Swimming Free

How Much Are You Worth?

2012-01-19T09:31:00.000-08:00

I've thought about this during the break in between semesters. I am returning in a week to tutor undergraduate students and I shall help them learn and master the art of writing essays and research papers. I do it thankfully because this part time job assists me in carving and sculpting my goal in writing and facilitating workshops through my business Workshops by Wolford, and I do gain great satisfaction in helping others since my purpose in life is to encourage. I do all of this, though, with an end goal and time limit in mind. And with a keen and growing realization that everyone who performs a service deserves a fair and engaging salary to go with that assistance.

Never continue in a job you don't enjoy. If you're happy in what you're doing, you'll like yourself, you'll have inner peace. And if you have that, along with physical health, you will have had more success than you could possibly have imagined. - Johnny Carson

Recently, I found myself tutoring a graduate student who had many challenges. It became a major amount of work and each time I went home tired with a capital T. Finally, I was given clarification that it was never in my contract to tutor grad students and so I did not have to assist this student anymore. I was relieved, yet also agitated that it had gone on for an entire semester. Worse yet, the actual student had the nerve to tell me that "maybe I had learned something" regarding the topics. This led me to realize the audacity of such a response, such a stubborn, boastful statement to make rather than having gratitude for my incredible assistance, especially on my humble hourly salary.

In my professional career, I look back now and think about the times when I accepted a job without knowing the actual salary, especially since I was a single parent. And then later, how I sought jobs that fit my skill set and motivation, trying also to balance it with a higher salary.

It didn't work.

So once I burned out in 2007, I decided to work on my own and find work to supplement it. However, what I didn't know yet was that I had extremely low self esteem and even though I could dream up some incredible job opportunities and projects, still my low regard for myself and my weak confidence made it impossible to accomplish. So things got worse as I began to accept gigs that paid the lowest amount of money I had made since my early twenties.

Now I understand and am working on my self esteem by being completely honest with myself on EVERY issue in my life. I am the ONLY one who needs to give the bottom line approval and this is where I have found the difference to be between low and high self esteem. This takes going inside and uncovering the fears and layers of worries in needing other people's approval. Now I understand I deserve a good, strong salary for my workshops, writing, everything I DO in accordance in knowing who I am and what I have to offer.

How much do you want to make in your life?

I have a brother who does not flinch at asking for an incredible amount of money for his skills. And when he picks up freelance jobs, he gets it. I admire him for this. And if he learns to carry this in every area of his life, he will be a true success and will live a happy, generous life.

If your self esteem is low, I recommend you seek out the lectures by Caroline Myss. She is remarkable. My growing knowledge in myself tells me I can tutor for another semester. I enjoy helping the students - the undergraduate students - who need enormous amounts of help to gain confidence in using writing and research skills. And I am fine with helping any student within a decent time frame and who possesses the correct frame of mind. But, I am on a mission to do other things, too, and am honoring that, as well and it is looming closer and closer, and so my time is valuable.

I want to pay my bills and loans. I want to be paid a salary that allows me to do that. And I want to love what I am doing. Thus Workshops by Wolford is important to me. And so is the amount of money I expect to come from this noble work. There was a time I would expect the minimum. Now I receive the proper amount reflecting my worth. And like my brother, I intend not to flinch in asking for it. When I do, I too, will graduate with my self esteem degree, walking the stage I've built and waving to the audience in appreciation, yet knowing the respect and approval lives, as it always has, solely within me.

Give Until it Feels Good

2012-01-14T10:14:00.000-08:00

And The King answers and says to them, 'Amen, I say to you, as much as you have done to one of these my little brothers, you have done that to me.' - Matthew 25:40

When I was a young girl and living in El Paso, Texas, some nights in the winter months - even West Texas and the Southwest - would turn unusually cold, a frostbitten mess on the other side of the border in Juarez, Mexico. I would have trouble sleeping, thinking about them, the families in cardboard houses just miles from my home. I wondered if they had blankets and if not, how could we get an army of warmth to them?

When I was in the first grade, living on two cleared acres of land outside Fairbanks, Alaska, I came home from school and told my mother about a boy in my class who I'd witnessed not eating lunch. She sent me with two hot dog sandwiches the next day. I wish I could remember how many more sandwiches I took to him, but I don't.

I'm reading an essay, "Our Tired, Our Poor, Our Kids," by Anna Quindlen in her 2004 publication of Loud and Clear, and upon finishing the essay, I feel those same pangs of wanting to help. I think now - in 2012 - of all the talk on the news about the disappearance of the middle class, and yet, I realize now, how we all are responsible for turning a blind eye to the beginnings of the madness, and now that it has hit the belly of America, the handkerchiefs are coming out.

Not that I am not worried for the middle class, too. I am. I want all to have a good life. Yet, way before the greed became cannibalistic on Wall Street, the thievery rampant, we, too, must take responsibility for our greed in wanting more, more, more and not stopping to consider how to help the least of us.

Quindlen wrote in 2001, "There are hundreds of thousands of little nomads in America, sleeping in the backs of cars, on floors in welfare offices, or in shelters five to a room. What would it mean to spend your childhood drifting from one strange bed to another, waking in the morning to try to figure out where you'd landed today, without those things that confer security and happiness: a familiar picture on the wall, a certain slant of light through a curtained window?"

So we've hit the bottom, America. I never will discount us, though. I hit the bottom in the Fall of 2007, and I found my way back up with the help of a handful of a few. But they were there and they helped me when everyone else turned their backs. So a handful becomes a bunch, and a bunch becomes a group, and a group becomes a mass, and a mass becomes a movement, and a movement becomes a way of life, a value, a hunger fed.

We begin by taking care of the least of us. We begin with a hotdog sandwich, a blanket, and a humble acceptance that no one needs anything until all have light coming from a curtained window. And don't bark "socialism" to me. It is not that. It is humanism. Be a human spirit. Take care of each other.

I am thankful for the few who did for me when I could not find my way; when the darkness was too strong, when the weariness sat on my head, yet I had a slant of light every morning. I was allowed to keep going. The spirit rose in me. "Don't stop," it said, and I didn't.

I'm sending a long overdue box of clothes to the Femap Foundation. It is a start. It is my start. I am going to donate to Children's Defense Fund this year and every year after. It is a start. I also bought two scarves from Deh Kwe Life and I will buy more. It is a start. And, in addition, I will applaud, sign petitions, march, protest, write letters, work for non-profits, write, sing, and praise anyone who is listening to his or her heart and working for the good of all.

Caroline Myss teaches about the power of invisibility. I've just told you what I am going to be doing to help "the least of these," but I am also going to be performing more acts of compassion I shall tell no one. It is this invisibility of kindness where I wish for my power to reside. And then I intend to rise to the middle class where I've seldom been before and higher. And I shall know I have given to the best of my ability, taking care of myself, righting wrongs, and asking for forgiveness as I prosper and grow, because I intend to grow to the height and width of my generosity and wisdom. And on the coldest of nights or hungriest of noons, I want to know there is warmth, room, and food for all.

Catching Mystical Energy

2012-01-09T20:01:00.000-08:00

Last night I listened to an interview on WNYC with Roseanne Cash. I have loved her voice and music for decades. She was talking about how important it is for her to continue to work on her music, to go deeper. And I think this is so true. There are things we each are here to do and to remember about ourselves and the evolving never stops. I like that aspect. Makes me feel ageless. Makes me want to drink water, exercise, stay alive and continue learning.

She talked about how mystical was her father. How he worked his problems out on stage. What a smart way to live, I thought. Stay in the present and work through the issue. She also talked about the morning after he was buried, and how she got up at 5 am, went to Starbucks, and waited for it to open. She purchased two cups of coffee - one for her, one for Johnny - and went to the cemetery, watching the sun rise. She said it was a time travel experience and this song came to her.

She said she thinks of creating songs as catching them as they pass through the air. I love that idea and it reminds me of what Stephen King says about finding stories as fossils, partially submerged in the dirt and sand, requiring gentle recovery. Roseanne said what she is trying to do is to catch the songs she is capable of catching.

I like that and am adopting that approach.

This past Christmas I bought two humble journals and filled the first few pages with handwritten poems for both of my daughters. They said that was the best present, ever. I sat there, feeling the warmth that comes from being in the present moment. I shall never forget it.

My nephew's birthday was yesterday and I made another journal for him and plan to do it for all my loved ones. It feels so good to know I shall do that. I am returning to poetry and taking it seriously. I keep making writing out to be harder than it must be. I have been trying to catch way over my head. Poetry comes to my glove and I thankfully accept it. I am reading - rereading Mary Oliver's Handbook on Poetry She is the best.

Roseanne spoke about her ten years of Jungian therapy and how Jung says there are five important dreams we have in our lifetime. She said she had one of those dreams and it was of her at a party and the host's name was "Art" and he turned his back on her, saying in essence, "We do not respect dilettantes."

She said it shook her, and told her not to coast, but to push deeper. In the interview she kept referring to love and energy. I listened, thanking Roseanne, the interviewer, WNYC, and the magical, mystical, majesty of creativity. I thanked God - there in the roses - in the petals and the thorns.

Yesterday I wrote to a few close friends from back home asking them to help a friend of my ex's who has a keen ability to read Tarot cards and could use some extra cash. Months ago, he had sent me a Tarot message from my ex husband who transitioned in 1999, and I read it, crying with happiness and sorrow. It was him, pure and simple. Yesterday, I reread his message from the earlier reading. I cried most of the afternoon. I knew it meant my ex was near. I always cried when I was near him after our divorce. We couldn't live together, but we loved each other and what stunning daughters we produced.

Yes, it was a mystical day yesterday. My nephew, Robert. was born 28 years ago and something inside me just was having a major time travel. I talked to my sister via text and wept through the hour long conversation. I was there when my nephew was born and each year at his birthday, I see the rainy evening and my father driving crazy to the hospital with me in the backseat and my sister holding on to the passenger door, both of us yelling at him to slow down before he kills us! I, too, was pregnant with my daughter and had her three months later. My nephew's birth started the parenthood procession in our family and I go back there with each of his birthdays, feeling the passion of birth and loss in my heart. Last night everything meant something. The interview with Roseanne, my nephew's birthday, trying to help Ed's friend, rereading the Tarot reading. All of it.

I am so thankful. Today I made major headway with a book project and workbook. And both of my daughters are making remarkable progress in their professions. And I talked to an old friend who had lost her husband a few years ago and she has reconnected with someone and she sounded so stunned and happy. This made me so happy. Yesterday's tears paved the way for today's sunshine. And I have my glove, ready to catch it all.

Weary is gateway to Wonder

2011-12-17T17:41:00.000-08:00

Bronx, NY

It started out with me oversleeping. I got to the college where I tutor and was the first one there. Phew. Then slowly the students started coming in. This is our last weekend before winter break. So many papers to proof; students to help, that soon I was overwhelmed and left for the solace of the bathroom stall. Then, back to more harried faces asking me to work a miracle. Why didn't you come sooner, or more so throughout the semester, my mind scolded. But I tried not to judge. Two with dyslexia, one a non-stop chatterer, and three circling me, I wanted to get out of there as much as they did. And finally I was, but not before one last frustrating hour.

On the "prison bus" as I call the Hutchinson bus that takes us from Mercy College to Weschester Square, I saw the large group of parents and children. It was the ACS Holiday party. This bus was small, how would they all get on? I wondered. How much more? I stood in the back with about eight of the children, who sat on the floor, around me. I found myself talking to them, their faces painted as butterflies Big Bird, and tigers. I commented on all the shopping bags, seeing many stuffed animals filling the bottoms. "At least we got something," said an older child, about 10, the one painted as Big Bird and I wanted to give her everything this world could muster. Her mother stood my me on the bus. I felt her smoldering sadness.

Getting on the 6 train at Westchester Square, I felt weary, and while holding a hot tea, I sat down and closed my eyes, listening for 125th, my transfer. When it came I bolted for the 4, getting on, and gaining a coveted seat. I closed my eyes again.

Westchester Square/Tremont Avenue

But something caused me to open them a few stops later. I saw a woman as tall as a sycamore, dressed in brown and holding a brown cane standing across from where I sat, by the door. I waited to catch her attention and to indicate she could have my seat. As soon as she saw me, she spoke in Spanish, telling me she was fine, but thanking me. I thought this odd since she had a cane! A good commuter gives up their seat to anyone with a cane, or who is pregnant, elderly, or with children.

I closed my eyes again only to feel her come and sit beside me soon after the stop at 86th Street. Even now as I am telling you - I am still in sublime shock - over all of this. She sat down and her elbow brushed my arm and you know how sometimes when you are tense, a slight touch can activate a healing point of relief? I was thankful for that, but that was just the beginning.

She began to talk, looking straight ahead as if remembering something from the day, and in fact she was. She said she had witnessed what I determined to be domestic violence while "out in the field," so she must be a social worker or home attendant. I found myself not shying away from a stranger's talk. Nor did I feel like she was a runaway conversationalist, just talking to hear her voice.

But she kept saying, "sometimes you have to report it," and each time, I agreed with her. I thought we must look so funny together, this light, brown-skinned woman wearing braids caught at the ends with red rubberbands, next to a weary white girl with a braid trailing down her back and loose pieces of hair around her face..

She talked of how everyone can be helped to function normally, even those who they say are "special". She told me of a three year old Jewish boy whose parents told her would not eat. She took an orange and peeled it, letting the rinds fall to the ground, she told me. She said the little boy picked it up and put it to her tongue. She accepted it, and it was the start of him beginning to receive his own food. "Today he is in college," she tells me, smiling. "And now I have hundreds of people asking for my help." And I believe her.

She read my mind and asked me how old did I think she was? I looked and blushed. "You can go high or low," she said. I played it safe and said 65. She put her head down as if to laugh, looking up, her eyes vibrant, saying, "I will be 95 on the 25th!"

Shut up!" I said.

"Yes, I am," she answered. "And I am on my fifth pension!"

I reached for my bag, scurrying for my notebook, "Please, you have to let me talk to you," I said, suddenly out of breath. "You see," I stammered, "I have this memoir program, well, I have another program, but it hasn't really taken off, yet, but you will be the first, and well, it's called Elder Campfire, and it is about what we want to say to the future children in our families about what we have learned while here," I said, stammering on and writing my information on the paper. As wild as I felt, nothing felt forced. This felt right. Natural. Normal.

"I want you to," she replied and then she shifted. "I, I mean, yes, you will talk to me, and yes this night it all changes," she said, looking upward, "and this is when it will begin, but I want you to know that God wants you to go home and to take out another piece of paper and to write down, to sit down and to write what you want and what you need, what you really want to happen in your life."

I stared at her, feeling her words in my solar plexus.

"I will do it," I said to her.

"You know, I let two trains pass, and when this one came my friend went to that car and I came to this one," she said. "I knew I was supposed to meet someone and here you are. And I want you to know that angels do not always bring the message. Sometimes it is from people, people like me. And when you see the light," she said, pointing upwards, "don't be afraid. When it comes you will never be the same again."

And I said thank you to this messenger. Humbled, stunned, shook, I rose to leave the train. I didn't want to go. "Please tell me we will speak again," I pleaded. "I will contact you," she said, smiling wide, and as I stepped onto the platform, I hurried hoping to catch her stare in the window and to wave, and to connect again. But her head was down. She was putting my paper into her purse. And her expression was calm, unpretentious, serene, matter of fact, at peace.

I trembled from the grandeur all the way home. I am still moved. Whimpering into my scarf, I walked home, mouth open, no words coming out, no tears, just an all-encompassing feeling of relief and grace.

Dedicated to Tito Ortegon, the most handsome man I never had, but Ida let him carry me home one stone cold drunk night. Te amo to Ida, Tito, and the darling babies that followed.

Help is Dreaming Inside You

2011-12-15T09:26:00.000-08:00

Dreaming is mega important.

As Aristotle said, "Hope is a waking dream." Dreams are the gateway to solutions, answers, help, and support. If you are ever struggling with a problem or issue, ask for assistance before you go to sleep and then keep a Dream Journal by your bedside.

Last night I had a dream, or really early this morning. I awoke, grabbing at the air, and sat up, putting my elbows onto the table next to the bed. A lot to process. I had gone from one stressful, angry dream to kicking obnoxious people out of my "house" (getting rid of bad habits), and feeling sick about it to being back in my old bedroom back in El Paso, Texas on Album Avenue where my parents lived for four decades. Both of my folks, as you know, have transitioned, but in this dream, my mother was on my bed and my father on the opposite side of the room, more the middle, next to my sister's bed, and lounging on the floor.

Eighteen and home for Christmas on Album Avenue.

My darling parents on Easter Sunday 1988.

My mother was drinking a cappuccino and even in the dream I marveled. So uncharacteristic of who she was when I knew her. This told me that she was letting her freak flag fly. As ordinary as a coffee drink may seem, but my mother was hesitant about enjoying much of anything even though at the end I discovered she loved food as much as I do. She drank it all with a gusto, her hair teased as she wore it in the 60s and 70s. Her head rested on a large shoebox with paperwork inside, so like my mother to use for her filing or storage. "Do you want a pillow?" I asked her, something I would have done since she had a disabling life for 30 years. She looked at me as if to say why??

I was flabbergasted!

Then I turned to my father who sat staring at me smiling and from his left eye (earlier in relaying this story to my daughters I said right, but now I realize it was the left) came a twinkle and the most radiant stream of love, magically I took it all in, feeling the awesomeness that everything is alright and always will be.

I began to wake up when suddenly in my mind's eye, I saw a good sized Blue Jay come sweeping down at me, swooshing inside my forehead. I saw its white underside as it slide into me. I researched what a blue jay represents and looked on What's Your Sign and am claiming the Blue Jay in my totem.

It was my first dream with both of my parents there. I am so thankful.

There is so much spiritual support just waiting to help us! You are surrounded by eternal and present love. Accept it and sleep on it! Happy dreaming!

Saying See You Later and Don't Make Me Say it Again

2011-12-11T19:12:00.000-08:00

We sat at our last meeting. On Wednesday, the private student I tutor is leaving back for his home country, Korea. We have been meeting every Friday at the Juan Valdez Cafe since July. A few times I cancelled, once he did. But each time Won Jae and I met, we walked away two hours later, filled with Colombian coffee and an everlasting feeling of friendship.

Tutor and student. American. Korean. Female. Male. Both hard to understand, sometimes, but always a genuine respect for the other.

He wrote down lines from watching "Sex and the City" and I'd explain what it meant. We always laughed at some of the absurdities and the way I "acted" out each line, until he'd have to say, "okay, okay," going to the next line.

Yesterday, we reviewed his last essay for our sessions. It was about his experience in Philadelphia, and while visiting, trying to order a McFlurry at McDonald's. "She couldn't understand me," he said of the cashier. "I was so embarrassed." This was also at the same time a few weeks ago when he announced to me he just felt he had not used his time wisely enough during the six months he was in New York, learning English. "Are you kidding?" I asked him, and so I proceeded to show him how he had not only used his time smartly, but had raised his English competency a few levels from my ears and viewpoint just since I'd been meeting with him for the last three months. His eyes brightened and by the end of the session, he told me I had him "all fired up."

So thereafter I brought up "McFlurry" to gauge his confidence level and each time, his smile fell, reliving that moment. Finally, while reading his essay on this last meeting time, I read with happiness that he had written about how he realized mistakes - as in not being understood at the counter at the McDonald's in Philly - didn't matter. And his certificate from the language school he attended here, revealed his truth: that he was "advanced."

I read his essay and came to the McFlurry part. I smiled and told him I was going to give him my signature strong last line. I wrote down something and read it to him. He broke out in laughter.

It was a reenactment of him standing at the McDonald's counter, repeatedly telling the cashier what he wanted only to hear her say: "What?" So I gave to him:

"You want me to spell it? McFlurry. M. c. F. l. u. r. r. y. And with whipped cream."

We sat laughing at our table at Juan Valdez. And laughing. It was just the break we needed in the reality that soon our time would be up. And then he asked me, "If you were 24 again (as he will be in a few days), what would you do with your life? How would you live it?"

I sat there staring at him. "I'd write," I told him. "I'd keep my expenses low, and I'd write, and I'd write what I wanted to write and I'd experiment, and I'd just keep going."

He smiled. But I knew he wanted something else. He wanted to know what he should do.

"I'd follow my heart on every turn," I told him, "I'd do absolutely everything my heart said to do, and I'd never stop."

He smiled again. We smiled at each other. I knew it was time to go. I looked at my watch. As usual, we'd gone over half an hour. I asked him what he and his friends were doing tonight? He said they were meeting at 6:30, all of them soon to be flying out of New York, so they were going to explore the city as much as they could before the days came for them to leave. I imagined them enjoying their last few days in this moment. I told myself not to get weepy inside, but I felt it. I'd opened my heart and now, feeling like the military brat I am, realized I had to say good-bye again.

I made Won-Jae promise we would just say, "See you later." We walked to the train station, his first, and we hugged, the first time we'd ever hugged. I felt like I was saying good-bye to a family member, to a son.

"Thank you," he said to me. And it was as precious as our first meeting, when we'd awkwardly met, him nervous, a fish out of water, and me, wondering how we would kill two hours of time? And then the friendship found rich soil. In that first meeting. I showed him where Jay Z and Beyonce lived when we walked to the train after that first session. It was the same way he bowed to me that I felt today. Precious connection, friendship, kindred, spirit seeing itself in another.

"It was my pleasure," I said, grinning too much, hiding the emotions beating underneath.

W.o.n.j.a.e.

My memory of you will never be a blur.

Hula Hoop Your Way to Wholeness

2011-11-30T10:49:00.000-08:00

Life is meant to be unscrambled like a jigsaw puzzle.

I'm a girl born in 1955. As early as five, I was asking for money from my father. My mother was a homemaker, so I knew to go to Dad for change for ice cream, a headband, or a hula hoop. A few years later I found ways to make money on my own by doing chores and selling Sunshine greeting cards door to door in the rural area of Michigan where we lived when my Dad was in the Air Force.

My father when he only knew joy.

I saved up for a ceramic poodle figurine that changed colors with the weather; a slinky, a yoyo, and a rubber banded object that when pulled by the hands spun in balance. Looking back, I feel empowered that I figured out ways to earn my own money. But yet, it was during this same time that I experienced not feeling like I was a part of the whole financial wheel, not balanced like my rubber band toy.

One Saturday morning, the six of us were piled into our station wagon to drive up to Alpena for a shopping day, I witnessed my father writing a check as we sat in the bank parking lot. I asked him what was he doing and he told me it was to get money from the bank. "Make it for whatever you want!" I shouted in glee. The thought of a book of checks to write out amounts sounded like the most delicious part of life I'd ever heard and why then were we not writing with the speed of a jet? He turned and looked at me with frustration and now as a parent I understand when he said, "It doesn't work that way." And I felt embarrassment roll over me. But why? I wanted to ask.

I never got any more of an explanation, and the years trailed on, and suddenly I was in charge of my own family, feeling as overwhelmed as my parents probably felt back then. Thank goodness for Suze Orman who helps us everyday. And as much as I know from her generosity, the connection I am making in my journey now is how I need to know I am quite capable to value myself enough to earn a sensational living while giving to my community in beautiful ways. And so connecting with my self esteem has become Mission #1 and I am so grateful to Caroline Myss and her program on self esteem.

Just last Saturday, I checked my mail and found a free copy of Louise Hay and Cheryl Richardson's book, You Can Create an Exceptional Life after participating in a contest to describe my idea of what an exceptional life for me would look like. This book is helping me to see how ultra successful women - like Cheryl and Louise - indeed walk the same rocky path as me, as all of us, and find sterling and flexible ways to incorporate joy and wealth into their lives. This little book is saving me, once again.

I am a knowledge fiend.

As the creator of Workshops by Wolford, I am constantly seeking ways to improve, reinvent, and to fortify the human experience so that we can live whole, free lives. I like the idea of looking at a checkbook and not sweating the amount I need to write down. And I want to give to society through work that thrills and satisfies me.

Yet, I've spent too long worrying about how to accomplish that and now I know worry is just a fearmonger and has no place in our lives because there is plenty of money for ice cream and headbands and anything else inbetween. Knowing this, owning this, and applying this through spiritual and active practice is the key.

I am writing a new workshop titled: "The Problem is Worrying: How to Make Friends with Your Unconscious Patterns". I will be pulling together lots of loose strings and will offer it online as well as in person in New York, and I am excited to do this. Not only does it feel great to be swimming in the knowledge and wisdom of my value, but it also feels incredible to know I am giving what I am learning to you, you who are waiting to take this information and to let go and to grow! It's never too late. Headbands and weather poodles for all!

Familial Tenderness, Raw and Uncooked is Okay

2011-11-23T11:39:00.000-08:00

My mother and me in 1988

My first recollection of Thanksgiving must have been when I was about four or five. My mother was standing and leaning down, gazing into the oven, a hot pad in her hand and a frown on her face.

The oven had not been turned on and guests were to arrive in an hour.

I felt my mother's panic that first Thanksgiving with her at the festive helm. There would be 50 more years with her planning or attending Thanksgiving dinners whether made by her own hands, together with mine, or fixed by someone else. Several years she ordered from Furr's Cafeteria, the whole meal, and we'd pick it up for her, my sister and I or my sister and brother in law. There were years when I fixed the dinner at Mom's house and one year everyone came to my place, the last Thanksgiving my daughters and I lived in El Paso. Each year means something. When I was a kid, it meant eating pecan or pumpkin pie, turkey, stuffing with celery and onions, jellied cranberry sauce later replaced with whole berries, cool whip, drinking from stemmed glasses and hearing the conversations of relatives from my Uncle Tex and Grandmother Hastings to Aunt Shirley with lopsided lipstick smudges to later my children and nieces and nephews running through the house, the warmth and confusion of familial tenderness.

My mother's last few years were spent eating at my sister's house. My mother loved Thanksgiving as do I. She loved coming together around a table as do I. She prayed no one would argue, and I had to shrug off the frustration when she began to be at the helm of the controversies and bedlam, but still I know today she wanted it to go right, as we all do each year, and sometimes it does, and sometimes it is as chilly and pale as a turkey in an oven not yet turned on.

My older daughter and nephew playing in the leaves in El Paso.

This is our second Thanksgiving without her. Two Novembers ago, I fought with her telling her the reasons why she needed to move into an adult care residence. She'd been living with my sister and my mother's stubbornness to allow the proper help was becoming a nightmare. Finally, she agreed. It was on her birthday of October 26, 2009, her 80th birthday. We had had a big birthday party for her the Saturday prior and on Monday, her actual birth date, we ate pizza with her grandchildren, one son, two daughters, and one son in law, around my sister's table, and I struggled not to cry as she sang, as we all sang little songs to lift the bruising finality of the mood. She was different that night, a resignation, a resolve, a sadness that still makes my heart choke. But she had to go. And she did enjoy her time at the facility where she stayed until she had a stroke on February 28, 2010. I held her hand and watched her pulse stop at 5:50 CST on April 13, 2010.

I hope my children, nieces and nephews remember their Thanksgivings in El Paso with the same ease and satisfactions I did as a child. It is my intent to take on that role again and to make it once more a time of refreshment and gratefulness, remembering my mother's face while opening the oven door to an uncooked turkey. It was and is the beginning of the family tradition, and it is in that honesty and stark realness and moments for laughter - as we have on many occasions - in which I vow to impose each Thanksgiving, starting tomorrow, November 24, 2011, and onward, for as many as I am lucky and thankful enough to have.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Dedicated to my birth family.

A Strike

2011-11-04T19:23:00.000-07:00

I got the idea from being a substitute tutor over the summer. So I posted an ad onto Craigslist to be a private tutor for anyone needing conversational English help. He contacted me. I saw the marks above his email that told me he was Asian. I had received two emails from others that didn't pan out, well, one, the other was spam. So I read his and responded, wondering if this was a prank, too? He said he'd meet me the next week at 4 pm. I didn't hear back and thought that was that. But he texted me on that day and hour, asking where was I, as he was where we had agreed to be.

He's real! He said he had sent a returning email, but I never found it. So I apologized and we met the next week.

When I was about eight years younger than my student is now.

He sat there at the cafe. I knew he was Korean. I noticed he was tall and had hair as black as the coffee he was drinking. Young, about the age of my daughter, Sarah, he seemed shy and a bit agitated. We took a table in the back and began what now includes six weeks of conversation developing into such a delightful association. When he leaves for Korea in December, I shall miss him, but am so glad to have met him.

We have talked about bowling, beer, Sex and the City (he writes down the phrases and I explain it), why "john" is a toilet, baseball, parents, girlfriends, ex-husbands, daughters, the future, but most of all NYC. He loves NYC and today we talked about Halloween. "I am jealous because in Korea, we do not have this custom," he said. He told me about going to the Halloween parade and how it was "fabulous." He rode home on the train next to Batman. It is in these moments when we snorkel with laughter that I thank NYC for allowing me to sit in this cafe and talk to this young man.

Today, we also talked about his first day here. And how scared he was. But he came here, alone, and not knowing this city at all. He said he stood in Times Square and shook with happiness. He went on to Queens where he is subletting and found it quiet and boring. A true Manhattanite.

I feel so vital sitting and talking to him, listening, forcing him to listen to me. And the laughter that erupts. And how he is a writer who I am encouraging to write about these six months here before it is back to Korea where he will return and go to college to become a computer tech, hoping to work for Sony. We Googled Silicon Valley and his eyes bore into mine. "You are giving me hope," he said.

The aggression I felt on that first day turned out to be his dismay from the tutor he hired before me, a man who forced grammar exercises on him when what he really wanted was to talk.

I can do that. I think I've found another niche.

Tonight we walked together after our session, him for the N train, me for the F. We had been talking about trying to give directions to tourists and accidentally sending them in the wrong direction. Well, me, that is. I pointed to the right and said, "That's your subway station, isn't it?" And he said, "No it is one street more. You did that last week, too." Laughter.

I will miss him. I feel blessed beyond words.I am so thankful he answered my ad. I would have missed such a hilariously good time. And such a beautiful friend.

Fondling the Marshmallows and Coins

2011-10-27T21:30:00.000-07:00

So I turned 56 last Friday. I secretly didn't want to let 55 go. I liked being as old as my birth year. It was a magically hard, awakening year, and as I welcomed 56, I juggled with the notion of getting older versus still feeling pretty young and prime. I bought a box of highlights and went at it. An hour later, on the day of my birth, I stood in the bathroom, blow drying my hair and smiling. Looking good. I looked good. Life looks good. Just gotta keep drinking the water.

Leila and I met and wickedly ate a McRib at McDonald's. Yes, we did. The hell with it. I threw french fries down my gullet like pigeons go for bread crumbs. Then we went to Loehmann's where my precious girl bought me not one, but two pairs of boots. When we first arrived at the Seventh Avenue store, I witnessed many women dashing in and once in the shoe section, fuggedaboutit. I was overwhelmed, but I love me some boots, so I waded in with the ladies. Leila helped me a lot once I became a sock stumbling mama, unearthed by the firm thighed girls of ankle boots and over the knee.

Then we went to Spice Cove on the Lower East Side. When Leila asked me what I wanted to do on my birthday, I texted "eat Indian food and go for a coffee afterwards." As you can see I was lavished with more. I love Indian food and this is a place Leila and I love for its $9.95 satisfying portions, variety, and environment. As we entered Spice Cove, we noticed it was crowded. My heart sunk down with the barely digested McRib sandwich three hours earlier. Maybe we wouldn't be able to eat here? We saw the host and an open table at the same time. We pointed in gleeful direction at the table, but he raised his finger in a no affirmation. "The couple over there are fighting. You don't want to be there," he said, frenzied.

Leila and I looked at each other. Excitement. We both assured him we'd be fine, so we squeezed in to the matchbox sized square of a spot in the already small restaurant. Loehmann bags and all, we sat a few inches from a pensive older couple, huddled over their appetizers, the woman mumbling and fussing at her husband. And, yes, they were fighting.

She pointed at our bags, and asked him if that bothered him since he was so upset that the other people at the table had left because of their bickering? She verbally bitch slapped him over any issue she could pull up from her angry I've been married to you for this many years hard drive. "What are you going to do about your diabetes?" she hissed. "I'm going to leave you. I should just get up and leave now. I'm going to leave this marriage if you don't take care of yourself. It's too noisy in here. I think I will just leave. Why am I married to you?" And in fine argumentative form, he tried his best to keep up with his miserable wife, but she was laps ahead of him in agonizing discomfort.

Leila and I ate our meal spittingly fast, so hurried that we both expressed to the other our major digestive distress for a day or two afterwards. I imagined rice furiously clinging to the sides of my intestines, pissed at being subjected to such an unpleasant dining mockery.

But once the couple's food arrived and they began to eat, they calmed down. Were they just hungry? Once his wife was smiling again, saying how good was the food, he stared at her, grinning and said, "You're sitting next to Buddha." Shocked, I think, was he at the realization that from all this chaos, bliss had been sitting beside his hornet's nest of a wife. "I am?" she questioned, turning, and staring at what now showed a two foot high golden Buddha, six inches from her. She fingered the coins in the palms of Buddha. "Leave those alone," warned her husband playfully, and Leila swears she saw her take a few.

They paid their bill, and as they moved past us, our shopping bags wedded to our calves, the husband eyed us saying, "that's some shopping you two have done!" "It's her birthday!" Leila pealed, and the man blushed, realizing what horses' asses they had been on someone's birthday.

He turned to me and said, "22"? "Eighteen!" said Leila and we laughed and were on our way to Max Brenner's http://maxbrenner.com/ for chocolate, baby. We arrived and waited for Natalie to come and when she did, we ordered the Sampler which included fondue for two since Natalie wanted only a salad.

Leila and I roasted marshmallows over the flame from the black pot on our table and dipping the marshmallows into a milk chocolate fondue and then into our mouths, "Oh. My. God." was all that was permitted to come out.

The flame grew so tall that Natalie flagged a waiter. "Could you put this out?" she asked authoritatively, ignoring Leila's and my cries of protest. The waiter, a no nonsense young woman, looked at Natalie, reached for her water glass and in one motion poured water into the container and spizzt, it was out. Out. Natalie's face in time with Leila's and my realization that the girl had used Natalie's own drinking glass to annihilate the pot, threw us into laughter, our extended bellies heaving into the table.

Finally, full, sweet toothed and wasted, Leila and Natalie paid the bill, and we left, me hunched in saturation, as we made our way down 14th Street, them trying to hail a cab, one for the birthday girl and one for the givers of the party.

But it was Friday night, and a shift change, and nobody wanted to drive to Brooklyn so onto the F train I went with my bags of loot. Kissing Leila and Natalie good-bye, I sat on the train, a bloated pillow of belly, as deliciously decadent and unholy as a wild-eyed woman sitting next to Buddha with coins and rice in her hands.