Marilyn and Caroline

For weeks now I’ve been thinking about our Marilyn, practically the founder of that group of people for whom no last name is necessary.  Today she will have been dead for 50 years. As everyone seems to know by now, she was just 36 when they found her sprawled across her bed, the phone under her hand..For weeks I have also been thinking about writer Caroline Knapp, who as of this summer has been dead for ten years. She was just 42 when she succumbed to a very aggressive form of lung cancer: diagnosed in April, gone in June.But I remember so vividly the day they found Marilyn’s body. I remember so clearly looking down at my own changing body and thinking, "How did all THIS get here?" It was a bewildering new world all right; having guys fake-sighing and then laughing when I passed in the corridors. I suddenly had a boyfriend too, young as I was. He was blond with perfect ears and just 5 foot 2, my same height at the time. I liked that we were small like that. It made the whole boyfriend girlfriend thing so much less scary. It made us seem to me like children still, which of course we were.Children.Innocents.This boy and I were together the day the news broke about Marilyn’s death and it chilled me to my core, I think because even at that young age I saw in her something familiar, naïve way of pleasing others that I sensed was becoming my way. It’s how young women were taught to be back then, ever pliant and agreeable.I was heading down that path, all right; and were it not for an ability to shine in school I can't think how I might have ended. Giving people my shirt as well as my cloak, to use the metaphor. Memorizing the birthdays of people I had only just met so I could send them a card in four or six or eleven months and to prove what? To purchase what?I gave away far too much time and attention to others, and kept far too little for myself.Marilyn did that too, and used alcohol to keep herself blind to the fact.In her brave book, Caroline Knapp writes with great insight about addiction's riptide pull. In it we learn what she finally learned about self-worth, and about alcohol's insidious way of acting like your closest friend - right up until it reveals itself as your deadliest foe. She talks about her father, high-achieving and remote, every night drinking his martinis-with-an-olive.And because, as she puts it, “alcohol travels through families like water over a landscape,” she drank as well, starting at age 14.Just by her description of a glass of chilled white wine filled to the brim and beading with moisture you can see how she loved it, in much the same way Marilyn loved her champagne, alternating its use with the pills she took at night to help her sleep and the ones she took in the morning to help her function again.Well I don’t know just where I’m going here except to note that while Marilyn lost her battle, Caroline won hers, thanks to the 12 Steps. She got sober and she wrote a wonderful book which I would recommend to anyone. It certainly helped me with my decades old habit of over functioning.Drinking: A Love Story, it is called.Now let’s watch this video of Marilyn and salute the oh-so-natural and the oh-so-perishable beauty that was hers.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJfBUKCnzNs&feature=related]

Little Miss Do-It-All

Tough getting up today, especially if you're like me and you overworked all weekend – if you can call it work bringing seven male teens to see some Shakespeare, then having supper with them before going to play laser tag until 10 at night. That was all fun, as was going to see the most amazing troupe of young actors perform an original version of The Pied Piper. It was also fun to write my 1000^th post; fun to take notes in a deli for this week’s column, fun to do it all –

If only I had stopped before I began refinishing the furniture.

I notice people kind of hate you if you seem to be organized and 'productive' and have it all together. I know I've drawn some fire in the past from people for being neat and having spices that were alphabetized and all but if they get even a little closer they see: You don’t live this way because you choose to. You live this way because even after all these years you are still pursued by these nameless Hounds of Hell who make you think that it’s not enough to just BE your own little self, you also have to also DO, and serve all the time. So they will love you I suppose. So they maybe won’t leave.

I knew I had crossed the line when I saw myself pulling those two dusty and wrecked old bedsteads out of the attic and starting in on the job of refinishing them, just because one of my kids spotted them in there a few weeks ago and indicated they were maybe pretty nice beds under all those scratchmarks.

Now, on this Monday March 12th, besides working a full day and taking a 91-year-old man to the cardiologist and buying the food and cooking, I also have to finish staining two foot boards, and getting the whole mess out of the kitchen where I was working on the project - which feels like a pretty tall order to me right now.

I bet all our Monday chores feel like pretty tall orders to all of us playing the Daylight Savings game, which is everyone in the U.S. anyway especially when we woke at 6:00 or 7:00 and already felt like we were an hour behind and low on sleep besides.

Ah well. I guess today I’ll just start in again with those mantras I learned in those 12-step Al-Anon meetings, like One Day at a Time, and Easy Does It, and Don’t Just Do Something Stand There.

But gosh the old wood sure looks great. Here's the "Before" with the old finish off but no stain:

And here's the wood with just one coat:

You liberate the living tree when you strip and refinish a piece of wood. If only it were as easy to liberate yourself.

Living Proof

Bryan just added a comment to what I wrote about him a few days ago but since it's sort of too 'buried' under all the other comments I'm going to put it up here too, as a posting.Again this is my former student and valued friend who in my book came back from the dead, thanks to the 12 Steps and the daily discipline of self reflection and self scrutiny:

Hi Terry: I'm writing in response to the story you printed about the way God led me to 'randomly' meet someone I had needed to make amends to for a long time. As heady and intoxicating to my ego having the story printed was, there were other more important lessons learned here, for me.The story didn't end there, at Bentley's, in that line, behind that guy, that day: Paul and I met two days later in my office. I was able to apologize for my behavior, after all those years. We agreed on a dollar figure for the car, $3,500, and I wrote him a check for $1,000, agreeing to pay the rest in monthly installments.I encountered fear again before writing the check. I had had a couple of customers, earlier that month, not pay me what they owed me. My initial thoughts were to use that as an excuse to either not pay Paul or to give him a much smaller check. But, that fear was quickly removed too and I made a "good demonstration" giving him nearly 1/3 of the amount we had agreed on. I was amazed that as I handed him the check, that all the financial fear was gone.Then I asked Paul for his mailing address, so I could send monthly installments, and he said " No. Why would you want to mail me the checks, when we could just see each other once in a while and you could give me the installments in person".Again, I was dumbfounded. I asked him " Why would you want to see me once in a while, instead of getting the checks in the mail?"He said, " Because you're a good guy. Why wouldn't I want to see you?"I still didn't fully understand. Why would anyone I had treated so poorly ever want to see me again?We've been out riding twice since that weekend. And I got a call from him today to come and look at some houses he's building, to give him  quotes for installing the heat and air conditioning, which, as you know, is what I do.Paul's reaction to me throughout this whole thing has amazed me. I expected nothing but bitterness and anger, but he's been just the opposite. I have a couple of resentments towards a few people I feel owe me amends from the past. I wonder if I would greet these people with the same compassion, dignity, and willingness to forgive that Paul has demonstrated towards me?AA's Big Book teaches us how to make an amend, but Paul has shown me how to receive one and forgive the person making it. If someone came to me to make an ammend, I hope I can behave as Paul has towards me.There were just so many lessons  to learn, all around this thing.I read some of the comments people wrote after reading your article and I was truly touched. It seems a lot of people were affected by this story.I'm just a schmuck who made an amend and told you about it. Then, you told hundreds if not thousands of people by printing it in your article.Judging by the reactions of those who responded, so many more people were affected by this than just Paul, you, or myself.There's a line in a Bruce Springsteen song titled " Living Proof". Bruce sings " I was looking for a little bit of God's mercy and I found living proof."Now, so have I, so has Paul, so have you, and so have your readers.And we've all been changed, by this, just a little bit.Living Proof.Love, Bryan (as he looks today)