The Story Sisters and the Lunchroom at Neiman-Marcus

The lunchroom I'm envisioning isn't there any more; I'm back in the 1980s when the decor was pink and pale turquoise with shiny, abstract art on every wall. Back then I thought it was the height of sophistication to eat lunch at Neiman-Marcus, and I ate the same thing every time, a chicken salad sandwich and a glass of Neiman's special iced tea (their trick was mixing the tea with ground cloves and Tang).

Neiman's is hardly Paris but there is something about those memories -- the strength of tradition, which lasts when everything else is gone -- that comes back to me while I read The Story Sisters.

The sisters -- Elv, Meg, and Claire -- have one life in Paris with their grandmother Natalia and another life on Long Island with their mother Annie. Their father disappears early on -- we see him only briefly driving around town with his new girlfriend in a Miata -- and it's clear from the start that the girls are on their own when it comes to staying safe. One sister in particular -- Elv -- begins to fall and then spirals downward in a way that feels so true to me that it's painful to read. Although this book is about the worst things that can happen to a family, it's also a soaring flight, a walk along the Seine in the darkest hours of night, long afternoons in a bird-filled garret, the trick of finding solace in memories and the color of the light. Reading this is like being on a small boat in the fog; the mist moves and you see first one object emerge and then disappear again while another point comes into focus.

I'm envious and in awe and at a complete loss as to how Alice Hoffman can write a story with such clear beauty, such pure brushstrokes, such pain and such grace. I immediately ran to the library and checked out 9 Alice Hoffman books but none of them have the same power, clarity, beauty, or sheer transcendence. I think about a writer becoming stronger and clearer with each work until she produces a novel that is as painful and startling and beautiful and human as any painting by Van Gogh, or any piece by Mozart. How can words on a page make one love fictional characters, embrace human frailties, feel the pain in a part of our minds (not left brain but right brain) that puts the beauty before the pain?

copyright 2010 Ann Krueger Spivack

My Stroke of Insight and Earl Grey Tea

I'm thinking about the left hemisphere and right hemisphere of my brain thanks to Jill Bolte Taylor's book My Stroke of Insight. Jill is a neuroanatomist, a researcher at Harvard who made the study of the human brain her career because she grew up with a schizophrenic older brother. At 37 years old, she had a stroke, specifically an arteriovenous malformation, a rare form of hemorrhagic stroke that can strike younger people.

Jill explains with humor and self-deprecation how the portions of her brain affected by the stroke lead to loss of faculties. Blood is fatal to brain cells and when the rupture of a major blood vessel bathes the brain in blood, big swaths of brain cells die. (My first thought: how can blood be fatal to brain cells? What part of evolution was responsible for that little kink?)

More than 75% of hemorrhagic strokes happen in the left portion of the brain. I wonder about this. Do strokes occur in the left side more often because that side is busier or because that side is responsible for our negative ideas about life and ourselves? When you've had a stroke on the left side, you lose things like interest in achievement and success, time, society, fitting in, excelling. What about those who have a stroke on the right side and retain the capacity for despair while losing the big picture, and an innate sense of well-being that has nothing to do with accomplishment. I am fascinated by Jill's post-stroke thoughts about left and right brain. She says,

"Moment by moment, our right mind creates a master collage of what this moment in time looks like, sounds like, tastes like, smells like, and feels like.... In the absence of the rules and regulations that have been defined (by our left mind) as the correct way of doing something, the right mind is free to explore the possibilities that each new moment brings. By its design, our right mind is spontaneous, carefree, imaginative... and it allows our creative juices to flow free without inhibition or judgment."

The left brain on the other hand is not carefree. It organizes each moment of our life into linear and methodical configurations so that we know to put on our socks before our shoes. Our left hemisphere uses words to describe, define, categorize and communicate. Our left hemisphere examines a flower and categorizes it: stem, leaf, petal, stamen. The right brain feels the joy of the whole picture, feels beauty, smells fragrance and is enticed, soothed, excited, or sorrowful. The left brain dissects the image of a rainbow into ROY G. BIV. The left brain thrives on weaving details into story. It excels at academics and manifests a sense of authority over the details it masters.

The voice that moves us forward, task by task, stems from the left brain. When Jill's left brain in incapacitated, the "brain chatter" stops. Jill says,

"One of the jobs of the left hemisphere language centers is to define self by saying, 'I am.' Your brain repeats over and over the details of your life so you remember them.... I personally love the color red and am inclined to collect a bunch of red things -- I drive a red car and wear red clothes. I like red because there's a circuit in my brain that gets very excited and runs automatically whenever anything red comes my way. From a purely neurological perspective, I like red because the cells in my brain tell me that I like red."

But that is all left brain, and when her left brain is wiped clean so are many aspects of Jill's personality: her ability to read -- or even determine what letters and number are -- her ability to walk, to speak, to drive, to make sense of the cracks on a sidewalk.

Here's the flip side. The loss of left brain means a right-brain view of the world. Jill says,

"Although I experienced enormous grief for the death of my left hemisphere consciousness and the woman I had been, I concurrently felt tremendous relief. That Jill Bolte Taylor had grown up with lots of anger and a lifetime of emotional baggage that must have required a lot of energy to sustain.... In my present form, I had not inherited her fundamental hostility. With the obliteration of my memories, I felt both relief and joy."

It took eight years but Jill was able to recover most of her faculties. She explains how brain cells repurpose themselves by comparing the cells in different portions of her brain to kids at a playground. If the merry-go-round is taken away, she says, those kids will run to other parts of the playground and try to find another spot to play. The strongest aftereffect of stroke was holding on to the enormous relief that came with loss of the left-brain chatter. When her left brain begins to heal (i.e. cells that survived the stroke take up some of the work of the cells that did not), Jill writes that "it seemed natural to blame other people or external events for my feelings or circumstances" even while she knew it was unrealistic to blame others for how she felt. She even says she wishes there were a safe way to silence the left brain so that people could experience a right-brain existence, if only for a few minutes.

So I'm thinking of my two hemispheres. I'm picturing my right brain as a sort of pre-hippie Berkeley bohemian, long stringy hair, shapeless purple caftan trimmed in gold. At one time she studied modern dance. Her house is an absolute mess. My left brain is an army sergeant, one who has been kicked out of the service for lack of organizational skills and yet he tries valiantly to maintain some semblance of order. He sees that he doesn't have much sway over caftan woman but still he pokes me constantly, disgusted by my piles of paper, my unpacked boxes, my dining room table filled with things for Any Soldier, the fact that it takes me days to make it to the post office.

Jill describes how her perception of her own body shifted after her stroke:

"I no longer perceived myself as a solid, an entity with boundaries that separated me from the entities around me. At the most elementary level, I was liquid. Of course I am a fluid! Everything around us is made of atoms and molecules vibrating in space."

Our left brain makes our skin solid and impermeable to everything but air while the right brain feels us to be a part of everything around us. I drink my Earl Grey tea and try to let both halves of my brain have a taste. My left brain chatter reminds me of Rachey, who adores Earl Grey, and the Sullivans at the Ritz-Carlton every December and of being in London where I sipped Earl Grey by Hyde Park, watching as a huge black coach rolled past pulled by black horses with red plumes. I try to ease Sergeant Left Brain off the controls so I can feel a bigger picture, the cup smooth and warm in my hands, the tea fragrant and I feel myself as liquid, like tea, like water, like ocean, like air.

copyright 2010 Ann Krueger Spivack

Here is Jill, talking about how her stroke changed her for the better:

http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

Committed (Part II) and Becca's House

In her book, Committed, Elizabeth Gilbert discusses the Marriage Benefit Imbalance. "Married men live longer than single men; married men accumulate more wealth than single men; married men excel at their careers above single men, married men are far more likely to die a violent death than single men; married men report themselves to be much happier than single men; and married men suffer less from alcoholism, drug addiction and depression than do single men."

"Dishearteningly," Elizabeth writes, "the reverse is not true." Married women don't live as long as single women, don't accumulate as much wealth, don't thrive in their careers as well as single women do, are significantly less healthy than single women, and we're much more likely to die a violent death than single women -- usually at the hands of a husband.

I'm confident that Brad would never hurt me but I'm also sure that marriage has not made me a better person. For every personal sacrifice I've made, I lug behind me about 10 suitcases bulging with bitterness and regret. They take up all the rooms in our house. And our house is big. Yet I am the person who has made the decisions that have carried our lives so off-track. Adopting twins from a family that clearly has some sort of mental disorder -- now there's a recipe for certain unhappiness. Moving us all to Gilroy, effectively cutting us off from every friend we have. WTF?????

So the question becomes -- how to steer together with Brad so life feels hopeful again instead of sitting here in Gilroy waiting to be hit by yet another loss in a long series of failures and bad choices.

I'm thinking about all this when we go to Becca and Allyn's house for a surprise party for Suzie. Becca and Allyn's house is a bungalow, in a neighborhood that is a long way from gentrification. They give us the tour, the huge cellar with a wine press in one corner; a high ceiling that -- when they tore down the low, rough ceiling that hid it -- showed the scorch marks of a long-ago fire. There is something about Becca and Allyn in this house -- their simple happiness at creating a place that is theirs that reminds me it's not so simple to say no to love, to a first house, to companionship, to children. We want those things. We think... we hope our family life will be free of the upheavals, the despair, the violence and fear that marked the low points in our own childhoods. How dim-witted am I to think our family life could possibly be free of upheavals? Life is upheaval.

I think about this as we wait for Suzie and Steven to arrive. Suzie comes through the door, and all of us, 50 people, jump out and yell "surprise" at her. Suzie is shocked. She covers her face with both hands, and stands in the doorway not moving, then she shows her face again and laughs, clearly at a loss. Later, when the color is back in her face, we stand to one side talking.

"Do you like surprises?," I ask her. She grimaces, tilts her head, shrugs, makes an "eh" sound, and laughs. "Your daughter," I say, and what I love about Suzie is we speak without words. That Becca admires her mom and loves her and arranged this party to show how highly she thinks of Suzie, how much Suzie means to her. And Suzie, maybe, in those first seconds when she walked through the door, would have preferred a quieter Valentine's Day with Becca and Allyn, Steven and Rachel, but as the party moves through Becca and Allyn's house, the kids all tooting on their glittery party-favor horns, there is only good will and peace and community and the love between a mother and a daughter.

Steven, who has helped Becca and Allyn lay the wonderful dark red and yellow checkerboard kitchen floor, is in back, manning the barbecue, turning turkey burgers. And the table shows how this group knows Suzie because the turkey burgers are the only meat in sight: there is a carrot salad that practically glows it's so orange, and a salad of pristinely tender Little Gems lettuce leaves, a lentil salad with incredibly ethereal feta, and the most beautiful plate of asparagus, and even a salad of shaved Brussels sprouts and almonds. And an enormous bowl of potato salad that Becca has made. I have three helpings of that potato sald and even take a fourth helping with me for the long drive home.

And I think about weathering the upheavals, using whatever means you have: meditation or religion, yoga or Feldenkrais, travel or singing or reading or whatever gets you through the really bad patches. So you can be there on those radiant days when the love shines clear.

copyright 2010 Ann Krueger Spivack

Committed (Part I) and Potato Salad

Brad says to me, "why can't you just commit?" As we've been married for 25 years and lived together for more than 27 years, this strikes me as odd. I'm pondering this -- the fact that I still hesitate to commit after all these years -- while making potato salad and thinking about Elizabeth Gilbert's new book Committed.

Elizabeth has come through a horrible divorce, is determined to never marry again, but then is put in a situation where she has to marry. The thing that hits me hardest while reading this book is her absolute clarity around that fact that she does not want children. She wants to work. I want to work too. Living in a house with two struggling teens (hell, all of us are struggling) means that time to work is hard won.

It's not just that there are no uninterrupted hours. It's that there are no uninterrupted thoughts. Brad says he thinks about sex every 30 seconds. I laugh at that but thoughts about relationships fill most of my waking hours and not just my relationship with Brad. My relationship with my children (that's the worrisome one), my relationship with my parents (definitely better now), my relation to my sisters and my failed relationship with my sister-in-law. At least four times a day I think, "I'm not the right person; another person could manage these relationships better. There must be someplace I can go to be free of these relationships and then become the person I was meant to be. Mexico? Bali? Iceland?"

Elizabeth Gilbert is maybe not the best person to turn to when one is tempted to run away to foreign lands. I'm stuck on the idea that if I live alone, I could be good. When I live with others (especially sixteen-year-old others) I'm angry, mean, even sometimes violent. This is not who I am in my head, but this is who I become when I'm scared and frustrated, angry and tired. I'm envious of families whose children are in step -- soccer-playing, straight A, polite readers -- and I kill a big part of myself with the thought that my children would be those teens too if I'd just been a better mother.

I think about having twin babies in New York City, moving to Manhattan when they were only two months old. I remember the intense loneliness of it but also days when sun poured through the window, and I lay on my back inside the huge corral that I'd constructed in the center of our apartment. Danny and Rachel would crawl over me, each one clutching a Cheerio between thumb and forefinger. And who they were did not depend on me. Their well-being depended on me, and I did a damned good job of making sure they were never hungry, that they were warm and clean and dry and safe always, always. They were happy. But now, somehow who they are depends on me. The fact that they haven't achieved is my fault. And fear is the ruling emotion, fear that Danny will land in jail, fear that Rachel will become pregnant, fear that I'm somehow keeping them from doing their best or not doing enough to help them become the person I think they could be, should be.

How do mothers bear this?

I drag myself out of bed, and make potato salad. My Dad always made the potato salad in our house, and I think about how hard my parents had it with five children and not enough money. I chop vegetables just the way that my Dad does, small mounds of diced celery, red onion, and sweet gherkins. I leave out the hard-boiled eggs and mayo, and cook really beautiful Yukon golds (a pain to peel but such a gorgeous yellow). I make two bowls of it, one just chunks of potato, a good deal of Olio Nuovo, and a sprinkle of sea salt. In the other bowl, I mix the potatoes with the Olio Nuovo and all the veggies. Danny and Rachel fall on the no-veggie potatoes, and pronounce it "bomb-y." I take a spoonful of the vegified potato salad and there's something about commitment right there: that my parents and I struggled and yet I make the potato salad, I try to stay. That's a sort of commitment.

copyright 2010 Ann Krueger Spivack

I Capture the Castle and Bottega

When life is hard, I fall back on children's books. I Capture the Castle isn't quite a children's book and it's not really an adult book; it's sort of a fairy tale for those of us with no patience for "the prince will come and we'll live happily ever after." This book fills up a small leaky place in my heart every time I read it.

Bottega is a fairy tale too. It's one of those restaurants that seems to exist on a separate plane: you step through the doors and the rules change a little from the outside world. We walk in and glasses of sparkling wine are set down before we've even settled into our seats. We're brought lemon-braised artichokes and burrata (a kind of super-creamy soft mozzarella) on floral plates that would be right at home in my grandmother's good china cabinet. We're served small, sweet clams on delicate saffron fettucine and perfect asparagus topping a Meyer lemon risotto and airy puffs of ricotta gnocchi in a sauce the color of dark red velvet. Then we have gingerbread with coastal huckleberries, and an apple turnover with fennel seeds and caramel gelato.

Chiarello comes to sit with us and every one looks over to see who we are. The two women at the next table lean in, eager to hear what he is saying. He is saying that he was in D.C., where he'd gone for his wife's brother's wedding. Many of the guests were stranded by snow, stuck in airports all across the U.S. and then the caterer called to say there's no getting his truck through this snow so he won't be able to make the dinner. Chiarello listens quietly, sipping his coffee, while his wife's family runs around the room, throwing up their hands, squawking, pleading with the caterer to no avail. He's not budging. When they had exhausted all resources, Michael got on the phone. "Listen," he told the caterer, "I don't need you. I just need what's in your truck. You have two options. I can come to you and drive the truck. Or I can bring a few four-wheel vehicles and we can offload your truck, but either way, I'm getting all the stuff in your truck and I'm coming to get it now." Long pause from the caterer, and then he asks, "Who IS this?" Chiarello looks around the table, and we are all laughing, everyone who can hear him tell this story is laughing, and he doesn't need to say another word because of course that's the punch line -- imagining the caterer's face when he hears "This is Michael Chiarello."

And that's the thing about Chiarello. This is a man who is going to find a noble four-wheeled steed and he is going to save the day, record-breaking snowfall be damned. He's a romantic at heart and no true romantic can bear the idea of a bride with no wedding dinner. Chiarello came, he drove, he cooked and the wedding dinner was saved -- no, not just saved. The wedding dinner was fantastic. Poor caterer.

copyright 2010 Ann Krueger Spivack

Her Fearful Symmetry and Nothing

I kept turning pages thinking, "this book has to get better" but it didn't. Cold-hearted and clinical, Her Fearful Symmetry was so depressing, I'm actually angry with the author, Audrey Niffenegger. It's a sad thing when a story's most appealing character is the cemetery.

Columbine and Orson

I don't think it's morbid curiosity that has me engrossed in Columbine. It's more the idea of a pathology, psychopathy as not illness but irreversibly twisted wiring that makes a human being incapable of compassion. This concept -- the idea of a person who lacks empathy -- is so puzzling I close the book often and sit staring at the ceiling, pondering it.

The author of Columbine, Dave Cullen, was one of the first journalists on the scene on April 20, 1999. Along with all the other journalists that day, his priority was posting the story minute by minute. Over time, he realized that he had made many errors -- as had every other reporter -- and that the ideas all of us hold about Columbine are wrong.

The misconceptions bothered Cullen so much that he spent ten years on this book, talking to Dylan's parents, talking to the parents of children killed and the students who survived. This book tells a story of two boys, one depressed and one a psychopath, but the bigger story is how we share a story, how the media can imprint us with inaccuracies that we regard as truth ten years later.

Orson is the anti-Columbine. At a benefit for Project Open Hand, we sit upstairs with Deb and Janet and Elizabeth, talking about astral projection and horses, books and wines and mushroom hunting. We eat a soup so glorious that it makes you wonder how you've underestimated winter vegetables all these decades. We eat short ribs and a sous vide chocolate cake with hazelnut mousseline and a perfect little homemade Reese's cup (but way better than a Reese's cup). Jane, the psychoanalyst and dream interpreter at our table, can't finish her dessert so of course she turns to the one person at the table who can. "Ann," she says, handing her plate across the table to me. "Do you want the rest?" She's known me for 90 minutes and already she's got me pegged.

And I think about how this room feels -- peaceful -- and how we don't have as many of these warm, filled, peaceful evenings as we should but that for most of us humans this connection is the best part about being on the planet. And I think about Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and how teenagers don't know. They know Bruce Willis, and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and that Arnold is governor and all kinds of awful things about destruction and anger and violence and hatred but they don't know the power of peace and good will.

copyright 2010 Ann Krueger Spivack