Ten years after

It was quite a time for me even before the planes hit. In the middle of June my then wife told me she was a lesbian. Even though I was able to get help from a minister and my therapist, I kept it entirely within myself to protect her privacy. As such I really didn't get the help or advice I needed. I was floundering, looking for answers that weren't there, instead of planning how to take care of myself and our children, who were then 7 and 4. Later, after the planes hit, my therapist remarked that my wife and I were like terrorists, carrying around this information that would have such an impact, like bombs we were going to detonate.

The news should not have come as a surprise to me. In our bedroom, a few days before, I noticed in the closet a book with the subtitle "coming out later in life." The following Friday night, after our friends departed and the kids had gone to bed, she said "I have to talk to you," and fear quickened me. She said something to the effect of I love you, you're a wonderful husband and father, and I gasped and I felt my heart racing and as if it was rising into my throat. "I think I'm a lesbian," she said. The upshot of it was while she and my daughter went away for several days it was up to me to think of what I wanted to do. I had been fearful that she was leaving right then or asking me to leave. Anything but immediate action, that's what disturbed me most. It didn't occur to me to ask, why is this my problem? The prospect of making any decision overwhelmed me, but wasn't it more fear that was driving me, dread at the prospect of insecurity, thinking I couldn't afford divorce or imaging how a breakup could be facilitated. We had just bought a house with another couple who lived upstairs. Not too many months before, with a job, housing payments, child care, I thought to myself, I'm so leveraged I couldn't even kill myself. Now it seemed even more complicated.

In the ensuing summer days I went to work, took my to son to daycare, picked him up, rode home with him on the bus, drove around, had incomplete conversations with acquaintances and strangers, wondered about my own sexuality ( the Ox-Cart Man or the man on the Goodwill box seemed to have benign smiles and I flirted with a guy in the supermarket,) but for the most part did nothing. "Is it weird having me around," I asked my wife. "It's weird having me around," she answered. Early in August she asked me to sleep on the couch and so every night I would and try to wake up before the kids so I could fold up the convertible, but my daughter caught me at it, and she was not fooled.

Gradually I told my immediate family, my brother when he came to visit from France. He questioned why my wife was adopting such a rigid definition of her sexuality. Telling my parents, however, is one of the most painful memories I have. Looking back, I made the mistake of trying to smooth things over rather than letting them, especially my father, feel their grief. Perhaps because I have so much trouble sitting with my own discomfort.

Later in the month, I learned that the research institution I worked for was going to be absorbed by a large university, with an uncertain future for all. No one would say anything. There was a vague notice from the president in each person's mailbox. A group of professors from the university would visit on September 11 to visit the labs and evaluate the scientists, and your librarian was the last on the docket.

We had an ice cream party with our neighbors at our house. They invited all their friends, I didn't invite anyone. There was pretense, but I had been keeping it up all summer, what was another afternoon as the sun shone and the peaches ripened. September came and school started, bright cool sunny days. On a certain Tuesday I dropped my son off at day care as usual, and headed in to work. Soon a woman who worked with me told me a plane had hit the World Trade Center, and I thought it was maybe pilot error. Not long after that she came back to tell me that another plane crashed and that these were acts of terrorism. I tried to find information from CNN or some other web site but nothing would load on my computer. I had a half-assed radio and turned to any station I could find and heard Peter Jennings talking to some official about what had happened and how it represented a failure of intelligence. Later a television was placed in the lunchroom as we ate our customary Tuesday lunch, with our guests from the university. Someone's flight had been cancelled. My colleague who brought me the news was concerned about her brother, a New York City policeman. An older scientist was desperately trying to reach his son who lived in New York, whereabouts unknown. Our guests from the university sat at different tables, I remember one nervously looking around at the television. The show went on, however, and it wasn't until around six that the trio came to the library and I talked to them but I imagine they had their fill by then. Eventually I made it home to see my father dropping off my daughter. He remarked on the similarities with Pearl Harbor, which he would remember, and his last words as he walked off were "sad day."

Ironically, the day before had been our thirteenth wedding anniversary. I bought my wife roses. I don't know why. Maybe I wasn't able to let go. Several weeks later I moved out, renting a couple of rooms from a taxi driver not too far from my house. The first night I slept there I felt a sense of peace and relief. Much of my subsequent activity was driven by fear and avoidance, nevertheless.

(And Sarah (who is also called Chris, not the result of a Road to Damascus experience to my knowledge,) was not finished. Another story for another day.)

So the marriage ending, the turmoil around work, and the trauma of the national situation I think of as a triple whammy. Personal trauma, institutional trauma, and then, above and beyond, national trauma.

Eerie days followed. Sadness. People more distant. Trash cans removed from the streets and subways. Flags flying, whipping from cars and trucks driving past. Groups of people, especially kids holding candles at night. The troubling sight of the photos of the suspected hijackers, one by one, in the newspaper. Events in subsequent years I do not remember so well, but those days I recall vividly.

And today, a clear blue sky like that Tuesday ten years ago, occasional hum of helicopters and sudden roar of fighter jets, I try to exercise a little imagination and think of what this day is for others in the world, particularly those who lost someone, a parent, a child, a friend, and waking up every subsequent day with loss and grief that doesn't go away.

I recommend Pema Teeter's moving ongoing story series reflecting on the month of days leading up to September 11, 2001.

Namaste

Namaste "is a common spoken greeting or salutation from the Indian subcontinent." Certainly I never heard it until associating it with yoga practice. The most common explanation I've encountered is "I acknowledge the spirit in you which is in me," though there are probably many variations. Wikipedia goes on to provide interesting etymology. Namas, Sanskrit for bow, adoration, and te, the dative of you (second person singular. I have forgotten most of the grammar I've learned at one time or another.)

Even last night, as I walked from my car with my hands full, an Indian couple passed by, dressed in traditional clothing. They were singing. I can't remember what it sounded like, the elderly man's voice was rather resonant. They stopped singing as they passed and I stood aside to let them go by. Then they both gave the Namaste sign, bowing with cupped hands. I was too lazy to put down my encumbrances, so I nodded curtly. But there it was, they had acknowledged what is in all of us.

Then this morning in the car, I couldn't tell you what I was thinking about, maybe my neglected yoga and meditation practices, but I may have been thinking of anagrams, can't imagine why. And the word Namaste came into my thought. And I suddenly realized: my last name, Eastman, is an anagram of Namaste.

Coincidence?

(Maybe I'll sign all my correspondence Namaste and see if anyone catches on.)

Namaste: I acknowledge the spirit in both of us.

A regular guy

Looks like I fell off the #Trust30 commitment. The post I'm responding to today asks me to "pick up my ordinary," it is written by Patti Digh. How would I do this, choking myself with perfectionism like the weed wraps its tendrils around the hosta (until I yanked its root this morning, not so easy with my habits of thinking and acting.)

A man a little older than me who tried to help me when I was young remarked that I had a lot of self-importance and that I needed to become " a regular guy." "You think you're the only one who struggles," he told me, pointing out the person working multiple jobs just to keep a roof over the head and food on the table. And I didn't know what I didn't know. It's not that I want to be just like everybody but rather admitting that I don't deserve special treatment. So what are the ways I'd be "a regular guy" today?

Patience. Especially on the road, allowing myself as much time as I can to get from one place to another so that I don't have to drive urgently and/or with desperation. I try to anticipate where the light will change or there will be a crosswalk or another driver will cross my path and adjust, slow down a little, make room. As I've said in this venue before, "I don't own the road, I'm not the turnpike authority, nobody owes me anything." And not be resentful when I am not given the same consideration or someone drives behind me with desperation; as David Foster Wallace pointed out in a widely circulated graduation speech, maybe I'm in his way; and likewise, as a blog post I read makes clear, " I don't know what's going on." Maybe the other one is in a real emergency or just late and feeling desperate. I don't have to feed into it and I don't have to judge or feel superior because I have felt like that, that was the norm for me and it is taking lots of practice to change that. Through breathing and being in my body as I sit in the car seat, with acceptance, I can do it.

Generosity. I have an older friend named Carol who expressed a wish to buy a computer, that the one she had was outdated and that while her needs were simple, she would be interested in discovering material on the internet and online music. We saw each other fairly regularly while I was unemployed, but I didn't make a date to take her to the store and she has no car. When I knew I had a free Friday afternoon coming up, I made arrangements with Carol and picked her up yesterday. I saw her frustration with newer computers and the interfaces and components, but took the time to explain the choices simply, waited for her to make a decision, offered suggestions and worked with the salesperson to arrange the simplest solution possible. (Still have to pick up the unit and set it up.) She thanked me and yet this kind of giving is its own reward, combined with the satisfaction of doing what I said I would, in contrast to how many times I've made empty promises in my life.

Compassion for those around me, and this is new for me, having spent most of my life living in my head and really lacking empathy and having no idea what it would be like for another person, inside her or his skin, looking through those eyes, breathing that breath, experiencing that duration. My wife and I are living in an apartment while our house is being repaired. She had something of a melt down last night, working in an enclosed kitchen space in contrast to what she's used to, not having a salad spinner or a steamer, and then the smoke from the frying meat sets off the smoke alarm. While I would have preferred more emotional balance and the situation made me uncomfortable, upon further review of the play, I realized that this is the way she is feeling, she is expressing her feelings, maybe I didn't feel the same way but I wasn't the one trying to cook a meal in the kitchen while the smoke alarm was blaring and the obdurate smoke was not responding to the fan. (Add to that the general disruption and uncertainty of the housing situation.) I cannot expect someone to respond or feel like me and yet, no matter how many times I've been taught this in my life, in the moment, in the acid test, it is hard to remember and act accordingly. Asking questions too becomes easier with practice and trains the mind to respond and show interest and remember details from others' lives, even that the woman I work with went to visit her son, to be able to ask, how was that, even if it seems like chit chat, another person appreciates when someone shows interest. I know I do and am surprised when others remember details about me or ask about my children, probably because unlike me they are paying attention.


At the end of my sophomore year in high school, a fellow I was friendly with, we hung around quite a bit, wrote in my yearbook upon his graduation something about the ensuing years being hard on the soul, " so keep your feet on the ground," he told me. I had no idea what he meant by those words. I have a sense today, feeling myself held up by the earth or whatever is holding my body, a chair, a sofa. This was totally foreign to me then and for such a long time. Today, maybe the best I can ask of this moment, which is good, is to have my feet on the ground and be on this earth. I didn't know what I didn't know.

Fast ride

I was introduced to an intriguing new novel via Twitter, the Traz by Eileen Schuh. The subject is Katrina, a 12-year old "brainiac," computer-whiz, proficient in physics, learned hunting and survival skills from her grandfather, meditation, self-care and herbology from her grandmother, grew up in a chaotic home with an alcoholic, unloving mother who fights constantly with her policeman husband. Gradually, Katrina experiences more and more loss - her grandfather, and then ultimately both her parents are killed in an auto accident, her mother driving under the influence. Katrina's left with a lot of money and nowhere to go. Already, through a boyfriend, she has made connections with unsavory characters, and is sought out by Shrug, leader of a biker gang called the Traz, who is in reality an undercover cop. Katrina accepts his protection. The duration of the novel takes place over a couple of years and seems to pace slowly but the total effect is like a fast motorcycle ride. The situation is riddled with ambiguity, particularly Katrina's apparent sophistication belying her young age, and what are the implications for her future being mixed up with this organization. Shrug alternately presents as protective and threatening, insisting on controlling the situation and carrying out the operation his way, and yet to what potential harm has he exposed Katrina? Most of the story is told through Katrina's perspective; we read what Shrug and others perceive that seems to contradict what she says and thinks and wonder what's unsaid, does she knowingly or unknowingly present a different reality from what she's claiming? She is protected and imprisoned in the biker compound, gathering herbs to make strange tea concoctions, hacking into computer networks for criminal ends. Finally, Shrug cannot protect Katrina from the awful truth about the murder of her ex-boyfriend that is initially presented ambiguously and dreamlike and is clarified near the end of the story. (Interestingly, the Sergeant is called "Kindle," maybe he starts the fire or you can read everything through him, a conduit for information, I don't know. ) Evidently this is the first of a series, igniting an appetite for the sequel. A study guide with moral questions for exploration and resources for students dealing with life issues follow the conclusion of the novel. I recommend this dark and compelling story.

(Cross posted to GoodReads and Amazon)

Open to the unknown

Today's #Trust30 prompt by Jonathan Fields asks: “What alternative opportunities, interpretations and paths am I not seeing?” In a field facing potentially drastic changes, librarianship, this is extremely relevant for me. So rather than defining myself as a librarian or information specialist, person, whatever it is, I have to ask, what do I like to do, what am I good at, what new abilities might I want to acquire? Maybe I don't know the answers to any of these questions right now.

Take computing. I had great difficulty using a computer when I was younger, had to rely on help from my father to pass a math course, or from more skilled peers just to type a college essay into a word processor. I knew nothing of commands or programming, could barely play games even, and for me a computer was little more than a sophisticated typewriter.

This all changed with the world wide web, software developed to browse it and information placed on remote servers for me to find using these tools to help me in my library work and answer questions for the people I served as well as for my own personal interest. And all this was completely unknown to me several years before, I could not have conceived of it, even as others were working hard to turn it into reality. And what followed has been a long fascination with information discovery on the internet. Finding. I think of the Latin word invenio, I find, I come upon, from which comes our word "invent."

So the path for me in the future may or may not involve a library building. It may involve skills used in finding and organizing and presenting information, connecting people with people and information, or it may be something I haven't even thought or heard of. My colleague Bill Mayer is known to say that the distinction between the library and IT in organizations or the distinction between the library and the network is dissolving. In a place, be it a business, educational institution or municipality, where these things are conundrums, this can present an opportunity for someone interested in information and knowledge, making things accessible for people and putting them to use. And I once worked with a scientist who told me it was my job to make myself obsolete, and if I did, and did it well, there would potentially be other opportunities and rewarding work for me. I believe he is right.

Two for the price of one

Traveling and with limited computer access this weekend I have not set aside time to respond to the #Trust30 challenges from Lachlan Cotter and Ash Ambirge on fear and surprise. One asks is do not doing the thing I fear worth sacrificing what I want and the other questions how I surprised myself in the past by doing something I couldn't and how will I surprise myself now.

If there is a strong wish in me it is to know the truth and to be honest with myself and others. I believe writing helps me pursue this, especially as the words that come out prove to different than what I imagined or what is revolving in my mind, the endless chatter of fantasy. For I have found it so easy to deceive myself, thinking I am honest, when I have left something undone, not paid someone I owed, not acknowledged someone who did me a courtesy, and I go about thinking I am conducting myself well.

However, I surprised myself once when making a driving mistake, getting in the way of another driver who honked at me furiously. We ended up side by side on the street and I rolled down my window and he rolled down his and we looked at each other for an instant. At another time I might have been frightened and avoided him. However, I looked into the man's eyes and said to him "I'm sorry." He curtly nodded. The light changed and we drove off and I will probably never see him again. For once, I took responsibility and did not act out of fear. Can I do so again and not once but every day? I admit I know too little.

What right now teaches me is to accept who I am and see how I can change for the better and become more honest and responsible to myself and others. Part of that is owning my own story. I look back on mistakes and accept this is the kind of person I was and did the best I could with what I had. I looked on others' successes and saw only my own failures. I can get beyond that now. So much is helping me. I learn from Victoria's post on experience not being wasted, necessary to bring one to where one is. Or as Brene Brown writes in The Gifts of Imperfection, which I have finally begun reading, "Owning our own story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it." I am similarly inspired by Marjory's story about connecting with her soulmates and living the story of their bodies together. She and Julie wrote the words describing their bodily experience on each other (love the smiles and laughter in the pictures.) "We wrote our precious word messengers on each others chests to let them sink into our hearts." Further on Marjory writes "Your body needs to know that you will hold its story with tenderness." Or it is captured for me in this sign, courtesy of insightful and courageous Carolyn.

So I continue to pursue honesty, aiming to be like the monk who says to his disciple "I am close to not being deceived about myself." "But master, how can that be?" asks the disciple. The master replies, "Talking is easy. Being is not."

"Garrett, you quote too much"

I am an imitator, from birth, it seems. I would repeat things I heard, whether appropriate to the situation or not, whether true to my experience or not.

Here's an example. I met a former teacher of my brother's when visiting a school I would later attend, and sat in the classroom. "Of course we miss Andrew, we all wish he'd flunked," the teacher said wryly. Then many years later I repeated those words to a student worker of mine who, having just graduated, was bringing her parents around on a visit. Of course, they were horrified at what I said, and I had not thought how it would be inappropriate or misinterpreted. And this was my favorite student with whom I enjoyed a wonderful working relationship. And I still failed to learn, continued to parrot words I heard elsewhere even when it didn't make sense. It is unconscious, it is not a working part of the mind.

It's one thing to use another's words for inspiration or to really get inside them and see how they say something to my life. I quote less and less because I know that the words are empty unless I apply them to my life and can show by example how that is done. I like to feel connected through quotes and through sharing of words and stories. And yet for so long I have interfered with the telling of my own story.

If what I have learned from others teaches me something it is humility and my lack of originality, on one level. On another level, as far as I am concerned, I am the only one who can act for me and in my own interest. It is a fluidity between self-assertion and letting go, effort and relaxation, the will to change and acceptance.

And it is not what I like or prefer that will make the difference but what I do. I know that but I fail to act.