Fantasy/Reality

I watched the season finale of "Desperate Housewives" with the same guilty pleasure I have enjoyed all season. This may be a soap opera, mindless, poorly written, or another 20 adjectives that the critics use to express their dismay but I gotta tell you for me it is the best intersection of black humor, mystery, and just plain fun on t.v. The only show in my mind that might have the same possibilities is "Grey's Anatomy"but it's too early to tell on that one.

I love to watch interesting/entertaining t.v. I don't consider it a mindless waste of time or a frivolous use of time. It is entertainment pure and simple and if my idea of entertainment is different than yours - there's something for everyone. At work I deal with people all day long who are in the throes of various difficulties. And then there are the just cranky ones who make life difficult. And don't forget the sweet ones who love to drop by and chat for hours while I'm trying to type the Sunday bulletin. Admittedly, these are small problems in the world but it's fun to forget about them when I go home and tune in to shows like "Desperate Housewives." I don't watch t.v. 7 nights a week, I don't even watch every Sunday. But to be able to check out once in a while is great. My husband and I have a running debate about this because his idea of the best t.v. is all things sports, which could be a 24 hour a day deal. He insists that sports has a greater value than the shows I watch because it is "real." Also, stupid, macho, and steroid driven, but hey who am I to be a critic. He watches his stuff, I watch mine. And never the two shall meet, although I did catch him watching Housewives one night when he was surfing but I think it was because Eva Longoria was in the bathtub. He would agree that in addition to sports, sex will always get his attention, for real or on t.v.

In my youth I loved to use artificial means for checking out, the specifics to remain known only to me and a few close friends, but in the wisdom of advancing age I no longer partake of anything stronger than a very occasional glass of wine. For me the fun of a well written t.v. show serves the same purpose (well almost), it provides a break from everyday reality, and I don't even have to wake up feeling yucky. Some would call me shallow. Perhaps.

But I deal with the same realities the deeper thinkers of the world are dealing with. I know about the crisis in Darfur, the war in Iraq, the Bird Flu in China, the crisis in Social Security, the Real Estate bubble. I am charitable to those in need, work in my church's food pantry, write letters to my Congress people, read the papers, wring my hands, shake my head, recycle my trash, and watch my fossil fuel consumption. There's more in the world to cry over than to laugh about. But isn't it great to have the opportunity to laugh. Doesn't it feel good to have those belly laughs. I don't want to lose the ability to see the fun in life, to enjoy the fantasy, to participate in pleasurable activities.

I think it's what I hate about the conservatives. They are so serious. Actually, the liberals too. Everything is a crisis, a reason to despair, a fight waiting to happen. Can't we all just chill out? There is no indication that our overzealous, hyperactive, argumentative, confrontational, sky is falling dramas are truly achieving anything more than pissing us all off. Or worse yet putting us all to sleep.

So for me, some t.v. is an antidote to desperation. Maybe the "housewives" need to watch more of it. If one or two hours a week of escape helps me do more and be better the rest of the time then I'm all for it. Perhaps I am just part of the brave, new world, where people escape into their soma driven fantasies but I prefer to think that moderation, in all things including escape, is the best way to remain effective and happy. For those of you who agree, do you think Mike is going to get shot? And for the rest of you, if you don't know who Mike is tune in next season and you'll find out.

Living and Dying

Our son's fiancee's father has terminal cancer, just diagnosed, in every bone in his body. Not much life left according to the medical personnel. My husband and I are trying to console our son and help him with this but we realize that this is a hurdle we have not crossed. We have four living parents. We have not had to deal with the messy end of life issues with our parents yet although we find ourselves, more and more, trying to approach subjects with them that were avoidable for many years. How do you talk to your parents about their finances, their end of life wishes, their imagined legacy, their spiritual thoughts. We are having a hard time in our 50's and our son and future daughter in law are 23. I find myself at a loss for words as he asks me questions about what to say to her, to them, how to get information, provide support, deal with medical people, on and on the list goes.

Although there have been times when I have not been able to answer his questions over the years I now find myself struggling not only to help him but also pondering for myself how to grapple with these big issues. Our parents have been so self sufficient and independent that there have been few openings for these serious conversations. It is in the nature of parents to say, "don't worry about us, we have everything taken care of." But do we?

If nothing else this has been an awakening for me in terms of how I want to talk with our children. I realize that the earlier these conversations start and the more willingness we show to discuss the hard stuff the easier it will be for them as we come to the time in our life when we need them to worry about us and take care of us. I hope that we don't have to burden them with our cares but the reality is that the only people in our lives who care about us as much as we care about each other are our children. I wish that our son did not have to take this on right now but there is no good time. We won't know the time or place of our death. But we can lay the groundwork for ongoing conversation with our kids about the tough stuff. I want them to know about our vulnerabilities as well as our strengths even if that is scary for them and for us.

We die alone but we don't have to die uncared for. How much support and love we receive in the end is related to how much we are willing to be open to receiving it. We are walking through the grocery store today picking over heads of lettuce and discussing these big, tough subjects. I love to shop with our children, the grocery store has been the center of a lot of good conversation over the years. I hope we have a lot more years of shopping together, picking over the lettuce, and debating whether to buy the chocolate chip or peanut butter cookies. I love our kids, I hate it that they will most likely have to deal with our dying, and I thank God everyday that we have them in our lives. We may die alone but our love for them will live on.

Commitment

How many times I have started something, not to finish it. My mother used to tell me it was my worst fault. She would become so annoyed when I would quit my lessons, quit brownies, quit an endless number of activities that she felt were worthwhile and broadening and that I hated. As I grew older I realized that most of us have this fault. We all start out with the best of intentions and somewhere along the way we lose interest. This can be particularly annoying to those around us when they are depending upon us to hold up our part of the bargain. Who can forget the person who walks out of the job on the day that they are most needed, or the person who promises to bring the cookies for the tea and calls at the last minute with lame excuses or worse yet just doesn't show up. Or more painfully, the father who leaves his family with no warning, or the mother who is unwilling to parent and so just lets whatever happens happen. And then there is the spouse who realizes belatedly that marriage isn't really what he or she is interested in and be it one year or fifty the betrayal of that commitment is not forgotten.

In so many ways we fail those who depend upon us. More importantly we fail ourselves. The list of those failures follows us around like a naughty list for the kid who's getting the lump of coal at Christmas. We beat ourselves up with our failures and if we are really into narcissistic punishment one failure begets another and another until we are sunk in a pit of depression that is hard to climb out of. And we wonder why we are the Prozac nation.

We can recite line and verse the litany of our mistakes, if not out loud certainly loudly enough that we ourselves cannot forget. Whether the world recognizes our essential failures we recognize them. For every good thing that you can say about me there is a yes but in response. It is a neurotic and damning way of life that is reinforced by each new mistake. And if someone is so lucky not to have this particular neurosis we brand them uncaring at the least, character disordered at the most extreme. We want our friends to have been raised by mothers, whether Jewish or not, who have taught them the value of guilt if not the value of following through.

I would like to propose though an essential human truth that our mother's may not have been quite as keen for us to learn. We are sinners, we make mistakes, we often don't have what it takes to stay the course. We learn by trial and error, usually remembering most keenly those lessons that resulted in our falling on our butts. We are not perfected. Far from it. If commitment has a value in the course of our lives it is in the fact that each time we try again to stick to something we become stronger, better able to hang in there, more able to appreciate that sometimes the very act of staying the course makes us better able to see what the course is. But this is a lesson learned over a lifetime of getting it wrong. Instead of beating ourselves mercilessly over the head for each failure we need to look through the lens of our lives and see how each one has led us towards a more enduring and persistent ability to be committed.

Of course there are those of us who don't learn this lesson. But for those of us who do the other thing our mother's never told us is that it can take a lifetime to know one's truth, to pin down one's desire, to separate the proverbial wheat from the chaff, and find the small wonderful nugget of truth that defines us. We are not born knowing what commitments we are worthy of. We cannot know easily or quickly which of lifes lures is a trap and which a call to true faith. We are not easily persuaded to give our all and yet ultimately giving our all is what makes us not sinners but saints.

This is what I wish my mother had said to me. Child, instead of evaluating your life by your failures, evaluate each of your failures to understand what it says about you. Because each time you make this examination you will get closer to understanding what is most important for you in your life and how you must go about committing yourself to it. Let your failures be your teachers. Your life is a process of learning how to commit.

Love, Mom