will take me down different paths, but nothing really momentous is riding on the outcome.

Ha, let’s see how long that philosophy will stick!

Enough August 30, 2015

The bookstore in Point Reyes frequently hosts multi-week explorations of books that broadly fit into the realm of spirituality – slowing down, paying attention, living life more authentically – and though I don’t attend the workshops, I often buy a copy of the recommended book and read it on my own.  This weekend’s exploration was “A life of being, having, and doing enough” by Wayne Muller.  What a little gem, received at just the right time.  What is enough?  Why isn’t what we have right here, right now “enough”?  Why do we suffer from the feeling that we are never doing enough, contributing enough?  Muller’s short and engaging book, filled with eye-opening metaphors and parables, is just what I needed at this moment.

As it happens, a friend who now lives in Bangkok is visiting the Bay Area, and as we chatted about plans I had considered for this fall, she espoused the virtue of doing nothing.  I immediately protested that I wasn’t doing these things just to keep busy but that I genuinely enjoyed them and was enriched by them.  But something she said stuck:  "How would you know what the alternative would be like?  You have never tried it!" 

Just so.

Check-in August 30, 2015

The summer passed quickly enough, much of it spent in quiet resignation.  However, I did explore two new venues in the path of art and music, and both were well worth it.

First, I took a summer course at UC Berkeley, a “visual studies” class called Paint and Pixel taught by Katie Hawkinson.  My goal was to try my hand at graphic design and learn a little Photoshop and Illustrator in the process.  What a blast this was!  We designed posters and postage stamps and explored concepts through line and color.  It was so engaging and so satisfying to generate a design and have it printed within a short period of time.  Compare that to the protracted process of architecture, with its multi-dimensional plans, permits, and construction.

My second adventure was joining the Stanford Summer Chorus.  What a hoot this was!  Following only six rehearsals and one dress rehearsal, we found ourselves singing in the magnificent and resonant Memorial Church.  The program centered on the Earth, and in his kooky and wonderful way, the director Raf Ornes even had an earth quiz on our registration forms.  A geek after my heart.  I will plan singing with them next summer, too.

Recalling Passaggio August 29, 2015

Though my journey has been interrupted this year by a string of personal “challenges”, I do try to keep going.  This blog had been pushed to the back of my mind until last week when I received an email from a colleague in Michigan who recommended a subject for a genetics interview.  She and I exchanged a few additional emails as she considered whether she should keep working in the face of poor government funding for the sciences.  Her issue was the same as it is for many of us who love our work so much and wonder how we could be happy and fulfilled without it.  It was then that I remembered my blog, in particular an entry on February 15^th of this year, and I suggested she take a look at it.  She did!