WHERE THE WATER RUNS: Nancy's Green Book
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I have a journal bound in rich, green leather, with cream colored pages and a black silk ribbon tucked into the binding to help me find my place.
And that’s exactly what it does, time and time again. When I first got my Green Book, it sat untouched on my desk for a good chunk of time. I loved the feel and elegance of it, and pictured it sitting atop a colonial desk, bathed in flickering shadows from a nearby candle. It has since become my oasis, a place where I can reside unfettered and jot down thoughts, hopes, fears and joys. Sometimes I’ll just write a single word, a morsel of language that feels good on my tongue. Many beautiful songs have germinated there, and the deep green color conjures images of a still, bottomless sea. |
This is where the water runs for me, where my voice is clear, authentic and free-flowing, finding nooks and crannies and filling spaces. In this spirit, I will share thoughts and reflections that have helped me find my path to clarity and peace.
My Dad: Sweet and Salty, and Really Cool
I find holidays like Father’s Day, Mother’s Day and National Wear-Your-Pants-Inside-Out Day (okay, that’s not really a thing) to be contrived and overdone. But the hype around dads during the month of June makes me think of mine even more than I usually do.
Which is a lot.
My dad had a brilliant mind and a heroic heart. He was stern, funny, loyal and loving. As a young girl, I followed him around on Saturdays, helping him with chores and running errands to the hardware store (I still love the smell of wood shavings), the liquor store (I always got a lollipop from the cashier) and the fish store (to replenish his aquarium). I watched him repair our stone wall, work on his grey Corvair, fix just about anything that broke, cut the grass. He converted half of our basement to a dark room and installed a red light outside the door so we knew not to barge in while he was developing. I learned how to create ‘negatives’ with a machine called an enlarger, dip prints into a series of chemical baths and hang them with clothespins from a string above his workspace. He loved the sea and spent hours upon days building elaborate ship models, attending to every small detail with what seemed like tireless focus and fervor. A strict disciplinarian, he had no tolerance for rudeness or disrespect. Equal parts kind and salty, his moodiness only made him more fascinating to me.
Back when such a thing was still possible, my father was a career IBM guy. We attended grandiose company Christmas parties and spent summers at the country club, swimming for hours on end and eating our weight in burgers and ice cream sandwiches. In 1976, his job transferred to the Netherlands for a 14-month assignment and we were catapulted into a new and vastly different world. While most of the ex-patriot families lived in large homes with thatched roofs and elaborately landscaped yards, he opted for a small row house with a narrow, winding staircase and a swath of Delft tiles around the living room hearth. We were flanked by families who spoke broken English (at best) and were immersed in Dutch culture. My bedroom was an aerie on the top floor with a clear view of the town’s windmill. I attended school with diplomats’ children and participated in a model U.N. (my country was Lesotho). When one of my friends (daughter of the U.S. Ambassador) invited me to a dinner party, her house staff called my mother to review dress code and protocol. I sat next to Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s Prime Minister at the time.
From early on, my father ingrained in me the power of daring to be different. One particularly indelible memory is of his help with a junior high school assignment to build a mobile of our solar system. When I described the teacher’s recommendation to twist a metal coat hanger and hang paper planets from the helix, he raised one bushy eyebrow and said, “No no no, that won’t do. The planets are at different distances from each other. That wouldn’t be right. We’ll do it our own way.”
With a hanger, wire cutters and cardboard, we created a solar system of free-floating planets, suspended in unique orbits around the sun. It was different from every other one in the class, and I took great pride in explaining how and why my dad helped me design it that way.
Which was pretty cool.
A brain tumor took his life at 71, a short two months after diagnosis. For a man with such keen intellect, the rapid and tragic loss of cognition was all the more devastating. The only saving grace was that the trajectory rendered him unaware of what was happening. That’s my hope, anyway.
Don’t Believe Everything You Think
My friend actually suggested this to me a few months ago. I was sharing a story about how I felt when someone said something crappy to me. And by crappy, I mean infuriating, marginalizing, made-me-want-to-smack-her kind of crappy. My friend listened intently, and then made the suggestion with a straight face, as if she really meant it. “Nancy, don’t believe everything you think.” I laughed at her (obviously), but felt stupid for laughing when I realized she was dead serious.
In an effort to redeem myself I asked, “Exactly how does that work? Do I look at myself in the mirror and say out loud, ‘I don’t want to be really pissed off right now, so I won’t,’ or ‘I refuse to let this irksome thing that’s happening right now irk me.’? Do I have to be more specific? How long does it take before I feel better? Does it involve traveling to Narnia or barreling through a train station wall?”
The fact is, I explained, I don’t choose my feelings or decide when they’re going to strike. I can’t control what I feel. I react to my world. Things hit me however they hit me. I can’t help it. Right???
Maybe not so much.
It sounds like a pipe dream, like willing it to rain or trying to blink away a crow’s foot. Even worse, it smacks of a bumper sticker sound bite, staring back from the kick line of dog paws and stick figures, making the red light seem inordinately long. But it was delivered to me in earnest, from a woman I deeply respect and who deeply respects me. And, while it took a bit to wrap my head around the concept, I soon came to realize its breadth and girth. Humans, after all, are meaning-makers, but wouldn’t it be arrogant to assume that one person’s take on a given situation is the absolute truth? If so, what would be the point of political debates, religious sermons or car commercials?
This led me to the stark realization that, while we can accept how we feel about things as irrefutable, we can also choose to change how we think .
I started experimenting, first on a relatively small scale. “Just because I think this pair of slacks makes my ass look like a barge doesn’t mean it actually does,” or “If I don’t want to meet him for dinner, I don’t have to explain why.” I eventually graduated to a pithier realm, “I’m not causing her passive aggressive behavior. It’s not about me. It’s all she is capable of.” Before I knew it, the practice was paying off. “I may think I can’t do this job, but I’m wrong. I can. I CAN.” I was able to negotiate some pretty slippery roads while keeping control of the wheel. It was new and hugely empowering. That’s not to say there were no lapses along the way, but the fact that I was aware of them, meant I was aware of the choice.
At one point on this revelatory journey - during a beach vacation - I walked into a boardwalk shop that reeked of coconut oil and was organized like a maze of dried starfish, mermaid statues and shark tooth jewelry. There, among the mass of Chinese imports, hung a small yellow plaque with bright green lettering: “Don’t Believe Everything You Think.” I marveled at it, hanging there in all its sound-bite glory, abutting a rack of dog paw and stick figure decals. This fist-sized souvenir somehow validated my mantra. It’s on this plaque, therefore it MUST be true.
I bought every one.
Okay, so I probably can’t make it rain and have certainly made some ill-advised slacks purchases. But let’s face it; crow’s feet serve the vital purpose of keeping our feathered friends secure on their phone line perches. And that’s the thought I will choose to have when sizing things up in the less-than-flattering dressing room light. Don’t believe everything you think.
Go ahead, say it out loud. You might surprise yourself.
In an effort to redeem myself I asked, “Exactly how does that work? Do I look at myself in the mirror and say out loud, ‘I don’t want to be really pissed off right now, so I won’t,’ or ‘I refuse to let this irksome thing that’s happening right now irk me.’? Do I have to be more specific? How long does it take before I feel better? Does it involve traveling to Narnia or barreling through a train station wall?”
The fact is, I explained, I don’t choose my feelings or decide when they’re going to strike. I can’t control what I feel. I react to my world. Things hit me however they hit me. I can’t help it. Right???
Maybe not so much.
It sounds like a pipe dream, like willing it to rain or trying to blink away a crow’s foot. Even worse, it smacks of a bumper sticker sound bite, staring back from the kick line of dog paws and stick figures, making the red light seem inordinately long. But it was delivered to me in earnest, from a woman I deeply respect and who deeply respects me. And, while it took a bit to wrap my head around the concept, I soon came to realize its breadth and girth. Humans, after all, are meaning-makers, but wouldn’t it be arrogant to assume that one person’s take on a given situation is the absolute truth? If so, what would be the point of political debates, religious sermons or car commercials?
This led me to the stark realization that, while we can accept how we feel about things as irrefutable, we can also choose to change how we think .
I started experimenting, first on a relatively small scale. “Just because I think this pair of slacks makes my ass look like a barge doesn’t mean it actually does,” or “If I don’t want to meet him for dinner, I don’t have to explain why.” I eventually graduated to a pithier realm, “I’m not causing her passive aggressive behavior. It’s not about me. It’s all she is capable of.” Before I knew it, the practice was paying off. “I may think I can’t do this job, but I’m wrong. I can. I CAN.” I was able to negotiate some pretty slippery roads while keeping control of the wheel. It was new and hugely empowering. That’s not to say there were no lapses along the way, but the fact that I was aware of them, meant I was aware of the choice.
At one point on this revelatory journey - during a beach vacation - I walked into a boardwalk shop that reeked of coconut oil and was organized like a maze of dried starfish, mermaid statues and shark tooth jewelry. There, among the mass of Chinese imports, hung a small yellow plaque with bright green lettering: “Don’t Believe Everything You Think.” I marveled at it, hanging there in all its sound-bite glory, abutting a rack of dog paw and stick figure decals. This fist-sized souvenir somehow validated my mantra. It’s on this plaque, therefore it MUST be true.
I bought every one.
Okay, so I probably can’t make it rain and have certainly made some ill-advised slacks purchases. But let’s face it; crow’s feet serve the vital purpose of keeping our feathered friends secure on their phone line perches. And that’s the thought I will choose to have when sizing things up in the less-than-flattering dressing room light. Don’t believe everything you think.
Go ahead, say it out loud. You might surprise yourself.
