Rain: A devotion

Written on Valentine's Day

Parked in a mini-flood, my right tires submerged to the hubcaps

I zip up my jacket

pull up my hood

and turn off the car

Left, right, left

I check for cars

open the door

leave the car

close the door

check for cars

but no one’s on this road in the rain

and cross to the less flooded side of the street

The rain patters on my jacket

the sound soothing

and I feel

Joy

I love the rain

How it feeds the grass, which greens almost upon contact with the water

How some people slow down in the rain

because they’re dressed for it

so they don’t mind

How they pause before jumping the streams that flank the roads

I love the impact of splashing in the rain

I love giving in to the rain

when my arms

my knees

my face

are wet

It feels like permission to take time

to enjoy

the cooler air

the reprieve from incessant sun

(do I sound like I’m complaining?

I’m not complaining)

to be a child

to explore the water

how it drips off of rooftops

slides down windows

drips into streams

and

flows down the street

or sits

collecting drops

a pool for enterprising rodents

the utter delight of splashing in the water

remembering that you don’t have to sidestep the puddles

especially if you have boots

you can go straight in

wade, slowly

jump

stomp

splash

kick

There’s a happy medium with rain

enough to help the plants grow and green

but not enough to wash away trees and homes

and as long as we’re there

where rain is a nuisance for other people but not a danger

(except for those idiots who speed and don’t use their headlights

but you can’t blame the rain for stupidity)

as long as the rain cooperates

I will remember that, like the sun, it is life

and childhood

and delight

I will not take it for granted

I will embrace it

I will revel in it

Lest I forget

and its absence remind me

just how precious it is.

Send me emails like this, Ophira!

Home awaits

One day, we drove to a part of town I hadn’t visited before. I hadn’t seen photos and didn’t know what to expect. The highway here isn’t surrounded by trees alone—you see houses, hills in the distances, buildings—so you know if it’s familiar or not.

It wasn’t familiar.

On the short drive home, I thought about how each of us in our little boxes on the hillside* can venture out into the world, turn right, left, up, down, and around, experience all sorts of things, and then, directly or roundabout-ly, find our way home.

Home.

Not just to the general vicinity we come from, not just to people who speak our language (though sometimes that feels incredible enough), but to the exact place where our people and our things await our return.

We take this for granted most of the time, but isn’t it a miracle? You leave something somewhere, you go far away from it, and often (most of the time, if you live in a safe place), when you return, it’s still there. After minutes. Hours. Sometimes after years.

It may not be exactly the same, but it’s there.

And even if it’s been only hours, are you ever certain you know what you’ll find? Have you ever had surprises, like a package you didn’t expect, a person you didn’t expect, a home that looks different from how you left it?

(In the most innocuous-but-annoying version of this possible, my then-16-year-old brother and friend X went into the bedroom of a mutual friend Y who was out of town and spooned it—meaning, COVERED EVERY SURFACE WITH LITTLE PLASTIC ICE CREAM TASTER SPOONS—and then filled the room with balloons. When tired friend B got home, he opened the door to his room, closed it, and went to sleep on the couch.)

On that drive back home, we reached an area I recognized. And I felt what I feel every time I return to a place I know after being away: an exhale of relief.

And a small start of surprise every time we make a turn, and what I think will be there is, actually, there.

*Song lyrics by Malvina Reynolds

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The fine line between laughter and tears

My improv class started meeting outside of class to give us more time to practice.

At the end of the first meeting, we did this laughing/crying exercise: Everyone stands in a circle and two people hold eye contact as they start laughing together. Then, by unspoken agreement, they begin crying while maintaining eye contact. One person turns and makes eye contact with the next person in the circle; they cry together and then start laughing. And so on.

Watching this was amazing.

First, it was funny, seeing the way people cry on demand and laugh with their whole bodies.

Next, it was interesting, observing how the interactions developed and changed and differed among pairs. It was uplifting to hear laughter.

Then, by the time we made it to the final pairs in our little circle, I was almost in tears, even when other people were laughing.

Because this convergence, this edge, this brink of laughter and tears? I know it.

When something horrible happens, I’m on that brink.

You know the feeling?

You think: Did this really happen, on top of everything else?

You think: This is so bad, I can’t even process it.

You think: This is so absurd, it’s hilarious.

Maybe you laugh. And then you remember. And you cry.

And while you cry, you think: Someday, this might make for a good story.

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When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple (hair) to get my oil changed

I’m in a car dealership, waiting for an oil change since apparently cars now alert you when it’s time to go in. (I drove late ’90s and early ’00s cars for so long, I’m still getting used to this concept. A’s car, which is newer than mine, even tells him when his tire pressure is low, though I think it only kicks in when the pressure gets dangerously low.)

I’m sitting in the coffee area next to a Filipina who is also a US citizen through her father. She joined the Air Force to see the world. She’s been a nurse (and now manager) for about 40 years, and at the same hospital where A had his surgeries and hospital stays for about half of that. She used to work in cardiac surgery and spent a good half hour geeking out about how cool cardiac surgery is and telling me about how they do heart transplants and double-lung transplants and fish out blood clots, and how some of the procedures require inducing hypothermia to slow metabolism so patients don’t die when their hearts stop pumping.

She talks till they call to tell her that her car is ready.

The subject matter is frankly a bit morbid, especially the transplant part, because you have to wait for someone to die in a way that doesn’t damage the organs you need and hope that they’ll be a match.

But for a few minutes, she shares something she loves in this world, and I learn something new and understand a bit better how this world works.

She leaves.

A few minutes later a woman in her 70s sits down. Short white hair with a cloud of magenta on top. She says, A lot of my friends dye their hair—brown or black—so I figured, why not. She does a different shade each time. Her hairdresser worried at first that this woman wouldn’t be happy with it, but now is into it (the hairdresser, too!). She says, I’m not dead yet. When I turned 70, I got a couple tattoos.

There’s something fascinating about this particular choice: Even as she changes her hair color, she’s embracing her naturally white color because magenta hair works on white hair in a way that it doesn’t in dark hair. It’s striking.

And these interactions, these choices, these things strangers share with us, whether through conversation or through a physical choice like hair color, give so much food for thought: Are we doing work we love? Are we taking time to notice the people around us? How do we want to see the world and our lives as we grow older? And how do we see ourselves today?

But maybe I ought to practise a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

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Sharing cells with your 16-year-old self

My friend from high school and I have a tradition: We call on each other’s birthdays. His is in the fall. Mine is in the spring. No matter what, we talk at least twice a year.

This year, on my birthday, I asked, How long have we kept this up? What, almost 20 years?

Yeah, he said. [no big deal.]

Then, Yes! You were at my 16th birthday party!

And somehow “16” was much more jarring than “almost 20 years ago”. We were 16. Sixteen. 16. Who’s sixteen these days? (No one in my life.)

Sixteen was a universe ago. An age. More than half a lifetime. We didn’t know what the point of high school was. (I’m still not sure about this.) We didn’t know what we’d be doing after. We didn’t know what we’d be studying or where or when. We hadn’t yet traveled much. We hadn’t yet hung out thousands of miles away, in New Orleans… and even that was 11 years ago. Whew. We hadn’t yet had Chinese food or gone to the restaurant where A got food poisoning. We hadn’t gotten married or even met the people we would marry. We had yet to have any of these twice-annual birthday phone calls.

I don’t find birthdays traumatic. I don’t feel old. I want to be (and am) trying new things. Making new friends. Exploring career options. Getting better at a variety of things. I haven’t settled on what I want my life to look like. I don’t feel constrained in ways I don’t want to be.

But still: 16. How can we share cells with the 16-year-old versions of ourselves? How are we the same human beings? Who were we at 16?

I thought about it. And realized:

16-year-old Ophira? She would have been totally cool with much of my current life.

She’d have been cool with learning to be a good partner. With exploring career interests and being independent and figuring out how to stay independent rather than fitting into a poorly-sized box. With getting stronger, trying new types of exercise. With playing at improv. With dancing. With writing. With talking to everyone, all the time.

Which is comforting. We take all these turns in life, we make all these decisions, but we are always the ones making those decisions. Any time I look around and choose what looks like the right thing to me, any time I look into something I care about, I am being true to myself. “Myself” is just what I am. Underneath the titles and the age and the current style of hair and glasses and the bite splint I wear at night and the crappy clothes—okay, those could really be better. Underneath all the surface things that are signs of “Ophira in 2019” is just Ophira. Ophira who likes to read and explore and talk to people and learn new things and be active. Ophira who gets that she doesn’t always frame things in productive ways and wants to learn to do better. Ophira who loves to dance. Ophira who laughs at most everything in a way other people still notice.

(Seriously, I thought I’d passed this stage of life, but just the other week, three people in my improv class commented on my laugh because I still can’t keep a straight face.)

And people still feel comfortable around me, even though I’m pretty sure I bring the awkwardness to the yard sometimes.

How was I was already fully myself so long ago?

I have nothing outside my physical self in common with the person I was then. My relatives may be the same (plus new additions since then), but none of us live in the same place as before and few in the same place as each other. I interact regularly with zero of the same people outside my family. I’ve moved multiple times. I’ve studied different things. And yet, I am the same person.

I guess this is what people mean when they say to look back on what you did and loved as a child to figure out what you might want to explore, what skills or qualities you want to focus on, because there are certain fundamentals that aren’t likely to change even as everything else does.

I’ve noticed this in other people, too: A still likes taking things apart to see how they work; he still needs to break things down to their most basic level to truly understand them (which is what makes him a great teacher).

There’s that beautiful quote from Steve Jobs’ commencement speech:

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.

I’m in my mid-30s, and some of the dots are finally beginning to converge. Just knowing that they can, that all of this random jumble of life experiences, of interactions and lessons and reactions and choices, can produce something useful and interesting (if only to me), makes it exciting to find out what comes next.

Happy year of birthdays, of discovering what comes next, to you.

Send me emails like this, Ophira!

Life evanescent

Everything comes in phases. Everything is temporary. Everything ends.

We’re not always aware of this.

Consider childhood: Children are so immersed in life that everything lasts forever. Each tooth is loose for ages before it falls out. Summers are endless, in a beautiful way. Pain feels endless in the moment, too, until it passes. You’re never going to be a grown-up (for better or worse). You bask in your teacher’s glow (or suffer under her glare) for eternity.

So it seems like being aware that things end should be liberating when it comes to bad things. Doesn’t my friend find her difficult job situation manageable now that she knows she’s leaving soon? Didn’t A and I find long-distance much easier to handle when we had travel plans to see each other?

And it also seems like this awareness should be painful when it comes to good things. Moving away from good friends. Finishing a delicious meal. Life, in general.

But maybe it’s not so straightforward.

“This too shall pass” is agnostic: it applies to the good, the bad, the value-free. But awareness that “this too shall pass” can, sometimes, be a gift, even in good situations.

I don’t always remember that everything comes in phases, but when I do, this is what happens:

Detachment. I can step out of the moment and remember that this is just a moment in time. Whatever is happening around me or to me or by me is happening, and I can observe it, decide what it means to me, decide whether and how to react.

Appreciation+Focus. When I recognize that I’m in a good moment, I savor it. This, I think. Pay attention to this. Remember this. There’s some combination of focusing and zooming out to appreciate, letting the beauty wash over me.

Patience. When I’m in a bad moment, remembering evanescence makes it a lot easier to wait it out. To be okay not trying to fix everything, to accept that some things won’t work the way I want them to, but hey, they’re temporary.

Engagement. Knowing that this moment is just a moment makes it so I sometimes choose to engage, to be in the moment. This is not the same as appreciation: gratitude and appreciation require a certain amount of detachment, a meta-awareness of the the moment. If you’re truly engaged, you can be enjoying yourself and know that you’re happy, but you aren’t actively appreciating the moment in that moment.

I wonder if it’s the case that good moments are only truly good because they’re moments.

And then I wonder if all this talk is just confirmation bias—we are stuck in this world of phases and moments and evanescence, we need to believe we’re getting something out of it, so we try to make it a good thing.

Well, then. Good luck to us.

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Coffeeshops as a cross-section of humanity

I’m sitting in a coffee shop, reading, when in walk a bride and a groom. She’s wearing a tiara, a wedding dress covered in a suit jacket; he’s wearing a suit with a boutonnière; they’re followed by four older people and a photographer.

For me, an outsider, a witness to a mere excerpt of this time in their lives, being able to decipher what’s happening and how significant it likely is to them feels like magic. It feels like we’re connected, even though in this case it goes one way: I have an inkling, a whisper of insight, into their lives. They’re living their moment; they don’t see me.

But even with these clues about what’s going on, there is a universe of experience and context I don’t know. Who are they? How did they meet? Are the older people with them the parents who raised them? What brought them here, today? Why are they getting married? What have their lives been like? What are their plans?

All I know is one tiny little detail, and even that’s conjecture: They’re probably taking photos before their wedding.

But it feels momentous. You’re getting married; I’ve heard of marriage!

(Actually, I am married, but I don’t think I’d feel much less connected with them if I weren’t. What feels big in this moment is that they’re going through an emotionally significant life event—or at least that’s what appears to be happening—and I get to see a piece of it.)

Maybe it feels so powerful because so often we know nothing about the people whose paths we cross.

We see people, and unless we’re going through something in particular, we often assume it’s just another day for them. A day to get the kids out and active and happy in the fresh air. A day to go for a walk or a jog. A day to sit somewhere other than the office and get some work done, or unwind, or see some friends.

But sometimes it’s not just another day.

Those people sitting at the next table or booth or at the bar? The ones standing in line with their dogs, with other people, or alone?

They could have just gotten a promotion at work, a promotion they worked hard for, and they could be thrilled and relaxed that they’ve finally achieved it, or they could be disappointed despite that work because now they feel stuck in a position that will give them even more work.

They could have gotten a clean bill of health after a health scare; they could be taking their health for granted; they could have just been diagnosed with a terminal disease or with a non-terminal disease that has an easy treatment or a rough treatment. They could have just been house-bound for the past week, ill and in bed, and feeling relieved that they’re finally outside.

They could be sick and tired of the same routine.

They could be new to town or established.

They could be looking for a place to live or a job, filling out applications online. Planning a curriculum or lesson plan for a class. Meeting with a tutor or mentor. Interviewing for a job.

Everyone has a reason to want to go to a coffee shop. Even the mundane varies: to get some work done. To get away from work. To be alone. To have someone to talk to. To meet friends. To read. To people-watch. Resting while walking a dog. To get energy. To have an excuse to spend time together.

To get coffee, or tea, or chai, or hot chocolate, or a mediocre baked product. To sit in the sunshine or in the shade.

To take a break from pre-wedding photography.

Sometimes, as with this couple, there are clues.

You’ve probably noticed some, too.

I’ve seen people studying for a class. Interviewing for a job. Trying to raise VC funding (ever visited the Bay Area?). Meeting up with fellow new parents. Having co-working meet-ups. Meeting to work on a project together.

The barista here told me he’s seen people ask to use the bathroom at the same time every day, go on blind dates, break up, set up an impromptu acoustic show for a traveling band, and steal snacks from the food area.

The strangest thing I’ve ever done in a coffee shop is watch a live stream of my partner’s grandmother’s funeral. Which I’d just like to say is crazy. How is it possible that we’re in the age of live-streamed funerals? But that’s a discussion for a whole other thread. We couldn’t travel then, so I went to a coffee shop. That’s where I was when the funeral took place. In went the head phones and down flowed the fluids: tears, snot. Some laughter.

That’s what I did that day at the coffee shop. And anyone who talked to me had no way of knowing the reason for my obvious emotional turmoil.

Unless they walked behind me. Between the tears and the funeral taking up my whole screen, they might’ve figured something out.

Not everyone broadcasts their emotions like I did that day.

And yet, whether or not it’s on display, our contexts color our experience of this moment. This coffeeshop we’re both inhabiting—it doesn’t look the same to me as it does to you. And our contexts can vary so widely.

Maybe that’s why it’s such a big deal to have insight into the moment a stranger is experiencing.

It’s a reminder that the world is much bigger than we are. That there are things to look forward to and reasons to be grateful. That there’s pain and beauty. That there are other ways of being and seeing.

And that even as when we live our separate lives side by side, we can come together for a moment, we can understand that someone else is experiencing something in particular, and witnessing that something can help us see them as a fellow human, can remind us that though we are often feel separate, we are together in this crazy, beautiful existence.

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What trying to release a rubber pig from a tube taught me about my relationship

One day last fall, I found myself in a compromising position with a vacuum tube, a rubber pig, and a spudger.*

A while back I got this little rubber pink most-of-a-pig that, instead of a head, has a suction cup to attach to a phone. The pig body props up the phone. It’s a ridiculous single-use item and it cost a dollar but it’s hilarious. So.

I used it to prop up my phone to watch a video while working at the kitchen table.

I was making a mess. It was time to clean up. The open tube of the vacuum seemed more effective than the floor attachment, so I went at it with that and… picked up the pig.

A, the son of an amateur vacuum repairman (and professional dentist, stairbuilder, Uber/Lyft driver, store manager, and test engineer, though not all at once), was happy to help me figure this out. He agreed that the pig was stuck where I thought it was. We had a fancy ass vacuum we didn’t want to ruin, and per internet videos it looked like taking it apart would ruin it, so we shook the tube around enough to get the pig in our smartphone flashlight crosshairs.

Then… Well. Let me paint you a picture.

A is sitting on the couch, holding the end of the vacuum tube that’s farther from the little rubber pig. I’m lying down on the floor, face up, holding the end where the pig is just visible. We’re trying to use gravity to our advantage. This is what college degrees are for, people. Gravity.

The phone is on the ground next to me, flashlight on. I’m trying to aim the open tube over the phone flashlight so I can see what I’m doing, and to use the spudger to nudge the little pig down.

This is when I ask if maybe we can vacuum the damn thing out of there. Clearly, I haven’t learned my lesson.

A decides that what would be most helpful right now, while the vacuum tube is over my face, is to try to blow the pig out. So he does.

The pig doesn’t move, but the dust does.

And I start laughing. And coughing.

To recap: I get a rubber phone-propping pig stuck in a vacuum cleaner. I think it might be possible to solve this by vacuuming it out. My partner thinks he can blow into the vacuum tube while it’s over my face to get out a pig that’s nestled in, tight.

At least we’re well-matched.

(By the way, the pig did come out–not because of the huffing and puffing, but with the help of the spudger. Yay, tools! And rescued amazing appliances.)

*From Wikipedia: “A spudger is a tool that has a wide flat-head screwdriver-like end that extends as a wedge, used to separate pressure-fit plastic components without causing damage during separation.”

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Dreaming up a dream of cancer

Last summer, I convinced myself that we dreamed up the cancer.

A’s hair was growing back. He’d stopped taking chemo-related drugs. There were no more appointments. The follow-up PET scan was behind us. He went back to work and eventually settled in. We were planning the summer and the fall and living our lives again.

And cancer?

It didn’t really happen. It was a dream in exquisite detail, really, with all the medications and the moods and the nausea and the trauma and the visitors and the help. But it wasn’t real. How could it have been real?

This is in no way the same thing, but from what I’ve heard and read, I gather this is also the way people react to deaths. You forget that it happened, or you don’t believe it, you pick up the phone to call someone or you shout to the person who should be in the next room… and then you remember.

In this case, my reminder was my partner, who’d been through cancer treatment, telling me he needed to schedule another appointment. There’s no indication anything is wrong, okay? This is just routine follow-up. But you know what? There was no indication anything was wrong before, unless you happened to feel a lump on A’s upper inner thigh. And it took even A a while to think that that might be a problem. Externally? Nothing.

So. We’re in the car, and I’m driving, and he tells me this. I’m getting in the left lane, a few minutes from home. And I’m crying. Not loudly, not even audibly, but the tears are coming, even though nothing is happening, even though it’s not necessary.

“Necessary”. Ha.

And in my head, this is what’s happening:

I’m upset about this. Why am I upset about this? The cancer wasn’t real, right? It was just a dream. Who am I to be upset about this? A’s here next to me.

And then: I thought I had more time before I had to think about this again.

And still: tears.

Today, as I write this, we’re nearly a month past a follow-up CT scan that found no signs of active lymphoma.

I’m not a religious person, but every time I think of this, I want to clasp my hands together and thank some more powerful entity for making this so.

A month ago, we were anxious, pre-scan. We were reliving it. Remembering last year. Imagining what our lives would look like if the cancer was back.

The evening of the appointment, when we found out it wasn’t, we were incredibly grateful. For that night and maybe the weekend that followed.

And then we went back to our lives.

And the cancer went back to being a bad dream.

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Learning to say yes

In 2015, I took my first improv class. Several years and moves later, I’m finally taking a series of classes (I’m in level 3 of 6). This post is about why I started.

People relate to each other in all different ways.

Some make steady eye contact. Some nod when other people talk. Some interrupt with questions or with their own, probably more valid, stories. Some look for reasons to agree with each other.

Where my family comes from, there’s a culture of “No”. (Actually, it’s more like “No no no”). It can be in the style of “No, and”, which is how you agree with someone.

Isn’t Italian food your favorite?/No no no, it’s delicious.

We’re having pasta for dinner./No no no, it’s spaghetti.

Or it can be the more typical “No, but”.

Isn’t Italian food your favorite?/No no no, I prefer Thai.

We’re having pasta for dinner./No no no, eggs tonight, pasta tomorrow.

You know how in German, it’s possible to negate an entire sentence with a nicht at the very end? Well. In this case, instead of listening for yes or no to find out what someone thinks, you ignore the no-no-no completely and pay attention to what follows it instead.

What no really means is simply this: I’m talking now. It marks a shift of the spotlight.

But even though these nos carry zero weight as far as the substance of the conversation, they do influence its tone. You start with a word that implies denial. Negation. Rejection.

And maybe, over time, you internalize it.

What if you don’t like how you relate to others (and to yourself)?

On the one hand, I’m a problem solver. I have evidence! There was that broken seat-back pocket on a plane that I adjusted with two hair bands. There were the survey questions I suggested to help a friend understand why his research subjects acted the way they did. There was figuring out how to keep our visitors and ourselves happy with different levels of outdoor time and physical activity while maximizing time together. Plus, you know, lots of math classes.

But, when it comes to my own sticky problems? What sticks for me is that “no”. Even when I solicit feedback from other people, my default—for years—has been to look for reasons to reject it out of hand.

To be clear, I don’t reject the feedback or criticism. I’m pretty good at accepting those. Eventually.

What I reject is the proposed solution.

And I do want to do new and different things, in new and different ways.

It’s just that I don’t want to do it that way.

And yet… what if I’m missing out on something amazing by looking for reasons for why not to do X instead of why to do X?

And… why do I reject even my own ideas?

Maybe there’s another way.

So I signed up for an improv comedy class.

Even though I’m not a comedian. Even though I’m the person who laughs at the jokes, not the one who makes them. Even though, more often than not, my voice shakes when I’m talking in front of other people.

Luckily, improv isn’t about becoming a comedian.

Here’s what improv is about: Accepting suggestions.

Exactly what I suck at.

It’s about saying, “Yes, and…”, which means actively accepting a suggestion: not only accepting it as true, but taking it to the next level. Heightening.

Here’s an example:

You and a scene partner are on stage. Your scene partner mimes brushing her teeth. You say, Ready for your date?

Guess what? This means there’s a reason for you, whoever you are to each other, to believe that she has a date coming up.

She still has options:

She can be excited or nervous and say yes and talk about what she has left to do.
She can say she canceled it because she ate some bad fish this afternoon and now she’s going to sleep it off.
She can be exasperated and ask if you’re serious because just a towel isn’t really appropriate date attire.
Or she can say something else, as long as it supports a reality where you would ask her about her upcoming date.

It also means you have to grapple with this:

The most difficult suggestion to accept can be the one in your own head.

You’re on stage (again). You ask for a suggestion of a non-geographic location and someone in the audience says ice cream shop.

And the most vivid association you have with an ice cream shop is getting broken up with, in front of a crowd, in high school.

Your scene partner is miming scooping ice cream into cups. Your first thought is to sob while ordering some flavor that your character will think represents heartbreak.

Your entire job in this moment is to “yes, and” yourself.

But you falter.

You think: Is this funny or just sad? Does it make sense? Am I giving away too much about myself? Will my partner support me?

Making the choice to accept what you come up with? It’s a fight against self-preservation. But it’s also a fun, silly, fascinating way to explore your own mind.

And the thing is, improv is a cooperative game. Your scene partner will support you.

Where better to practice accepting your wild self, finding out just what you’re capable of, than in a setting where everyone else will accept you, too?

Send me emails like this, Ophira!