Mother's Season

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Not Just Mother's Day

The Peonies are in bloom again. Nearly a year later.

One of the only blog-posts I ever read aloud to my mom (z"l), who didn't have her own computer, was one with pictures of peonies from May 18, 2014. It was about loss.

Just over a year later, I'm bursting from loss, or wish I were. Nearly a year ago, while trying to comfort me over my mother's (z"l) death, a rabbinical student asked me, "What do you want to ask God?" I posted this here already:

"When do I get to fall apart?"

"And how would God respond?"

"Never," I said because what would my falling apart serve?

Serving others is the antidote to self-pity, yet I want to wallow a little.

Pat's on her annual golf trip in Tennessee with her friends from her days at NIU and I must do all of the daily chores she'd be doing if she were here, since she's retired: filling and re-filling the pitcher from the rain-barrel, watering the plants, feeding the birds and local wildlife along with the kitties (I do feed the kitties daily already -- that's my job), making dinner, taking out the garbage and the recycling, dealing with the guy who needed to waterproof the front steps and walkway....These chores, it turns out, are a pretty nice way to connect with the world right around me.

And I've been doing more connecting than usual this past week, in part to distract myself from imminent, first yahrzeit of my mom's (z"l) death along with our impending trip to Green Bay to unveil my mother-in-law Bev's (z"l) headstone; she died unexpectedly of complications from a fall last month, exactly 10 months after my mom. I loved Bev (z"l), too, and also miss her. When we come back, we'll have my mom's (z"l) unveiling on the 31st of May.

My mom (z"l) is so present in her absence:

On Wednesday last week, she (z"l) was there among the caravan of Stamford [Connecticut -- my hometown, where my mom (z"l) lived for 50 years --] Tents trucks at Duggal Greenhouse in Brooklyn last Wednesday as I was departing from World of Watson, but she was not there to call when I wanted to debrief on the coolness of the experience of seeing a positive future for the world, augmented and aided by artificial intelligence.

My mom (z"l) was there at the Art of the 1990s show at the Montclair Art Museum on Thursday evening as I was telling a new friend how she and my dad (z"l) practically chose to move from the Village to Montclair because it had an art museum, but then chose Stamford, which had one, too, but was not there when I wanted to talk about the couple of interesting installations I saw as part of the exhibit.

My ever-present and shatteringly-absent mom (z"l) was there at the Agudath Shalom Cemetery when we visited her not-yet engraved joint-plot prior to the mezuzah posting ceremony in her memory, held at the Stamford Jewish Community Center Library, and was there at the Senior Lunch afterwards as Mr. Soifer, our Bi-Cultural Day School music teacher, smiled at me as he saw me moving my lips accurately while he sang the extended Kiddush over the Shabbat wine and gone when I wanted to tell her that one of her friends there had said, "Your mother was so valuable to me."

Rabbi Cohen, reciting blessings

Rabbi Cohen, my sisters Kayla and Deb, and me outside of the Stamford JCC Library, where our mom (z"l) volunteered.

L

The mezuzah was created by Chaya Magal and the roses remind us of our mom (z"l); her middle name was Rose.

She (z"l) was there at the Brookdale Park Conservancy-sponsored *Heaven is a Garden* book talk and signing at Watchung Booksellers on Friday evening, even though I should have been at Shabbat services instead, but gone after our dinner out with two new friends at a restaurant in Montclair that she liked, too.

Author Jan Johnsen, discussing her marvelous book,*Heaven is a Garden*

My mom (z"l) was there when Noga and Hilla, a gorgeous couple of Israeli friends with four kids, two of whom were with them, visited us in our newly renovated home, and there when I brought my giant case of Lego over to their four-year-old Shaked, and there when Uri, the baby, smiled winningly and there when we talked about *Fun Home* as a masterpiece. But she was gone when I wanted to call her the next day to wish her a Happy Mother's Day.

My still-here mother (z"l) was ultra-present when I picked up the tray she gave us some years ago that read, "Smart women crave good company" and which featured only a '50s-era, stylized illustration of women drinking coffee on it and tried to determine how to display it visibly in our newly renovated kitchen/dining room and living room.

My mom (z"l) said she thought of Pat & me when she saw this platter and got it for us; she had a good sense of humor.

And she was proud of the rest of how we re-assembled our home and of its major freshening. But she (z"l) was gone when it came time to eat dinner and then take a rest in the living room.

Our new kitchen/dining room/library

Our refreshed living room

Sad Music to Match My Mood

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

These Songs Help Me Feel My Sadness Around the Loss of My Mom (z"l)

Not all of the lyrics are sad, but all of the melodies make me feel sad, and not all of the melodies are entirely sad, but sometimes the lyrics are. And sometimes, they're neither, but they remind me of sad times. And sometimes, they're just moving to me in a sort of sad way.

Charlie Brown Christmas song by Vince Guaraldi

One Hundred Ways by James Ingram

Wedding Bell Blues by the 5th Dimension

One Less Bell to Answer by the 5th Dimension

At 17 by Janis Ian

Hard Candy Christmas by Dolly Parton

Problem by Ariana Grande, featuring Iggy

Porcelain by Julia Fordham

Where Does the Time Go by Julia Fordham

Father Figure by George Michael

Constant Craving by k.d. Lang

Rhode Island is Famous for You by Michael Feinstein

I've Got You Under My Skin by Nenah Cherry

It Never Entered My Mind by Rodgers & Hart, sung by Ella Fitzgerald - This was the song that made my mom (z"l) sad after my dad (z"l) died.

That's the Way I Always Heard It Should Be by Carly Simon

The Piano Has Been Drinking by Tom Waits

Such Unlikely Lovely Lovers by Elvis Costello with Burt Bacharach

God Give Me Strength by Elvis Costello

The Message by Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five

Mama Used to Say by Junior

Sof la'Sipur (End of the Story) by Yehudit Ravitz

Yo Ya by Poogy - reminds me of dancing to the record in the living room where I grew up, the living room that we'll be listing along with the rest of the house tomorrow, to be sold.

Lost in the Supermarket by The Clash

Luka by Suzanne Vega

Black Boys on Mopeds by Sinéad O'Connor

I Can't Make You Love Me by Bonnie Raitt

No One Is Alone from "Into the Woods" sung by Bernadette Peters

This is what grief looks like...

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Putting a Brave Face On It

This is the first day I've put on makeup since my mom (z"l) died on June 4th:

Pat said, "You look like your mother. At first, I thought that was a younger picture of your mother."

It has been 13 weeks since my last haircut. At first, I was honoring Shloshim, but now, I have three reasons for not cutting my hair:

1. When it's longer, it's wavier and my mom's (z"l) hair was wavy; it's a way of hanging onto her.
2. I feel young in my grief, not youthful, but like a teen again, like I was when my dad (z"l) died and my hair was longer then, too.
3. The longer my hair is, the more vulnerable I feel for whatever gender-stereotype reasons and it makes sense to me that my outside should match the way I feel inside these days.

This picture is not flattering, I know, but it's really how things are right now and I felt like documenting this time.

Sixteen Days Later

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Poor Me

Pat & I were going to go to shul, so I could say The Mourner's Kaddish publicly, but the service tonight honors LGBT Pride, so as I posted in a Facebook status update earlier, I opted out, thinking it would feel more festive than I felt. Instead, we finished binge-watching Derek, a superbly poignant series about an autistic man who works in a home for the aged.

Here are the last books my mom ever read or considered reading with her book group:

• The Fallen Angel
• A Lucky Child
• A Walker in the City
• The Canterbury Tales
• Jews Without Money
• I Married a Communist

Here are the books I've taken out of the library since her death:

• The Orphaned Adult
• Matters of Honor
• Rose of No Man's Land
• How Animals Grieve
• The Other Side of Sadness
• Healing Your Grieving Heart for Teens: 100 Practical Ideas - Simple tips for understanding and expressing your grief
• Death's Door: Modern Dying and the Ways We Grieve

The two best book recommendations my mom ever made to me were The Crock of Gold and Cutting for Stone. The first novel was about magic and love and the second, about yearning and grief, and living through both.

That's where I am now -- grateful for the magical parts of my life and for all of the love I experience and express, but living through yearning for, and grief around, my mother (z"l).

I wish I could check out of real-life till I finish reading all seven of the books I listed above, if not also the ones from my mother's book group list (though I don't want to re-read *The Canterbury Tales*).

Suddenly, I was jealous of my age when my dad died -- 17 -- as I thought about how many fewer responsibilities I had then, but that's not really true. I had to continue showing up to high school and had to do well enough to get to go to college. I also forgot to consider how love-lorn I was as well; I had a secret girlfriend then, who was already a freshman at a too-far-away college, and I knew my attachment wasn't requited, not really.

So compared to when my dad died in November of '82, I didn't have love or meaningful work then, but I also didn't have to settle my parent's estate, like my sisters and I do now, now that we're the only adults left in the upper-part of the chain. My other responsibilities, to Pat and our kitties Phoebe and Toonces, and to my management and the team I manage at work, and are more welcome than not at this time. I can always renew the library books....

Finding Some Peace After a Rollerblading Jaunt

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

"Joy and pain are like sunshine and rain" -- Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock

I'm not sure which photo moves me more. Last night, I photographed the nearly in-bloom peonies in the rain and this afternoon, they were sunbathing in full bloom. I witnessed their sun bath when I returned from rollerblading. I lay down on the lawn and photographed them.

Music Joint-filled Jaunt

I have a semi-secret place I go to rollerblade, where I don't need to wear a helmet and where I can sing along to my iPod with no fear of cars. I'm not a fancy figure-skating type, but I'm highly-proficient, with 45 years of skating experience. After swimming, ice-skating was the first sport I learned -- both at four years old. Today's jaunt featured 30 minutes worth of the "B"'s of my iPod:

• Baghdad Cafe (Callin' U), A:Xus - At 22, the lyrics, "...a desert road from Vegas to nowhere, someplace better than where you've been" helped me end the first full-fledged relationship I had with another woman, as I figured that a road to nowhere would still be better than where I had been.
• Be Near Me, ABC - In high school, my friend and her family were new immigrants and lived in a condo, rather than a house, but they had MTV and we didn't. Roxy Music and ABC were featured on it at the time.
• Beautiful, Bombay Rockers - I cannot relate to the girl to whom they're referring in this song, as they say she's in 7th Grade and everyone's mean to her because they are jealous of her. In 7th Grade, I was just willing myself to develop and be noticed by anyone for something other than being tall.
• Beautiful, Me'Shell Ndegeocello - Her music is among my favorite for rollerblading; it transports me beyond where the rollerblades can because her voice is lush and she's usually telling a story I relate to, or imagine I could. I can't recall when I first heard Me'Shell Ndegeocello's music -- probably when I lived in Chicago -- but I've loved it ever since.
• Beautiful Girl, Bombay Rockers - When Pat & I lived in Bangalore for six months in 2007, a helpful Planet M employee recommended the Bombay Rockers when I asked him to suggest an Indian pop group whose music was cheerful with a beat.
• Beautiful Stranger, Madonna - This album reminds me of being with a couple of IBM colleagues in Madrid, Kris and Miguel. They took me dancing at a lesbian club and Madonna's latest music played then. This song was older, but it still conjured that time for me as I was rollerblading today. "Hung Up", I think, was one of the current hits then, in 2006.
• Before I Let Go, Maze, featuring Frankie Beverly - The melody was so cheerful, but it belied the singer's reluctance to let go of his beloved, and so when it first came out in '81 and now, I ignored the lyrics and focused on the good mood its melody inspired in me.

As I pulled off my wrist-guards and 'blades, "The Best Is Yet to Come" was playing and I couldn't wait to get home to work on this blog-post. As it has turned out, I could detail only memories triggered by my iPod playlist and then needed to leave the rest of it overnight. It was too challenging to write this next part. But today, a day later, I'm moved to do so:

It's Facebook's Fault

The other night, in my Facebook stream, I saw a picture of my first and former best friend's mom from when she was probably in her early-20s. My former best friend's older brother and only sibling had posted it on Mother's Day as a memorial tribute. She was a beautiful woman whose features were so different from any of the women's in my family; she was blond with a bit of an upturned nose and seemed exotic to me. She died several years ago, but I found out only recently. Even after my friend and I were no longer friends, our mothers remained friends for 35 years, until my former friend's mom moved away. My mother wondered aloud with me recently, "I wonder if she is still alive. I'm afraid she isn't."

"I'll go on Facebook and see if I can find out." And I searched for the brother's name and found him. Yes, their beloved mother had died several years ago. And she was sort of another, early mother to me, too. What was an appropriate amount of grief for someone I had known for only four years, 40 years ago?

A Hot Dog with Every Visit

My former best friend and I met when we were four, in nursery school. I'd get off the bus with her from school nearly daily and then I was there on weekends, too. I took it for granted. It was automatic. My sisters were more than half a decade and nearly a decade older than I, and at my friend's house, the kids -- my former friend and her brother -- were my age or just a few years older. My former friend's brother became as close as I'd ever get to having a brother and their curly, sweet Airedale became a quasi-pet for me. Relatively, their dad wasn't around as often as their mom, and their mom became another mother to me. She fed us, asking what we'd like for lunch and I always asked for a hot dog. At home, my mother made salami and eggs sometimes, but hot dogs were only for dinner and not very commonly.

At school, we learned to ice-skate and my former friend was a better skater than I, learning to skate backwards sooner and she took figure-skating lessons. By contrast, I was steady and confident minus any tricks; that steadiness served me for rollerskating and rollerblading, starting in my early teens. During my jaunt yesterday, I thought of the little rink by our school, where we'd go throughout the winters from ages four to eight. Probably, she kept going there, but I don't know, as our friendship was over by the time her father died, when we were eight.

My former friend's dad was many years older than her mother and still, his death was premature, from a disease. He took us kite-flying once, at the Stamford branch of UCONN. I was impatient and then it was fun when he helped me, so that my kite finally became airborne. Our dads liked each other, too, and at one point, I think they were working on a pie-slicing invention together, but it didn't happen. They hatched a number of ideas that they didn't commercialize. I think they just liked using their imaginations together -- like my former friend and I did, for four years.

My former friend was better at everything than I and I loved going over to her house and doing whatever she initiated. Make Spin Art? Sure. Help put a pair of her flowered, cotton underpants on the dog? Yes. Play with her Barbie camper, and always agree to be Skipper while she was Barbie? Indeed. Sit in their guest cottage at a small table, where she held a glass paperweight and told my fortune? Definitely. Look for arrowheads under an overhanging boulder on their property that my former friend said was an Indian shelter? Yes! Help collect eggs from the chicken-coop? Of course. Hang upside-down off the back of the couch, singing along to the lyrics of "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree"? Why not?

Were Differing Degrees of Literacy a Harbinger for the Inevitable End of the Friendship?

My former friend was reading The Wind in the Willows when we were five and I would not learn to read for another year. That same winter, she sent me a postcard from her family's vacation in Barbados. It was in her block-print handwriting and not only couldn't I write yet myself, I had to ask my mother to read it to me.

Maybe my former friend was tired of our differing aptitudes. Maybe she was sick of initiating what we'd do when we played together. Maybe she related to what she read in *The Wind in the Willows*, "Here today, up and off to somewhere else tomorrow! Travel, change, interest, excitement! The whole world before you, and a horizon that's always changing!" I never did read the book. I simply cheated just now and found a quote and imagined her latching onto that sentiment. I didn't need new horizons. I never needed to be anywhere but shuttled back and forth between my family's house and hers. I could have done that for years longer. I wondered why it ended. She stopped calling and I never asked.

Nine Years Later, a Shivah Call

When my father died of cancer at 56, my friendship with my former best friend had been finished for nearly a decade. I was a senior in high school, 17. My former friend's mother paid a shivah call, since she was friends with my mother, but when I saw her, I felt as though she had come to see me even though she had probably come to comfort my mother as much or more than she had come to be kind to me. Her visit was a relief. She offered to take a walk with me and I don't recall our conversation during the walk. I had written her a note, in case she came, and gave it to her at the end of our walk. In the note, I told my former friend's mom that I was less grief-stricken than I might have been, since I felt like I still had two parents, since she had been so motherly to me in my early years.

No One is Perfect

Nearly 20 years ago, I saw my former friend's mother one more time. My eventual wife Pat & I were visiting my mom -- from St. Charles, Illinois, where we lived at the time. I don't recall the context, but my mom suggested we drop by my former friend's mother's home. My memory is that Pat was with me, but she doesn't recall the visit, so perhaps not. My former friend's mother was as beautiful as she had ever been, and seemed the same, just visibly older, and so did I...except that I had also publicly chosen a woman as my future spouse (whenever it would be legal to marry her), whereas when I was a kid and an adolescent, my former friend's mother did not need to acknowledge a romantic relationship I would have with anyone of my own gender.

Some years later, my mother told me that my former friend's mother told my mom that she couldn't accept my lesbianism. My hot-dog-providing-loving-beautiful-kind-other mother was telling my actual mother that she could not reconcile it. Fortunately, she never told me her feelings. She must have loved me too much to want to hurt me by telling me.

Finding Some Peace, and Again, It Was Facebook's Fault

While I had seen my former friend's mom once as an adult, I never saw my former friend again, after her brother's bar mitzvah, when we were nine or 10. And we were practically strangers by then, or at least that's how it felt. Over the years, I've thought, what would my former friend say if I asked her why she ended our friendship? She got bored? Or worse, what if she didn't even recall why? And why did this rejection still hurt me 40 years later? And what would we have had in common if we had remained friends anyhow? Once we no longer went to the same school, what was left? Is that what occurred to her then -- that we had too little in common to stay friends?

Historically, whenever I've thought of this former friend, I've time-traveled back to being eight and sitting across the aisle and behind her at her father's funeral and feeling sad not only about her dad's death, but also at the death of our friendship. The other night, though, something sort of soothing happened: After seeing the memorial photo on my former friend's brother's Facebook wall, I commented on it, describing how lovely their mother had been to me. Later the same night, my former friend's college-aged daughter clicked, "Like" on my comment.

What the heck, I thought: I'm curious if I'll be able to see any photos of the daughter and maybe of my former friend. Why not click on the daughter's profile? I did so. And I got to see both of my former friend's kids -- a teenage boy and college-aged young woman. And then my former friend! I clicked on photo after photo, finding the facial features I recalled from our childhood and was amazed to see them on this grown woman. Being able to at least see what she looked like as an adult was a bit of comfort.

Americans in Paris

Just as I was beginning to feel stalker-ish, a beautiful photo emerged: My former friend and her daughter were standing on a sidewalk in France apparently and my former friend was holding a poster that urged, in French, equality for her daughter, and the daughter was holding a rainbow flag and French poster that declared, I love my mother who accepts me. I don't know the sexual orientation of my former friend's daughter, except that currently, she does not identify as heterosexual.

Maybe my former friend and I had more in common after all, or maybe she had more in common with my mother, and I with her daughter. It reminded me that all of us are more connected than we realize, even as there are vast differences among people. And I thought of the 1995 Pride Parade in Paris; I was in France on business and Pat had to work, so my mom came with me and during the weekend, we marched with the Beth Haverim Juif Homo (Beth Haverim Jewish congregation's gay) delegation.

There we were, nearly two decades apart: two American mothers and two American daughters from three generations, demonstrating ultimate loyalty to each other on the streets of Paris. And if that's the peace I can take from our having been friends, it's enough. I think I feel closer to my former friend now that I've seen that photo than I did when we were friends. Here are some snapshots of my mom's and my experience at the 1995 Paris Pride Parade:

Top 10 Things I Appreciate About...

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Pat, My mom, My Sisters Deb and Kayla

In today's "New York Times", Bruce Feiler wrote an essay that inspired me to tell the four people with whom I am closest in the world -- my wife, my mom and my two older siblings -- what I appreciate about them. He talked of Dr. Shelly Kagan's point to tell our loved ones what they mean to us sooner, rather than later.

Feiler also quoted film critic Roger Ebert, who reminded us that we shouldn't try to compare ourselves to similar scenes in the movies, since, "...those scenes are well-written, directed, and performed by professionals." In that spirit, I'll try to be fearless or at least less self-conscious in creating and posting these lists:

Pat, you are:

1. The funniest person I know, and without being cruelly so
2. Inclined toward doing g'milut chasadim (acts of loving kindness), for example, suggesting that we use our prayers that we were posting in the Western Wall in behalf of the sick granddaughter of a couple in our Israel tour group (who had been strangers just days prior)
3. Lovely physically, including your green eyes, dimples, pretty mouth, tall height, appealing gait and more
4. Jewish like me
5. Nearly photographic with your memory; you know the answer to almost any question I ask because, "I read it somewhere," you say simply
6. Action-oriented -- which has rubbed off on me and made me more disciplined, for example, with completing chores -- and your related, dedicated work ethic; you even treat volunteer-work like a job
7. Innocent, rather than cynical, that is, you prefer naïveté over suspiciousness
8. Accomplished, including having earned an M.S. in Pysch, an MBA, and an M.S. and Ed.D. in Education, and multiple executive jobs in Higher Ed. with giant responsibilities before retiring, and the incoming president of Essex County Master Gardeners
9. Well-coordinated -- a great dancer and graceful in sports
10. Attracted to me.

Mom, you are:

1. Vocally proud of me, which makes me feel good and validated and encouraged and emboldened
2. Available whenever I want to talk with you, including offering encouragement when I need it
3. Funny and also readily amused by the world around you, including me
4. Intellectually curious and interactive/interrogative, especially during Q&A's at lectures, always contributing a nugget as well as asking the best questions
5. A good arbiter of what makes for interesting art/cultural experiences, including movies, music, lectures...
6. Creative, for example, in:
   • Amassing the Jewish folk art collection you have over your lifetime so far
   • Designing cultural programs for the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Stamford and the Stamford Museum & Nature Center back in the day
7. Stylish -- you have more flair than anyone I know
8. Invested in my development since my babyhood, including exposing me to more experimental pursuits than any other parent I know, including tennis, acting, golf, needlepoint, oceanography, clarinet, guitar, piano, journalism, cartoon art, sculpting, skiing...
9. More intuitive than anyone I know and routinely, you say the kindest thing at just the right time, even to people you've just met
10. Supportive of me unconditionally, for example, though you might have wished I'd have done like you and married a man and had children, you love me actively even though I did neither, including always introducing Pat appropriately when you're acquainting us with your friends.

Deb, you are:

1. The most original person I know, including your continual creation of unique, cool and useful silver and copper Jewish ritual objects
2. Along with Kayla, the most dedicated sister I could wish for, including reading lesbian literature to understand me better
3. A devoted mom, exposing your kids to cultural experiences galore and letting them be who they are, including artists, skateboarders, and Latin and Greek students
4. The person who most informed my music-appreciation other than me, including Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, The Crusaders, Michael Franks, and even Madonna, who you spotted super-early; I acknowledge my debt in this blog entry
5. A great mother-by-proxy, including giving me shampoos via your "Magic Mask" invention when I was little
6. One of our family who showed me Israel at its best, including rowing me down the Yarkon River in Tel Aviv while you had bronchitis when I was 15 and you were 24 -- I hope we didn't know it was bronchitis at the time
7. The world's best birthday-card writer, always including a message that shows your love specifically of me
8. The most adventurous fiction reader I know, including authors from around the world; your example inspires me to be more wide-ranging in my choices
9. A gifted singer with a gorgeous voice, who along with Kayla, always makes me sound better at Pesach Seders
10. Proud of me.

Kayla, you are:

1. The best rhymer I know, including profound and hip poems tailor-made for poetry slams and publications
2. Along with Deb, the most dedicated sister I could wish for, taking care of us whenever we got lost as children, including in the Bowery in New York City when I was five and you were 10 and a half
3. A devoted mom, encouraging Zach to pursue whatever makes him happy, including years of playing the sitar and schlepping him to New Jersey for lessons and buying him his own sitar till he became good enough to be paid for gigs at the nicest Indian restaurant in Brooklyn
4. The person who taught me three essential skills, to:
   • Ride a bike
   • Recite the Ma Nishtana
   • Play Chess
5. My mentor as an educator and you inspired me to pursue a Masters by your example
6. A brave leader who, as a high school principal, leadership consultant and vice-principal, has helped hundreds and hundreds of new immigrants and refugees have a better, more meaningful life in America than they would have had if they had not met you
7. The first person to:
   • Teach me The Facts of Life, when I was seven and you were 12 and a half, while we waited for our school bus
   • Learn of my non-heterosexual sexual orientation, when I was 15 and visiting you at college
8. Our family member who first taught me the value of immersing ourselves in other cultures by living in multiple countries, going to Israel for six months at 14 with our school, and then to Finland for a year on AFS at 17
9. Resilient, surviving cancer while unwaveringly contributing to others' well-being
10. Like Deb, proud of me.

"Concrete Jungle Where Dreams Are Made of"

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Reposted from my "Learning to Lead" IBM blog:

It was a dilemma: Should the following blog-entry appear first on my personal blog, or on my IBM one?

I chose IBM first for two reasons:

1. Essentially, in addition to being an opportunity for reflection, this blog entry could serve as Part II of the e-mailed thank-you note I sent to my management and the supportive colleagues and mentors who enabled me to pursue the part-time master's degree over the past 5+ years
2. To me, its content would inevitably relate to my concept of learning to lead and the associated occasional discoveries that go with such learning.

Columbia Alumnae Made Me Cry

Tears didn't well up until the very end of the graduation ceremony when Alicia Keys' "New York - Empire State of Mind" boomed celestially from the same PA system that broadcasted the degree petitions by various deans and Columbia school presidents all morning prior...and specifically, not till the woman next to me (who spoke with her parents in Polish on her cell phone as the festivities were starting) sang along with me joyously: "New York, concrete jungle where dreams are made of; there's nothing you can't do, now [that] you're in New York ...." (Columbia University is in New York City.) The tears, I think, came from hearing the marvelous song visibly together with so many others, and so loudly and clearly in this ultra-academic venue when typically, I'm hearing it alone on the radio in my car. And they came also from hearing the Polish-speaking woman to my right belting out the song with fun fervor; if not from Poland herself, she was likely first-generation. With her blond, blue-eyed multilingual youth, she was as symbolic of hope and freedom for me at that moment as the Statue of Liberty.

The tears also sprang from a flashback to an exchange with another Columbia alumna, my middle-sister Kathy, when I lived in Chicago and she, in Brooklyn. Maybe it was sibling rivalry, but just as likely, she was trying to goad me into coming home to metro-New York from the Midwest, where I had lived for more than a decade by then; my whole family wished I was less than a plane-ride away and made their wish plain in many ways over the years.

"You know, you haven't made it till you make it in New York," Kathy said.

"Pfff," I responded dismissively, but smiled as I recalled the exchange in my head a number of times while working for IBM both at 590 and 11 Madison Ave. in New York City. And then I smiled again as I looked at the Columbia-blue sleeve of my master's regalia, figuratively if not literally, while singing along to Alicia Keys' anthem. Growing up, my other and oldest sibling, Deb, and I were less like rivals and more like bonus-mother and daughter, since she was nine years older than I. When I invited Deb to the ceremony, I said that I hoped she would be able to come, as she had been like another mother to me and so my achievement was partly her "fault," too. Deb's own graduate degree pursuit at Tel Aviv University had been tragically and permanently interrupted by the death of my dad of blessed memory (z"l) in 1982.

Discovering a Small World Among a Mass of Humanity

There was something fundamentally awe-inspiring and alienating at once about being part of a giant graduation ceremony:

Sitting apart from my family among students who happened to be completing their degrees at the same time, but with whom I was not necessarily close friends was a little lonely initially. It was the second academic occasion where I steeled myself for the payoff of feeling part of something much, much larger than myself. Twenty-five years prior, I sat practically randomly with a guy from my hometown who was also graduating the same year as I because we ran into each other in the crowd; the rest of my friends had either graduated the year prior when I studied at Hebrew University in Jerusalem for the year, or were on the five-year plan. We sat in the bleachers of the University of Michigan stadium, among an even bigger crowd than I saw in Columbia's Low Plaza on Wednesday. On both occasions, as well as during my high school graduation, my dad (z"l) was corporeally absent. His death in November of my senior year of high school was due to rare, common bile-duct cancer. This time, I thought of him directly as I watched the graduating physicians and surgeons stand with their heads bowed while their dean recited the Hippocratic Oath. Columbia-trained physicians treated my father at what is now called Columbia University Medical Center; devastatingly, his cancer was too advanced to save him by the time it was discovered.

This time, a quarter of a century later, maybe due to greater social skills and diminished self-involvement -- maybe -- I felt more engaged with my schoolmates. And I planned ahead: I recalled that Alysa Turkowitz, who like me is also openly-lesbian and Jewish, and who had interviewed me for her dissertation on lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) students navigating graduate school, was graduating, too; I asked if she planned to be at the larger ceremony on Wednesday and if so, if she'd like to sit together.

Absolutely, she said; she was in the same boat in that no one else she knew was graduating at the same time.

On purpose, I arrived at the meeting point extra-early, to secure a spot at the head of the Teachers College delegation, hoping my family would have a better chance of seeing me and then it also seemed fun that Alysa and I would lead off the procession; Alysa's dissertation concluded that LGB students were less visible than we wished, so it was symbolically important to me that we comprised the front of one of two, parallel lines of Teachers College students at a final moment of our respective graduate careers.

Prior to the procession, all students were told to stand in front or behind the person with whom we wished to sit during the ceremony. What an interesting social experiment! The Law School preceded Teachers College and it was fascinating to see collections of different regions of Asian guys and of pretty White women, all with long hair, and of tall White guys, and so on walk by us. Alysa and I made up the Jewish-American lesbian section of the Teachers College delegation -- as far as we knew :-) Afterward, at the reception, I mentioned my observation to Pat, about how like-people marched together and she said, "Carl Jung said that people prefer to be with people who appear to be like them, and that's why we have prejudice."

While we waited for the ceremony to start, Alysa noticed my ring and said, "Are you and Pat married?"

"Yes, we got married legally in Connecticut last summer, in my hometown, Stamford." Alysa congratulated me and then told me of how she had relatively recently proposed to her girlfriend Gwen, who had accepted. As I listened, I smiled to myself, thinking of how some might have thought it interesting that just like any number of women of any sexual orientation, we were describing our joy at having found The One prior to graduation.

As it turned out, Alysa couldn't keep me company through the entire ceremony, as her doctoral hooding ceremony began at 1 pm and her family and she needed to eat lunch prior, and so I opted to be sociable with others after she left, since I wanted to sustain a communal sense of the experience. Here is the predictable irony; I had plenty in common with someone who did not appear to be at all like me:

The hijab-wearing, gorgeous woman to my left turned out to have gone to the University of Michigan as an undergrad, too. She was from Dearborn, Michigan.

"Why did you go to Michigan from out of state?" she asked me.

"My father -- who was dying of cancer at the time, but who still took me to a college fair my junior year -- thought it was a good idea because of "The Michigan Daily"; I had been a reporter for my high school newspaper. He was sold on Michigan, too, because he had had a great conversation with one of our synagogue's congregants, a successful alumnus, during the fair."

"Ah, makes sense."

"But actually, I also chose it because I thought it was big enough that I could explore my sexual orientation without anyone from home knowing -- I had gone to a Modern Orthodox Jewish day school for eight years, growing up." I looked at her for a moment and then away.

"Michigan was very welcoming, it's true," she said simply and apparently without judgment.

"Why did you choose to go to Michigan?"

"My brother-in-law went there and he took me for a visit once and I loved the campus." Pat, who was in Higher Ed Admin for her whole career and who was specifically responsible for Facilities in her role as Associate VP and VP of Business and Finance at two universities told me later, "I read in a Facilities journal that something like 63% or 65% of students choose their university based on how the campus looks." This woman was not superficial; she had majored in Neuroscience, so Pat's stat must be right.

When Gloria Steinem received her honorary Doctor of Laws degree, a few minutes later, my bleacher-mate did not know who she was.

After explaining that she was among the leaders of the Feminist movement, I said, "I'd like to ask you potentially a super-ignorant question. May I?"

Graciously and instantly, she said, "Sure."

"Do you think it's because you are young or because you grew up in a Muslim environment that you don't know who Gloria Steinem is?"

"It's definitely not because I grew up in a Muslim environment," she said, "I'm such a Code Pinker."

"What's that?" I asked.

She looked at me with the same incredulous expression I'd had on my face when she didn't know who Gloria Steinem was. "It's a radical women's group that I joined in Ann Arbor and then here; it made me feel at home."

Later, I commented on this exchange on Facebook and one of my friends from Michigan responded, "Haha my sister is so "code pink!" and she's 5 yrs older than us!!! No excuse for either of u!"

Luckily, we had already found common ground because we discovered that she had had IBM Center for Advanced Learning colleague and friend Dr. Nabeel Ahmad as her professor during her final course at Teachers College and also that both of us had gone to the University of Michigan as undergrads.

Toward the end, when we saw that the singing of the Columbia "Alma Mater" song would happen soon, both of us smiled as we talked about how we still remembered the words to "Hail to the Victors," the Michigan Fight Song.

"Do you want to sing it?" I asked.

She answered by starting. We sang it softly to each other as we looked out at the throngs below. And then at the very end, when Alicia Keys' song echoed off of the Library, the Polish-speaking woman to my right and I sang along. Maybe that's all she and I had in common -- a love of Alicia Keys -- but probably not, if only we'd had a chance to talk, too....

At lunch, I told my mom, "I wish Dad could have been here."

"He was," she responded instantly, and yet I think that the day prior, my mom was missing being able to share the occasion with him more apparently.

A Happy-Sad Confluence Made My Mom Cry

Since it was indoors, the Master's Ceremony the day before was accessible to my mom. As I approached her, seated next to my wife Pat and close to the left-hand jumbotron, I went to kiss my mom's cheek and saw that her bright blue eyes looked even bluer with welled-up tears. I can remember seeing my mom cry only a few times in my life, including when my father of blessed memory (z"l) died in 1982, seven months prior to my high school graduation. As I sat down, I wondered, Is my mom overjoyed, or sad that my dad (z"l) missed so much, or sad that she didn't pursue a graduate degree or...? For my part, I was the sort of happy where I couldn't stop smiling (I'm the tallest one of the visible graduates in this photo.)

When I asked later why she was crying, she said, "Sometimes you cry when you're happy.... Your father missed everything."

My mother has a Journalism B.A. from the University of Wisconsin and neither of her parents (z"l) went to university. Her dad (z"l) didn't get to go to school beyond the 6th grade and initially, was a truck driver before starting a furniture business in Rochester, New York. My dad (z"l) had a B.A. in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design and neither of his parents went to university either. In fact, among the chief reasons I thought to pursue this graduate degree was that my middle sister Kathy was gravely ill with breast cancer and I said to myself, someone's got to carry on her legacy as an educator; Kathy has a master's in Applied Linguistics from Teachers College and another in Education from Bank Street College.

Thank God, it has been six years since her bout and hopefully, she's fine. Graduate school attendance was pretty rare in my family through our generation. Only our father's (z"l) sister Aunt Tovah (z"l) and our first cousin Sari each had a doctorate, and my sister Kathy and I have master's. Even more strikingly, my wife was the only one of her family to go on for grad. school. Neither of Pat's parents was able to go to university, yet Pat has an M.S. in Psych, an MBA and an Ed.D. She always said it was no big deal that she had them and that I didn't, but it was always big to me, and I feel better now, that at least I have one graduate degree. Pat has passed along a fun saying that a friend of hers declared after they finished their Psych master's. Her friend was so tired of all of the academic reading and writing (as I became, too), and said upon graduation, "Now, it's just chips and dip and day-time TV!" Not exactly in my case, since the degree applied to the work I do at IBM, but it still makes me smile because compared with working full-time and squeezing in school during every bit of my discretionary time, I think I'll feel on vacation till I fill up part of the time again with volunteer work, or more blogging or simply more socializing. The possibilities are disorienting -- in a good way!

The Smartest, Best People Are the Kindest, Too

At the end of the Master's Ceremony, I ran into the speaker Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson at the side-entrance of The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, where I was searching for my mother; she was using a wheelchair for the day, since the Cathedral was too vast to traverse with her walker. I asked Dr. Tyson, "May I kiss your cheek? I was so inspired by you."

"Sure," he said without hesitation. He was several inches taller than I -- probably at least 6'3" -- and I tip-toed to kiss his face and he hugged me lightly. I stepped back and started to walk away smiling and suddenly thought to try to affiliate with the scientist in him by saying, "I work for IBM."

"Really? Where?"

"Armonk."

"CHQ!"

Did I hear him correctly? How does he know "CHQ", I marveled. "Well, in the Learning Center next-door."

"IBM, what a great legacy it has."

"What a great legacy *you* have -- I loved your remarks about your father [who graduated from Teachers College 50 years ago]."

We smiled at each other and he walked out with a family member or friend, perhaps.

For another moment, I just stood there, so moved by his kind curiosity, and then found my mom with Pat; they were already in the car in the adjacent lot. I re-lived the experience with them. How lovely of him to ask, "Where?" I said. How terrific of him to let me kiss his cheek. His receptivity and curiosity were extra inspiration beyond his remarks.

His formal remarks helped me, too. Dr. Tyson said he wanted a quote from education reformer Horace Mann as his epitaph, "Be Ashamed to Die Until You Have Won Some Victory for Humanity." I tweeted about Dr. Tyson's quoting of Horace Mann that evening and my Toronto-based friend and IBMer Bernie Michalik (@blm149) replied to my tweet, " @SarahSiegel every act of kindness over indifference is a victory for humanity."

In his remarks, Dr. Tyson also said he hoped that as employers, we would be the sort who would hire the creative, thoughtful employees, and not just those who have memorized the right answers. He gave an example, where he'd rather hire the interviewee who asked to be excused from the interview and who returned 20 minutes later with the answer than the one who just spouted a response. The question to the fictional interviewees was, "How tall is this Cathedral's spire?" One of them answered, "One hundred and eighty-seven feet." The other returned and said, "I think it's around 185 feet." Dr. Tyson explained that the second interviewee had measured the shadow of the spire in the street and then the shadow of a person standing next to it and extrapolated from there, and that he'd rather hire him.

"Pat, I agree with Dr. Tyson about looking for more creative employees, but with one difference. I think at IBM, we have to be creative *and* fast," I said while we were driving home.

"Sarah, he said that the interviewee paused for 20 minutes, not two days," [so I think you're aligned].

Learning Is a Fragile Business

If Dr. Tyson had been one of my high school teachers, I wonder if I would have stuck with my childhood passion, which was encouraged by my parents and Mrs. Honan in elementary and junior high, and if I would have become a mineralogist, rather than growing sciencephobic in high school. He reminded me of how purely fun it had been during the Lego years. Just reading the Wikipedia entry on mineralogy intimidates me now, but as 10 year-olds, my friend Amy and I were the youngest members of the Stamford [Connecticut] Mineralogical Society. Amy abandoned rocks and minerals, too. She became a graphic designer and I studied Comparative Literature as an undergrad; it's a miracle that I ended up even *near* scientists by joining IBM. Still, everything happens for a reason, I believe, and the master's degree I earned was specifically in Organization & Leadership with a specialization in Adult Learning and Leadership...which reminds me of an exchange I had the following morning:

Prior to the general ceremony for all of the university's graduates, in the library, I ran into a guy I knew from Teachers College's QueerTC organization and asked his dissertation topic.

"Math Education [the early sort]."

I teased him: "Ah, my master's is in Adult Learning and Leadership, which is all about helping adults learn receptively despite any baggage they're carrying from poor childhood and adolescent education experiences -- "

"I promise to try and not mess them up too badly," he said smiling good-naturedly.

I smiled in return and wished him well, and he congratulated me, since I was wearing my gown.

Trying to Make My Family and IBM Proud

Next, I led my mom to a comfortable chair, where she would wait for me till the general ceremony was over, since at age 86.5, she would not be able to sit outdoor for three hours in what was expected to be rain, but which turned into hazy heat. Both of us seemed in a sour mood as we said goodbye, even as we tried to act brave. My mom might have hated having to sit alone and miss the experience and I hated that none of my parents was either able-bodied or alive enough to be right there corporeally.

Even as I was sad that my parents couldn't be at the outdoor ceremony, I did feel joy on my own for earning this master's, and it is serving IBM and me:

I did my final integrative project on "Business Leaders Gaining Cultural Intelligence Via Virtual Worlds" and I summed it up and commented on it in this blog entry. In the Summer of 2010, the "International Journal of Advanced Corporate Learning" published a seven-page article, which ultimately bloomed into the project, and the article has so far been cited by two doctoral dissertations (http://bit.ly/J1cjRw and http://bit.ly/Jb6e9W) and a presentation for a university faculty development conference (http://bit.ly/Kd14ab). In the original seven-pager, and in the longer project paper, I explicitly acknowledged Amy Groves, since we collaborated directly on the pilots, and if not for Chuck Hamilton's and others' pioneering work in stretching Second Life as far as it could go in that time and place, the project wouldn't have been possible. So, after all, I sought work and school that would enable me to experiment.

When I told Pat about the citations in two doctoral dissertations, she said, "You've had the whole experience, Sarah. You've contributed to the body of knowledge, which is what academia's supposed to be about."

What I discovered during grad school that informed my learning to lead:

The biggest skills I picked up during grad school were how to do and understand formal research. Research requires creativity and concerted thought, and pausing to verify and/or qualify, rather than just going by pure hunch -- all essential attributes of the leaders I admire most. The most compelling adult learning theories I encountered were my advisor Professor Victoria Marsick's concept of "incidental learning" in the workplace, which like it sounds, is the often supremely useful social and informal learning we gain along the way to formal learning, and Professor Emeritus Jack Mezirow's theory around "critical incidents" or "disorienting dilemmas," which lead to unusually giant opportunities for transformative and emancipatory learning. I'm an incidental learning fan because it validates the mission of our department, Social Learning -- what I gravitate toward most naturally myself -- and I value critical incidents because I crave profound learning experiences that lead to breakthroughs, even if they're necessarily painful at the time.

Finally, what I re-learned at graduation that also informed my learning to lead:

• Let music move me
• Be grateful for my family and for strangers
• Stay open, curious and kind.

Wishing to Realize a Fantasy

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

If We Visited My Parents' Friends, Then My Father (z"l) Was Not Dead

It was my fantasy. If my mother and I drove three hours plus, we could reach a place, where my father of blessed memory (z"l) was still alive. A place with lots of leaves and people who seemed part of their land, rather than guests of it. A place where I could hear my father's voice, which is only faint to me now. A place, where my father and I were relative giants once I was no longer little, and which was full of pleasant surprises. A place, where perhaps no one remembered me well because I was the youngest and the younger ones always remember the older ones more than vice versa.

The Gently Painful Reality

Yesterday, the station wagon arrived at the white-clapboard house with its stone-slab steps. My mother was in the passenger seat as usual. My father (z"l) wasn't driving it, though, and his daughters weren't clambering restlessly around the back-seat and the way-back. It was just my mother and me.

Maybe my dad would be there already.

Last time we visited, I didn't even have a driver's license.

"Station Road. You just passed it," my mother said.

"Potter Road is what the GPS is telling me, not Station."

"I remember it was Station."

My mother remembered everything, too.

We got out of the car and saw that the party was down a mini nature-trail, in a clearing in the distance. My mom looked hopeless. "I can't make it down there [with my walker and bad back]."

"We'll ask the Gaineses to come up here."

"We can't expect them to leave the party they're hosting, Sarah."

"Well, let's at least go to the bathroom now."

I got my mother's walker out of the way-back, and she looked up at the house in despair. "I can't make it up there."

I had been the father, driving us to the Gaineses, and now, I was the mother. All I came for was to be the kid again, with two parents.

"I'm sorry, Mom, but I've gotta go," I said without making eye-contact.

A new, pleasant surprise: Two young boys appeared and said they would help us. I asked the older one to lead me to the bathroom inside the house.

"Here's the downstairs one," he told me, and as I walked toward it, I saw three horses in stone or cement relief on the wall and remembered them from when I was a kid. Nothing else other than the layout of the house was familiar.

When I emerged, I saw my mom sitting in the foyer, like magic; she had gotten herself up the steps -- or had the boys helped her?

And then more magic: My mom rolled slowly down to the clearing in the woods. My parents' friends, their youngest daughter and her musical husband -- who were the parents of the two sweet boys -- and several other friends were there, but my father wasn't...and my mother was, thank God.

Long-time-coming Contentment

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Relief Rollercoaster

Rabbi Rachel Weiss, smiling a beautiful, broad smile, as she has done practically throughout the relatively short and very sweet ceremony: "Now, if anyone would like to say a word -- not a sentence or paragraph -- about what they're feeling right now, please go ahead."

Pat, Rabbi Weiss, and me

Oh, no, I think silently, but loudly, this is the pressure-part for everyone. What if no one says anything? An otherwise surprisingly relaxing ceremony feels suddenly tense for me.

My mother begins, "I don't want to give away either of you because you're both too precious to me."

My tension drains. How perfect. Unsolicitedly, my mom has taken up the mantle, serving as the proxy for Pat's mom, who, at 87, is too frail to travel from Green Bay for the wedding, and for both of our dead fathers (z"l). My mom is all of our parents for the day, and also, finally -- genuinely -- Pat is her daughter-in-law.

"OK, 'precious.' Who else?" asks the rabbi.

"L'chaim!" says my brother-in-law Gary, coming into view behind the rabbi.

"Mazel tov!" says our friend of 18 years, Carol Vericker, who's holding one of the chuppah poles.

"B'hatzlichah!" says David Chase, our friend of 17 years, and another chuppah-pole holder.

"To your success [or good luck]!" the rabbi translates.

I reward David with a big smile. David, who's an athiest, is the most respectful person I know when it comes to others' religious and cultural traditions. I don't recall when he found out that "B'hatzlichah!" was an appropriate phrase to use with Jewish friends, just that it was prior to our occasion, for another pair of friends.

I don't say a word then, but if I had done so, I could have chosen from, "finally [after 19 years]" or "relief" or "joy" or "buoyancy" or "phew!" These words remind me that we were invited by the nytimes.com team to create a 3-minute-or-less-in-length video of how we met and got together, and we did so. In addition, we submitted an announcement, which was published today.

Directly prior to the wedding, my words would have been, "awed," "self-conscious," "on-display" and "torn."

Our niece Zoe, her grandmother -- my mom -- Sam & Max, Zoe's brothers, at the High Line

"Awed" because I was feeling that it was practically too good to be true that my immediate family and four dear friends-as-family were gathered for an occasion that was in honor particularly of Pat & me. That feeling stayed with me all day, including at lunch afterward as I looked at everyone around the table; at the High Line prior to Shabbat services; and then again at shul, during services.

The only other time I had ever had a special moment(s) with a rabbi prior to a ceremony that involved me was for my dad's (z"l) funeral when I was a year younger than Zoe (and our other nephew Zach), at 17....I don't even recall a rabbi at my bat mitzvah, which I celebrated with my family at Camp Ramah...and that was not my finest hour, as I had been too busy, having a vivid sleep-away camp experience, rather than practicing my Torah reading, and so I was a tentative performer; I guess I'm trying not to remember that occasion.

"Self-conscious" and "on-display" because I was wearing the most beautiful, most classically feminine, most cadet-blue dress I had ever had on in my life, including open-toed dress-sandals with lavender-painted nails and I felt as vulnerable as I predicted I would. I was convinced to wear what I did by a heterosexual friend who had said to me some weeks ago, "Well, doesn't everyone feel vulnerable on wedding days in any case?" By "vulnerable," both of us meant, super-public, rather than private, and in various senses, almost naked, rather than armored, no matter what we're wearing.

Another two, lesbian friends were influential, too, as both of them had chosen to wear a dress for their weddings in Massachusetts because, they agreed, it was an ultra-special occasion. One of them and I also share a love of using virtual worlds for learning and I said, "And besides, you're familiar with that Stanford research that says that thin avatars influence their obese creators to lose weight? Well, as you know, my Second Life avatar is super-femme and I think she's influencing my real-life choice of outfit."

My friend understood, and I think our avatars would have been proud of me.

"Torn" because three of my relatives hit traffic and were late, and the ceremony already should have been in progress. While waiting for them, I experienced a bonus-dilemma: I ran into a friend I had met through another friend and our affiliation with a national organization that advocated against gender-stereotyping. I didn't realize that she worked in Stamford's Government Center, where we held the ceremony, outside of the cafeteria on the 4th floor, in a space that resembled a city-park.

She was with a colleague and I was happy for the coincidence, but anxious about our late-start, and our conversation was holding up the proceedings further. Pat walked over and I said, "This is Pat, my...fiancée."

"Yes, hi. I think we've met," she said -- and I recalled Pat, being with me at a benefit or two for the organization. Since my friend lived in Stamford and my mother still did, too, I had brought her to my mom's house to meet my mother some years ago. Pat's presence by my side reminded me of the occasion and snapped me back into the present.

In a split-second, I decided, no, I won't invite her to join us; this is going to go as planned, as much as possible. We are having just my immediate family -- my mom, two sisters, brothers-in-law and collectively, their four kids, plus four friends to serve as Pat's proxy-family, and who we chose because they were the first two couples to befriend us as we were moving to New Jersey from Illinois more than 15 years ago.

"I hope you'll understand, it's just a small, family wedding," I told my friend.

She nodded, of course, and I hugged her and walked back over to Pat and the rabbi. Oy! I wish I had been more flexible and just said, "Please join us."

After the ceremony, which was brief by design -- about 20 minutes in length total -- I saw that she was still at the picnic table, where she had been prior, though her colleague was gone. I approached her.

She said, "I like to work outside when the weather's nice. Guess who sends her best wishes?" She had called our mutual friend to let her know that Pat & I were marrying. I felt like a jerk for not including her, since I'm supposedly so committed to inclusion everywhere, all the time; oy! Pat came over again, which helped wash away my guilt for a moment, as I was happier than guilty in saying, "And here's my wife."

My friend smiled and Pat made a nice comment about the friend this friend had called, and then walked back to the rest of our family. My guilt returned. I looked at my friend sheepishly and she switched topics, "You know, I still have those tefillin for you," she said.

"I *know*. Every time I'm in Stamford, it seems I'm here with my mom and then gone and back to see my mom and then gone, but yes, we have to figure out a time."

This friend is a transwoman and while she recognizes that women, who are not Orthodox Jews, are welcome to wear tefillin, they remind her of the years, where she had to present herself as a boy and man, which wasn't true to herself.

I wonder what she was thinking as I walked away. I hope she forgave me.

Bonus Reflections By My Mom and Me

Two days later, as I write this, above all, I'm happy to be Pat's wife, finally, after nearly two decades. It reminds me of a shirt that our friend Gerard changed into for the evening, which featured a great photo of David and read, "Married to David in 2003" above the photo, and below it, "His fiancé for 16 years."

As I pressed, "Publish post" just now, my mom called me. "You said that Pat told you I looked contemplative during the ceremony?" my mom asked.

"Yes, 'contemplative.'"

"I was. I was thinking, Thank God I lived to see this day."

Shakespeare, the Torah & Therapeutic Avatars

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

Even I Don't Know Where This is Going

I just know that beginning last Saturday, I thought of the first two, established powerhouses, and two days ago, "The Science Times" reminded me of the potentially therapeutic power of virtual-world-based avatars. Maybe I'll make a connection among the three before this blog-entry is done. Suddenly, I have an image of the avatar versions of Shakespeare, Juliet and Joseph & his dreamcoat....

Last Saturday night, Dr. Eleanor Ehrenkranz got me thinking about shared themes in the Torah and Shakespeare's plays. Dr. Ehrenkranz was a featured teacher at a lecture series, which my mom invited my sisters and our families to attend with her on her birthday. The series had many lecture-topics to choose from, including, "E.T. Torah: What Does Judaism Say about Life on Other Planets? Do We Care?" but we could participate only in two of them, since they were concurrent, so we went to the ones my mom attended, namely the one on Shakespeare and a second one, "500 Years of Hiding: The Lives of the Secret Jews" by Dr. Andrée Aelion Brooks.

During Dr. Ehrenkranz's interactive lecture, if I remember correctly, she spoke of envy/jealousy as the world's most destructive emotion. Earlier in my M.A. pursuit, I blogged about envy, essentially agreeing with Dr. Ehrenkranz, especially in the written-comments-exchange I had with my classmate Zdravko, the object of my envy, following the blog-entry.

The morning after the lecture -- I got home after midnight -- I heard from my partner Pat, who had to miss the whole day, since she lay in bed with a crippling cold; she said, "Envy might be the most destructive outward emotion, but shame is the most destructive inward one." In other words, envy is the most destructive, and shame, the most self-destructive.

Here's where therapeutic avatars might come in:

If, for example, I could go through 3D simulations, where I could experience vivid envy or shame in the safety of a therapist's office while interacting with some 3D automated character, maybe I could experience less of both emotions in the real-world, or be better equipped to handle those emotions.

Here's another possibility that seems more remote at this stage, but I'm prompted to explore it due to a hallway conversation I had with one of the people I met at the lecture series: trying out being an adoptive parent by caring for an adopted baby automated character. Talking with Pat at breakfast this morning in Green Bay, where we have visited her family every Thanksgiving for the past 19 years, I mentioned the idea of a parenting simulation, saying, "If people got to try it out ahead of time, nobody would have children."

"I think some people would like it; some people really want to have babies, whether adopted or organically," Pat answered.

Just when I am feeling some peace around our having chosen not to adopt, since I was unable to conceive by natural means after 18 months of trying, and since Pat, being 15 years older than I was too old to conceive a child by the time we agreed to try to have children, I have the following exchange and get a bit stirred up again:

I'm talking to a new acquaintance about how our 17-year-old nephew enjoyed the lecture on Shakespeare and the Torah and about how one of our 12-year-old nephews enjoyed learning to bake challah in one of the sessions.

"What about your family?" she asks.

"Oh, I don't have any children. My partner is female and I tried for awhile [via anonymous donor], but it didn't work and we didn't want to adopt. I wanted a 'little me.'"

"[Can't recall precisely what she said to encourage me to re-consider adopting, but then simply,] You're a beautiful woman," she said as she turned and walked away and I touched her shoulder gratefully as she departed.

Here's where Shakespeare and shame and envy and the Torah come back in:

I'm left, standing there, feeling positively recognized among this huge sample of humanity -- the whole parking lot was packed for this event -- while also wondering later, the usual chip on my shoulder returning, Did she mean, "You're a beautiful woman; it's a shame you are a lesbian and didn't have children?" or am I projecting? And I'm also standing there, feeling envious of my mother and of her, for having daughters to kvell over while I simply have nephews and a niece for whom I can take nearly zero credit.

Oh, well, it's time for the dessert reception, following the lectures. I enter the busy room and see one of our 12-year-old nephews, Sam, sitting at the "Young Jewish Professionals" table with his plate piled high with cheesecake and cookies. He is a skateboarder and drummer, and likely will burn off the calories of this plateful soon enough -- not that that's on his mind as a 12-year-old boy.

"Are you a young, Jewish professional?" I ask, crouching by his chair, not wanting to take another seat from the earnest, mostly appealing people seated across from us.

"I did a rap at my concert," he answers.

"Oh, great. I thought you were just playing the drums. Take me over to a corner of this room and do it for me."

Sam gets up instantly, abandoning the heaping plateful, and leads me to the quietest pocket of the room he can find. He begins. It's an onslaught of crazy-rhyming and I'm impressed at his memory-retention.

Kids used to memorize Shakespeare and recite patches of his plays; in fact, my mom's dad, who did not get to go to school beyond the 6th grade (a year behind the grade Sam and his twin-brother Max are in now) had sent my mom and her sister to Shakespeare lessons when they were girls.

Who knows? Maybe I'll be like Sarah in the Torah and have a child years from now. I wonder what kids will be reciting by then.

Perspective

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies.

Gaining It and Recognizing the Gain

"I'm going through something painful with my mother, too," said a colleague with Aspberger's the other day as I was on my way to visit my mom in the rehab facility. "She's got dementia and doesn't remember well," said my colleague about his mom and then, "My father, actually, has forgotten that she will be turning 85, and says she's 83. And I'm a person who cares a lot about numbers. She's not 83. She's nearly 85." As he spoke, he stared anxiously at my throat, which unnerved me. Finally, I touched it and found that my necklace was askew. I re-centered it and he stopped staring and seemed to relax a bit.

Thank God I do not have Aspberger's, and thank God my mother has no dementia.

Rehab Encounters

Yesterday, at lunch with my mother in the rehab dining room, I met a 100-year-old woman, who looked 80 at most, and then later, in my mom's room, a nurse from another country, whose daughter was given a total scholarship to Loomis Chafee, but for whom it's a dilemma, since culturally, it's anathema for the daughter to go to boarding school and be away from the family.

And I met my mother's former roommate, who called her a devil, since my mother is not Christian, and then also a greyhound, who is on the rehab floor to provide affection-therapy for the patients. I stole a few pets from the dog while waiting for the elevator. The greyhound was not as silky and as furry as our kitties, but she was still comforting.

My mom hasn't yet found anyone to sit with during her meals. The 100-year-old woman could become a friend. She'll have to see. Meanwhile, my mom told me that the prior day, she sat down across from a woman, who didn't acknowledge her, so my mother said plainly, "Are you anti-social or do you have Alzheimer's?" The woman did not register the question, and my mom said, "When I got up, she gave me a smile; you know, they're in and out [with Alzheimer's]."

I wish I could find the energy to make the trip more often to spend more time with my mother; I can hardly stand that she feels lonely, but I guess it's also because I can't stand the idea of being alone myself.

Till My Sister Gets There

My sister Deb will bring her kids to see my mom today, around 2 pm, so I called this morning to keep her company for a bit meanwhile.

"It looks like a beautiful day outside," my mom said.

"It is. It's warm. Pat and I raked leaves and it was fun this time, since she's taking her tree-identification class and was pointing out all of the different leaves while we raked."

"That's what I had with your father. I was never bored."

I'm not surprised that they were never bored. My mother and I laughed and laughed at lunch yesterday and she kept grabbing the University of Wisconsin Bucky Badger I brought for her to her chest, so it wouldn't hurt so much when she did. (My mother's a U-W alumni club life-member.) "What did you say when your roommate called you a devil?"

"I told her she was lucky that she didn't have a roommate who was a lawyer. Now, she's telling people that I said I would call the cops, which I didn't say."

I also read her the NYT article on Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks and we cracked up.

Minutes ago, I switched over to e-mail to see the latest in my in-box and saw a note from a friend and colleague about her father's passing from a sudden heart attack, including wake information.

God, we never know how long we have and every funny conversation I can have with my mom is a blessing.

It Might Not Be My Mother's Fault

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

Recall for Bad Accelerators

Most important is that my mom's mobility is only temporarily impaired. Still, it's hopeful to learn that there's currently a question of whether the car had a faulty accelerator and caused the accident.

In any case, my mom's still laid up in the hospital and rehab for at least a couple of weeks, and she will not heal for up to eight weeks.

"Oh, God," I said to Pat when I first learned of my mom's cracked sternum, "She's already got a bad back --"

"Her sternum is her front, not her back," Pat explained.

"Oy, so now a bad back and a bad *front*. My poor mother."

My mother looks injured, with a mottled, right hand that's full of swelling and a silvery finger-splint on her index finger. And every time she moves, she yelps due to the sternum-damage.

This morning by phone:

"You sound better, Mom. You were a bit morose yesterday."

"Because I had had no sleep. How was I morose?"

"Well, you were needing to be convinced that it made sense to hang around for Max's and Sam's Bar Mitzvah [in two years]."

"Yeah, well --"

"And I need you to stick around for my Masters graduation."

"Don't make me laugh, Sarah, it hurts."

"I'm not joking."

"Kayla's coming today."

"Yeah, and I'll visit you after my therapy session tomorrow evening."

"Oh, good --"

"So that'll mean you'll just be on your own on Thursday and Friday, but we'll all see you over the weekend."

"Well, they're moving me on Thursday to the rehab anyway."

Writing this, I'm haunted by the nurse who offered yesterday, "The people I've seen do best in the hospital are the ones from ethnic families. They might not even understand English or what's going on exactly, but they're here with food and everyone's in the room continuously. Sometimes, they spill out of the room."

I recall, thinking at the time that the nurse was no doubt right and that she had better not use that as an excuse and blame us, if my mother's health failed, God forbid.

Yesterday morning, I called the local U.S. Post Office to request that my mom's mail be held for eight weeks.

"We hold it only for 30 days. Let's cross that bridge if we come to it, though."

In response, I felt both hopeful and worried. Did the postmaster mean, Your mother might be better by then, or God forbid...?

When I told her my mom's name (Edythe) and address, she said, "My mother's name was also Edith."

"You said, 'was.'"

"Yes," she sounded like she was smiling wistfully.

"I'm sorry to hear it."

The Scene

In the afternoon, I picked up the police report from the Bedford Street station, got directions from a lovely police officer and then drove to the scene of the accident to see it for myself.

There is another Stamford, which I never really noticed as vividly prior. Once I drove under the I-95 overpass, the sky and land suddenly opened up and I felt like I was in the Hamptons or any beachy area. I drove past the convenience store, where one of my best friends who lived in that neighborhood and I used to hang out when we were 11. She would wear her sparkly "Yes" rock-band T-shirt and look so cool and I would feel like her nerdy sidekick.

And then I kept going down Shippan Avenue, till it was time to turn down a street and see the aftermath. I took two camera-phone pictures, but my phone doesn't enable me to upload the photos. It was terrifying. The stone-wall had a bite-shaped chunk taken out of it, the width of my mom's car, and I saw that behind the wall was a 20-foot+ drop down to the owner's property. Thank God the car got caught on the wall. It creeps me out, writing about it.

My mother had a friend, whose car was hit earlier this year, and he is paralyzed from it. Thank you, God, that my mother was not more hurt than she was. And thank God I have therapy tomorrow eve.