The Psychology of Sugar Cookies

Last week my sister and I made and decorated sugar cookies. Here are the cookies I decorated:

And here are the ones my sister decorated:

Move over Myers & Briggs. I've discovered a new way to assess personality types.

I found the following while digging through a box of old papers. It's a "poem" I wrote at age nine.

She opens the book
And starts to read
Going into another world
Of reading enjoyment,
Disappearing into the book
Where no one can find her,
Being immersed in the joy of
READING!

The continuity of my life sometimes amazes me.

Memorial Day

Summer rolled in over my city today.
It caught me by surprise
As I stepped unsuspecting into its tiny drops of mist.
Although this is a day for remembering
I had forgotten this feeling
Of deep and dampened rest rooting in my bones,
Of dreadful joyous longing gnawing in my gut,
Of thick and hazy cold blanketing my shoulders,
Of spring-turned-summer's wetness condensing on my cheeks.
I walked through the twilit dawning of the season
Remembering these things I had forgotten.
I came to the spot where you and I talked that one winter night.
I am sure you must remember the one
On today of all days.
I looked out from there in all directions
Both forward and back.
My eyes made out nothing but the fog.

Old Lesson, New Perspective

I recently had a conversation that I've known I needed to have for the past two years. As with most things like this that I put off, when I finally did the thing, it went much better than I had imagined it could. The obvious lesson in this is one that I've "learned" many times: anticipation of the things we dread is often far worse than the things themselves. Having come to this realization once again, it would be easy to come down on myself for continuing to put important things off -- why do I avoid what I know I should do when experience has shown me time and again that it's best in the long run to, in the words of Nike, just do it?

But there is another side to this lesson that I'm seeing for the first time, and this new perspective is keeping me from beating myself up too much for the two-year delay. For while it's true that fear was a big part of what kept me from engaging in this particular conversation for two years, I believe there was also something more benevolent at work in my dragging my heels. To be honest, if I had had this conversation when I first realized it needed to be had, I don't know that it would or could have gone nearly so well as it eventually did. Neither I, nor the other party involved, was in a place to have this conversation two years ago without causing more anger and hurt than necessitated it in the first place. Of course, I could be wrong about this, and perhaps I'm just finding a way to justify my dillydallying. There really is no way to know for sure, to know what would have been if . . . But I do know that in the past two years something happened in me -- or more likely, many things happened in me -- that made me both better equipped and more willing to have this particular conversation, which cannot be unrelated to how the conversation itself went.

This is an interesting thing to realize, especially given my penchant for being pretty hard core about pushing myself to confront the things that scare me. It seems that backing away is not always the same as backing down, and perhaps I need to let up in places where I would otherwise press in. I'm not sure. But I'm beginning to ponder what exactly it would look like to find a balance between confronting the challenging conversations in my life and allowing myself the time and space to be whole enough to step into the ring.

Learned Helplessness

I've been thinking about the phrase "learned helplessness" for literally eight months. A coworker first mentioned it on a business trip in reference to the over-dependence (in his opinion) on GPS so many drivers have developed. The phrase struck me as an intriguing one, and although his definition lends a fairly derogatory connotation, and while helplessness is generally viewed as a negative trait, my reflections have led me to an interesting place with this particular concept. Let me explain.

A number of people close to me have gone through some real shit in the past year. The details vary from person to person -- for some it was a death, for some the dissolution of a relationship, for some life in general seeming to fall apart -- but all involved hurt and sorrow that in the moment was completely devastating. And so I've found myself in conversation after conversation with someone whom I care about deeply, listening to their heartbreak, wanting desperately to provide some sort of comfort, some relief, some thing, any thing to help, and feeling at an utter loss as to how to do that. The best I could usually muster was a simple acknowledgment: This sucks, I'm so sorry you have to go through this. While I know this sentiment was appreciated, I'm not sure how "helpful" it actually was.

But the thing I'm realizing is, these situations are not about my being helpful. (These situations are not about me at all, really, but that's a different matter.) I'm learning that it's actually no help at all to come in with an action plan or even unflinching reassurance. Because, honestly, there isn't anything that any person can do to make these scenarios any less painful to the people going through them, and acting in a way that presumes otherwise seems naive at best and cruelly dismissive at worst.

So while it's hard to feel incapacitated and ineffectual in response to loved ones' reaching out -- and it is extremely hard to feel this way when you're someone who likes to find solutions, someone who's made a career, in fact, out of telling other people what to do -- I'm learning that the best and only help I can provide is to try to be present, to listen, to grieve a friend's loss as if it is my own, and to embrace my helpless role with the commitment to be there until we're both through to the other side where there is no more need for my "help". In short, in learning my own helplessness, I'm learning it is not the same as hopelessness.

I got a haircut today, and the chitchat with my hair-guy (he's fabulous by the way, Jeffrey at Salon Baobao), after the requisite trip through pop culture and our mutual appreciation of Lady Gaga, turned to the topic of New Year's resolutions. He hadn't made any for 2010 but had in 2009 finally completed his 2008 resolution, which was a pretty impressive accomplishment. I feel like it's not my place to share the details of his undertaking, but what he told me inspired me to start taking care of some of the unfinished business in my life, even if the "deadlines" are passed.

Being the consummate procrastinator that I am, there are quite a few past-due items on the old to-do list. I've decided to start tackling them in an fairly easy place -- this blog. So over the next little while I'll be going back through old drafts and finally posting all the unfinished pieces I meant to write over the last several months.

Thanks, Jeffrey, for the cut and the inspiration.

He told her he wanted to kiss the hell out of her. She wasn't sure there was any hell in her to begin with, but she let him try anyway. If there is a hell, she thought, I'd rather it be kissed out of me than otherwise removed. He laughed for three blocks when she told him that, which surprised her. After all, hell and kissing are both serious business, and really she wasn't that funny. He laughed all the more in response to that remark, at which point she gave up on talking and let him exorcise a few more sulfurous demons from her mouth. The absence of hell, she learned, tastes like spearmint gum.

Had a poetry night with the Reimagine girls tonight. Mostly we read for each other from our favorites, but we also did a quick writing exercise: a poem inspired by one word, chosen by the person to your left. Great fun, with some impressive results from the group overall. Here's my bit:

Silk

I think first of soy milk
and then of "smooth as" and flowy dresses
and then of all the the other textural cliches.
And then I think of how it comes from worms,
ugly gray little things,
as a matter of fact.
I know because we used to raise them:
we fed them mulberry leaves from the front yard,
watched them spin gray cocoons,
and then gnaw their way,
transformed,
through the thread.
They lived a flightless seven days
as ugly gray little moths;
they mated,
and they laid their eggs,
ugly gray little dots we used to keep
in old shoebox lids.
We put them in the freezer
until spring came again
and there were fresh mulberry leaves
in the front yard.

I remember also
the story of a Chinese princess
who smuggled worms hidden in her hair:
I think of how she carried beauty,
disguised as ugly gray little things,
in those silky tresses.
And I think of the promise
of ugly gray little things
stored in my childhood freezer.