Marissa Flaxbart

ENJOYABLE

Did you know that IKEA now sells a small loom as a children’s toy? It’s sold under the name LUSTIGT, which is Swedish for “enjoyable” and, incidentally, is also the name for all the other cool toy-type-stuff at IKEA. Good luck with your google search for this loom. 

 

Anyway, I bought the loom. No brainer. And then I made this little...tapestry? as a (belated) 40th birthday gift for my cousin. I’m so pleased with how it turned out. I bought one skein of yarn for the project; the rest I just had in my closet. 

 

 

People (and online surveys, dating apps, what have you) sometimes ask this question that totally short-circuits my brain. The question is, “What are your interests?” How?...what?...I don’t...like, what AREN’T my interests? The world is very interesting. And yet, “everything” is a bad (and, I suppose, inaccurate) answer to the question. 

 

Any line of questioning focusing on the idea of “hobbies” is just as hard for me. I have long described myself as a “hobby-collector.” I come by it honestly; many people on both sides of my family have a huge array of arts & crafts skills or niche pastimes (off the top of my head: woodworking, pinball, photography, metallurgy, stained glass, cocktail crafting, beer-making...on and on). It’s not that I take on a new hobby and then lose interest, it’s that once I learn how to do something, continuing to do it feels like less of a pressing need than learning how to do an additional thing. It’s still fun to decorate cakes and embroider and decoupage, but the siren song of a new handicraft draws me back to Michaels...

 

I am considering using this space to talk a bit more about the new things I’m trying, and maybe even to document this discovery process more methodically. One wonderful thing about most crafts is that they provide solo entertainment, but for me, keeping the experience to myself feels like a shame. Why not bring the Internet along for the ride? Maybe you, reading this, will be inspired to try something new. Or, you know, to avoid a particular something new altogether. Either way. 😁

All Walls Are Analog

Earlier today I clicked on the link to this site from my Instagram bio. I was showing someone (someone a couple decades older than I) how the whole “link in bio” thing works. Right at the top of landing page, just where I left it, was my last post. How could it possibly have been from so long ago? I wondered, embarrassed. It was a doodle of a stranger.

Between the podcast, social media (especially the aforementioned Instagram, where I control a small army of accounts), and my other writing work, I have this feeling that I am generating work. Work, work, work…or at the very least, “content.” Simultaneously, I worry constantly that I am failing to share my voice with the world in a meaningful way — when I say I “worry” about this, I mean that it is the foremost shape that my anxiety takes these days, 50% the feeling that I am shouting into a void, 50% concern that I am not shouting loud enough. 

Having a blog is pretty old school. I have never been good about posting regularly, and I have often thought about using the blog as a repository for all of the things I’m making. Or documenting. Or, in a more recent development, collecting. 

For the past (nearly) two years, ever since my pilgrimage to England (much documented on this blog) I have been “collecting” photographs of wallpaper. And for the past couple months, once a week, I have been posting images from that ever-growing collection on Instagram with the hashtag “#wallpaperwednesday). Much to my surprise, people (mainly my friends, whom I'd never known to be wallpaper enthusiasts) seem pretty into it.

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Yesterday, I was at a coffee meetup with some volunteering colleagues I don’t know very well outside of social media. One of them asked me to explain the whole wallpaper thing. Suddenly I found myself speaking at length about how and why I had started collecting and posting these images. Maybe it was just because it was an easy conversation starter, but I and half the gathered group went on to talk about wallpaper — and social media — for quite some time.  I posited that I think wallpaper may be making a comeback. “It’s kind of old-fashioned, but in a cool way that’s novel. It’s like record players or cursive…wallpaper is analog.” I paused, proud of my observation until I saw its flaw. I amended: “I guess all walls are analog.”  

At one point, someone described the wallpaper thing as “your passion.” Well, that escalated quickly! I thought it was just something I like. I like a lot of things. But…a passion? Maybe it is a passion of sorts, but if so, that escalates many of my interests to passion-level. Perhaps all that is part and parcel of my void-shouting-angst: more passions filling me up than one body can comfortably contain, and still only 24 hours in the day, only 7 days in a week, only this finite quantity of weeks in a lifetime. Wall-wise, I feel more passionate about street art and murals than wallpaper (out of thin air, I have been fantasizing about PAINTING murals of late). One of the gathered suggested I implement “#muralmodays” and I might just. I would promise to post about it here when I do, but given my track record, I wouldn’t trust me to start posting regularly if I were you. But who knows. Maybe blogs will make a comeback; everything old is new again. 

 

THE DAILY HUMAN: Going Off the Rails Re: This Crazy Train

I have a way with children. By which I mean, there is a way in which I am with them, and that way rarely wavers regardless of age or intelligence or even how well I know them: I pay attention to them, and I speak to them as if they are reasonable and understand big words.  My two-and-a-half year old nephew plays along with this very nicely: he lets me read books to him in Italian, and when I told him that his magnetic cars were "defying the laws of gravity," he gave a blank stare that I interpreted as new neuron pathways being kicked into gear.  

Today, this child (whom I was allowing to push his own stroller down the street so that I didn't have to carry it, and to keep him occupied), steered his stroller into a ticking-down crosswalk and spun the stroller around in tight circles. When I asked him what he was doing, he said, gleefully, "Spinning and spinning and spinning!" Crazed with the fear of (nonexistent) oncoming traffic, I scooped him up into my arms and dragged him and the stroller across to the sidewalk. I then set him down and tried very hard to explain how crosswalk lights worked. "The little white man," I told him, the phrase tripping awkwardly off my tongue, "means we walk across. When the red hand flashes, we don't cross...unless we are already crossing, and then we hurry to the other side..." Shit. This was more complicated than I realized. But I was pleased at having made the effort, if unsure that any of it had sunk in. Because he is not my child, I neither know how many times he's been given this explanation before, nor worry if I'm failing him by not making it clearer, or by not having insisted that he hold my hand in the first two crosswalks of that stroll, or by allowing him to walk at all when I could be saving his energy by pushing him.  

We were headed to a kids' Advent fair, and once we arrived there, it wasn't long before he spotted a stash of prizes lying around for a yet-to-be-played game. It was a short stack of tiny, red, plastic trains with tiny tracks to go with (and, as he preciously pointed out later, "a trail-uh"). As soon as he laid eyes on this train, it was his in his mind. His mom (who we met there) disabused him of this notion, but throughout the afternoon, he kept suddenly remembering the trains and leaving us to run over to where they were (inexplicably) just sitting out for any toddler to covet. At one point, when we were trying to eat dinner, I was the one who chased after him, and when he reached for the pile, I spoke sternly to him. "Just because you see something doesn't mean you get to have it," I said sharply, and if he didn't get my meaning he understood my tone and was NOT happy with it. I changed the subject. A guitarist had begun playing "Feliz Navidad" and I asked my nephew if he wanted to sing. I didn't wait for him to answer before starting to sing myself, which was conspicuous because I have a loud voice and no one else in the group was singing. But he forgot about the train, and the scolding...

Until he remembered again, and had a full-scale, crying meltdown over it. And, because I am not his parent, I didn't have to soothe this meltdown. I was, in fact, across the room making an angel ornament out of paper and glue. I didn't know about the meltdown until he and his mom joined me and I could see the fresh tears drying on his face. The storm had passed, though. We were crafting now, and he could forget about the train that got away.

Until a kindly volunteer, an older woman who'd observed the child's unwavering fixation on this dumb little toy at many points throughout the afternoon, walked over to us. Filled with the holiday spirit and a warm heart, she presented this tortured, wet-faced toddler with one of the trains leftover after prizes had been handed out. A Christmas Miracle! His mother and I tried to impress upon him how grateful he should be. But was he listening?

His mom didn't let him open the package until he got home. The moment -- hours later -- when we walked in the door, he instantly figured out how to open the package, tore it open, let the pieces fall on the floor, and dived out of his stroller onto the fallen pieces, a man obsessed. Once the four pieces of plastic track were snapped together, the wind-up train could barely move on them without derailing, even without the trailer attached. Nevertheless, he was in love.

His mom and I stood in the kitchen as he futzed with this cheap little treasure, rehashing the game tape and concluding that (a) this angel woman had been very sweet to give him something he so desired and so treasured and (b) this was NO WAY to learn any kind of lesson about not throwing a tantrum. But honestly, what was there to do? We made coffee. We drank it.  

An irony of parenthood: the more you care about being a great parent, the harder it is to believe you're succeeding at that task. Though I don't yet have children of my own, one doesn't need to spend much time with a parent to observe this impossible-to-avoid pothole on the road toward raising a functional adult. Every conversation, every interaction, becomes a monumental test. Am I turning my child into a sociopath, or teaching them a lesson that will form them into a super-citizen? Are they going to be scarred for life by this dressing-down, or this lack-of-a-dressing-down-because-I-couldn't-muster-the-energy, or are they even paying attention to a word that's coming out of my mouth? And, oh, the results of this test don't come in for a decade or two.

I seriously doubt my intelligent, precocious nephew will grow into a man who stomps and cries when he doesn't get to own something that he sees and likes. But regardless, for today: Thank you, well-meaning church lady. You brought genuine joy to an overtired, locomotive-loving toddler and almost certainly didn't ruin him for life.

 

 

 

 

"What Is Art?": The Mystical Magic of Taking Something Too Seriously

When I started the Sweet Valley High Podcast, my aims and questions were much the same as when I started the blog of the same name:

Wouldn't it be fun to examine these frivolous, over-the-top books through a tongue-in-cheek-but-still-very-powerful microscope?

And would other people find the books as shocking and fascinating as I did?

The blog, started in the blogger's heyday that was 2006, proved that there was an audience of Sweet Valley readers who were eager to revisit the literary soap opera of their girlhoods. The podcast has done something a bit more: it's proven to me that I can hand one of these books to practically anyone I know and, after they've read it, work them into a high-pitched frenzy by casually discussing the plot. Seriously, it happens at least once an episode.

It's so much fun.

Because every main episode of the show is devoted to recapping the book in question (and because I don't have the time or wherewithal to book a guest, record, and edit a new episode every week), alternate weeks feature a "bonus" episode that takes the form of an extended conversation on some theme in the book. They're usually pretty fun, and no two conversations have been remotely similar.

Today, though, I released a bonus episode (recorded with my friend and fellow deep thinker Kali Baker-Johnson) that has something more to say. It's about art, artists, and finding the courage to share what you've made. Listening back to it this morning, I was struck by what we were able to bring out of one another in the conversation. I really think it's something that I'll return to whenever I'm not feeling particularly eager to share my work and myself with the world.

The following is not a great example of what Sweet Valley Diaries is usually like, but it is a perfect example of what good stuff you can uncover when you take something silly too seriously. 

(Posted on Medium) Still No Word From the Quantum Realm Thoughts on Missing My Mom, 20 Years Later

For the 20th anniversary of my mother's untimely death, I wrote this story, my first on the Medium.com platform.

Click to read.

Meanwhile in Sweet Valley... (Sweet Valley Diaries Season 2 Premieres Today!)

Sweet Valley Diaries, my podcast (and long-running, if somewhat neglected blog) about Francine Pascal's Sweet Valley High book series, returns today for its second season. I'm delighted to share this labor of love with the world; this new season, which starts with Book #11 (TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE), is loaded with seriously ridiculous drama.

If you're reading this sentence right now, something has brought you to my page. Maybe you know me. Maybe you are trying to figure out who I am. Maybe you're a robot, here to leave a comment about how much you enjoy my content. But whatever the case, I hope you'll stop what you're doing and go listen to Sweet Valley Diaries, from the beginning. Even if you've never heard of a Sweet Valley. It's like joining a really niche book club, except you don't have to do a lick of reading.

There are over a hundred books in the series, and I've read a LOT of them already. On every episode of the show (starting with Book 1 and going through in order), a new guest joins me. Both of us have read that week's volume; for most of my guests, it's the first Sweet Valley High novel they've ever laid eyes on. When I first started the podcast, I wasn't sure if my friends and colleagues would receive the stories with the same wide-eyed, jaw-dropped fascination/horror/delight that has kept me hooked all these years. 

They did! They have! They do! 

The result is a show that's part '80s nostalgia, part feminism, part comedy, part soap opera. It's my fond hope that every episode feels like hanging out with your friends, listening as they fill you in on the crazy story they just heard, stumbling into moments of depth, honesty, and social commentary as they go. 

Sounds fun, right?

The link above takes you to the podcast page on my SweetValleyDiaries.net, but if you're already a podcast person, you can also search for Sweet Valley Diaries on iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever app you use to find shows. 

 

So Many Seeds Sprouting

On Saturday, I bought one of those tiny flower growing kits from the $1 bin at Target. I took it home, opened it up, and read the instructions. “Plant no more than 3 seeds!” it read. 

 

Then I opened the seed packet. There must have been a hundred tiny flecks of brown nothing in there, indistinguishable from the dirt itself. I tried to follow the instructions, but I had no idea how many I was planting, or if any of the seeds were being covered by the weird wet dirt pellet, or if I was rinsing them all away when I washed my seed-covered hands. 

 

 

That was 6 days ago. And this morning, imagine my surprise: so many tiny green shoots, curling out of the wet soil. 

 

Now Entering the Aural Fray: Sweet Valley Diaries, the Podcast

Yesterday I took a step that has been months in the making: I announced a start date for my new podcast. In less than a week, on December 7, the first of 10 initial episodes (and 10 shorter bonus episodes) of the Sweet Valley Diaries podcast will be available for public consumption. I'm thrilled, excited, even a little nervous. But above all, I feel content: I think my friends and I have done a good job with the show, and even if not a soul ever listens to it, I had so much fun making it that I kind of want to invent some fake podcasts just to trick people I like into having highly direct, interview-style conversations around a table with me. 

I wrote about the launch date yesterday on the Sweet Valley Diaries blog, and I‘ve included the body of that post below. But I think of this blog as a place where I tell true stories about myself and muse about the creative process, so let me give you a glimpse into this whole “setting a release date“ thing: I’ve been trying to do it since September. 

Every month, I make a plan – goals I have and tasks I want to accomplish. (For example, since today is the 1st of December, I’ve been sneaking new-month planning time in between loads of laundry.) At the very start of a new month, those four-plus weeks stretch out as wide and slow as a mid-afternoon cat. It’s easy for me to imagine I’ll have “plenty of time” to accomplish a long list of somewhat complex goals, and I rarely bother to break those steps down into smaller steps, because my goals sheet only has so many slots and I want to be able to fill them all up with amazing, unrealistic future accomplishments! Even though I kept writing “set podcast release schedule” and “set and announce premiere date” as monthly goals, first in September, then in October…it just wasn’t quite happening.

I wanted to set a release date, but I didn’t have all my guests scheduled. I wanted to set a release date, but it was taking me hours and hours to edit episode one. I wanted to set a release date but I was still planning my bonus content. I wanted to set a release date, but I have never made a podcast myself before and there were so many unknowns. 

One think I knew for sure? A release date was a deadline, and I never miss a deadline. In this case in fact, a release date was more like a series of deadlines, because I want to make sure and get a new episode out on each successive Thursday (Thursday, Dec 7, was the day I finally landed on; very few of the shows I listen to release on Thursday, and “7” is a go-to number for one of Sweet Valley’s main characters, Jessica Wakefield). As soon as I made the call, the next 20 weeks of my life were to be deadline-ified.

You may have heard that a deadline is a strategy (perhaps from Gretchen Rubin, who would no doubt recognize me as an Obliger). For me, it’s such an effective strategy that I was a little afraid of it. I had to be ready. Or at least ready enough. And  call it first-of-the-month optimism, but I think I am. 

*****

The below is from sweetvalleydiaries.net, Nov 30, 2017

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 VERY BIG NEWS: It's Almost Podcasting Time!

Sweet Valley High. It's been an interest bordering on an obsession, and getting dangerously reminiscent of an "area of expertise" in the years since this blog was born. 

But I've developed a side passion: podcasts.

Like my love of SVH, my podcast passion has been a long time in the making (the very first podcasts were coming on to the scene around the same time as The Diaries first began!). And I'm beyond thrilled to finally announce that, over the past few months, I've been working hard to merge these two passions together, like the hottest couple in school, making out at Miller's Point in broad daylight. 

One week from today, on December 7, The first episode of the Sweet Valley Diaries Podcast will launch on all your favorite podcasting platforms. I know that Sweet Valley fans are my target demo, but the entire show is designed to do something I have never been quite able to achieve with the blog: to let non-die hards (or even total Sweet Valley neophytes) get a glimpse of the beautiful, absurd, dark perfection that is Sweet Valley High.

I love you for reading this and sticking with me all these years. And I say with all humility that I think this is the most exciting thing to happen in the world of Sweet Valley since 10 Years Later. More details to come as the week goes on, but here's a little teaser from my freshly-minted SVD Insta account:

Foolproof Holiday Baking

I pulled into my parking spot at 5:30 last night with one item on my to-do list: I had to make a pie.

I've made countless pies in the past, so I knew the steps required: throw together a quick crust dough, chill for an hour; roll it out, chill a bit more. The filling is the easy part, so you can whip that up while the bottom crust is blindbaking; then your just have to put it all together and let it sit in the oven. I knew I might not have a finished product until almost bedtime, but as most of the prep time was marked "chill," I planned to spend a much of the evening doing the same. Netflix might even come into play.

Before I'd even opened my car door to head upstairs, I opened my go-to crust recipe, which lives inside the "How to Cook Everything" app – an interactive, digital version of Mark Bittman's famous cookbook. At least, I attempted to open the recipe. Instead, my phone alerted me that "The developer of this app needs to update it to work with iOS 11." Bittman, you slippery bastard. My ancient version of this app had been outmoded; a fresh new copy of the program was available, but it would cost $9.99, and on principle I couldn't bring myself to re-pay for an app that, to my mind, I already owned. Pie crust recipes are dime a dozen, and my roommates and I have a bookshelf full of cookbooks. Not, like, one shelf: the entire bookcase is full of cookbooks.  

I pulled out my Cook's Illustrated Cookbook, a versatile (if sometimes overly fussy) kitchen treasure. They didn't have one recipe for pie crust. They had three recipes, all broken down further into single- and double-crust versions. Perfect. My eyes gravitated at first to "Classic Pie Crust," but then I noticed the name of the neighboring recipe: FOOLPROOF PIE CRUST. Now, I'm no fool, but I was looking to whip up something quick and easy and forego any unnecessary extra steps. It didn't have to be a culinary masterpiece, it needed to be a finished pie.

This was going to be a piece of cake. As the saying goes.

Pie crust recipes often call for a food processor, which I don't have. Instead, I always opt to cut in the butter myself; this naturally takes a lot more time and effort and doesn't necessarily yield better results. So I had the bright idea to break the recipe into halves and use a handy miniature food processor/blender tool that I often forget is living under my counter. Halving the ingredients was no struggle, but using the processor was; it was only macerating the flour and butter at the bottom of the mixer, and I was making a huge mess. I had to go in with my hands, a knife, and a spatula, just as if I hadn't used the processor at all. At one point, I knocked the thing over and sent a portion of my poorly mixed dough sailing across my stovetop, into all those hard-to-clean nooks and crannies. I had a flash to the previous day, when my roommate, Selah, and I were watching the just-added-to-Netflix season of Great British Baking Show and I'd said aloud, "How can these people be so clumsy?" Oof. To make matters worse, when all was said and done, I knew the dough didn't look right. It was way too dry. I looked back at the recipe.

Fuck. The shortening! I had only added the butter. This kind of rookie omission was abnormal for me, but butter is practically a religion in my maternal lineage, and the addition of shortening to pie crust was not my custom. It had totally slipped my mind after reading the recipe. And the shortening was supposed to be chilled. 

I went back to my shitty little mini Cuisinart and added the shortening I'd hastily chilled – in two batches, of course, as that's all that could fit in the small container. A lot of filling and emptying and spilling and refilling later, I had dirtied two more bowls and created a dough that was wrong in the opposite way – it was almost a paste, way too wet to do anything with, and this was before I had even added any liquid. I messed with it a bit more, prepped it for a deep chill, stuck two dough disks in the freezer, and prayed. Meanwhile, I complained to Selah that my lack of proper equipment was hindering me. She replied (generously, if too late), "do you want to use my food processor?" She then pointed to the full-sized Cuisinart that has been sitting on the bottom shelf of our pantry for, oh, probably 18 months. Goddammit, Marissa. 

Fast-forward one hour. I'd made some headway with bottom crust (incorporating lots of flour during the rolling) and successfully wrangled it into the pie tin. Covered with foil, filled with baking weights, I stuck it into the very hot oven and noticed that I'd forgotten to remove the baking sheets we store in there. They were now too hot to be moved. Oh well. I only needed the bottom shelf. Seven minutes later, our apartment seemed a bit smoky. And after another minute, our smoke alarm went off. Part of the crust edge had fallen onto the oven floor and was blackening into floury charcoal oblivion. I apologized profusely for the smoke and the smell and self-flagellated about my growing list of mistakes. Luckily Selah is a laid-back angel who knows how these things go, so she didn't bat an eye as I threw open every door and window in the place. 

At this point, I decided it was time to chill myself. I rolled out a top crust that I knew would be ugly, and then asked Selah if she was up for the remainder of the Bake Off episode we had to finish. She was. She offered to light a scented candle to distract from the smoky odor and I plopped onto the couch with a considerably sized cocktail. We proceeded to watch 11 of the best home bakers in Britain make an absolute mess of their gingerbread house challenge. Gingerbread walls were destroyed, gingerbread trees were burnt, gingerbread bell towers crumbled under their own weight. Selah cringed at the scrambling contestants – "this is painful to watch" – and normally I'd have been right there with her. But at that moment, watching talented bakers make dumb mistakes felt pretty damn good. 

I returned to my pie. The blind-baked bottom crust seemed acceptably golden and was holding together, even if my carefully fluted edges were smooshed. Those would be covered by the top crust anyway. I prepared the filling while the bottom crust cooled, and powered through a few more minor errors with a shrug. The top crust ripped as I put it in place, but I decided it didn't matter. I even made some last-minute decorative leaves with my paring knife, freehand. I'd never done that before, but I thought some creative flourish was in order. I smiled as I placed the crooked leaves over the crack. They were kind of cute.

Watching Bake Off, it had dawned on me: I wasn't making this pie to impress the judges. I wasn't going to be sent home if it was ugly, or chided by Mary Berry if it had a "soggy bottom." I was making this pie for the guests, mostly homeless, of All Saints' Beverly Hills' Monday Meal, which today was a Thanksgiving feast. The pie didn't need to be at home at in a patisserie window; it needed to be edible, and hopefully tasty. I'd stressed myself out and beaten myself up for turning something "foolproof" into such a shitshow. But now, I was over it. It would be no less, and no more, than an apple pie. Homeless people would eat it for dessert. Maybe it would remind them of their childhoods. Maybe it would be a sloppy mess. But either way, it would be a dessert, and it would be made with love and care. 

This is what we do at this time of year, seasoned chef and kitchen neophyte alike. We take a crack at putting our heart into the food we make. Sometimes, as with putting one's heart into anything, the process is more painful than we bargained for, and the whole business would be much simpler if we cared a little less about how things turned out. But caring is a part of the magic. Wanting to make something for another person, and to make it well, is a prayer and a sacrifice and a blessing...and that's true even if a chunk of what you made falls off and burns up in the oven. 

Anyone who looked at a slice of my craggy, mottled pie would know that it wasn't made in a factory. But when I took it out of the oven at damn near 11pm, I was pleasantly surprised. It was no masterpiece, but it had its own unique, handmade beauty. And it smelled amazing.

I guess the recipe was foolproof after all.

Permission to Take What's Granted (Thoughts on Dad's LA Visit)

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Yesterday my dad flew home to Chicago after a long weekend trip to visit me and read books in the sunshine. While we Angelenos proclaimed the 60-70 degree temps "so fall" and "officially sweater weather," Dad smirked at all the stylish brooders in black knit beanies, slept with the window open, and donned short sleeves. On Monday night, after I left the office, we had a teriffic, one-for-the-memory-books dinner at The Ponte, Stephanie Bombet and Scott Conant's newish, Modern Italian restaurant in the part of town Dad suggested we refer to as "NQBH" -- Not Quite Beverly Hills.

 

And, of course, we dined al fresco. Sure, it was 60 degrees outside, but there were heat lamps and goddammit, we're Chicagoans. If you give us the option to sit outside, we take it.

 

I'd worried about how expensive the meal might be, scheming ways to keep the bill low. Two entrees, no cocktails, no desserts, and suddenly this would be a pretty average tab. My reasoning was simple: I knew my dad would be paying the bill, and I didn't want to drag him to a pricey place willy-nilly. If I could afford it, I'd have tried to pick up the bill myself, but as anyone who's eaten dinner with him can attest, this is easier said than done. I didn't want him to think I was taking advantage of his constant generosity just because it was his last night in town.

 

Dad had his own agenda for dinner though: get what we want. Have a cocktail, because look at this beautiful menu. Have a second cocktail. Have dessert. The plates were small after all. This was a celebration, life is for the living and, thank God, after decades of very hard work he can afford to take his daughter out for nice dinners during their short time together in LA.

 

Dad didn't SAY any of these things out loud. What he said, as I held the cocktail menu close to my face, weighing my many options like so much precious metal, was "you look like you're preparing for your bat mitzvah." And he laughed, and I laughed, because it was really funny and we were having the time of our lives.

 

I've been thinking today about the complex feelings I have around parental support, be it emotional (we talk on the phone nearly every day), moral (he firmly believes in my talent as a writer, reads my work and discusses it with me, and is the single loudest voice rooting for my success), or financial (I would be unable to pursue success in my chosen field without the privelege of a parental safety net). The simple fact is, my father's support and friendship is probably the greatest treasure in my life. Not all my friends can count on stability and sanity from their parents; few if any can count on the level of motivation, wisdom, and friendship I'm lucky enough to receive (and which I try very hard to return). I don’t take it for granted and I thank him for it all the time.

 

But “not taking it for granted” ignores the very beautiful way in which all those things ARE granted. That love and support? It’s not going anywhere. And yet, I let my gratitude morph into a kind of guilt that no one asked for and which is doing no one any good. Guilt that sometimes takes the shape of my deepest insecurity: that if I am not doing it “on my own” I am failing.

 

Where does this come from? Who taught me that I needed to do it all on my own? Is it an American society that teaches us that making it on your own is a necessary part of adulthood? Is it the fact that I'm an only child, and have a lot of learned self-reliance? Is it an inherited self-reliance from my pretty self-reliant parents? Or maybe (because all psychological self-evaluative roads lead back here for me), it has something to do with my mom's death. Some story I made up for myself about not wanting to be a burden.

 

(Don't trust the stories you tell yourself at 15. 15-year-old-you doesn't know shit.)

 

And maybe not. Maybe all this is bullshit psuedopsychology. The good news is, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that I more fully open my heart to the grace of Other People, which I know to be both abudant and only available if you allow yourself to seek it. What matters is that I earnestly try to put the myth of "you have to do it on your own or you're failing" into a box marked "Damaging: Please Incinerate." And with time, gratitude, love, and that open heart, I will set that damn box ablaze.

 

After dinner Monday night, I drove home, the radio tuned to KUSC, the classical station. I told my dad, honestly, that the amount of time we'd spent listening to this station while he was here (a lot) was not representative of how much I usually listened to it (only ocassionally). And then Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano concerto began, and I proclaimed, just as honestly, that it was one of my favorite pieces of music. The DJ's lead-in had prepared us for a unique and eye-opening rendition of the piece, and that's exactly what it was, so singularly soulful and dramatic that there were passages I barely recognized. I pulled into my parking garage, but the second movement had only just started. Without discussing it, I switched only the engine off, and we sat in the car, trying hard not to hum too loud over the rolling piano highs and lows of a piece that both of us, independently, had chosen as a favorite. And for just a moment, I stepped away from myself, took a look down at the scene from above, and felt exceedingly blessed to have been given so very many things in this world to love.