SAFE IS RISKY

In Tom Peters’s book The Pursuit of WOW (Every Person’s Guide to Topsy-Turvy Times), he asserts via Bob Pressman, Co-CEO of Barneys, that ‘safe is risky.’ In other words… same old same old doesn’t excite anyone. Those people and companies that look the same and act the same as everyone else are not safe these days. Kodak. Blockbuster Video. (WHO!?)…Lol.

By always playing it safe, we can remain invisible. By keeping our heads down, our eyes diverted, we don’t have to face risk. And we will be “safe.”

There is no safe place. Covid taught us that.

So… the better course is to be vulnerable and take the risk. Hang it out there. And slide into the Home Plate of life with some righteous and wonderful bruises from fighting the good fight. 

Seth Godin in the altMBA would tell you, “Everything costs.”

The risk of being safe is not living fully. Which stinks.

Safe. Is. Risky.

NOTE: Image compliments of Pexels Free Photos.

Where Are You From?

I am from the stars. Dust. Silver-striped meteorites blown to bits by a goddess’s rage at being shunned by her lover. He left in the middle of the night the day before yesterday in cosmic time, which could have been before the earth existed. Or it could have been a second ago.

I am from the beach. Sand. Washed ashore with kelp around my waist, starfish nibbling at my toes. My scalp teems with tiny organisms that lived there until now. They try to scamper back to the salty sea, yet their microcosmic feet tangle in my hair.

I am from the mountains. Rock. From high above the valley, I look down on the birdless trees. I am pummeled by the weather. Rain. Snow. Sun. Melt. Repeat. Rain. Snow. Wind. Ice. Sun. Melt. Repeat. . .

I am from Mom’s egg.
And from Dad’s sperm.

I am, I guess.

Changing Names

I listened to a Duolingo French Podcast today, and it talks about a young man who discovers that his grandfather changed his surname from a Jewish name to a French name during the war. The young man tried to change his name to his grandfather’s name but was told he could not because of the French laws at the time. * Spoiler Alert*: Eventually, he was able to change his name. Times and laws change.

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Our names are particularly important to us – both our first and last names. I changed my first name from Kathy to Kathryn, as I disliked Kathy growing up. There were three Kathys in my grade in elementary school, so I switched to Kathryn in college. Did I change? No. But my name did. And, my identity was now aligned with my name.  I was lucky I liked Kathryn. What if I wanted a different name altogether?

I was lucky I liked Kathryn.

Some women keep their maiden names. Some give theirs up. Most men don’t change their surnames unless, like the person in the podcast, they want to achieve some goal. He wanted to honor his heritage.

Sharp left turn ahead:
I’m wondering if I want to find my bio mom and dad after all this time. I never looked for them growing up. Maybe I want to know who they were, or maybe not. It’s scary. If I did find them, would I change my name? Would I take hers or his? Either way, would it change who I am?

Wait. How can we identify with something we never chose for ourselves? We choose our dogs’ names. We choose our clothes. Our cars. Our friends. We never “choose” our names.

Maybe our names choose us. And we can accept them or not.

Foster Kid

How unusual it is to think of myself as a foster kid. It’s the tail end of a story that started with my mom doing what people do.  She was not different. But she was my mom. So she was unique in that.

People write dispassionately about these things. But also with passion. Did this mom (my bio mom) love my biological father? Maybe she did. Maybe she didn’t. For some reason, she couldn’t be with him. Was he married? Or was he a one night stand? Or was he a priest or a traveling salesman?  Golly. Who was my father, anyway?

My bio mom’s ‘ex’ was not my biological father. He was, however, the better human in the end. My bio father would not claim me. Had my mom’s ex not ’claimed’ me, I could not have been adopted—as my adoptive mom said in a posthumous letter to me.  (I was not allowed to open this letter until after she was gone.)

The thing is. (My breath catches as I write this.) The thing is, my mom’s ex-husband signed the papers. So. I. Could. Be. Adopted. 

I like to think that my mom’s ex husband loved her still. She was lucky. And I was very lucky. I wasn’t a foster kid, branded for life with the “F” word (the foster word in this case), a Scarlet Letter of sorts scratched onto the inside of my heart. Or maybe it was across foster kids’ foreheads like brands but not the good kind. Not like Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. Or the OK Corral. 

Is it a brand? Yes, it’s a brand of kid. Oh, heck. 

I am approaching 70, and I wonder about both dads. The dad that was my flesh and blood was a jerk. Or maybe he was unable to make the right decision for whatever reason… priest, married, young? I don’t know. The ‘other’ dad, my mom’s ex, was a good man. (So was my adoptive father, by the way.)

I wondered about my bio mom, but I never looked her up. I didn’t think she wanted to see me. 

And I don’t care about my bio dad. Unfair? Maybe, but he didn’t lift a finger to help my mom. 

So, after all this time, I realize that I am part him — part ‘bad-dad.’ Rather, and at the same time, he is a part of me, and I am ashamed. Or should be. Or not. I wasn’t there. I didn’t make him do what he did. I don’t know why, either. It might have been the right thing to do for a lot of reasons. I think I’ll give us all a break and move on.

The past has passed, and I am here. My mom did not abort me, but rather gave me up to be adopted by what turned out to be wonderful parents. I’m grateful for that and for my mom’s courage.

One thing I know for sure.

“Life’s a crapshoot.”

Boarding Pass

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The top portion of the faded boarding pass peeked out from the old book. Curious, I pulled the novel from the shelf. I could just make out the destination on the boarding pass. Salt Lake City. No date. No context. I did not remember the trip at all. In fact, it may not have been my boarding pass. No name. And yet,

the cosmic sense of those words— Boarding Pass—gave me pause.

And here we are. Sometimes we need to give ourselves permission to board whatever will take us away from our world. It sounds easy. But it’s not nearly as simple as buying a ticket, getting the boarding pass, and flying away. In fact, the idea of escape is often clouded with the means that we use to achieve it. Drugs, alcohol, habit, denial, excuses, and tickets to faraway places, of course. We keep ourselves in a tethered state as if our feet had grown cement bricks around them, or our elephant selves had learned to define the total of our available space by a tiny string attached to a six-inch stake in the ground. Because someone trained us to be ‘this’ or do ‘that’ or toe some line, real or imagined.

But wait.

We hold the boarding pass. We are here at the gate. We are in line. We are due on the airplane in a moment, any moment. We can see the aircraft waiting. The pilot is in his place. The flight attendants are standing by. We are clutching the means by which we can do this thing. We need not look back. There is no line behind us. The past is gone. Forever. We see the future stretching before us. We simply have to hand the boarding pass to someone, maybe it’s a higher power, call her God. Or Buddha. Or the Universe. Or whatever. Let it go.

We step across the little gap, or maybe it’s a big gap,  and we climb aboard our purpose. We need to let go of the fear of being wrong, failing, or worst of all, choosing incorrectly. The Boarding Pass is just a piece of paper. It’s a little like Dumbo’s feather. He didn’t need the feather to fly. We don’t need boarding passes to change. We just need to be brave. We need to believe in ourselves. And in the Universe.

Just. Like. Dumbo.

 

 

 

New York Is

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New York is:

A state

A city

A harbor

A county

A cheesecake

A cut of steak

A baseball team

A football team

A hockey team

A basketball team

A stadium

A newspaper

A daily

A magazine

A book

A song

A historical novel

A film

A ship

A typeface

A TV star

A pinball machine

A state of mind

But for me, New York is . . .

The

place

where

I

was

conceived

 but

not

born.

Loved perhaps, but not kept.

Transported from in utero

To the left coast

To await my fate.

What happened???

I was lucky.

I was adopted.

*

For more thoughts around the subject, please see my May 2018 post: Life’s a Crapshoot.

 

 

 

 

Leave Room in Your Suitcase

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So, did you think this post was going to be about travel? Great. It is. But, it’s not.

Hopefully, we are all going somewhere. However, we are not always going on vacation. Or going out of town. Or going on a safari, per se. We are, however, traveling through life. We need to have our suitcase packed, our selves ready, open, and available to step, fly, jump, and fall forward into the next place. Our metaphorical bags should always be packed, as in why slow down to throw in a toothbrush when the next adventure may have toothbrushes waiting for you at the other end? Or better yet, we won’t need toothbrushes there at all. Our teeth will automatically be cleaned by busy nanobots grinning as they scrub, singing happy tunes, and making you happy to boot.

So while the suitcase should be ready to go, it should have room to add stuff. We want to leave space in the suitcase of our minds to put in cool new ideas, experience an image in a way we’ve never done so before, or taste a new aroma, or savor a different apple with a cool name like “Jazz” or “Envy.”

We save a spot for experimentation.  We can pause in the quietness to read an author we wouldn’t have tried without the clarity that white space in a suitcase brings. We can “hear” a not-my-usual color; “wear” a not-my-kind of music. (Not typos: Hear a color and wear music were on purpose.)

I invite you on your next journey to leave room in your suitcase. In fact, I will leave room in mine, too, and maybe we can meet in the middle.

 Always keep a bag packed!

Add A Brick

I stood up in front of the small crowd of people last night. Naked.

Photo by Kaboompics .com on Pexels.com

Kidding. I might as well have been. Two other authors and I were reading from our work, and I was the least accomplished of the trio by far. So, I can choose to engage in self-flagellation . . . or I can view it as a brave opportunity to add a brick to the building I’m constructing. The building of me.

Notice… the building at left has fire escapes! That’s me, too. I’m a building with what I hope are little escapes to help me exit the building when I need to save myself. OR they can equally be ladders or steps for when my wonderful friends and family come up to the floor I’m on that day and chat. Solve problems. Hang out. Are you ready for a climb?

If I’m not building (or being a building), I’m backsliding. I’ve stopped growing. Stopped trying. Stopped embarrassing my self — when that by itself is a lovely (albeit painful) way to get better. Immersion. Hanging it out. Hearing and seeing other people do it differently.

I was not horrible, no. But I am not “there” yet either. Which is silly. We’re never going to get there until we’re dead. OR until we stop trying.

So add a brick today. Or as Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Do one thing every day that scares you.”

*

Here’s the event, by the way. If you want to come by, we love audiences… even if it scares us! And here’s a photo of me at the event. With clothes on.

Life’s a Crapshoot

Did you watch it? The storybook Royal Wedding? What did you take from it? That there’s no predicting life. No one would have thought a Hollywood starlet would marry an honest-to-goodness prince. Well, not in real life. In stories. In movies. On TV. But not for real. But it was. Real.

Rolling the Dice

Back in 2006, I was becoming increasingly aware of egg donors facilities. Yes. I was pretty amazed that people were picking characteristics they wanted for their children and were buying eggs that they thought would make little people with those traits. What’s cool is that it doesn’t work that way. At least not yet. Thank goodness. For instance, neither of our children plays the piano by ear, but I do. On the other hand, I can’t draw my way out of a paper bag, but our younger son is crazy-good at drawing, painting, sketching, shading, faces (for gosh sakes), and composition. How nice a surprise. Right? 

Is life a game of chance? I think it is deliciously so. In fact, I say throw all the eggs and sperm in a piñata and do a free-for-all blindfolded party burst. Then grab the gametes and zygotes that lie on the ground, smash them together and you’ll have a kid — any old kid, and the future means nothing, the past means nothing, and lineage has no meaning whatsoever. Birthrights mean doodly squat. The Kennedy clan has had more than its share of problems, right? 

You can be born and given up for adoption. You can be born into squalor. You can come into the world with an affliction. You can start your life in a palace. And sometimes that, too, can be bad luck! What. Dee. Heck?

People that are born of two parents bring recessive and dominant genes to the party. The randomness of the different permutations produces hugely disparate kids of the same two parents, no matter how many kids they have. It’s the scary-wonderful, elegant and inelegant magic of it all. We keep doing it through the centuries, and sometimes we make a mess of it, and sometimes, it’s a beautiful thing, this life.

Life’s a crapshoot right from the beginning, and that’s all there is to it. There should be more, somehow, but there isn’t.

What Comes Next?

Note to reader: This is a story with no end . . . yet. You can finish this story however you would like. How does the sentence end? What will happen? Who comes in the room? Who leaves the room? Would you like this kind of chance? Can you relate? Enjoy!

The principal of the school sat in her office pondering the student— a girl who had been referred to the office for yet another dress-code violation. It was Thursday morning.

“What?” the girl said in a slouching stand, her hand on one hip as attitude permeated her skinny little half-dressed 15-year-old body. The girl’s makeup skewed toward prostitution, and her spiked green and blue hair looked hideous.

The principal knew better than to say anything about how the girl looked. Instead, she said, “This is your third dress-code violation in three days, Maddy. What would you like me to do about this?” The principal had already decided the girl’s fate, but she was always interested to see a student’s take on the situation at hand.

“Call my parents. Have them come and get me. They hate that.”
“So, that’s what this is about? Angering your parents?”

Maddy slouched the other way, put her other hand on her other hip, looked the principal straight in the eyes and said, “Yeah. That’s what this is about.”

The principal, Mrs. O’Reilly, knew this all along. It happened all last year and the year before. She knew Maddy’s parents. They were both attorneys, very bright, but very stupid when it came to their daughter. All Maddy wanted was some attention and the easiest way for her to get it was to get in trouble. She had tried the good grades route. She hadn’t been able to arrive on their radar with good grades. She tried pleasing them with clarinet lessons when she was younger. She hated the clarinet, which was okay because that hadn’t worked either. Finally, one day, she got a “C-” in a French class. Well, the whole bloody earth stopped spinning at Maddy’s house. Her mom and dad became enraged, engaged parents, and Maddy had finally found a path to success: failure.

Mrs. O’Reilly knew the pattern. She had seen it a hundred times before and told Maddy she was not going to call her parents, but rather that Maddy was to meet her at an address on the slip of paper she handed her. She knew from previous run-ins that this would be okay with Maddy’s mom and would handle the details in the next few hours.

“Saturday morning at nine o’clock, I will be waiting for you at this address. Don’t be late.”

“But…”

“No. Just be there.” Mrs. O’Reilly frowned and added, “And put on that T-shirt by the door for the rest of the day.”

The shirt said ‘Busted by Mrs. O.’ Mrs. O’Reilly had one hundred made at the beginning of the school year. This was the last one, and it was only December. They were a drab shade of gray, extra large size with white lettering. She bought them with her own money and tried vainly to get them back from the students the next day after they had worn them. But they had become popular with a certain section of the student body, and the parents of those students didn’t care anymore about their kids’ returning the shirts than they did about what they let their kids wear to school. She would have to buy more, and maybe make them cheaper, uglier, or with a reward attached for returning them. She knew that wouldn’t work, however. These kids had more money and less love than any other spoiled student body she’d ever worked with, and she had been a school principal for over 25 years.

* * *

 Connie O’Reilly waited until 9:15. Maddy finally arrived.

“What happened? I told you to be here promptly at nine o’clock.”
“I know, but I had to take the bus. I didn’t tell my parents where I was going.”

“Well, they should have known. I sent them an email telling them you were going to be with me today. I will call them so they won’t worry.” She pulled out her cellphone and started to dial.

“Don’t bother,” Maddy said. “They’re out of town this weekend like most weekends.”

Mrs. O’Reilly decided she better tell the truth. “Your mom does know, actually. I called her at work on Thursday.”

Maddy shrugged. “She didn’t mention it to me. Usually, she tells Dad, and they both yell at me.”

“Hmm.” Mrs. O’Reilly was a little surprised, too, and she wondered what was going on, though this was not strictly her problem. She only needed one parent’s permission at this point. She was a school principal, not a social worker, and not a marriage counselor. At this very moment, however, she wanted Maddy to see what she brought her to see.

It started to rain as Mrs. O’Reilly moved down the stairs. It was six steps down from street level to an old door taking them through a narrow hallway. Dim bulbs screwed directly into bare light receptacles made the passage most uninviting, but managed to hide the dirt (of questionable origin) on the walls. The two women seemed like intruders in a foreign country.

Maddy couldn’t stand the smell either and finally asked, “Where are you taking me, Mrs. O’Reilly? This place doesn’t feel safe, and it stinks.”

“It’s safe alright; it’s just dirty, but one should never allow appearances to keep you from experiencing new things.”

Maddy wore jeans and a T-shirt. Mrs. O’Reilly had jeans on, too, which Maddy had never seen her wear, even to school picnics. They got to the end of the scary hallway. The carpet was shabbier, and more stained than near the front door if that were possible.

“Room three. Room two. Room one,” Mrs. O’Reilly said looking at cast-iron numbers nailed to the wall over the narrow doors where they had finally arrived. “This is it. Go on in.” She smiled widely as excited as she always was to see the expression on a student’s face when they saw what was on the other side of the door.

* * *

The paint-peeled door opened in. Maddy had no idea what to expect. After the dark corridor, the lights blinded her. The light streaming in from skylights and high rain-spattered windows made it hard to see as well. Her eyes darted around quickly, and as they became accustomed to the brightness, she started to see forms.

Colors started to come together and became people; people became faces; a face became eyes, and many of the faces turned to smile at the newcomer. Maddy wasn’t sure what she was even looking at, nor why they were smiling. There were easels everywhere, with people in aprons holding paintbrushes sitting or standing in front of the easels. And there were heavy, paint-stained canvasses draped here and there. Maddy’s face held the confused look of every person who had ever walked through that door.

The room was three stories high. Balconies and stairways connected some of them to others; a few were separate alcoves. On some platforms, two or three people were busy with paintbrushes raised in thought or actively painting; the painters’ eyes skipped back and forth to hanging monitors showing drawings and paintings that the students appeared to be reproducing. A couple of the people were working in clay, and one group had marble forms in front of them.

“Mrs. O’Reilly. Why did you bring me here? I can’t draw or paint. I have trouble drawing stick figures.”

“These people can’t either. Or couldn’t. This is a place to learn how to get in touch with yourself.”

Maddy, short for Madeline, rolled her eyes and made a face. She shook her head and still didn’t understand it at all. A man with dreadlocks broke from his easel on the ground floor and came over to where they stood. By this time everyone else had gone back to work. There were thirty or forty people, spread around the space, and Maddy couldn’t fathom why she was here.

“Hi,” the man said. “My name is Raul. Welcome to the Artist’s Loft.”

“Hi,” Maddy said, turning to Mrs. O’Reilly for help. Mrs. O’Reilly did not say anything and just stood there smiling.

“I guess you’re here to learn to paint,” Raul ventured, winking at Mrs. O’Reilly.

“I can’t paint,” Maddy said. “Or draw, or sculpt, or do any of that stuff. There’s been a mistake.” Maddy was starting to feel very uncomfortable. She felt light headed and asked to sit down for a minute. “Are you all right, Miss?” Raul had seen this before. He’d seen everything.

“I think I might be coming down with something. Perhaps I should come back another time,” Maddy said.

Raul said, “I think you might be hungry. Why not come with me and I’ll get you a bagel and a spot of Earl Grey tea. I’ll wager you’ll be ready to start right after that. It works every time.” Turning to Mrs. O’Reilly, Raul said, “Thank you for bringing Madeline to us. I think she’ll be just fine.”

Maddy looked to Mrs. O’Reilly for help, but then realized something and said to Raul, “Wait. How do you know my name?” She was becoming more anxious by the moment. “We never told you my name,” she said.

Mrs. O’Reilly said, “I made an appointment for you, dear. You’ll be here every Saturday for the next ten weeks.” Waving her arm toward the area around her, Mrs. O’Reilly said, “This is your new job.”

“A job? I don’t need a job. My parents give me all the money I need. Besides, I told you, Mom doesn’t know about this, and really, I cannot paint. I told you.”

“You will learn how to paint, and I did get written permission from your mom. She emailed it over. I can show you if you’d like.” She pulled out a piece of paper from her pocket and offered it to Maddy, who looked at it and knew it was real. Her mom signed all her stuff with ESQ. (for lawyer) all in caps with a period at the end.

“It’s her signature, all right. But I will still need money for the bus to get here.”

“Yes, that’s been arranged. Here’s a bus pass. And every day that you come you will get paid. Like a job.”

“A bus pass? I hate taking the bus. I only did it today because I had to.”

Raul interrupted. “That’s part of the deal. It is about seeing and then painting subjects from what the world offers you. Busses are great places for inspiration.”

Maddy made a face accompanied by more eye-rolling. Mrs. O’Reilly said, “I wish I could do my life all over again. You’re lucky your mom and dad have the money to help with this. Your mom made a nice donation to the Artist’s Loft, and you’re signed up for the ten weeks. You’ll like it. You know, I hate to tell you this, but I’d rather be here than running the high school.”

Maddy’s eyes opened wide with the repetition of ten weeks, but also with that last statement. “REALLY? I thought you liked being a principal.”

“I do, but I would like being a painter more,” she said smiling at her and then at Raul.

Maddy said, “Sounds like my mom just paid you to get me out of her hair. So that’s par for the course.” Raul looked at Mrs. O’Reilly who made it clear that Maddy should stay. Maddy saw the exchange, and said, “So I don’t have a choice, as usual. What am I supposed to do?”

“Just follow Raul’s lead. Do exactly what he says, and you’ll be fine. If you don’t, he’ll kick you out, and you won’t get paid by anyone. Not your mom or your dad. Don’t try that one. Your mom promised me. She’s part of this. So it’s totally up to you. You can do what you want. See you at school on Monday.”

Mrs. O’Reilly left. Maddy turned to Raul. “What did you say your name was again?”

“That’s okay. This place is a lot to take in. I get it. My name is Raul. One syllable. It rhymes with tall, which I am not. But now that I’ve told you, don’t forget it. Okay?”

“Yeah. Whatever.”

“No. Not whatever. I need for you to pay attention and start to focus on people. Show respect for everyone around you, please. This is an awesome opportunity for you. Mrs. O’Reilly doesn’t do this for just anyone. She must think a lot of you. She’s putting her reputation on the line, and she doesn’t do this lightly.”

“I don’t understand. Who are these people and what are they doing here? Why am I here? What is this place?”

She and Raul have moved toward the food area. Raul said, “This is a privately-funded, experimental re-hab program. It’s not for everyone. The people you see around you are here for similar problems that you have – minor inabilities to fit in, whether it’s at work, school or home.”

Maddy looked around as she picked up a bagel and took a bite. Then she glanced out at the people scattered about the space. “Well, I don’t have a problem. I am in the wrong place. Thanks for the bagel. I’m leaving now.”

Raul looked at her, knowing she was testing and baiting. “You don’t follow your school’s dress code, and your grades suck, but you used to get straight A’s. Don’t tell me you have no problems. I also know you’re hanging out with the wrong people.”

Madeline raised her eyebrows. “How do you know all this about me? Did Mrs. O’Reilly tell you?”

“Hah. She didn’t tell me anything. I know the kids like you who come in here. You might as well be wearing a sign around your neck.”

“I hate my mom. I hate my dad. I hate Mrs. O, and I don’t even know you, and I hate you already.”

Raul said, “I did too. Mrs. O’Reilly showed me this place when I was a little older than you. But I hated everyone you just mentioned.” He paused. “Including myself.”

“Really?”

Raul offered Maddy the Earl Grey tea, made himself a cup, and sat down. After they talked for ten minutes, Maddy stood and said, “Okay. I had the bagel and the tea. I’ll stay for today.”

Raul smiled and said, “Great. Mrs. O’Reilly will be happy, and I think you will be, too.” They walked out to the work area. “Here’s an apron. Come with me. I’ll introduce you around.”

Maddy put her hand out to take the apron, which was stiff with paint and clay. Chips of muddy brown earth and blue and yellow paint fell on the ground between her feet and Raul’s. She looked down at the mess and paused. Then she looked around the room and then back down at the debris on the floor.

She looked at Raul and said, “I . . .