Sherry Delivers

Back in 2002, I suddenly heard the screen door slamming. I sat down to write about that door which opened a portal in my mind to those lazy summers I'd spent as a child in Westport, CT. Bit by bit, stories both true and fanciful sprang up and before I knew it, I was journeying toward my first novel, Sherry and The Unseen World. Many of the characters were drawn from that long ago time and as I wrote, I was back in those halcyon days.

I thoroughly enjoyed promoting the book. People told me how the book brought them back to their own childhoods, how they as one person said, "... remember crushes, falling in love, camp, Hamburger Heaven, returning to the city after spending summers away, and attempting to like a sport for my “new man of the moment."

Every time someone new tells me how the book touches them, I know why Sherry needed a voice, as did Sherry's marvelous Aunt Geraldine who brought intrigue and magic and helped Sherry find her own way in the world.

Only now I am in the process of selling the house with the screen door. Now that my mother has died, I know that my infrequent visits to that time and place do not justify the costs of maintaining that residence. The house is on the market, it's been stripped of the old furnishings and it awaits the new family that will delight in the colonial architecture, the spacious grounds and the proximity to the beach.

Yet, my heart yearns for over fifty years of all that living I did there both as a child and on into adulthood. My children spent parts of their summers in that same place. We will all miss the tiny door that led from the main house into the charming little apartment over the garage. Sure, you could access the place from the separate entrance up normal stairs, but the charm of that tiny door was priceless and still is.

Over the years, changes affected all of us. We mourned the loss of the charming old stores on Main Street that were replaced by the inevitable Gap, Ann Taylor and Starbucks. How the town could give up the Remarkable Book Store and Kleins is beyond my comprehension.

I wake up and smell the soft air, the freshly mowed lawns and the privet hedges. I am transported back to family cook-outs, to the parents and brother who are no longer on this earth, to the crunch of cars entering the gravel driveway and the excitement of each new day's promise. And, then I am so very grateful that I wrote all that down in my novel, that I can revisit the house on Danbury Avenue any time I want, not just mentally, but in the pages of the book.

BLASTED

I am reeling from seeing Blasted, a play that just opened at the Gables Stage in Coral Gables. My husband and I have been subscribers of this edgy, challenging theatre for a number of years. The artistic director, Joe Adler, is someone we admire and enjoy (I sometimes think he should just appear alone on stage and do and An Evening With Joe.)

However, I seriously part company with his judgment in the latest production. He says he thinks this is the most important play they have done in 12 years. My worry is that if he truly believes that and plans to follow it with more of the same, I will have to go elsewhere after this season. The play runs for 90 excruciating minutes (a device that Gables Stage has implemented frequently over the past several years)and catapults the audience into inescapable sadistic horror. After the play, our friend, who has served on the board of Gables Stage, proclaimed that it is important for people in our part of the world to understand that terrible things are happening simultaneously with our existence and that this exposure is important for us to comprehend.

Anyone who is an avid reader of two daily newspapers, and countless other news magazines as I am, knows that there are atrocities taking place. I do not wish to be trapped in a theatre on a Saturday night to be reminded of these things. As a psychologist, I am frequently reminded of how inhumane people can be. I don't choose to have my nose rubbed in it by Blasted. I was half tempted to hand out my cards to the audience for the treatment of post-traumatic-stress-disorder (PTSD) when the play ended.

I will say that the acting and staging were fabulous. It was the gratuitous violence that left me angry, horrified and crazed. If that is what Joe wants his audiences to feel, that is fine for him and them. At least, then, he should provide the intermission that would allow an escape.

Happier Mornings

Never thought the day would come when I would not look forward to reading the New York Times Op Ed pages. Typically I read two newspapers a day: The Miami Herald because I live here and the New York Times because I grew up there and still go there quite a bit and think it's a pretty good paper.

I've looked askance at others who say they don't read newspapers because they can't take knowing about all the bad news. My father was a journalist and my childhood home was awash with every kind of New York newspaper.

And, yes, I know we are living in hard times. Unemployment, wars, terrorism fears. It seems as if every writer can only lament and give dire predictions. Somehow, I think that makes everything worse. Doom and gloom with my breakfast cereal doesn't inspire me to meet the day's challenges. And we need to feel some inspiration so that we can cope with the current world. What if I told my depressed clients that the world is a hopeless place?

Yes, we need to know what is happening. But, I don't need to read day after day about how demoralized Bob Herbert is. His columns used to give me a lift, help me feel that there was something worth salvaging. It's not that I disagree with what he is saying. We have squandered opportunities to improve on the current situation. We do need a much more comprehensive program than the piecemeal bits we've been getting. I'm not sure what the answer is because I do know that the purpose of journalislm is, as Heywood Broun once said, "to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

I only know that constant focus on what is not working promotes depression and hopelessness. When I work with my clients, I look for their inner resources and strengths. I help them see how their survival skills have gotten them through hard times and help build their confidence by increasing their self-esteem. I'd like to have a jolt of optimism in the mornings. And, coffee won't do the trick.

Loving What I Do

I am so glad that I chose the career that I did. I go to work eagerly every day and have no intention of retiring. Somehow, in my senior year in high school, I decided that I wanted to be a psychologist. That took my teachers by some surprise, as I had not been very academically motivated. For years I'd been told that I was not working up to my potential. And, then, boom! I knew what I wanted to do and set upon pursuing my goal. To think that my private school refused to recommend me to some of the colleges I wanted to attend! I was told that all I was going to do anyway was "to get married and have children!" This was in the mid sixties. When I finally did obtain my Ph.D., I fantasized about sending that woman a copy of my degree.

Anyway, over forty years later, I am so glad that I followed my own convictions. I feel so privileged to be able to work with my clients. And, as the years have unfolded, I've learned so much from them as they grant me access to their very private journeys. I've learned so many different techniques and approaches. I have such respect for the whole person and for the way that our minds and bodies communicate. I've delighted in helping people reach their potential through helping them integrate their inner and outer experiences.

And to my high school doubting Tomasina, I would add that I am happily married and have wonderful children and grandchildren.

Grief Revisited

Each year brings more insights and growth. Just when you think you really understand something, you encounter new perspectives. For example, I have considered myself someone who understands the grief process. I've worked for many years helping others work through their losses. I've had some significant losses myself (brother's death at an early age, father's death, sister-in-law's premature death, and some very dear friends)and I've managed to work these through.

I was very close to my father and his death when I was just 36 was devastating. It took me three years to begin to integrate that loss. I was lucky to have had a wonderfully close and meaningful relationship with my father. I was not as close to my mother and really didn't get to know her until after my father's death. I sometimes think that if he had not died, I might never have gotten to know my mother the way I did in the years since his death. And, then, it took lots of time and required both she and I to open to each other in a new way.

So, at some level, I always imagined that when my mother died, I would be better able to cope. After all, she lived to 92! And yet, her sudden death last summer has deeply affected me. I think about her all the time and just cannot believe that she is no longer on the planet. Now, I do feel her presence and I do believe that she is with me, but that just isn't enough. As I told a friend this evening, I think about her more since she died than I did when she was living. The loss is painfully acute. Maybe this is because I was not close to her for more than half my life.

We lived in separate cities, she in New York and I in Miami. We only saw each other about six times a year, but we spoke at least once a week, we emailed, and we had just reached the point of comfort to profess our feelings about each other. I have no problem expressing love to most of my dear ones, but with her, because she was not one of those who ended phone conversations with an I love you, it was difficult for me to tell her how much she meant to me. She did tell me in an email last year that she loved me very much. That meant the world to me.

I wasn't one bit ready to have her die. Isn't that so often the truth? I have always said that the deaths of those with whom we've had complicated relationships are the hardest. And now, the truth of that is so poignantly with me.

Wordplay

I have become quite an afficianado of certain video games. I've always loved word games and now I play Strike A Match on Boxerjam.com and word whomp and scrabble on Pogo.com. I've been told by my son that if I played fewer games, I might write more on my novel and that is probably true. However, I really enjoy these games and am quite good at them. The Strike a Match game consists of four rounds in which you have to find relationships between two, then three and then four sets of words. It can be pretty cutthroat as you compete with others all over the country and the world. I have discovered that to make the "high score" list for the day, for example, you have to outrank everyone else who has played that game AND the only time that counts for the list is when it is your first game of the day. I have made a couple of "friends" on that game, but there are others who I simply won't play with either because they always win or because they take TOO long to answer or because they are nasty.

It isn't so surprising that I would fare well at word games, as I have always loved words and have been doing the New York Times crossword puzzles for over forty years. However, I have discovered that I love to play Pogo Bowl which consists of a virtual bowling alley. What I love most about that game is that the players are so friendly and encouraging. When someone gets a turkey (three consecutive strikes), other players will say "nt" which means nice turkey. If someone fails to get either a spare or a strike, others will say, "ss" meaning so sorry. I was never very athletic although I did like real bowling when I was younger. I wasn't athletic partly because I have a lazy eye which affects my depth perception and partly because others teased me unmercifully in elementary school. So, it is just delightful to be with the Pogo bowlers who go out of their way to encourage each other. There is such a grand camaraderie and I look forward to meeting with this group.

Hopefully, the neglected novel will once again inspire me. For now, I'll keep on playing!

Continuity of Friendship

I cherish my friendships and see them as precious gems that warm my heart and fill me with hope and sweetness. I'm actually known for my interest in long lost friends who suddenly re-enter my life. Just a few weeks ago I became reacquainted with a man who'd been one of my confidants during my teens. His memories of the teenage me took my breath away. He said that he could see the sixteen year old me in my website picture. When friends of my youth reappear, it's almost as if they'd never left. We have an instant rapport as the years fall away and there is a recognition and a knowing of each other. There's the woman I speak with about once or twice a year and we marvel at how our voices still sound exactly the same and we recapture the essence of our friendship within minutes. She touches something deep within my heart...she gets me in a unique way.

Then, there are those friends who've been present for over forty years and we have shared all those major life events of marriage and babies and growing children and finally grandchildren. We've been there for each other through career changes and challenges. A friend I made in graduate school has been my Monday lunch partner for over a quarter of a century. We never run out of things to talk about. We process everything that happens and we never miss a lunch unless one of us is either on vacation or, as happens too frequently as we age, at a funeral.

I told a client just today that I believe that our friendships and relationships are probably the most meaningful parts of our lives and that it is usually worth it to work through difficulties rather than simply abandon a friendship. Having the courage to gently confront a friend and express what I'm feeling allows the relationship to deepen and grow and we are both better for the effort.

We lead busy lives. We are on our computers, blackberries, iphones. Face to face interactions seem to be dwindling. However we can reach out to each other is essential. Texting ignores the nuances of communication. It has its place, but it will never replace the value of authentic contact.