10-20-30-40 Years Ago ~ by Jay

This one I swiped from Dawn. I'm not putting in pictures (that whole anonymity thing) but I like the idea. I've been feeling kind of reminiscent lately, anyway - end of the year, end of the decade, 25th anniversary, finding my high school yearbooks when we unpacked the books, that sort of thing.

10 years ago...

We were waiting for Eve. We didn't know it would be Eve - we were matched with her birthmother around the 15th of January - but we had completed the initial application and were in the midst of the homestudy application. We'd told our families we were in process.

I was working in a job I hated and trying not to admit to myself that I had to make a change, because every time I mentioned the idea to Sam, he panicked. I was slowly recovering from the worst episode of depression I'd ever had; I'd been on meds at that point for about six months and was starting to have entire days when I didn't feel completely hopeless. These two things were not unrelated, but at that point I had the cause and effect confused and was convinced that it was my inability to function that was making it impossible for me to do my job, rather than recognizing that the job itself was making it impossible for me to function.

20 years ago....

I was in the midst of my fellowship. Sam had completed his PhD the previous year but hadn't found an academic job; he was working for a consulting company and applying to every possible university position as well as looking at post-docs. I know I worked on Christmas, because I remember bringing Christmas dinner to the hospital for the residents (well, Sam brought it, with friends of ours, since she was also working that day and we would otherwise have had dinner together). I suspect I took a week off in January, because I usually did, and maybe that was the year we took a winter camping trip to Death Valley and the Mojave Desert. That was the year I started singing again. I joined a community choir and was loving it - it was like getting part of myself back after years away from musical performance.

30 years ago...

I was just coming back to school, sophomore year of college. We had exams after Christmas break, so I was studying for finals in Organic Chemistry and Physics as well as a survey course in English Lit. Can't remember the other course that semester. I had just finished a run as Lucy in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown that was the beginning of a string of shows I worked on in college. We were about to start auditions for a musical revue based on the music of Rodgers and Hart; I was stage-managing that one. I was still in a relationship I should have left a year before, and heading for my first episode of major depression (there's a pattern here, and I sure hope it's been broken for good this time).

40 years ago....

I was 9 and in fourth grade. Drove my teacher crazy because I finished everything early, read books under my desk during class, and never seemed perturbed by correction or punishment. He finally had me running his errands and making phone calls for him to keep me busy. I was taking art lessons, piano lessons and acting lessons after school. That was the year the school allowed girls to wear pants. My father didn't allow me to wear pants until sixth grade, though, unless it was bitter cold outside, and then I wore ski pants under my skirt and had to take them off when I got to school.

That was also the year that, unbeknowst to me, my parents were holding off an effort by other families in the district to get my teacher fired because there were suspicions he was gay. I found out about when I was in college and someone else told me. My parents, when I asked, said yes, it happened, and yes, they'd made sure he could at least finish out the year. They wanted him to stay - apparently they figured if he could manage me, he could do anything - but he resigned and moved to San Francisco, thus confirming everyone's suspicions. My mother said she was pretty sure he was gay but she didn't see why that was anybody's business.

Word For the Year ~ by Jay

R has picked her word for the year and it's a good one: balance.

Over at Both Hands and a Flashlight, Tim suggests we choose three words for the year, words that will help us focus on goals important to us in the coming year. Instead of resolutions, these would serve as reminders - little verbal anchors to help us float back to what we really want and need as we are bounced around in the current of daily life.

As I said last year, I don't do New Year's Resolutions. I find the three-words-for-the-year idea appealing because it's not about resolution but about reflection and reminders. I'll be interested to see what Tim chooses. The three words feel like teshuvah, which for me goes on all year but is concentrated in Elul, not here in the cold and dark. If you're choosing three words, drop me a comment or a link - I'm curious.

I'll stick with one word for now. My word for 2009 was quiet. I wanted to reduce the physical and emotional clutter in my life, and we . My word for 2010 presented itself to me as soon as I started writing this post: connection. This year is about deepening and strengthening my connections - with Sam, with Eve, with my friends, with my family, with God, with myself.

What words are presenting themselves to you?

In A Moment ~ by Jay

I am a hospice doctor. We deal with death all the time. It is familiar, known, manageable, understood. Sometimes we welcome death as the end of suffering. Sometimes we struggle along with the families for whom death comes, as it always does, too soon. We help people find peace and we do it well - but it's different when it's one of our own.

I go to more than my share of funerals, and I went to a funeral today, but this was the funeral of a colleague, killed in the course of her daily work - of our daily work. There was no life review. There was no warning, no way to adjust to the idea, no chance to have the final conversations. There was only the void - her presence, and then her absence. As if a switch had been thrown and with one click we were thrust into a different world.

There was no peace for me in the service. The minister exhorted us to make this our first day with Jesus as our savior, and seemed to emphasize the bloodiest parts of the Christ story. I left the church more in need of comfort than when I had entered. I know that the service wasn't designed for me; I went to be with my team and to show my respect to Martha's family. It was the right thing to do.

I can find a lesson here, an opportunity to expand my empathy for the families of our patients and for the nurses and social workers and chaplains I will rejoin on Monday. I can find an example in Martha's life and dedication, a model for the work we do and the values we hold. Perhaps, eventually, I can find meaning in her death. Not now. Not yet. Now I am just angry and sad and empty.

If I were to assess my risk of complicated bereavement, as we assess the friends and families of our patients, I would say I am routine, not high-risk. I have good social supports, a strong faith, a healthy sense of self, and plans for the future. But today I am reminded of how much routine hurts. I am reminded that moving forward does not mean moving without pain. I will feel sad and empty and angry for a while longer. I am reminded that this death brings up the other losses, and I will grieve my father again, more intensely than my usual daily awareness of his absence.

This is not the post I expected to write today. This has been a blessed year for me. I have found the work I am meant to do, and I am being paid well to do it and am appreciated by my organization. Sam and I have reached a deeper and more intense level of connection and trust than I thought possible. Eve is old enough to talk about books and ideas and to beat me at Scrabble, and she's happy and healthy and amazingly fun to be with. I have good friends here and scattered around the country, and I have the incredible gift of having John back in my life. I planned to write about all that, about my gratitude for the abundance of my 50th year, about the miraculous experience of simply being happy almost all the time.

All that is true. All that is real. All that will be there tomorrow as we start a new year. And all that could be gone in a moment. There's the challenge: to embrace all that is good in my life, to live fully within it, to appreciate every moment of it, even knowing it could all vanish. That's what will fill the void left by Martha's death. That's what she would want.

Happy New Year. May this year bring us peace.

Spamalot~by MPJ

I know Jay has already mentioned this (complete with classic video clip) by we are getting a lot of spam. We are being inundated with spam, buried alive under spam, served spam with every meal (and without any eggs). In fact, we're getting several times as many comments about where to buy Viagra or win a free iPod as we are real substantive comments on our posts. And that's a little too much virtual processed pork for anyone, let alone two Jews and a vegetarian neo-Buddhist.

So, it is with great regret that we have turned on comment verification. Yep, the few of you who are actually humans, leaving actual comments will now have to prove it by typing in a nonsense word when you comment. Know that each time you type it, you are saving each of us from staying up at night wondering if those comments we're getting in Chinese mean anything other than "buy Viagra here!"

The spammers may have won this battle, but the war is not over yet.

Yet Another Meme ~ by Jay

This one was swiped from Dawn.

1.What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?

Asked for what I wanted at work.

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Don't do resolutions, so no.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Define "close to you". No relatives or close friends, but several colleagues.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

A founding member of our congregation, unexpectedly; a colleague, also unexpectedly.

5. What countries did you visit?

Spent the year entirely within the borders of the continental US.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?

More time with friends. The discipline to complete some projects that have been waiting for a long time.

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

July 21st, the day I started my new job; December 23rd, our 25th anniversary.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Becoming medical director of the hospice.

9. What was your biggest failure?:

I didn't follow through on something I promised to do; felt like a failure to me.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?:

The dog ran into my knee, and it still bothers me from time to time.

11. What was the best thing you bought?:(was bought for you)

Not a thing, but our new bathroom. Well, maybe a thing. And, specifically, the new showerheads. Wow.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?

Sam's. He applied for and didn't get a major promotion at work, and the way he approached it was incredibly sane and balanced and gracious.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?

No one in my personal life. Lots of people in public life, starting with whoever made up that "death panel" nonsense.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Into our house.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

New job and the renovation.

16. What songs will always remind you of 2009?

"Power of Two", by the Indigo Girls. Which is not from this year at all, but this was the year I felt like it perfectly described us. "So we're OK/We're fine/Baby, I'm here to stop your crying/Drive all the ghosts/From your head/I'm stronger than the monsters beneath your bed". Also "Boom Boom Pow", the first song that Eve learned from the radio and decided she loved.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i) …happier or sadder?

Happier. So much happier. Truly, fully, happy - for the first time in more years than I can count.

ii) thinner or fatter?

Don't care.

iii) richer or poorer?

Slightly richer, and grateful.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Actual stuff with Eve - art projects, games, shopping.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Worrying.

20. How did you spend Christmas?:

OK, pretty non-inclusive question....but I spent it working and eating Chinese food, a variation on the traditional Jewish observance.

22. Did you fall in love in 2009?

All over again.

23. How many one night stands?

None.

24. What were your favourite TV programs?

So You Think You Can Dance, which I just discovered this year, because I'm behind like that.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

No.

26. What was the best book you read?

Moloka'i is the one that stays with me; may just be the most recent, but I really did love it.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?

I know this isn't what they had in mind, but I'd say the Genius playlist in iTunes. Love it.

28. What did you want and get?

My new job.

29. What did you want and not get?

A new MacBook.

30. What was your favourite film of this year?

Star Trek. It annoyed me in many ways, but I really liked it. Then again, I don't see many movies.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I turned 49 and I celebrated on vacation with Sam and some good friends, including a grown-up night in a hotel while Eve had a special-treat sleepover with her favorite teenager.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Real health care reform.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?

Better fitting clothes. Less black, more colors, especially jewel tones.

34. What kept you sane?

Connections with friends, and with Sam.

35.Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Not how my mind works.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?

Health care reform, if by "stirred" you mean "made me grind my teeth to stubs".

37. Who did you miss?

My father.

38. Who was the best new person you met?

A new colleague, for the first time; John, but certainly not for the first time.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009

Nothing you love is ever really lost.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

I have a friend in a bright and distant town
And she's found a common balance
Where you do you work
And you do your love
And they praise you
And pay you for your talents

41. What was your favorite moment of the year?

Watching Eve in her first orchestra performance.

42. What was your least favourite moment of the year?

Fighting with my mother.

(Like Dawn, I skipped a bunch of questions that were about drugs and alcohol and parties.)

57. If you could go back in time to any moment of 2009 and change what?

I'm afraid if I did, the good stuff wouldn't happen.

58. What are your plans for 2010?

Be open to joy.

Unbelievable Cuteness ~ by Jay

I don't post pictures of my own daughter on the blog, but Cate does, and you need to go look at these. This is quite possibly the cutest baby of current babydom (mine, of course, is well past babydom, and she was cuter. But not by much).

Seems to me that poaching pics of someone else's baby is a bit much, or I'd show you one. Take my word for it. Go look.

This Made Me Smile ~ by Jay

Just 'cause.


Swiped from Isabel.