Not All Memories Sweeten With Age

I really didn't expect the reaction I had watching HBO's docudrama, Recount. I thought that I had so neatly packaged and packed the Florida election debacle that the movie would be a bit like taking in a review of Watergate on the History Channel -- not our proudest moment, but in the rearview mirror enough to feel some distance, have some perspective.
I even had a mindless paper-sorting project in front of me. Docudrama, it practically screams multi-task! Silly me.
Two hours later, paper-work forgotten, I found myself in an HBO-induced fog repeating the words: it's only a movie, it's only a movie, all the while knowing in the deepest regions of my psyche that it wasn't just a movie.
I'm guessing I got a very small taste of the PTSD experienced by an adult child of abuse after watching Mommie Dearest. It was far too fresh a wound to rip the bandaid from.
I remember the night of the election as the stations began calling for Gore. I had a feeling, early on, that something was up. The conservative commentators weren't buying it and I could hear in their voices that they knew more than they were allowing. I still wonder...did they smell the rat in the room or had there been a preemptive meeting of select minds?
I want to say it took weeks to get past it, but the truth is I never recovered. Neither did our country. Neither did the planet.
This was a crock heard round the world and the echo of its report still reverberates in places like New Orleans and Iraq.
Reviewers of the movie question its accuracy, criticize the portrayal of Warren Christopher as an elitist who waved the white flag of diplomacy far too early in the game. Democrats -- they never learned to play street ball. I think that's what got so many of us in a quandary over Hillary. The girl's a fighter...do we want a fighter?
I heard an interview with David Boies, the attorney who represented the Gore argument before the Supreme Court. Throughout the whole movie he just kept hoping for a new ending. Yeah -- me, too.
Re the film as an artform -- the best thing they did was casting. Tom Wilkonson played a villainous James Baker so well I wanted to boo and hiss when he came on screen. John Hurt became Warren Christopher and Kevin Spacey's torment as Ron Klain, the man who just wanted to be loved, was right on.
As far as I'm concerned, though, the Emmy goes to Laura Dern as Katherine Harris. Okay, I'll admit it...there was a lot of material to work with, Katherine was an easy read. But Dern held nothing back. She was the image of Sleeping Beauty's thoroughly evil and foolishly vain stepmother; and history's mirror reflects to us a woman ill-prepared to oversee a Girl Scout Cookie drive, much less an election.
If there is wisdom to the timing of this movie, maybe it's to warn us that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Beware, Mr. Obama, beware. There be beasties afoot and you are in their sites.

Hatred: A Force That Gives Life Meaning

Foreign Policy's Passport reports that The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg had an interview with John McCain. Check this part out:

JG: What do you think motivates Iran?

JM: Hatred. I don't try to divine people's motives. I look at their actions and what they say. I don't pretend to be an expert on the state of their emotions. I do know what their nation’s stated purpose is, I do know they continue in the development of nuclear weapons, and I know that they continue to support terrorists who are bent on the destruction of the state of Israel. You'll have to ask someone who engages in this psycho stuff to talk about their emotions.

Help me out here. What is this guy talking about? I am not an expert on emotions? What the heck is hatred? I look at their actions, what they say......what drives actions and expression? To his credit, JM has integrity. He is the poster child for a political ideology that can not/will not connect with reality, emotion, feeling, or psycho stuff. Hatred - motive....rhetoric - BS....election - competition....presidency - power.
Total eclipse of the mind.

Tooth Fairy Goes Global

In an attempt to impress my grandson with geography as opposed to capitalism, his parents have made arrangements with the tooth fairy to bring him foreign money. Cute. Maybe even interesting.
He lost his first tooth and was delighted to find coins under his pillow. He was unfamiliar with the currency so he left the tooth fairy this note.

Here's my thought. I remember being a kid and getting the occasional peso from my Uncle Rex who was a rodeo clown. He'd drop by now and again and he always had Mexican coins to give my brother and me. We thought we were rich. They were coins. They were heavy. They had big numbers on them.
But the moment was blown when someone explained that Mexican money wasn't worth as much as American money. Bummer. No good. Nobody will take them. Won't even buy a piece of bubble gum.
Is that the way European kids feel when the tooth fairy brings them foreign money from the U.S.? I had to ask.

Not Losing Is A Little Like Winning

It was Scrabulous. And she was waxing my you know what.
I was dying. She was so good. How did she learn to get all those double letter/side-by-side word points anyway?
I’m her mother. I should have been ahead. I taught her everything she knows!
And yet…I was dying.
Thank God it was a long-term game.
You can do one of those if you have a Facebook add-on for Scrabulous. The game goes on until someone runs out of tiles. You play it sort of like those old farts at the park play chess…one move at a time – each a week apart. Our Scrabulous game lasted at least ten days.
It gave us time to think about it, to weigh our words.
Her words weighed more. She really bested me playing horizontal combos like SENE against words like TOFT and PHONEY with ALONE at the vertical to make mega-points. I was stuck in monosyllable-land and my score reflected it.
The word that saved me was RUBIGO. Where did I get that? A color retrieved from somewhere in the almost lost wells of my memory. It just happened to fall on a red triple word score square.
It was a momentum turner. She was easily sixty points ahead at the time.
But step by step, inch by inch I moved forward until we reached that point where I had three tiles and she had five.
CENT was her choice and it placed her thirteen points ahead with one tile remaining.
The three in my cache were less than stupendous. Each was a single pointer: R – U – N
I worked at it forever. And finally I saw an opening. Vertically, there was a space where I could spell URN while connecting with a horizontal T at the top to spell UT and a horizontal BAR at the bottom to spell BARN. All together I would make thirteen points. Not enough to win, but not so little as to lose, either.
But who ever heard of UT? Is it a word????
I had to try. I entered the letters and pressed Play.
The screen whirled around verification mode and then accepted my play.
Game over! A Draw! Hallelujah! I didn’t lose!
She didn’t reply for two days.
It was as if it never really happened.
Heck! Not losing was like winning as far as I was concerned. I just wanted a little victory relish to top it all off. But she didn’t concede a thing.
I finally had to ask.
What, that?
Yes, that.
Well, I don’t really even get it. It was a draw? How did that happen?
Uh…because I’m so good? I came back from the dead. I caught your little baby butt and danced all around it....
I didn’t say any of that. I was cool.
But I still have the screen saved and I look at it frequently.
Life goes on, this I know.
And not losing helps the passing just a bit.

Post Script

I did get one email at exactly 11:09 a.m. It was from my daughter.
It was just a link to an interesting site....something she thought I'd like.
Not profound.
And yet....if you seek it you will find it. Hmmm.....
She took time to send it on because I might like it.
She thought of me.
She knows me that well.
Wow.
Cool.
(I never learn, not really).

11:09 a.m.

Crazy! That’s what I’m telling myself. You're Crazy!
It’s all my sister’s fault. She sent the stupid email.
The STUPID email I opened and read.
You know the kind: this is your guardian angel and she brings you the promise that you will hear from someone about something very important at 11:09 tomorrow morning. Send this message on to seven of your closest friends so they can be blessed as well.
Argghhhh! I fell for it. I sent the thing to seven friends.
I needed a message!
It’s 11:10 a.m.
What’s the message?
Is it that you can’t fleece God?
I can hear him now: Silly girl, don’t you know? I will not be mocked….or manipulated!
One night a few years ago I was praying under the stars in northern New Mexico. It was a fervent prayer, a deep-seeded groan that and I so desperately needed to hear from God…to know that God was listening and was giving me personal attention.
At just the right moment, a star shot across the heavens, leaving a trail of space dust so incredibly thick that it hung in the sky for several moments. It was like a love note from God written on heaven’s chalkboard.
I loved it. I just knew that God had sent that star in answer to my prayer.
I don’t remember what I was praying about.
I remember the sign.
The problem with signs is that once you get one, you look for the next one. It got so that I couldn’t look up into the night sky without hoping God would send another star shooting across just to say “hi!” I approached the stellar landscape expecting divine hieroglypics and each time, walked away disappointed. It got so I couldn’t just look up and love the handiwork of the skies because of my need for more.
Finally, I realized the only way I could overcome this frame of mind was to go on a star fast. I wouldn’t allow myself to look up. That way I wouldn’t be disappointed. For months when I went out at night I intentionally willed myself to look straight ahead, only looking up on nights that were cloudy or on which the moon was so big and bright that the stars were almost imperceptible.
Eventually, I came back to a mindset from which I could look to the sky just to see the stars, their incredible and beautiful light – the miracle of them simply for their own sake.
Maybe that’s the message of 11:09 a.m.
It was a moment in which I could simply be, a moment to appreciate and relish…even cherish apart from the millions that I speed through unattended.
That little sixty second span was the one thing I had for sure right then.
And I missed the treasure looking for the sparkly….
Ahhh…grasshopper, therein lies a truth.

In Process

I read about the Navajo and their Nizhoni….the way of beauty. It is a life-style that says how we live is more important than what we produce. Imagine that.
I work toward outcomes.
I need measurables.
I set goals and objectives and I want to see results.
That’s what they told me, anyway. So many years ago when my young mind was being molded and my skills were being honed. They put me on their conveyor belt of knowledge that said the end is the means.
I have spent a chunk of life believing this rhetoric, living this system, anticipating their end.
Problem is….I got to the end and it’s not so pretty.
I keep looking back wishing I’d given more attention to the moments…each delicate and intimate moment that passed. I wish I’d noticed the people more. I wish I had listened their stories. I wish I had a story that said I am more than the end of my days.
That is why I began reading about the Navajo and their intentional style of living.
I am impressed with the notion that each moment of life is It. It is all you have.
And It holds all that came before and all that goes ahead.
It is a definition of the one who holds It.
For a Navajo It involves being who one is…wholly. Compassionate, moral, dedicated, and beautiful. It means honoring those who brought you to the now. And It means honoring those will come after.
It is more caught up in the herding of the sheep than the market value per head
It is more caught up in the sheering of the animals than the price per pound of wool.
It is more caught up in the weaving of the blanket than the item when it’s finished.
It is celebrating the first laugh of a baby, calling all the friends – many of whom happen to be family – together to honor that very moment when life has been known and appreciated and loved by the most tender among us.
I am in awe of this Nizhoni, this way of beauty. I have breath and life and moments remaining in me. I am giving myself over to a new way of being.
I am no longer content to be measured by....any system of measure.
I am so much more.
Right now.
Right this very moment.