The Stack and the Net

Los Angeles, California

I was watching a program recently where, before sitting down to a meal at their home, the host collected everyone's cell phones. I was reminded that I once heard someone interviewed on Fresh Air who was promoting an unplugged weekend. At the time, several years back, that appealed to me. But now, it just seems impossible! I now even need my phone to unlock and start my car! While I ponder about overusing my phone, I am gratified that I stave off impatience by playing pool on my phone, when I am, for example, waiting in line at the bank. But my phone usage has begun to usurp time that I would normally spend reading books at night, or catching up on the last month of The New Yorker magazines that I seem to be perpetually chasing.

Texting sometimes stands in for telephone conversations, which is both good and bad. Good in its expediency; but bad in its lack of face-to-face, or at least voice-to-voice, connection. Thankfully, it hasn't replaced the phone conversations that I have with my cousin and my closest friends, and, of course, Joel. But for some of the friends with whom I am in intermittant contact, texting often suffices, and that's okay.

Christopher once mentioned the stack, where, during business lunches, everyone stacks their cellphones in the middle of the table. The first one who reaches for their phone has to pay for the meal. I once proposed a similar plan with friends who seem to be vilely steeped in celebrity culture: The first one who mentions 'the k-word' pays for the meal. The k-word being Kardashian (Kardashian clearly up there with Lord Voldemort as a name which should not be spoken aloud ever). I suspect they were not amused. Can you imagine?

The cell phone thing has apparently replaced the personal computer thing which replaced the television thing. Think of the changes that have occurred in interpersonal relationships since people have become distracted by screens. I grew up in the sixties, and have no memory of living in a home without televisions. There was always a television set in each of our bedrooms, though not in my parents' bedroom nor anywhere else in the house. Watching television together was not a family activity, as both my parents looked on TV-watching as something that was done by people who did not read books. However, my grandfather worked for Barker Brothers department store in downtown Los Angeles, and they retailed television sets. So, our family always had an abundance of new TVs, even though my parents never watched except when there was a major news event or NASA launch (Dad was an aerospace engineer whose firm worked on instruments in those rockets). We had our skating lessons and other activities, including Girl Scouts, after school. At night, we did our homework and practiced piano during the week. If we were at home on the weekends, we played games while listening to albums on the stereo system that my father had built. Engineer that he was, he had put together a receiver, a metal tray of tubes and wires, connected to a turntable. When my parents joined us, we played Tripoly and other card games. I was the youngest in my family, and always trying to get the rest of them to play board games with me. I think I got them to play Clue and Monopoly a couple of times, but we got back to Tripoly pretty quickly.

I'm not the first person to observe that technology is wreaking havoc on our relationship to others. On this planet, normal humans need to have a connection with the people in their lives. At the worst of times, three years ago, my therapist and I discussed the idea of bringing my female friends together in a sort of loose support group. When I floated this idea out to two of them, one immediately demurred, saying she wasn't interested in talking about, nor listening to others' problems. Fair enough. So, the Frister Fridays became social, which was fine. Friendships became stronger through these monthly get togethers, which clearly separated the women from the girls.

Recently, my friend Cathy, who is also my pilates trainer and acupuncture practitioner, was telling me about a workshop she attended in Washington state. We were having lunch at a little restaurant in Westwood called Fundamental. After she described one of the exercises in visualization which was called The Net, I had an epiphany. That was a realization of what my friends and I are providing for each other. The net Cathy described is a metaphor where strength comes from being interwoven, which allows it to support, even to gently rock, as in a hammock. How important is that? In my own net, I am, literally, trusting these women with my life as I have given them this power through my Living Trust. But they are also available, and emotionally available, in so many other ways. As I have written before, Joel is my rock. But these women are my safety net.

Whether they know it or not, everyone needs The Net in their lives. If you don't get this, step away from this blog and go watch a few Sex and the City episodes. Or, The Golden Girls, or I Love Lucy. Remember how many times Ethel was side-by-side with Lucy in all of her zany experiences and schemes? If you utilize your friends for socializing alone, you are missing out on what it feels like to have people in your life who have your back, whom you can call at any time, and with whom you balance all of that by also having a lot of shared fun: travel, and shopping, and concerts, and special dinners together. The best of two worlds. And the best part of all of it? They are always only a text away...

And again, thanks for reading my blog!

Independence Day

Los Angeles, California


Let us recount the major holidays of the year, shall we? Certainly Christmas/Christmas Eve, which count as a pair, I think; Thanksgiving and Easter (sticking with my religious holidays since it's my blog). Then the secular ones: Memorial, Independence, and Labor Days; Mom & Pop Days; Halloween. I would say that my enthusiasm trails off for those obscure holidays in the middle designed to give students and the hard-working labor force a three-day holiday, but not Billy (our business is closed on Sundays and Mondays anyway, so he gets screwed cheated).


I never moved very far away from my parents, so we always celebrated the big holidays (see above: the first ones mentioned) with my family. Once, in the early years of our marriage, I told my mom that Billy and I had decided to spend every other Thanksgiving with Billy's family, since his father's health was failing and we didn't know how long he'd be around. In response to that, my mom burst into tears. Billy's dad passed away that next summer, and we continued to spend all the holidays with my family. And I'm not begrudging this. I enjoyed being with my family. They celebrated well -- good champagne and wines, an attention to the food (that being the raison d'etre, often even more so than the congregation), and conversation that, as a rule, stayed away from religion, politics, anyone's rights. Unfortunately, when you knock that all off the table, people tend to veer towards describing episodes of television shows, causing my eyes to quickly turn to pinwheels (I Love Lucy, Soap, & The Golden Girls being the exception to this rule, and you can see how au courant I am on this subject). But none of this is the point of this post.


I no longer have any family left to celebrate these holidays with (see that preposition? I'm just going to leave it there). And my anticipation of that was seeded with dread. But, somehow, it hasn't been as awful as I expected. In fact, after the first year (which was truly hard), I've even enjoyed making some new traditions.


Easter is the tricky holiday. That was OUR holiday (even though we also hosted Christmas, and in some years, and all later years, Christmas Eve, and occasionally Thanksgiving). We used to scrape up all the family we could, including Billy's mom and a stray sibling and nephew, distant cousins, whoever. We were looking for numbers, honestly believing in the more, the merrier -- especially where my family is concerned. If the weather cooperated, we would do a big bash outside. Numbers determined how many tables we would set. In our earlier years at this house, before we built the swimming pool which sits in the courtyard of our U-shaped house, the men would carry the dining room table outside. I would set it with a Belgian lace tablecloth that my aunt brought me from, well, Belgium; my grandmother's china; the silver given to me by my parents; the Waterford that Billy's mom bought for me in Ireland. We would eat an afternoon dinner under the large sprawling oak tree that was one of the major reasons we bought this house. We usually listened to Bach and Mozart on Easter, and don't even ask me why. Many of those Easters felt, well, magical. But, those Easters are long-gone, and we have no tradition as of yet to replace them. I have thought about recreating them with friends, but that is still feeling too daunting. Maybe next year . . .


Meanwhile, Fourth of July has come and gone. Because of the way the holiday fell on the calendar, Billy had four days off. He's been working non-stop at our business during the week; helping to find a place for my mom, then finally moving my mom; all on the weekends. It's been a really hard year for him, and he's beat. But, instead of hanging out by the pool for four days, we decided to try to get a handle on our house. We are probably storing thirty boxes of my mom's things. And these are not organized in any way. Plus, as we were spending so much time visiting her; doing research on Board and Care, then finally moving her, a lot of our own possessions and paper disintegrated to clutter. I have this theory that there is a point in time when you either wrest control or lose it forever, and we were teetering on the brink.


So, we spent the four days working. Of course we didn't accomplish as much as we had hoped. But we made a fair dent and got momentarily inspired to continue. In the evenings, we made simple dinners, watched the Dodgers play and lose, then watched the movie 1776 on July 4th. The weather was unseasonably cool (read: low 80s, and my God, we're spoiled), and we never made it into the pool. But we have house guests coming next week, and that period of time is usually spent in and by the pool each day.


I told Billy that our work was over for the summer. We will take time out for the rest of the weekends through July and August. He needs this, and, frankly, so do I. Other holidays will come and go. We will celebrate; break bread with friends; remember the holidays that have come before - those markers of time, and makers of memories, for better or for worse. Hope you made some of your own, with good food and companionship, this Independence Day. As for us, next year, no work . . . except fireworks! Happy Birthday America! And, thank you for reading my blog.