Learning from Experience

"Experience is the name men give to their mistakes," I believe. The most painful experiences, for me, are not the obvious ones, such as losing a job. They are the loves lost, or the death of a family member or friends, sickness or even the agony of losing a boat race to Harvard or at Henley in England. I was the coxswain on crews for ten years. One always remembers the loves, the friends, the races lost. They stick in the hide, kin to death and dying.

I've never fit well enough into work that it took much out of me to lose it. I have not been invested in it enough. I have not found my calling. Losing a job is an insult, however, to one's ego. The harm of being under appreciated and under valued is incalculable, not for public display, something we learn to deal with over time. And then there is the self-laceration over having made the wrong choices, either vertent or inadvertent; it forever stings. Wait a moment. There are some divets, dents in the armor. Not having my book published after nearly two years of work was a shot to the jaw; I put my creative energies on the line and my "baby" was stillborn. The accumulative result is a form of erosion, an undermining of one's self-confidence. It can be corrosive, too. One can never lose self-confidence, "never let the bastards get you down." This is the law of the jungle. How could I have known most of what jumps out, sometimes obviously, after the fact? Who does not have 20/20 hindsight? Raise your hand! Putting all this aside. I remain an upbeat, positive, confident person. My time and purpose will surely come, on my schedule, no one else's. I am looking for my raison d'etre. When I look in the mirror, I surely feel something of the emotions of dejection and depression. The fact is, there is a lot of clinical depression in my family. The good news: are not creativity and depression a kind of hand and glove sort of deal? "You can't have one without the other." No: that's love and marriage, horse and carriage. Faced with such a choice, learning from one's mistakes or not, I'll take the former option, including the pain of the experience. "Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved" my mother once told me. I can't wait until I find my way home. Or in George Harrison's words, ". . . if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there."

Pull of Spring

Some law of physics is tugging at me to go out of doors, get out into the sun. And I am going to yield to it, momentarily, having done most of what I can indoors. I am desirous, if undeserving, of a spring "break." Nose to the grindstone? I am useless!

A call to my favorite heavy machinery operator tells me that the brush pile's been burned and I am excited to go see the new gate posts he's installed at our summer home. No matter that it means I will need to build a gate; I want to build one. This is great progress, years in the happening. And we have tenants signed for Stonepile for half of July, not sufficient, but we are part of the way there, at least. I've sent an email to my benefactor who has helped me stay solvent this winter, thanking him and making sure he does not think I've taken him for granted, because I have not. And I have extended a couple of books taken out from the Athenaeum by a month; they are good, but somewhat slow going. I've ascertained that the appointment with the future buyers of our house in New York will be tomorrow, and I am crossing my fingers, hoping for the best. And I have left various messages for various people. I need work. Work would solve a slew of problems, but work is just around the corner, I have this feeling. So now I can go out. I am self-justified.

The daughter's going to her first lacrosse practice, with her new stick, new face guard, kit bag and ball. I wonder if she'll last it out long enough to enjoy it? The wife's painting Japanesque screens to be installed in some autocrat's dining room high up in the Sherry Netherlands hotel. I expect that the dogs are snoozing somewhere in the sunlight, unfortunately locked indoors, alone in the house. They, more than I, must feel the tug of spring. Animals are better connected with their feelings, if prevented from free exercise of them. The boy-girl display behavior seen by humans on the streets of Boston, Providence or New York, notwithstanding. Here the gardens yield their snowdrops, crocii and daffodils, their bright, small flowers of early spring. Old Henry Thoreau found delight in the skunk cabbages discovered late winter in Concord, peeking their chartreuse green spears through the swamp ice and snow.

More transition, this time of limbo betwixt winter and spring. The heat of the sun by day, yet subfreezing temperatures at night. More time for change, from indoors to out of it, no more gloves and winter coats by day. To the pull of beckoning rebirth, I yield. March came in like a lion this year, and on a day such as this, it will go out like a pascal lamb.

Re-Pro

After an Easter elsewhere, today is the first day of the spring term: "We're back" at the apartment. In New York for two weeks with a long weekend in Vermont, it feels as though we have had a lengthy break. Not as exotic as the trip to the Galapagos or Cortina, St. Bart's or Africa of some, but a welcome break. Perhaps it wasn't quite as hard to leave the modain? We saw a couple of very good movies (The Merchant of Venice, Million Dollar Baby), painted the television room, ran Sophie's lacrosse warm-up regime, up and down our road, and cross country skied locally and at our friends' farm in Vermont. We enjoyed the dogs. We read books. We ate home-cooked meals, and now we are back in Providence.

Wisteria Sinensis

The forecast was for a snowstorm, temperatures in the thirties, rain and sleet, some accumulation. A perfect spring day to prune the wisteria in Greenwich. I am running out of time here in New York, and I do not relish the idea of Sally or Suzanne atop a rickety stepladder, cutting the vines back to the two or three buds per vine on the poolhouse pergola, eight or ten feet above the ground. I've done this for three or four years now; I have the process down pretty well, I have to say. I am usually out there in the sunshine, enjoying the newfound warmth of spring. But not today; any colder, the vines would snap.

Up on the pergola, not to be confused with the 60s song "Up on the Roof," I am reminded of this place, this work. Of Margo, chief gardener and friend, and of Gail who lives here, and of working with Sally. Margo was a great one to work with, but she died so young, unnecessarily. And Gail is confusing, a wealthy Jewish lady who plays golf year r0und and jokes about "dykes in spikes" and might well be one, who knows or even caares. She lives with a much younger man, a golf pro, who she appears to "keep." I don't know, really, but she has some masculine-feminine issues that I sense as a man, she in her red Mercedes coupe with the maxed-out, macho motor size. She gets along well with the women. And working in this garden with Sally has always been fun. She's a good boss, generally speaking, no matter that she's my wife. Suzanne will take this garden forward in the coming months, she of "in the little things, is everything." This garden is a small sanctuary, a secret garden, an oasis along the well-travelled road.

Years of careful pruning these two wisteria trees have made them luxuriant, full of blossoms and great shade from the summer's sun. And pruning reminds me of a year spent working with a crew in the dozens of perennial gardens in Fairfield County, between Stamford, New Canaan and Greenwich. I learned things with this crew. I was outdoors, I was with considerate and competent people. It was the goddammed money part of it; too little to justify. Money screws up everything. I pruned the wisteria in several dozen estates, enjoying the laddertop view, the independence, tying neat little square knots, looking at the artistry of each vine, shaping it for the summer to come, mastering the use of the Felco pruners. Here, trained along a trellis or a porch, it is quite the opposite of Little Comopton where wisteria vines are the enemy, creeping up, and sometimes over the house, unkept, wild. There was a time when the vines began to camouflage the house, tendrils up and over the roof and in between the shingles. But that was long ago; it is more in control these days.

A couple of hours later, as I pack away my tarp and rake, I notice how cold my hands have become, how stiff, and how ready I am to be finished, chilled to the bone. I have done the whole job quickly and well. I hope I can come back in May or June and see the results. People think you do it for the money. I always think about what the results will yield later in the season; I want to know how it all works out, whether I did it right. I don't know. I'm strange that way. It shouldn't matter; many of these people do not even notice the results themselves. They care more if their neighbor's vines bloom and theirs do not. They compete rather than enjoy. They covet rather than cultivate and see. I still wonder how all those tulips that I've planted came up in the Richmond garden, but it must remain a mystery. And the bulbs I planted in the children's gardens in the pouring rain in Darien. As I walk across the wide, perfect lawn, I notice winter deadfall everywhere, all manner of minor and major carpentering issues, peeling paint and think about how I could fix them, but this is not my work, and it seems the owner doesn't want to pay the freight. But the wisteria is done and I am confident that it will be spectacular later on. I can compartmentalize.

As I drive north, back home through Bedford, through the inexorable sprawl of expensive houses where there were only trees and fields only a few years ago. I pass places I have known for thirty years, places standing rock-like alonga stormy coast. You know it is only a matter of time, or money, and a new generation that will erode them, dynamite them out of existence. You can't go home again, but I always choose the longer, winding road to forestall the inevitable, to resist the change. I have made quite a personal investement in this area. At moments, I am sorry that I'll be moving onward, but there will be many new places to discover, and one day I may likely pass through these places again. Who knows what I will be thinking? Time swirls past as irrevocably and as swift as an eddy in a winter swollen river, dark, sometimes dangerous and often unknowable. We live; we move; we experience; we die. And we cultivate our gardens in between.

The Season's Begun?

Yeah, right: buyers are flocking here in hordes! One, to be precise, in the past week and a half. The Big Chihuaua, the Little Cahuna comes not this Thursday, as promised, but the next one, along with his entourage of daughter in law, granddaughter and architect son. Who knows? I am no longer holding my breath, believe me. I have begun to loathe these people. First it was Barbados, then a medical procedure, then broken appointment after broken appointment. So the son comes along and there will be all sorts of tire kicking; his reputation precedes him. And the father ain't getting any younger. And to top it off, the real estate agent is in his pocket and my good friend Lou happens to be the buyer's brother in common law. He knows my financial underpinings, the very cut and stripe of my boxer shorts. He knows exactly how vulnerable we are.

We had a plan last year about this time. Move to Rhode Island, get a fresh start, take advantage of the healthy real estate market. And here we sit, nearly a year later, or more fairly, seven months since we put our house on the market. Everything is unresolved. We are living in separate orbits, wandering WASPs, with Sally here in New York and Sophie and I in a rented apartment in Providence. It just aint' right. But who is complaining? The academic year has been a good one for Sophie, and that was the primary factor in our decision to move. Time for a change was a good idea, once upon a time, or it seemed sound enough. Looking back, it just doesn't seem so smart anymore and I am losing faith. We appear to be on the wrong side of the wind shift, again. Right now, there is nothing to do but stay the course. I wonder, will this, too, appear short-sighted or mistaken a few months from today? It is time for a change. I welcome the spring, the beginning of the new real estate season, the fulmination of a dream. Andiamo! C'est tout!

Ramble Monday Morning

OK. I've got to go buy the rollers, the caulk, the trim paint and leave the girl home in bed asleep. And the room has to be completed before Thursday; let's see, there are three days, the paint will need to dry, then I will have to scrape the windows with a single edged razor, hang the paintings, clean up and get out. Our buyer, I have my fingers crossed, comes nigh. And then we will ready for the drive up north to ski on the remnants of the past winter's snow there, get back to school Tuesday and, let's see...

The dogs are fed and curled up for their morning siesta, the girl's still sleeping--she's a gorilla in the morning--and I have got to keep her fed and entertained somewhat, and the squirrels seem to have moved from the attic, at least we could not hear them this morning. Yesterday I crawled there to break up a nest there, their "dray," using a wrought-iron fire poker as I balanced on the rafters, feeling them out beneath the fiberglass and the dust and spider webs and it was just godawful, unhealthy, and I swear it, I am not going to go up there again, ever. The squirrels are displaced temporarily but who knows where they'll reestablish themselves? Outside it is raw and foggy, 37 degrees fahrenheit. It rained overnight and Sally's off to Connecticut with Nancy to paint those oriental screens for someone's dining room walls in the Sherry Netherlands, bringing with her a freshly made batch of delicious Jewish cookies--what are they "hamentaschen" or some such thing--to Ingrid's, especially for Mikki, an American Israeli who will run in the Paris Marathon six weeks from now? That's cool. He says if he wakes up and it is raw and raining, no way will he run. He doesn't need to, having run dozens of marathons already, sometimes for sponsors. This one's just for himself, that is, if he runs. My own pony legs are slightly sore from working out running fartlek pieces up and down the road with Sophie. Only one week ago she acted as if she would die, barely trotting along, more like lurching, full of tears. Now she has doubled the effort and her legs are no longer sore, as mine are, my youthless but broken in legs. If I can conspire to keep her at it, she'll be fast and learn to like the exercise and all of its benefits.

Now it is time to move along and get things done and hope this week will be productive and unmemorable; that is to say, I hope that nothing deadly or tragic will occur, that we will all exist in fun and harmony and appreciation of our selves, our lives, our friends, that we do good and improve the existences or the demeanor or the appreciation of all those we intersect with, keeping in mind how lucky, how very, very fortunate we are to be alive and well and experiencing this Monday morning's gift of life. And that is quite enough.

Travelling Thoughts

The mind travels to the ocean state, to that summer house closed all winter long, awaiting our arrival with the spring. It is true that absence makes the heart grow fonder. Not every recollection is a good one. I begin to think more seriously of the honeybees in the cricket on the roof, and how I must remove them. It is cold; they are relatively dormant. I'll need to do this soon. And then there are the leaks in the porous roof, the broken and rotten screen doors, the window sash in the garage and the mess I need to clear out just to reach it, the pile of brush in the field which must be burned, the perennial plantings, the driveway, the gates that never happened in the fall, the bedroom windows that need replacement but surely will not be done before the season begins, the taxes and the tenants, the lawn, the unfinished trellis above the porch. And on and on. The sort of things I think about in the middle of the night, awake, twisiting. Actually, these are the welcome things, all minor compared to death and sickness, work and wealth, love and marriage, illusions of happiness and dreams. The dream of gold-glowing sunsets over the wide estuary, the bands of color, land, water, land and sky. And then those dinners, served with a flinty local wine, a walk through the wildflowers of the wetlands. This is a lovely reverie. I can see the century old arbor vitae standing sentinel, guarding the premises while we are away. I see the sea, I hear the rocks grinding with each sweep of a wave, in and out, a bold wall of sound that dominates yet goes unnoticed every minute, every month of every year.

Disruptions

At the home away from home, or the home of homes or whatever the heck I should call this place that is on the market and unbid upon, it has been hard to concentrate. This is both a function of distraction and technology. The computer is not on broadband here, so it is slow and often takes minutes instead of a split second to boot up and to travel anywhere in cyberspace. And nothing is settled here. I am perched in the kitchen with many comings and goings. This morning, our rodent tenants woke everyone up before it was light. There is a nest with baby squirrels in it, making bird-like noises in a nearly impossible place in the far reaches of the crawl space in the attic. It will be my job later today to investigate the nest and see whether I can access it or not. One thing I know is that we do not want dead baby squirrels up there. They will smell, only compounding the problem.

March epitomizes the change of the larger year. We have the ongoing winter and the developing spring in the space of the month. We have snow, ice, skiing and the thaw and return of sun and birds. The promise of spring that lures us more than its reality, as it takes another month or more for the grass to green and the foliage to emerge. We extract summer heat from a single intense ray of sun in a sheltered corner somewhere. Right now, one can see so deep into the forest that it would be impossible to mistake the exfoliated trees for a walled forest with its dark secrets. In only a month or two, the several hundred yards of view will be reduced to less than twenty-five or so. A private place soon will become a nearly secret space, surrounded by nature, yet without a view. Its country charm will return for those who visit with an eye to buying it for themselves.

But right now, there are patches of snow interspersed with matted dry, dead grasses; green heads of daffodils and crocuses, windfallen limbs, sand and gravel from snowplows. There is mud and wetness; one can never sit, and if one did, one would quickly chill, both cold and wet. We go outside with many layers of clothes which we leave unzipped more often than not. When we wear less, a northwest breeze reminds of the winter's remaining clutch upon the land. When we wear too much, we find it bulky and unpleasant, in the way, unthankful for the warmth we relished but a month ago. Here we live as a family, part in the old house, part in another state, in both place and in mind, unable to move forward and committed to never moving back, neither fish nor fowl. We are tied for the time, slaves to real estate, to an unknown buyer-saviour who will release us from the stasis of the year. It should happen soon, if not soon enough for me. It will happen when it is ready to happen. Time for a change is not entirely of our own specification; at the moment it is a mystery. We are waiting, impatient to be on our way.

Spring Snow

In the morning everything was silent. A Saturday, and the unexpected sight of white everywhere, with snow still coming down. It was one of those felicitous weather channel oversights, the storm passing to the north, insignificant accumulations on the ground, etcetera, with somewhere close to a foot of fresh white everywhere. Because it is March, it is of the sticky variety, making the trees look beautiful, festooned with the Yankee version of Spanish Moss. The wetness of this snow reminds me that the eskimos and other northern tribes have many names for snow, not just the handful we are familiar with, such as powder snow, corn snow, wet or dry snow. The sun is hot enough that it will burn it off within a few days. But this treat offered us the opportunity to ski at the reservation in Pound Ridge, so we went there aftern noon just after the snow stopped and the sun returned. The parking lot had one or two dozen cars in it. Although we saw several people there, some arriving, some leaving, once we snapped on our skiis and headed out on a familiar trail, aside from a nicely broken in track, we saw almost no one. The woods just swallowed everyone up in the trees and hills. But for the birds and falling clumps of snow, it was quiet, the solitude deafening. The more quiet we are, of course, the more we often hear. But the sounds were unanticipated. That is what was so much fun, the reward of being out in nature, expecting the unexpected. This was not to be a few hours of startling revelations, of a grosbeak or a pileated woodpecker drilling into a tree en route. It was more an opportunity to enjoy the last of winter in our backyard, to be out in it, to have fun with my daughter. I am proud that somehow, with all the mistakes I have made, I have succeeded in introducing the work of cross country skiiing as pleasure, along with its aesthetic of natural appreciation. Although her peer group think that racing downhill is great, getting up the mountain by fossil fuel and then rushing down pell mell to do it over again, standing in a lift line with hundreds of people, she knows that cross country skiing is unique and unobtrusive. She charges along quite cabably and loves to attempt a tuck goning downhill. I like both activities, as I enjoy sailing and powerboating. We respect the wind and the speed of sailing; we respond to the freshness of being out in a fresh nature that most urbanites will never see. We feel rich, doing that which draws upon our energy, reddens our cheeks and makes us sweat. These are a few of what the spring snow brought us this day.

Stonepile

With trepidation I ventured down unto the 'Pile today. Ice and snow blocked the driveway; I saw nothing to make me turn aside. As I walked through the new stone entrance and looked out across the Sakonnet, I thought what a great sight. What an amazing siting for a house. "Oh, what a lucky man, he was..." The drifts of snow around the porch and all of the doors confirmed that no one had visited within the past three days, when a Yankee Clipper, the last one for the season I expect, swept through, a mini-blizzard in the midst of March. The house was fine inside, except for the crap from a bird that must have ventured down into the chimney. As far as I can figure it, there is no other way for it to have entered the house. I collected some oddments and endments and, sincde the car was a few hundred yards up the drive, carried it up the drive. A great, huge flat stone that I had placed in the field when Bobby Carr rebuilt the wall sits forlorn. I hope to use it as a refuge in the summer or next fall. I scouted out the Menagerie and the rebuilt red gate that Jeff installed by Addie's camp, Joe Junior's camp, Joseph Forest Sherer's camp. I walked across the fields. No one is around, just some hawks, a turkey buzzard. I visited Uncle Bill. It is so silent in his house. He sits and reads, and does acrostic puzzles. It makes me sad. I said that I was walking in his steps, some thirty years behind. He said, "I envy you." And I acknowledged the truth in that, but that, just look at the news. The world is increasingly terrifying. Maybe it wasn't so bad to be thirty years senior. Happy Birthday! One year older, one year less to go. He showed me the high snow line around the house. I warned him about my wayward brother being near. He said, "I can't remember your brother." His own brother, I know, was named Dick.

Dick

When did "Dick" become such a bad, vile name? Was it because of Dick "I am not a a crook" Nixon? Was it the coarse slang usage, or that it rhymes or euphemizes 'prick'? For me, it is double bogey, combining my brother and my grandfather in one name. I leave out my uncle Richard Courtenay because he did not use the nickname, and because I liked and respected him. My memory of grandfather Dick is of an unemotional, selfish, ungiving man. Someone who was never fun. No one ever disabused me of this, least of all my own father. And my brother long ago ceased to be a brother. Memory of him is of a plane crash, a dropping out, a refusal to take the difficult choice, again and again and again, a schizophrenic, a con man, a crack addict. A scary guy.

Or may be it comes down to unsentimentality? Sentimentality does not extend to anyone in my life named Dick. He was a nice kid until the age of 17, but that was more than 25 years ago. Most of the years since he has been in mental institutions, especially in the beginning. And for most of the past decade, Dick has been incarcerated among the criminally insane, as a crack addict and drug dealer with variously diagnosed mental problems, depending upon who mades the diagnosis and the financial state of his health insurance. The good news, at least until recently, was that we generally knew where he was. Off the streets and in jail somewhere may sound cruel and indifferent, but it meant that we and those he intersected with out on the street were relatively safer. And so was he. That those jails were usually in California, with the entire continent safely between us came as a comfort as well. Sorry Dick. It comes down to what is inside of you: do you want to sink or swim. No one else can do this for you.

Dick's present link with family comes through a weak younger sister and a foggy-headed father. No one else will talk to him as he has burned every bridge. Neither sister nor father possess what most people would consider great judgement. Speaking for myself, I would venture to say they have poor, irresponsible judgement, but who asked me for my opinion? My sister has no personal life of her own for this reason, I suspect, so she buys people with money, plying them with plane tickets and gifts, then flying to another continent to disappear or hide. She thinks hers is a cool, glamorous lifestyle. My father feels emotionally invested in the youngest son, with some kind of poisonous choke-hold binding them together, as it once had bound my mother until she died ten years ago, victim of stress, cigarettes and gin. Dad writes Dick checks every week or two, misguidedly thinking he can keep Dick at a distance, or that he will improve Dick's daily existence with a quick fix. Or is it just that he needs to assuage his own guilt? The evidence is pretty clear that the decades of assistance have maintained a monster and probably helped keep him sick and dependent. But who am I to say he, the father, is wrong? How does the other, the eldest son tell a cynical, resentful, bitter and imperious father that what he is doing is counterproductive without appearing self-serving and heartless? In the end, he doesn't, having tried many too many times before. "Butt out. It's our problem" my mother was wont to say. It is a lose-lose situation. Lose the argument, lose the parents. As for the Dick himself, he is long lost, beyond anyone's redemption but his own.

Dick is nearby somewhere, last seen in Boston. My father and sister sent him a one way ticket from San Francisco, east. It seems that California wanted to rid itself of an expensive pest, to get him out of jail by airmailing him out of state. Today, the human timebomb is 3,000 miles nearer home and his relatives. Not only that, it is winter in New England, and he is here instead of California, where spring abounds. Dad met Dick at a hotel for a night, then went back home to Rhode Island, probably giving him a few hundred dollars "for medecine." He thinks that Dick cannot find him at his girlfriend's home, which is absurdly naive. Dad lives down a long, private road with many turns, but not so many that Dick cannot find him. Dick is a high-functioning schizophrenic who has survived for years in jail and out on the streets. He is smart, not dumb, and resourceful as a chittlin beagle. This makes my father most vulnerable, and it places a handful of relatives living nearby in harm's way. I worry about my wife in our house in New York, alone as well. Dick has come in this direction before. It also puts our empty summer houses at risk. He has broken into them before, crapping on the floors and eating miscelaneous canned foods in the shelves. That's the thing. He is not an idle threat or the product of my hyper-active imagination. So I am going down there to the camps to see what's happened, if anything. A fresh snow will reveal his whereabouts if he is around.

The return of ragged Dick, abetted by his father and my sister, reminds me of Max Frisch's play "The Firebugs," when an arsonist bearing gasoline is welcomed into a house by its blind-to-what-they-see before them hosts. The firebug even asks them for the match which he needs to light the fire to burn the house down. The allegory is to Germany and the Nazis as they took control of the country, with most citizens refusing to acknowledge what stared them in the face. Dick has not stayed out of trouble or jail for more than a few days that we know about for many years. He has no money, no work and no place to stay. My sister somehow knows he is not on his "meds." Oh, and he has been a crack addict for years, I don't know how many. So what chance do you give him? Can you foresee a good outcome? The odds for that are slim to none, if you ask me. The Return of the Native? Slim Dick's Revenge? You Can't Go Home Again? Barbarian at the Gate? The Firebugs? This is a story in the process of being written. What will be its denouement? Will Dick accelerate the action, or will this become just another chapter's end in a lengthy tale?

Discretion, Anyone?

My daughter finds it amusing to tell people about the night last January that I went out and drank too much, came home late and barfed all over the place. I didn't mean to do it: I forgot to pay attention, and my host kept wanting to go from one to another place, and I just can't hold my liquor. I never could. It was not a good moment for me; it was an interesting one for her. You know: my drunken father. It's all very funny! She became more responsible than I have ever seen her the next morning, helping me out of bed and out the door for school. She had a midterm math test that she managed a 90 on, even after staying up some sleepless hours worrying about it and her dad. And I don't expect to repeat the behavior again soon, or ever. I have been drunk three times in the past eighteen years, each time with what I would claim as extenuating circumstances. I hate being drunk, slurring my speech and being out of control. I detest being sick and feeling like crap, wasting time and money for that matter. I do not have a stomach for sailing or drinking alcohol. I love sailing and take medicine so I won't be seasick. I do not want to find a cure for alcohol poisoning. Hangovers are just punishment.

Of late my daughter has taken to regaling people whom she determines are "close enough friends" and certain relatives about the episode. It embarrasses me. I think it would be even worse to make her stop the story, a losing battle, the more I protest, the worse it all seems. So it didn't matter last night, when she told the story to my cousin and his wife, or even when she told the story to her friends' parents. However, the cousin did not want to talk about that time he got so drunk,way back in graduate school, though his wife told a good part of the tale anyway, before he silenced her. And the friends' parents laughed, telling us of some of their own exploits, so that was OK, offset by their own fauxpas.

But how do you know it is not going to have consequences? How do you know if the person is in Alcoholics Anonymous or is judgemental about drinking, those who drink or about parents who expose their children to the consequences of too much drink? I would have to say, my daughter's exposure would go pretty far towards keeping her sober, if you want to know.

She needs to learn that there is such a thing as discretion, that not all tales need telling. It is a good thing more often than not to put your best face and your best foot forward, not your grossest, most humiliating story, the time you fell into mud. Maybe that off-color tale can come some out other time, or not at all. But when you don't know someone very, very well, or you barely ever see them, maybe it is a better idea to "ac-cent-u-ate the postitive" and leave out the rest. Or if a light goes on inside about whether you should or should not tell something, then don't. Discretion is a very important thing to understand, and since she's been collecting laughs by repeating these spicy tales, at my and indirectly her own expense, I don't think she yet comprehends the sensitivity of what she may be doing or the harm that might be done.

School Fundraising Volunteer

OK. I am way past the discomfort stage about sitting in a meeting where most of the players are women and all the real men are at work somewhere else. I've been a reverse commuter in most things for most of my working life, the odd man out, a Mr. Mom picking my daughter up after school, a guy who always has enough time to stay late at parties and meetings and who never feels compelled to leave any social function early. I walked home reeling a bit this morning after a development office meeting for annual fund volunteers. The women were well-heeled though not off-puttingly so, and while they or their husbands could buy and sell me a thousand times over, I find that I know enough to help the group and even inform those running the meeting. But I'd rather be the silent one who carries a big stick, rather than the running mouth.

What makes me squirm in my seat is the woman with four kids in the school who pays full fare, the better part of $100,000 per year in after tax dollars, from her checking account or the number of people contributing over and above that amount to help the annual fund. Here am I, volunteering to make calls, and I am too old for this. Not the calling per se, just the precariousness of my finances. Here am I, thousands of dollars overdrawn in my bank account, over ten thousand dollars in arrears with tuition, and without a source of income or a job. Despite my awareness about the alumni fundraising business, I remain among those in the group who always talks a big-seeming game, while writing miniscule checks, or none at all. I am smart, but I am poor. I am a socialite WASP, but I am a swamp Yankee. I am going to find a way around the mortification and humiliation of this predicament, somehow, because it makes me seem hollow for the moment. It does not exactly boost my fragile self-esteem, which is always at a hazardous level. I am like a house built upon a wet, semi-flooded basement, its foundation on the verge of a disastrous collapse.

Resilience

I cannot claim any great resilience on my own part; au contraire! My skin is all too thin, despite my efforts to toughen up by chewing broken glass and rubbing alum on my blistered hands and feet. I learn things over time, often too slowly to help me with a present problem. Hindsight is infallible,of course, and armchair quarterbacking begins every Monday, after losing. Jane E. Brody of the New York Times broached the subject the other day in her weekly Health Column. Resilience is the ability to weather stresses, large and small, to bounce back from trauma and get on with life. Resilience has to do with the way we assimilate negative experiences and translate them into something positive. Resilience is the strength and confidence to change a blocked or nonproductive direction or chosen path. This does not mandate a life without risks or adverse conditions, but rather learning how to deal effectively with the inevitable stresses of life. And here is the best,most optimistic part: resilience can be learned! Apparently we have "negative scripts" in us that we live with all our lives, until or unless we change them. Others have labelled them 'paradigms.' Whatever we call them, we need to nurture our self-esteem by seeking out activities which elevate our spiritual lives and nurture our inner strengths. Resilience relates to the expression, "experience is the name men give to their mistakes." That is, the positive interpretation of our experiences does. It is the anti-hero's voice saying "I think I can't, I think I can't" or Brave Mr. Buckingham saying "That HURTS" instead of the opposite that block us. And those ugly little voices, "I am not good enough," "just say no" and "no, but..." instead of "yes, if..." that keep many good people, including me, from pursuing their dreams. So the great news is that if you did not luck into getting this in your gene pool, or in your home upbringing, or at school, it is never too late to take control of things by changing the script: "We are the authors of our lives." Amen to that!