Ten Minutes' Worth of Memoir Free Writing

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

When did a community you were part of use music to overcome a difficult time?

 It's my first day back at high school, straight from my father's shiva. I'm standing in a so-far empty classroom when a dance is announced over the PA system and they play some of Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing". I burst into tears, after not having cried at my dad's (z"l) funeral, because the music sounds so, so good. It's the first music I've heard in seven days. No one knows my father's dead, other than teachers; that's how at arms-length I kept everyone back then, punning compulsively to distract them from my attraction to the girls among them, if possible.

The music -- that particular song -- reminded me of my continuous and mostly unrequited horniness and also made me resolve to go to the dance that weekend. Anything to get out of the house, where I was stuck with my grieving mother, my older sisters having left years prior.

That song reminded me: I'm still alive. I'm still alive and I'm sexual and I'm reachable. That song pulled snatched away my numbness.

That song makes me feel the same way every time I hear it. Only I know, though, till now. Get up, get up!*

*Written during the Reading & Writing Club at my synagogue last Wednesday, and I didn't write about my community because the fastest thing that came to mind when I got the prompt in bold above was about the first music I heard when I returned from my dad's (z"l) shiva. The prompt came from http://www.pw.org/writing-prompts-exercises.

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....

"Here Comes the Rain Again"

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

Wishing My Memories Could Rest in Peace

November 3, 1982: My first cousin Yanai and I are sitting on the back porch of the home where I grew up and where my mom still lives. He's distracting me from the events of the day by talking about a favorite book of his, *The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy* and about his interest in Space, as in "the final frontier".

What do people talk about at a shivah call with a 17-year-old whose father's the reason for the shivah? What do they talk about if they are among Georgetown's undergrads and on the proudly nerdy end of the late-adolescent spectrum?

There's a famous -- famous, among our family -- photo of Yanai and me in a bathtub with Mr. Bubble when we were two and four years old. And that was practically the last time I saw Yanai, till the shivah call in memory of my dad (z"l) 15 years later.

We didn't grow up together like first cousins sometimes do. And I didn't get to know his younger sister Sarit (Sari) till she was 22 and I was 27, when she called me one summer out of the blue: I was living in Chicago and her college boyfriend had moved there to attend U. of C. for grad school, so why not meet for dinner, the three of us?

It turned out to be a fun, sweet evening and I felt wistful that we hadn't spent more time together growing up. And then we did stay in touch and she met Pat, and we were invited to her wedding, and Facebook has served as a continual bridge to many of my cousins, including Yanai, Gail, Sari and her husband Barry.

Regret that I Didn't Get to Know Gail, or My Dad, Better

October 26, 2013: Nearly 31 years since that shivah call, it's my turn to pay a shivah call to Yanai; Yanai's dear wife Gail is gone due to cancer, as of yesterday.

My dad was 56 and Gail was 49. I was 17 and her kids are probably 14 and 16. Happily, we were at the kids' Bat Mitzvah and Bar Mitzvah, where we loved seeing Gail dancing and looking vigorous. Unfortunately, I didn't get to know Gail other than at such simchot or at funerals. I'm melancholy, seeing her Facebook wall now, and that she loved some of the same cultural things that I loved, including the book *A Separate Peace*, the movie *Airplane*, and the musician Melissa Etheridge.

We never learned what we had in common, really, other than the Siegel family. We never had a conversation other than about family, or about a bit of her high-tech work -- and she sounded talented at it -- but I'd rather have found out why she loved *A Separate Peace*.

What would my dad have put on his Facebook wall if Facebook had been around in 1982? Perhaps that he loved P.G. Wodehouse (particularly as a kid, my mom told me), George Booth, the "New Yorker" cartoonist, Georg Jensen, the Danish designer, and Letraset.

I don't even recall the music he liked, other than chamber music and Jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman, and that he tolerated a couple of pop songs, "Moonlight Feels Right" because it mentioned Chesapeake Bay and my dad grew up in D.C., and "Sir Duke" by Stevie Wonder, which I adored; it was the only 45 he ever bought me.

On his Facebook wall, my dad might have Liked Max Schulman's books and "Popular Mechanics". And maybe the movie "Diner", which amused him; it was the last film my mom and I ever saw with him. And perhaps Breyers Rocky Road ice cream, though by now, he'd have discovered the many new brands and flavors. And if there were Facebook groups for paisley tie lovers or Carhartt overalls fans, he might have joined them. And he'd have specified that he was married to Edythe Siegel for 58 years, if he were still alive, rather than the 27 years they actually had due to cancer.... I'm pretty sure that Yanai and Gail had fewer than 20 years together.

How did we get from bubble-bath splashing to shivah chats too soon? From weddings and baby-births to Bat and Bar Mitzvot, to more shivah chats again too soon?

Parent Loss

While I'm confident that my mom can relate to Yanai's tragedy directly, I can't at this point, thank God, since Pat & I are both still alive and well k'ayn eyin harah. Instead, Yanai and Gail's kids keep coming to mind because like me, they've lost a parent in their teens.

Everyone grieves differently, but if they feel anything like I did, then it's practically more stress than anyone should have to bear: I was stricken at losing my dad while at the same time, experiencing the first ultimate assessment of my academic talent while yearning for love and romantic attention from my peers in parallel.

It was practically too much to handle. I'd work on my college applications in the hospital waiting room and then walk along the streets of Spanish Harlem, where the hospital was, wishing irrationally that I could get pregnant and have a baby to replace my dying father.

What do Yanai and Gail's kids feel along with their pure grief at losing their beloved mother? And how will they cope with their feelings? I spent nearly a decade coping mostly through junkfood and romantic fantasy accompanied by mostly disappointing reality. I want to say: "And then I got over it," but that's not at all true; I did give up the junkfood and the self-and-other-disrespecting romantic pursuits, but feel no less grief about my gone father than I did when he died.

Spouse Loss

This is territory I've not yet traveled, thank God, but my poor bubble-splashing cousin Yanai now has done so. How will he cope?

How would I cope? Would I go back to junkfood? Would I channel my grief through blogging? Would my remaining family comfort me? Would I find a great grief group or therapist? Would my synagogue community be a source of comfort? Would I swim more? How would I stay strong for my kids (in my case, two feline daughters)? What would I do to survive?

Please, God, help Yanai, Gail's and his kids, and the rest of their families to find life-affirming comfort. And help me not to be self-absorbed when I see them on Monday for the funeral and shivah; help me be usefully, compassionately present.... I guess this is what family is about -- the longevity to splash together in bubble baths, meet for dinner-fun, dance with one another at Bar/Bat Mitzvot celebrations and weddings, and comfort one another at shivot.

What Will We Do When We're No Longer Outsiders?

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

Death and Art Propel Big Questions This Weekend

At the funeral of our neighbor Megan of blessed memory earlier today, bookmarks-as-mementos sat next to the guestbook. One of them featured a girlhood photo of Megan and a quote: "When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." -- Wayne Dyer

The quotation reminded me of some insights shared with me earlier this weekend, and how I might change the way I look at lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) identity.

Last night, with our friends David & Gerard, I attended a lecture by Jonathan Katz, the co-curator of Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture. Most of the works he featured in his slideshow included metaphors and symbols and codes that were dense and tense and rich for eyes that could recognize the homosexual subtext of them; in a number of cases, Jonathan Katz decoded them for us, as a number of them were subtle.

As I watched and listened, I was touched by the artists' ability to make visible to any degree a segment of society that between 1898 and 1991, and even still, today, depending on where in the world we live, typically was marginalized, stigmatized or at the very least, in the shadows.

During the Q&A afterward, I asked, "What happens when LGBT artists are no longer outsiders?"

Jonathan Katz said, "Other differences will emerge....It will not be central to their themes."

I was shaken by this answer. And I told David and Gerard so after walking through the exhibit together.

Gerard: "He was saying something hopeful, I thought, like that even heterosexual artists might include us as subjects and we'd just be more visible."

Me: "Maybe I'm too literal, but I don't ever want to be lesbian just incidentally. It's part of my core identity."

David: "I'm literal, too, but maybe assimilation's not so bad. I mean, isn't it nice being married now?" (He meant, he to Gerard and me, to Pat.)

"Yes, *so* nice. Your use of the word 'assimilation' helps me a bit because it reminds me of some alarmist Jews in my community who say that Jews will disappear if we assimilate too much, and yet, we've been here for 3,000+ years. I don't really think we're gonna disappear, since we've hung on for this long."

Dance? No, Lurk Around the Margins.

We said goodbye, since I was ready to go home, while they wanted to linger at the exhibit a bit longer. Making my way toward the exit, I found a free dance party on the third floor of the museum.

Oh, the music was so good with Rhianna's voice bouncing off the paintings in the nice and dim, cavernous room. I was nearly ready to enter the dance floor and move alone among the crowd, which likely would have been fine had I not been too shy.

I wished that Pat were with me, so that I'd have a partner. It struck me that no one would even notice us; in fact, we might stand out more so for being older than most of the crowd, rather than for being a same-sex couple -- to Jonathan Katz's earlier point. After "Sweet Dreams" by the Eurythmics played, I slunk away to my car in the parking lot. When that song was first popular, I was most of the dancers' ages, and I just owned a bicycle and a subway pass, and a radio/tape-deck I got as a premium for opening a bank account.

Driving home, I thought, Oh, no! Have I become like the lesbian separatists who used to alienate me when I was first getting involved in the gay community in the late-'80s? Who thought that "womyn"-only spaces were supreme while I thought they were unappealing and even obsolete as a group due to their insularity?

There's an analogy, right? AIDS and other societal realities made lesbian separatism untenable back then, just like today, staunchly gay, lesbian, bi or transpeople were misguided whenever we ghetto-ized ourselves, smothering ourselves with an insecurity blanket; more and more polls showed that younger people weren't half as discriminatory as previous generations, so why did any of us hang on so fiercely to separateness and outsider status?

Still, the chip on my shoulder had become comfy after all these years of hauling it and the prospect of heeding Wayne Dyer's/Megan's advice to change my thinking was scary. Earlier today, I spoke with a heterosexual relative, to tell her of my new confusion around my identity, and of my fear of losing my minority status and as usual, she had great on-the-spot wisdom in response:

Sarah, you don't have to be ghetto-ized or Marrano-like anymore [in this area of the world]. And compared to Jews, I think there's less of a chance of LGBT assimilation causing the end of LGBT people, since you won't intermarry.... And in any case, don't worry that you'll lose your identity when people stop being hateful, as there will always be hateful people; there are persistent taboos in every stripe, like unwed mothers. There's always someone who will make sex dirty.... Sex is the engine for intrigue and betrayal and murder and art and politics.... Your sort of desire won't disappear just because it's more so accepted. It will simply be less underground, which should be good, right?

We Are All Outsiders.

In 1998, two years after Pat & I moved in to our neighborhood, Megan, Steve and their young son Ben moved in three houses down from us. I never brought them a house-warming gift, or any food or drink. Never invited them over. Promptly forgot their names as soon as Megan introduced her family and herself to us one day in the street. Thereafter, Megan would drive by us while we were raking leaves or gardening and would always wave. Whenever she had her car-window down, she'd address us by name, and I always felt bad that I had to try to stretch "Hi" into a multi-syllable word, since I was too embarrassed to ask Megan to tell me her name again.

Every time she passed us, she smiled whole-heartedly at us, but after all, what did we have in common with a woman who had a husband and a young kid? So why bother to be friendlier and learn more about her by talking with her? When other neighbors with whom we've been friendly since we've moved in, called to tell us of Megan's sudden death from a massive heart attack the other night, first, I was relieved and ashamed finally to know her name, but then realized that I'd lost the chance of ever being friendlier with her.

What did we have in common? Through loving eulogies from her husband, son, brother and best friends, I learned what I never bothered to find out from her while she was alive: One of only two other families in the neighborhood (that I know of), Megan's family and she were Jewishly-affiliated, attending High Holiday services and bar mitzah'ing their son, who was now 18 -- our nephew and niece's age...like Pat & me, originally, Meg & Steve spotted each other across a room...like part of Pat's heritage, Meg's was French-Canadian...and volunteered from the early days, helping PWA's (People with AIDS), and so likely saw a number of friends die over the early years, like we did. And probably, we'll never discover how much more we might have had in common. It's just ironic, and tragic, how I was so busy, being shy of a stereotypically nuclear family, that I didn't stop to consider that Megan and her family felt like outsiders in the neighborhood initially, which we could have softened by being friendlier.

The other bookmark-as-memento that sat next to Megan's funeral-guestbook had an adult photo of Megan, smiling the smile I recognized, and the quote associated with it came from the poet, Rainer Maria Rilke: "This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more they give, the more they possess."

Fighting a Taboo

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

Having Second Thoughts

...but I have to combat them. I'm feeling ashamed:

Why do I need to tell the world what I'm thinking? Why *isn't* a private journal-entry relief enough? And yet I know I'm not alone in my human struggles. Or maybe this is my repeated test to confirm that I'm not alone.

A friend of Phoebe -- Toonces was not similarly fond of him -- disappeared apparently. My partner Pat saw a photo of him up at Shop-Rite; his name is Brien and he lives on Alexander Ave., down the street. He weighs 13 pounds. The photo features Brien, reclining on an indoor couch. We only knew him as "the gentlman caller." He used to visit the girls at the sliding glass door of our house. I can't imagine him indoors....If only he had stayed indoors.

Pat just turned to me and said, "Sydney died."

"How do you know?"

"It says, 'RIP, Sydney,' on Jan's site."

Sydney was a miniature pinscher. She had a brain tumor. She was hyper and warm and wiry and affection-loving. Thank God, k'ayn ayeen ha'rah/minus the evil eye, Pat and the kitties and I are physically healthy. I just need to get mentally healthy again. Pat continues to be Pat, funny and supportive and my best friend, and I'm so grateful.

My dad of blessed memory's 27-year Yahrzeit (death anniversary) was yesterday. And yesterday, my mom's therapist called with a recommendation for a therapist I could meet. It felt like both of my parents were taking care of me yesterday. Tomorrow evening is my first meeting.

I am skeptical, but hungry for hope.

Grateful for Catastrophes...

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

...that Never Happened

Finishing *The Septembers of Shiraz* this morning, and seeing "Inglourious Basterds" last night, I think about survival and how easy mine has been relative to, say, that of Iranian Jews in post-Shah Iran or French Jews in Nazi-occupied France.

"Why, on a gorgeous, pure-vacation day am I wanting to think about catastrophes that never happened?" This morning, shortly after waking up, I wrote this question in my journal.

For one thing, it makes me even more grateful for the relatively luscious life I lead, and for another, I have survivor's guilt.

In a previous blog-entry, I'm pretty certain I wrote about Sofia, a Russian woman I tutored in English in 1987, when I lived in Chicago. It struck me that if my grandparents on my dad's side and great-great-grandparents on my mom's side had not left Russia by 1917, I could have been in Sofia's place -- a new, U.S. immigrant from Russia, needing literacy help and all sorts of other aid as well, if my ancestors had remained in Russia and had made it through further pogroms and the Holocaust...and if I would have existed at all. We were the same age and though I did not yet have a good job, my prospects were far greater than hers when we worked together.

Iran and Spanish Harlem Circa 1982

The same there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I sensation comes to me about the Iranian story, which was written by an Iranian- Jewish woman, just seven years younger than I. And this I believe I've written about prior as well: In 1973, my dad was on the verge of taking a job to build a toy factory in Iran that would have required our family to move to Tehran. Thank God, it fell through. I recall looking at a picture of the shah in our encyclopedia, with his white military uniform and dark hair and mustache (salted a bit with white) and thinking how elegant my new leader looked.

Had we been there, just six years later, my dad might have been imprisoned when the shah fell, under suspicion of being a spy for Israel, simply because his parents and sister lived there. Spoiler Alert: At least, that's what happened to the father in the novel I just read, who simply had some relatives in Israel.

Now, as I think of it, in real-life, the author's father was imprisoned for a time, and they really did have to escape from Iran in 1982, but her luck was that to this day, she still had a father in real-life, whereas by November of 1982, my dad of blessed memory had died of bile-duct cancer at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in Spanish Harlem. As a result, I've lived most of my life so far with just one parent.

Which was harder? Both were excruciating. I've read that kids who were separated from their well-meaning parents during the Holocaust would rather have remained with their parents and undergone whatever trauma doing so required than to have been separated from them, even if they were reunited over time.

France Circa 1944

To my knowledge, none of my relatives ever lived in France. I hadn't wanted to see "Inglourious Basterds," as I feared it would be somehow disrespectful, since in my experience with Quentin Tarantino's films, human-life is not all that sacred, but I really valued it, to my complete surprise.

Spoiler Alert for "Inglourious Basterds:" Most chilling of all was the monologue, where the "Jew Hunter" spoke of Jews as rats; I'm paraphrasing: "What is it about rats? I mean, they've never done anything to you, and yet you simply find them repulsive and you want to be rid of them."

Talking with my mom about it, before either of us saw it, but since we already knew the premise, my mother said, "Sarah, I've talked to survivors and the ones who got revenge were not made happier by it. It did not make them feel good." Sitting in the audience last night, Tarantino managed to make me feel blood-thirsty and ashamed all within seconds.

It was powerful how I, who've grown up, being taught that during the Holocaust, people had a choice and did not need to be an agent of Jews' destruction, found myself easily becoming part of a mob for the opposing side, i.e., I wanted to justify hurting Nazis for their inhumanity....Just as they did not see Jews as human, I wanted to see them as animals, too.

That's the thing about escalation: It makes me resort to my visceral version.

What a luxury that I get to conclude this entry and enjoy another warm, sunny, Maine-day. Wish my dad were here.

Life is a Cycle...

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

Sometimes the Tires Go Flat

Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Uncle Vevy (Velvel). All are gone within days of each other.

This confirms that I can never talk about death without also thinking, and most of the time talking, about affirming life: The popular poster of Farrah Fawcett helped accelerate my lesbian awakening when I first saw it while descending the escalator at Caldor, a department store in my hometown of Stamford. A few years later, I was inspired to "shake my body (down to the ground)" by Michael Jackson.

Unfortunately, I didn't know my uncle very well, nor his children -- my first cousins -- till we were adults, as our fathers were estranged. I blogged about this recently.

I'm feeling grief at my lack of grief, and I am wishing that we could go back to when I was little and we were getting together with them at least once in awhile. I have just one, vague memory of our backing out of their New Jersey home's driveway, sitting low (due to my small height back then) in the backseat of our station wagon, when I was probably around four years old. I had gotten to play with my older cousin, Yanai, and it had been a fun day. His little sister, Sarit, would be born a year later.

I'm grieving missed opportunities right now, grieving that I have more memories of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson than of my own uncle, aunt and cousins.

We will visit with Sari (for short) and Yanai upon our return from San Francisco and God, please help me have helpful things to say, and more important to be able to listen utterly-intentionally/attentively.

God, please let my uncle and father be re-united as the close siblings they were when they were kids, if there's an after-life. Also, please let my mother live for many, many more years, and Pat and the rest of my loved ones. Amen.

One of my friends wrote to me, asking if my uncle's passing makes me think about what I'm contributing to this world because it does so for her. If Uncle Vevy caused anyone to pause and consider their life-purpose, that's a bonus contribution he made.

Time Cut Short

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

Marvin Gaye died today, some years ago. Shot by his father before Gaye Junior was 46, if I remember correctly. First song on the radio during my commute, his: "Sexual Healing." Driving home from Brewster and my colleague's husband's wake, Gaye's "Let's Get It On," immediately after leaving the funeral home.

Death and desire always go together with me. Someone beloved dies and I want to create life. At this point, writing is my alternative means of creating some form of life, i.e., bringing stories to life, along with sustaining lives that already exist, like that of the kitty, swishing the end of her tail as she rests everything other than her active purr in my lap.

"Sexual Healing," I've written here before, was the first song I heard, following the shivah period after the death of my father of blessed memory; a snippet of it played over the Stamford High P.A. system, to promote a dance that was happening the following weekend. I was the first to arrive for Civics and I cried, looking out the window at Sonia Liebowitz, arriving on her motorcycle in the middle of the day, her long, red hair hidden by a black helmet...till she took it off. I was so happy to hear music again, let alone a pop-song that I loved, and then it made me cry with desire, not necessarily for Sonia per se, but at large.

When my dad died, desire was the alternative to a complete shutdown of every emotion. I wanted to become pregnant, but was going about it all wrong....I guess I wanted to make new life to replace my father, but not really enough to disregard every bit of who I was then, i.e., a college-bound, as-secret-as-possible lesbian.

What if I had become pregnant at 17? My child(ren) would be out of college and even grad school probably now, if she, he or they had had the opportunity to go for higher education. I never did become pregnant, but it remains something I wish for, at least momentarily, whenever I am reminded of death.

Musical Mourning

"Let's Get It On" always moves me when I hear it, especially ever since the scene I witnessed around a decade ago at a saloon in the Adirondacks; I've written about it prior, too: Pat and I were at one of the earliest Adirondyke Weekends, which was organized by a friend, who retired from IBM, and her partner of 30+ years.

The song came on and another IBM friend, who's also since retired, and her girlfriend at the time, stopped the pool-game they were playing to go and dance languorously. I watched them abandon the game, dance beguilingly for the length of the song and then in slow-motion, return to resume their game, smiling at each other across the table.

My colleague's husband lay in a half-open casket as we toured the collage of his life in photos with my colleague. There he was as a young boy, standing by the couch on which a black kitty sat, ignoring him; as an even younger kid, next to a cow on a farm to which his parents took him every summer; in his sailor-uniform; at his wedding to my colleague; with his small grandson....And then stock-still, eyes shut, nearby, in the casket.

In its wood and glass box, the American flag reminded me of my dad's; both of the men had been in the Navy, though in different eras. I kissed my colleague's cheek, coming and going, and registered with another colleague on my way out that at 64, my widowed colleague's husband was only six years older than Pat; I drove home through a dangerous rain, blasting the radio to drown out any mournful thoughts as best I could, and to invite my desire in parallel.

Channeling My Feelings Through Writing

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

...No Matter How Naked I Feel

What if you were somewhat observantly Jewish, and at synagogue during Rosh Hashanah, you found out that one of your friends from another time and place was serving jail-time? Or what if right before Yom Kippur, you learned that another friend had killed himself in the past week?

Would you mourn the memories of the fun you had with these two friends, and then want to escape into fantasy? And what if you were also a lesbian, and serendipitously -- around the time you had this series of tragic news -- a girlfriend from nearly 20 years ago had contacted you through LinkedIn?

Just Like the Summer of '82

During my dad's last summer, and after his death, I wished I could escape my grief through affirming life (in this case, that's a polite way of saying, through sexual activity). I was 17 and managed wholly with another girl, and partly, with a boy.

Whenever I'm faced particularly with the death of a loved one, I want to leave the painful emotion for experiences that are more body-focused. Like now. Why did my friend lose all hope?

I hope tomorrow will be more fun than today. I hope to be recognized as useful and funny by nearly everyone I meet. I hope that 5769 (2008-09) will be a good year. I hope to be honest enough to write what I wish to write here (see below).

Dreaming at Night

Last night, I dreamt that I was going to be intimate with the woman who had found me through LinkedIn. Pat did not even exist in the dream. And in the dream, the object of desire and I had gone to the same nursery school -- not the case in real-life.

Since my mother wasn't home, we headed over to the house, where I grew up. We looked like we were in our 20s again, but we were our current ages.

Unaware of her daughter's and my desire for each other, her mother invited herself over to my mother's house, and then the woman's younger brother appeared at my mother's house as well. (I don't recall if she has a brother in real-life.)

Finally, we excused ourselves and went down the hall to the bedroom of my childhood, where we began to touch [each other] in earnest, and unfortunately, I woke up very soon after she and I were finally alone.

Daydreaming

Usually, I call my mother on the way to work or while driving home. Yesterday, her line was busy in the morning, and so I spent the 60-minute commute mostly thinking about the LinkedIn woman. And then after I spoke with my mom during the commute home, I fantasized further about the woman I knew nearly two decades ago.

Her profile-photo was beautiful -- like I remembered her. She had hardly changed. We met on New Year's Day, 1989, if I remember correctly. She was a cellist by avocation, and played at my friend's New Year's potluck brunch. (Was there a more appealingly-shaped musical instrument than the cello, particularly when it was surrounded by her?)

She was tall, blue-eyed, long-necked, with wavy, blond hair to her shoulders, and a flashy, white, exciting smile. Even as I write this, she becomes an object for me again. In hindsight, I ended up feeling guilty at how I objectified her while we were together back then. Still, I see that she has remained more of a focus for my desire than a full-fledged human being.

When will I learn that packages are just that? The description of her that I just provided nearly matches that of another woman with whom I was involved while in my 20s, who was actually male inside; a number of years later, he transitioned to his natural gender.

The daydreaming did not include my above packaging reflection, though. It was strictly about replaying scenes from our ardent time together, like the sub-zero-degree, Chicago night when we stood by the lake and she took my hands out of my mittens and warmed my fingers with her mouth.

Recalling Our One Weekend Away

Something in her resisted being objectified, though, or maybe she was just being romantic and hospitable; right before we broke up -- my rolling stone was incapable of gathering any moss back then -- she invited me to visit her hometown for the weekend, to stay at her mother's. Her mother was kind to me, and -- in real-life as opposed to the dream -- was aware of her daughter's and my relationship. She heated Lender's frozen bagels for our breakfast, since she knew I was Jewish and thought that they'd make me feel more at home -- Wow, nothing like a wonderfully welcome reality-check in the middle of fantasizing:

It Wasn't Suicide!

Our friend's brother just called and said the doctor found that our friend had died of heart-failure. His brother, Pat and I had jumped to the conclusion that it was suicide, since he had been depressed perennially, but probably, it was simply a heart attack.

"Are you sure his brother's not just trying to make us feel better?"

"No," Pat said, "Heart disease runs in their family, his brother said, and that he's got it, too. He had just talked to him on Monday night."

He had died on Tuesday.

We're still not happy that he's dead, but a bit less stricken by the news.

Pat changed computers and didn't have any e-mail from our friend from before mid-2005. Fortunately, I had notes from as far back as 2001. Our friend was *so* funny. He once sent us a photo of himself in high school, with his prom-date.

Pat responded by e-mail, "The things we did to try and fit in. I have a few of these type pics myself. I definitely don't miss those days!!!"

He wrote back, "Yeah, but at least she was a top."

Trying to Borrow Some of Our Friend's (z"l) Sense of Humor

Our friend was hilarious, even when he was sad. Unfortunately, our friend didn't find a lasting love of his own in his lifetime. Pat always prayed to herself, at every Shabbat service we attended, after the silent Amidah, that he would find love. He wanted to find a partner, but wasn't lucky like Pat and me.

Wow, that really helps bring me back from fantasy-land -- appealingly distracting as it was when I wished to be distracted -- to remind me of my gratitude for Pat's and my 16-plus-year relationship. This isn't where I express guilt for having had my day and a half's worth of reminiscing about a past girlfriend. I could go on about her further, but now, I'm no longer in the mood, as reality's even better, all told.

If only the jailed friend turned out to be untrue! I pray that my friend's able to find peace, and yes, even laughter again ultimately, if not while still in prison.

Aren't I blessed, though? I mean, how lucky to have the luxury of thinking back to a time of delayed-adolescent behavior from the vantage-point of someone, who managed to become reliable and monogamous.

Do I sound authentically pleased right now? I'm not sure. I do miss the adventurousness of then, but not at all the loneliness before and after practically every experience with every woman I ever dated back then.

Our friend's legacy was that we should keep laughing. With Pat, I can do that. Pre-Pat, life was funny only when I was in the company of friends like the one, who went to jail. My other funniest friend, pre-Pat, died of AIDS. Nothing's funny about either one's fate...nor about our friend's -- the one, who just died -- but at least, it was likely a matter of nature, taking over, and not our friend, opting to end his life due to hopelessness. All we can do is keep laughing for as long as we last. Laughter is the voice of hope.