In the Service of Others

It was a spontaneous morning for one that had so many plans. A visit with Jane, a trip to the DMV for my driver's license renewal (yes, proof that I can still see!), and then on to IHOP for an early lunch.

There we sat, scrunched into a tiny booth in an impossibly crowded restaurant, when she came up and softly asked in heavily accented English if she could take our order. She must have known that she could be difficult to understand because she never once broke our gaze - using her eyes to ask as much as her voice.

We told her what we wanted, customizing our order just as if we were eating at a more expensive restaurant and she captured what we wanted, perfectly. Shortly we were happily chatting and dining on eggs, scrapple, and...of course...pancakes.

We asked for the bill and it came, promptly. The $30 tab reflected my customization (I'm an ala carte girl) and was the cheapest meal we've eaten in recent memory. Chris wandered off to pay the bill and I reached into my wallet to grab cash for the tip.

I thought about about the percentage for the tip and grabbed $6. Then I thought about the service and grabbed a bit more cash. I remembered her eyes and the softness of her voice and reached back in. Even as I dropped the cash onto her table I thought about how many times I've paid a straight 20% tip on a meal four to five times more expensive ...and, unfortunately...not as good. How is it that her service was worth less?

My first hour this morning was spent in getting ready for the day. My second hour included telling my daughter and my lover that I love them. My third hour reminded me to love myself. My fourth hour was in the DMV where I smiled gratefully at the woman behind the counter and observed outloud to her that it seemed many people come to her for help. She smiled throughout our 10 minute encounter, fixed a problem that had vexed me for years (I have two middle names, the result of refusing to give up the name I'd been born with and Virginia's decision nearly 2 decades ago to hyphenate the second one with my last one), and I was grateful for the good work she was doing.

I arrived the office with a smile, feeling connected to the world around me, greeted by coworkers who have become dear to me and as I unlocked my office door the bright sun caused me to squint as I sat down to my desk to perform my own service to others.

And now, 14 hours after the start of my day I feel as if it was a day well spent - connected to the universe in the spirit of service and grateful for the blessings in my life - including those who served me with a smile today.

NL

Amazing Strength in Unimaginable Grief

It has been nearly two decades now since I first visited my friends Katherine and Tom in their home. I'd brought an ornament for the tree as instructed (one I'd hand painted) and arrived timely for their annual Solstice party, an event so extraordinary that this year 60 people made it through 15 inches of snow. But they live in Martha's Vineyard now and I am still whiling away my time in DC. So I have not been in more than a decade despite being faithfully invited every year.

The first time I visited I was treated to a tour of their home. Both are avid cooks and even now, when I am in distress and say "I've taken to my kitchen" I can picture both of them at their huge stove in a kitchen perfectly outfitted with tools meant to last. As they work away, 30 year partners finely tuned to the ways of each other, they are simply delighting in the experience of doing something together. Tasting, smelling, feeling.

My favorite part of the home tour was a visit to their bathroom. They'd found it too small so they knocked out the wall to the room next door and made it bigger. In their remodelled bath was a large clawfoot tub and next to it a rocking chair so that Tom could read to Katherine while she bathed.

It is to me still the epitome of romance. But more than romance, there is a timelessness in the kind of love that has a man reading to a woman while she soaks in a tub. To simply be there with her in a moment that is about her.

They'd been together for many years before they actually married. Sitting in the cafeteria over lunch one day I asked her why they finally "tied the knot" and her answer was simply "insurance reasons." Over the years some of the rest of the story unfolded and it turns out the insurance issue was the broader one of "what is family?" Apparently Tom had ended up in the hospital - a fall I think - and Katherine had found herself unceramoniously removed from his hospital room by Tom's daughters, who were still unwilling to accept their father's relationship with her. I have no doubt that whatever reservations they had about marriage were resolved when faced with very real issue of people outside of their relationship defining the morality of the couple.

As I write this the smell of a beef dish with fennel and onion wafts from my kitchen. It is joined by the overtones of baking rosemary bread. I'd put it all on to cook and because cooking always makes me think of Katherine and Tom, I remembered I'd not yet read their most recent update.

Mid-stream in Tom's blog - ruminations - he writes: "Clearly, my death has been postphoned by four months but my life has not been extended by one minute while it has produced four months of misery for my caretakers."

At that line I am crying, as I have many times after first learning of Tom's cancer diagnosis, treatment, remission, and the re-emergence. I am praying hard again for Katherine, a woman who considered herself "just a librarian", who introduced the CIA to the internet, who wrote wonderfully whimsical guinea pig poetry - and who had a herd of guinea pigs underfoot while she cooked in her home in Bethesda (today she has an entire porch dedicated to finches!) She has always had long white hair pulled back in a braid hanging down her back and I cannot imagine her any other way. I cannot imagine her without the whimsy, the earthiness, the Texas steel that seems to seep through every pore of her body. I cannot imagine her without Tom.

I don't know how Tom and Katherine came to be together. I know there is an age difference somewhat similar to mine and Chris's and I know that apparently his family did not approve of her. I don't know where the mother of his children was in all of this and nor do I care. For it is Katherine who extends his soul and that I know with certainty that who ever came before and for however long, Katherine was the one intended for him. The mate to his soul.

Now they fight fiercely a disease that fully intends to separate the two of them and I anticipate the collapse of her heart when it finally wins. She is one of the strongest people I know but I cannot imagine how even that strength will bear her up under the grief that will surely fall upon her. He does not leave her willingly. I don't know if he realizes that every breath he takes - whether in sickness or in health - is a breath she treasures with every fiber of her being.

It is not a love I would have understood when I first met them. I recognized it but understood it to be so rare that I could never expect to be so lucky. I now understand. And I understand that it isn't a love that has to be approved of to exist. It simply is.


NL

Welcoming 2010

A friend of mine, who recently published a book btw which can be found at Amazon, pointed out today on his Facebook page that technically the new decade doesn't begin until 2011.

It made me think about the last time I heard this debate. 2000 - the new millenium? Or did we have to wait for 2001?

I didn't wait. I'm not waiting now. This first decade of the 21st century found me exactly where I'd left off. Married and not particularly happily, and a spook.

6 months after it started I was still married but no longer a spook. Spinning wildly and feeling like I'd been completely betrayed by an organization I'd given my entire adult life to I was faced with the choice to shut up and be obedient...or be able to look myself in the mirror in the morning.

The face that looks back at me is older, sometimes sadder, but always confident in knowing that I may be imperfect but I am my own person. For the first time in 17 years I told a certain government agency "no." It cost me dearly - but not as dearly as if I had been compliant.

On September 11, 2001 three thousand people lost their lives. The result, I believe, of an intelligence community going horribly wrong. We saw a part of that in 2000 and we were largely silent...or powerless...in the face of enormous determination and incompetence. I sometimes wonder if things would have been different had I been strong enough to take the stand that needed to be taken.

It is the impossible wondering of a woman. I don't know that anyone would have been strong enough to stand up in the face of the accusations and delusion we faced and do what needed to be done. It was hard enough not to just agree to be "wrong" and be allowed back in to the fold.

The past 10 years have been the best of my life in terms of personal growth. I've accomplished more, experienced more, and become better. They have been harder than any other 10 years of my life. I am still a mom but my work is different and mid-decade I finally bid adieu to a good man who was not the man for me. I know less today than I did at 34.

But today I am grateful for being so much more than I was at this time in 1999. I am praying for the second decade of the 21st century to be one of more joy and less hardship. I am hoping for...hope.

I might end this year skinnier. I might be healthier. I might be more successful. But I will, for certain, no longer be just the "ex-spook." The Agency is my past. I need it to stay there. I am a better person for having left - time to be that person all the way through.

NL

Neither Julie nor Julia but...

While visiting my sister and extended family last weekend we watched Julie & Julia. For me, again.

I really like the movie. I almost never watch a movie twice but there are a few notable exceptions. Anything Star Trek, Benny & Joon, and most Robin Williams movies.

Now Julie & Julia.

As I've been wandering around the "spouse of a diabetic" world - trying to figure out exactly *what* my role in all of this is supposed to be and trying to be a much better person than comes naturally to me - I've taken up cooking.

This is not the first time I've taken up cooking. The last time was when I joined Weight Watchers and had to admit to my then husband of 10 years and the rest of my family that I'd been keeping a secret. I can cook beyond a baked ham or cookies.

Chris knows I can cook. He also knows that that I firmly believe the requirement TO eat is one of the greatest jokes God ever played on mankind.

In the movie Julie & Julia there is clearly a great love of food. I do not share that in common with them. Although I do believe that butter makes everything better. And butter with lemon? Or butter with brown sugar? Oh yum.

At night I send Chris to the gym. Then I put on some music and pour a glass of wine. I spend the next 30 to 45 minutes concocting.

I've discovered the creativity to be had in cooking. Color. Smell. Taste. A little this, a bit of that.

This morning Chris was comparing our cooking. On a scale of 1-10 he says he's at most a 5. Occasionally a 7. But me? I'm occasionally a 5 but usually in the 7 to 9 range. He reserves 1's and 10's for those really extreme moments. So 9 is as good as it gets.

He likes eating what I cook. He says that at some point it just "turned on" for me. It did.

When I got angry with him I took to my kitchen. I rewarded his not telling me about his diagnosis and pill decision by baking all weekend long. Food he could not eat. Food I deliberately taunted him with. I found comfort in baking. I never find comfort in eating so I was happy to throw out everything I made. I just enjoyed making it knowing he wanted it and couldn't eat it.

In a way, I was cooking for him. And it turns out that I *like* cooking for him. I like that he genuinely enjoys what I make, knows I never know exactly what will happen but somehow it is flavorful and good for him (having gotten over the punishing him with food he can't have business.)

I bought a diabetes cookbook for him for Christmas. Diabetes recipe software for me.

I read through the book. It is uninspired.

Unlike last night's dinner of baked ham, baked sweet potatoes, southern collard greens (which he had three helpings of - the secret is bacon grease!) and mexicali cornbread. A meal that in balance was really good for him. Oh, and very very southern.

So last night I bought the two volume set "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" and I'm going to give some of the recipes a whirl. Not all of them. Julia Child had too great a fondness for mushrooms and seafood - neither of which I can eat. But the rich, creamy, lemon-buttery sauces the French and us southerners are known for.

Screw diabetes. I'm going to cook for the shear joy of it. Somehow I don't think it will hurt if I apply a bit of creativity to Julia Child's recipes - and maybe end up with things healthier as a result.

NL

Battling Death in the Season of Light

So God has a sense of humor.

Just when our relationship got to the point where I wanted to run and run and run...he dropped 20 inches of snow on us and made sure I could run absolutely freakin' lutely NO WHERE!

What do two adults do when they are facing serious questions about where they are going and whether they are going to try going there together? I don't know. Because last weekend was not two adults. It was many adults all stuck in the same, thankfully large, house for a couple of days.

(BTW, the bright spot was a wonderful visit with my sister - whom I love beyond measure, as well as my brothers and my sister-in-law.)

So we fought. For several days. In whispers. We got hardly any sleep. We dredged up every issue we could think of and when we ran out we invented some. There came a point in the midst of this that we decided that we were ended. We could not continue. We were done.

Then we looked out the bedroom window at the acres and acres of pure white snow and we realized that of all the things that felt wrong, splitting up felt the most wrong of all.

We ended up staying a day longer than planned which turned out to be a good thing because we were able to take my father to the hospital for his hip replacement surgery. As Chris sat there quietly, patiently, with me and my mom and my dad I realized that he's a good guy. Not perfect. But good.

Good because he knows that in the world of places I hate above all others, the hospital is right at the top of the list. And we were there for HOURS waiting for dad to go into surgery, get out of surgery, come out of recovery. Even with a lunch break in the middle (Cheesecake Factory - Red Velvet Cheesecake!) it was too much time for me. So when I said "I want to check out the gift shop" what he correctly heard was "I need retail therapy NOW!"

I walked through the doors of the gift shop and made a beeline for the jewelry counter where I scored 3 pairs of absolutely fabulous earrings.

I slept like a baby Monday night/Tuesday morning. 3 days of fighting, several hours in a hospital, a trek across still not great roads, and still no freakin' clue what what happening next with us - I was exhausted. But while the fighting was done the talking was not.

It is a week now since the worst of our battle and what we have to work with are a bunch of analogies because we aren't broken, we:

1. Are like several beautiful necklaces all tangled up. Time to tackle it one knot at a time.
2. Like a car stuck in a rut. We need a fulcrum (he had to actually explain to me what one of those is - I understood the intent but had no idea it was a tool!) to help us get unstuck.
3. Are able to work through much of the junk we gunk up between us BUT need to occasional poke to make sure we actually DO it.

At the end of it the visit to the counselor was a good thing - not because the visit went well but because it forced us to decide head on if *we* are worth working on.

We have a long way to go before we are anything approaching perfect - or even completely comfortable with where we are or where we are going. I still don't know if we're going to end up together in the long run. But then, does anyone?

My favorite quote in all of this was from Chris. He said "You are so rational when you are dispassionate. I like it when you are irrational because at least you are passionate." In short, he needs me to be as committed to us as I need him to be.

Meanwhile on our left hand ring fingers are two white gold & diamond rings. Our Christmas gifts to each other. We picked them out - he for me and me for him - with no input at all from the other. We weren't together.

And oddly the designs are lovely, elegant, and very similar. Eerily similar.

They are promise rings. A promise of a commitment to each other - to us. They are the visible reminder of the decisions we made out of last weekend's "fighting." Because what I realize now was that we weren't fighting each other...we were fighting *for* us.

NL