Cinderella in Wartime

According to Merriam Webster “memory” is the mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experience. There are countless quotes on memories- prose, short stories and musings about beloved recollections. There are mental health articles in abundance on retaining memories, jogging memory and improving one’s capacity for memory, but far fewer on how to obliterate a memory. In fact, the most available subjects when searching for ‘how to erase memory’ are largely relative to computer memory. While I am adept at extrapolating information from wise sources and applying it to the task at hand, I am hard pressed to find a mental delete button, and a metaphorical reboot seems to be the quest de jour of the Dr. Phil nation. Once after searching until dark, I was forced to ask a security guard to drive me around a parking garage looking for my car. I forget easily.

Nevertheless, memories of playing in the sand with our children do not wake us up at night; nor do they call on us to employ exercises of distraction to eradicate them. It seems to be the heartrending memories and the raw ones that attach themselves to us and demand to be brought everywhere we go. Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now says, "The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly—you usually don't use it at all. It uses you."

The Institute for the Healing of Memories (IHOM), based in South Africa, addresses the emotional and psychological wounds suffered by those in war ravaged countries. The IHOM attempts to help affected individuals remove painful obstacles which can keep them from moving forward. There is extensive supporting evidence that forgiveness promotes healing and thereby peace. The IHOM asserts that holding on to the anger and hate associated with wartime experiences can give way to future conflict and violence. Healing takes place by acknowledging the hurt that led to the feelings and working through a series of exercises intended to permit emotional and spiritual growth.

Rhodes Scholar and renowned teacher of Creative Thinking, Edward de Bono said simply “A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.” Overused expressions like ‘unfinished business’ and ‘closure’ often pepper well meaning advice; but finishing and closing are not always viable options. Death, distance, and circumstance are thieves who strike without notice, depriving us of options and time.

On the complicated subject of eradicating memories it seems everyone is an expert on everyone else’s pain. Most of us march through day after day thanking God for every experience, every sunset and every person who ever walked through the doors of our lives. Still other times gratitude escapes us and we are stuck in a decayed but vivid scene when we wished that the sun had not set so fast or that someone had just kept going or never reached for us in the first place. Like a white gull pressed against a dark sky, the shadow of a painful memory allows for striking contrast and makes the sweet ones shine.

Perfect Tommy's

Recently while visiting my home, my mother recalled a story for my children that I had long since forgotten. As I listened to her recount the tale, I was equal parts horrified, captivated, and inspired by my own cunning the likes of which I have at least tempered in the decades that have passed since the incident took place. She told the story of a night about 20 years ago watching a then popular news program-A Current Affair-on television that was featuring a local competition in a New York City bar. As she and my father flipped through channels they stopped for a minute because they thought they saw someone on TV that looked like me. They were right.

David Letterman had developed a ludicrous activity using the magic of Velcro back in 1984. A contestant dressed in the hook side of the Velcro material would leap from a tiny trampoline and attempt to stick onto a wall made of the loop side of the Velcro material. The object of this competition, and I use the term loosely, was to stick as high up on the wall as possible. This ingenious ‘sport’ became known as “Human Bar Fly”. A New York City pub called Perfect Tommy’s hosted a weekly “Human Bar Fly” night. On one of its first nights holding the event I begged a dear friend of mine to accompany me to Manhattan so I could try my hand at this sport.

I am a bruiser by nature, a bit of a bull in the proverbial china shop. So this activity was appealing to me. I did not tell my parents where I was going, nor did I make the mental leap between the camera crews on site and my truancy. Once I got there I remained focused and my objective was clear. There were several dozen contestants and the event was initially divided into men against women. I won in the female category. The winning height was measured by how high your feet were off the floor. While you were stuck on the wall a small group of judges would measure your feet to floor distance, briefly confer, and then viciously peel you off the wall.

While I was an athlete’s athlete among the women I was simply no match for the conqueror of the men’s category and to declare an ultimate champion he and I would have to go head to head. In a tremendous show of chivalry my rival geared up to go first for our final show down, the crowd cleared a corridor for him to run down, and with every leg muscle bulging from within his Velcro suit he began his run toward the wall. His powerful spring from the trampoline was impressive and his belly hit the wall high and hard like an ejected F16 pilot. He stuck it high. It was physically impossible for me to jump that high.

Koichi Tohei, the founder of the Ki Society and the practice of Aikido said, “Power of mind is infinite while brawn is limited.” And so an out of the box, or off the wall strategy if you will, was imperative if victory was to be mine! I quickly clarified the rules and verified that the measurement was simply feet to floor. With the information affirmed I zipped into my navy blue suit, took my place on the starting tape, scanned the floor for beer sludge or any other possible impediments to my success and began my run at the wall. Rather than the hard leap on the trampoline that my adversary had taken, I took more of a balanced and calculated bounce this time and then made a strong, close to the wall, head first front flip sticking to the wall upside down, back to the wall, with my feet high above my head and way above my opponent’s marker tape! Ingenious.

I won the admiration of every beer infused patron at Perfect Tommy’s on that night, the adoration of my friend (which I already had to begin with) and an on air interview on A Current Affair which would later prove to be my unraveling. In researching for this blog, it turns out my brilliant flip has been used by the masses since, as you can read for yourself in the following 1992 Newsweek article. http://www.newsweek.com/id/125528.

That clandestine trip to Perfect Tommy’s gave way to a hilarious night back in 1991 even after the news program aired my interview, and it made for even more memorable giggles with my family nearly 20 years later in a sleepy farm house. A good night, indeed.

An Honest Voice

""You're wishin' too much baby. You gotta' stop wearin' your wishbone where your backbone oughta be!" -Richard from Texas.

The world lost an extraordinary and honest voice this past week when Richard Vogt, a man made famous as, "Richard from Texas", a real life character in the memoir Eat, Pray, Love passed away suddenly in his sleep Thursday. His prominence would have been markedly less were it not for his implausible ability to shelf the appeal for pretty words and plainly say what he was feeling - a notion I sadly feel is fading into obscurity more every day. Among his many brilliant witticisms he said, "Sure those gremlins still gnaw at my heels but I keep kicking them aside". And isn’t that the objective anyway – to be better than what’s getting the better of us?

A little known fetish of mine, of which I am very proud, is my fascination with the origin of phrases and by fascination I mean I find it interesting not that it occupies time I don't have. In the 1800’s boots had a kind of tab or loop at the top known as bootstraps which allowed the wearer leverage in pulling the boots on. The phrase "to pull yourself up by your bootstraps" was conceived to metaphorically refer to an impossible mission or to convey the idea of bettering oneself without the aid of external assistance. It was the equivalent of saving oneself from drowning by pulling ones own hair.

Improbable though it may be, I like the suggestion of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and Richard Vogt must have too. His hard-hitting cowboy love had a candor and truthfulness that made anyone who heard him want to do better for themselves. Some people have the ability to comfort others while not allowing them to go headlong into the chasm of self pity. These are the people who truly care for us.

In my experience there are three types of nurturers: the Enablers, the Hallmarkers and- in deference to the character we lost- the Cowboys. The Enablers need our depression. It’s a pillow top mattress into which they can contentedly fall. Our weakness minimizes their own, so they comfort us in our time of need all the while ensuring we become more deeply mired every step of the way in our own circumstance. The Hallmarkers are the card senders. Sorry for your loss. Their concern is genuine, but your pain does not supersede their children’s soccer schedule. The Cowboys are those who allow us to feel, but then spend the energy and invest in us enough to pull us out and back into the light.

Many years ago during our first misstep into foster parenting we were in the process of losing the first baby we set out to adopt. This was a baby born to a drug addicted mother and prior to the turn of events we were told by numerous attorneys that this adoption would go through. I will pause here to tell you that, as the parent of biological children, I can say unequivocally that the love you feel for a child you have raised from birth -biologically yours or not- is the same. Losing this baby was killing me slowly and surely. At this stage we had been told that the baby would be placed with biological family that had surfaced and had expressed an interest in adopting her. (Foster parents have no rights in this case.) During a candid and emotional conversation with the DCF Resource Coordinator, AKA “the woman who had gotten me into this mess”, she gave me a piece of the best advice I have even been given. A bit of cowboy logic, if you will.

She suggested I pick a sensible timeframe that was fair to me and to my family - three to five days- and allow myself the privilege of falling apart. She invited me to be reckless within reason, shop excessively, cry, scream, eat, whatever I needed to do to grieve, and then, pick myself up by the bootstraps. I think about that little girl often now and there was additional grieving that needed to happen, but the concept worked and the advice was compassionate and sound.

Things do not always turn out as we plan. Fields that looked wide open from the sky turn out to have barbed wire fences stretched across them as we attempt to set down our troubled airplane. People we trusted with our hearts sometimes unexpectedly mistake those very hearts for baby fur seals. And, as Richard Vogt’s Texas eloquence offered, the gremlins do continue to gnaw at our heels. But even when we don’t feel safe and our back is exposed during one long mad season we do have to persist and keep kicking them aside.

"Everyday when you wake up ask yourself, 'Am I going to be happy or miserable today?' Take it from me -choose happiness - I always do." - Richard from Texas*

*quotes were taken from www.richardfromtexas.com