Winterberry

I was in a LOOOOONG line at the post office today and when I finally got near the window, the woman in front of me asks for Christmas stamps.

The cashier says, "Well we have these wreaths and the winterberry ones. I guess they're trying to make EVERYONE happy," and rolls her eyes so hard she practically had to catch her balance. 

Ruh-roh. I brace myself for an agreement from the customer and the expected ignorant banter about the War on Christmas, but she just smiled sweetly and said, "I like that. I'll take the winterberry." Her tone was so perfectly happy and stress-free that there was no way to take it as judgmental or critical. She had completely ignored the cashier's exasperation and had chosen to express delight and pleasure. It was beautiful.

And then it was my turn. We sorted the parcels and the PO clerk asked, "Do you need any stamps?"
"As a matter of fact I do - I'll take the Winterberry."

"Happy Holidays," she says, without eye-rolling or even a trace of sarcasm.

"Happy Holidays to you too," I reply, thinking maybe, just maybe, a little bit of kindness had crept across the counter, softened a cynical heart, and made the day brighter for both of us and the next people we met.

Watch Where You're Going

"Crap",  I say as I hastily brush out my wobbly inked line and impatiently wait for the paint to dry before trying again. I watch, envious of my painting partner who can swoosh out a perfect line without a glitch first time and every time. We're deep into another late-night work call painting a set for a local theater, running low on coffee, and I am burning out.
"How the hell do you do that?" I demand. "It's not natural."
"Easy," he says, "Watch where you're going, not where you've been."  

And that is how one ridiculously simple piece of painterly advice not only improved my craft, but became an integral part of my personal philosophy. Feeling stuck on a decision? Hung up on a grudge? Shame spiraling a thoughtless comment??

"Watch where you're going, not where you've been."

I'll be pounding on a tune trying to hammer it into memory and faltering over that one stubborn phrase when, "Watch where you're going, not where you've been." floats across the page. A deep breath and I try again.

I still pause to rummage around in the past - it's only natural, after all. All night angsting over regrets and mistakes and things left unsaid. Tenderly nursing old wounds and griefs, unsure if this hurting is healing or harming. Sometimes I look back and all I see are the scars, but scars are what hold the healthy bits together, so I bless them one by one for keeping me whole. After I get my fill, I turn my gaze ahead before taking another step.

"Watch where you're going, not where you've been."

Sidelined

I got a message from a friend who was looking for homeopathic doctors who might help her daughter with a serious depression problem. While I don't think homeopathy works (at least it doesn't do a damn thing for me, anyway), I do think there are alternative medical practices that are helpful. I want to offer advice, but my advice is probably not going to help. At least not today - tomorrow's advice might be OK.

I know because tonight I feel horrible. My depression is back with a vengeance, and every medication, alternative and conventional, I've tried drives my blood pressure through the roof, so I face this next round unmedicated. I exercise like crazy because it's supposed to be more effective than antidepressants and sobbed the whole time. My heart rate is awesome, but its hard to take your own pulse while weeping.  Of course I did choose to exercise in a cemetery which made me think of all of my dead friends, so maybe I ought to stick to the treadmill for now, but the cemetery was so exquisitely beautiful and the solitude was perfect.  Then I tripped coming in my own damn back door and took a fall that wrenched all the already painful parts of me and even some parts I didn't know could hurt. At this point if I thought homeopathy would help, I'd be snorting those tiny pellets like a junkie.

Tonight I feel awful, but someone I know and love may feel awful, too and so I throw this out there so we can feel horrible together until we feel better. And tomorrow we may think of something funny we wanted to say.

I don't feel like being funny tonight, but I did manage to get my ass inexplicably hooked onto one of my bedroom pillows today, which was pretty goddamn hilarious, in hindsight. 

Tonight I feel wretched, but I learned that at nearly 60 years old writing is my junkie pellet.

Go figure.

PS: I almost stepped on this dude on my "therapeutic" walk.

Etiquette

Advice for Young Doctors Treating Women of a Certain Age or Listen Up, Doogie, I'm Talking to You

Advice for Young Doctors Treating Women of a Certain Age
or Listen Up, Doogie, I'm Talking to You
by Sarah Gowan
who is almost 60 and just as Cranky as she was before the Side Effects

1. The Introduction: Do not attempt to engage or flatter by calling us, "Kiddo", "Young Lady", "Little Miss", or any other cutesy epithet. Our years of being charmed by precious nicknames are long past. Do it and I will call you "Doogie" till I die.

2. Listen: Tell me, why do these earnest young things think they have the answers? THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW THE QUESTIONS!!  You may have spent a decade in med school/residency, but when it comes to my body YOU KNOW NOTHING. Your medical degree earned you the privilege of listening to your patients, so use it! I've spent decades figuring out what works for me and what really doesn't. I've even figured out some things before the doctors did and will know the answer before you do. You will save us a lot of time if you listen. When we say Something Is Not Right, we are usually right.

example: My Mom went into her very experienced doctor and said, "Something Is Not Right. I have a blood clot in my leg." He could have brushed her off, but instead said, "You know your body better than I do, so I believe something could be wrong. Let's run some tests." Three positive tests later they discovered she did indeed have a blood clot in her leg that could have killed her if left untreated. He is never allowed to retire, as far as I'm concerned.

3. Speaking of which: Women of a Certain Age do not complain about pain unless there is pain and probably a lot of it. We know pain - we were born into it. We suffered menstruation, perms, childbirth, bad-fitting bras, child-rearing, pantyhose, surgeries, high heels, diets, assaults, and menopause, plus all the same crap men had to survive, too. (Except the testicle things, but childbirth is definitely worse, so I don't think that counts.) Listen to us when we tell you there is pain - we aren't making it up.

And guess what, pain isn't always consistent, so we can't tell you where it's going to strike next. Ankles today, that one spot next to the shoulder blade tomorrow, just the inside of the knees the day after, and then horrible leg cramps (not just a Charley Horse - the whole flippin' leg!) that night. My Pain rambles around my body like a sleepwalking night terror, randomly lashing out at invisible monsters. God I miss paregoric. It was the cure-all for everything in our day.

4. Oh and the sleep thing? Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! None of us have had a full night's sleep since we turned 21. 

5. We are not fat - we are Traditionally Sized: Be very, very careful how you bring up weight, if you even need to mention it at all. Women of a Certain Age are keenly aware of their weight. We've watched it zoom up and down, up and down, up and down - and not in the good way - our whole lives. We could probably tell you what it is to the ounce when we're standing stark naked on the scale (always before breakfast, after the morning poo, but before the shower) and how it will have increased exactly 7.5 pounds by the time we get to your office. We don't need you you tell us to lose/gain weight. 

And if we've been judged by our BMI by others, we've judged ourselves even more harshly. Every one of us has tried diets, (excuse me, "nutrition plans") and know they don't work unless we become insanely obsessed with every damn morsel we eat. So when you ask me about my diet and I say, "Listen up Doogie - I've been cooking amazing, healthy, nutritious meals for myself and my family since before you were too much Jameson's on Christmas Eve. Do NOT lecture me on nutrition, if you don't want that stethoscope wrapped around your pimply neck." 

These youngsters, who can lose 6 pounds by skipping breakfast and playing a game of racquetball, have no clue how hard it is for a woman who went through surgical menopause to lose even a few pounds. Remember, WE HAVE NO HORMONES, not even a trickle. We're hungry all the time -  I mean ALL the time. Ever seen teenagers eat after a swim meet? Yeah, we're that hungry. So if we're a little cranky when you suggest we steam our veggies instead of sautéing them in a microscopic dab of olive oil, count yourself lucky that we haven't dope-slapped you with a half-slab of ribs and a side of steamed broccoli.

6. Stress: Stop. Just stop. Stop asking if we have we have stress in our lives - jesum crow, dude, any thinking person with a scrap of common sense has gnawed their fingernails to nothing and taken to spiking their wine slushies with extra vodka. The world is going to hell in a handbasket and we're all flipping out - and that's still just the baseline. Women of a Certain Age are managing this and more without any hormones. Really all you need to know is that under no circumstances should you to mention meditation or yoga and we'll get along just fine.

Random Thoughts After a Long Day

I'm thinking a lot about change these days, mostly in the context of how we go about asking people to change their minds, behaviors, patterns, assumptions, and beliefs for both the greater good and personal growth. I'm coming to an incomplete conclusion that Change is really Learning and for change to be successful, we have to create spaces where it is safe to learn. We need places where people will WANT to learn because they can see the benefits that knowledge and change will bring them and the people they care about.

I've been parenting for 35 years, so most of my models of teaching and learning come from raising my kids. One thing I learned to ask myself when one of my kids was acting out was, "Hmmm, I wonder what they are trying to learn and how can I help them do that?" As they taught me to be a better parent, I worked to make a space where they could risk and fail, risk and succeed, risk and be loved. I learned that nothing slows down learning like derision and impatience, but fortunately kids and adults alike have pretty excellent systems for telling us when they are out of their safe learning zone or are being pushed faster than they can possibly learn.

We are surrounded by people who do crappy stuff ranging from the mildly offensive and thoughtless to the truly horrific and hateful. I keep wondering what would happen if, along with the practical attempts to curb harmful actions (just like we would take a stick away from a kid who's lost control), we starting asking, "What are they trying to learn? How can we help them learn it?"

How can we create space for taking risks and learning and wisdom? How can we make the most reluctant student of life eager to learn how to take care of themselves, the people around them?

I'm pretty sure the most effective social change activists I know either have kids or work with kids and have taken the time to really soak up how children learn. They instinctively understand that you can't convince someone to change though anger, bullying or fear - you simply cannot get someone to learn something their minds aren't ready to accept. But you CAN teach the the things they need to know to get ready to accept it. Maybe it's vocabulary or feeling words or games for mental and physical dexterity, or co-operative activities, or just one toe in the pool at a time.

How does this change the world? I don't know, maybe it doesn't. But I do know that this is the only way anyone has ever convinced me to change my mind about anything and the only way my kids learned how to tie their own shoes, though I'm pretty sure they still leave their socks everywhere, because I do that, too.

I Stop

I Stop I speak up because not all abuse leaves bruises, but it always leaves scars. I speak out because not all violence ends a life, but it always stops one. My life stops every time another priest or politician is accused, Until I remember I can breathe. My life stops leaving me sleepless and circling my aching heart When the man who put his hands on me is deified, His good works eclipsing my pain I stop. I stop my life for a few seconds, for a day, for months, totaling years to tend the scars and grieve. I stop, unable to feel focused and joyful Until churning thoughts are sorted and, exhausted, my world is set to rights again. Stop with me from time to time to witness my pain and grief and anger. Stop with loved ones and strangers alike and be still diverting the world around us while we gather ourselves and whisper for the 10000th time, "This was not my fault."

Sarah Gowan 2019

Change is Hard

Many of you know that my youngest child is transgender. When he first started clarifying his identity in his late teens and early twenties he figured out that he was indeed a he and he chose a new name for himself - Noah. His father and I completely supported him in his discoveries, but oh lordy was it hard for us to make our own transition. For 20 years he had been our sweet girl Emma.

Emma Bemma, 
Emmaroo, 
Em Bem the Baby-o, Up she flies and away she goes!

And now she was he..
Noah the creative, 
Noah the snark (and, might I add, the funniest person I know),
The persistence of Noah

I love my Emma/Noah in all of her/his identities, but changing names and pronouns was an exercise in frustration for both of us. Neural pathways had been set pretty firmly for a long time and rerouting them felt impossible. Fortunately for me I raised a very loving child who instinctively understood that time and patience would succeed where exasperation and impatience would not.

So we made an agreement where I could refer to my memories of him up through high school as being about Emma and everything after as being about Noah. This worked great for several years. I hardly ever messed up on pronouns when telling Emma/Noah stories and I felt like we had reached a compromise that I could not only live with, but feel very positive about.

And then an amazing thing happened. He became my Noah. My baby stories were about my sweet boy Noah. My grade school stories were about my mischievous boy Noah. High school, college - all about my boy Noah. He had found his true self and had gifted us the time to discover the real him in our present as well as in all of our memories.

For those of you who feel you can't possibly change, I want to give you the time to reroute your thinking at your own pace. It may take months or even years, and that's OK - brains are complicated things. It will probably feel strange and artificial and even impossible and you might feel frustrated and pissed off. Don't worry, there are friends who will hold your hand and say, "I know, but it will be OK - let's be frustrated together and find a way to laugh through the awkwardness of change".

For those of you who are moving ahead more easily, you have a choice; you can dismiss, and ridicule, or you can reach out to those who are struggling and remember your own challenges and what made you successful. I encourage you to be the reason people will WANT to change.

One last thing: The best parenting advice I ever got was from a nurse when my first darling boy Garrett was born. She said, "I know you're scared, but all you have to do is love him and everything will be OK." The second best advice I got was from my dear friend Maria. She said, "Whenever my kid throws a fit I ask myself, What is he trying to learn?." Now as a parent of grown children I realize that this wisdom informs how I want to deal with most difficult situations in my life and it all boils down to two simple questions:

What are we trying to learn?
What is the most loving thing I can do or say in this moment?

Be kind. Be patient. Be loving. 
Be human. Be funny. Be imperfect. 
And keep learning and loving as hard as you can.

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[EDIT: POSTSCRIPT
This was posted with Noah's blessing and consent. I've been ask to clarify that while Noah was OK with me using his birth name in the telling, many transgender people do not want their birth name aka "deadname" used. If you aren't sure, just ask them.]
#TransLoveStories

2003 Martin HD-28 for Sale

I'm selling my 2003 Martin HD-28. All original hardware, some light surface scratches and dings, but no cracks or warping. Includes a brand new LR Baggs Anthem SL Acoustic Pick-up and original (also slightly worn, but structurally sound) case.

Asking $1800 +shipping (price negotiable - make an offer!)
contact Sarah Gowan   ssgowan@gmail.com

1961 Gibson J-45

For sale - 1961 Gibson J-45 ADJ (Adjustable Bridge) Serial #040927

Well-played, but still has that great Gibson great sound (it's hard for me to let this one go!). It's very playable as is, but you will probably want to to have some work done on it - no one has touched it in years.

(Note: These are not the original tuners! If you're looking for a collector's item, this is not the guitar for you. Also the case is beat to hell and back - you'll need a new one soon!)

Best offer starting at $2500

contact Sarah Gowan   ssgowan@gmail.com