Better Things-- Seeing Ghosts

Pamela Adlon talking about Better Things

The holidays used to roll in and it would be impossible not to write about how they bring forward emotions we don't dwell on otherwise. Memorial Day is no different from Thanksgiving in this way.

On such days there's a breather from work.  We're happy if the weather obliges, anxious if there's a harbinger of family conflict at an anticipated reunion, or just sad that certain people aren't around.

On that note, in 2006 or 2007, I posted about what it means to believe in spirits. Google's Blogger, the host of this blog, tracks such things and would periodically reveal to me that of the hundreds of seriously rough, unedited essays, visitors hit on "Spirits" most frequently.  They search for essays on ghosts and spirits. Who knew? I didn't understand it.

But a television show — Better Things —clarified. Better Things is a production of Pamela Adlon and Louis CK.* She produces, writes, and acts the lead, Sam. The show feels biographical, almost anthropological as a recording of a particular tribe: a family, their lives as experienced within a particular culture. The stress associated with single parenthood, in addition to being the child tapped to stay on top of her own mother is familiar. As good media can do, Better Things brings us Ms. Alden's stories, shows them to us, so much so that the word "sandwiched" isn't necessary in the dialogue.

The show is a guilty pleasure despite the cringe bathroom humor, an entire episode dedicated to colonoscopy prep; most others replete with uncensored references to sex. Expect that, most episodes treating sex for what it is, especially to teenagers. It is not a pretty slice or interpretation to those of us who believe in love-making.  The language of the show is always coarse, direct, graphic.

So what's the pleasure? 

The stark truth of the relationships reels me in. When this show gives, it gives all the way, and you want to take every moment of the gift.

SPOILERS IN THE NEXT 4 PARAGRAPHS

In one of the most moving episodes, The Unknown, Sam is summoned by her daughter to come upstairs; she's sure there's a ghost in the house. Sam checks it out and oddly enough there's an indentation on the seat of the bed. Sam can't help but comment on the similarity of the size to her father's derriere. He passed away young, around 50. He was her rock. Her mother struggles with dementia and you wonder if it is alcohol related, sense she has always been as she is, British, detached, on her own planet, yet wildly popular among her peers.

Sam is driving in the car and Dad pops up in the passenger seat, comments about a man she is seeing. She has to think about the observation. She never would have looked at it this way.  I think, will my daughter, my sons, do that? Think about what I would say about something after I'm gone? It is hard not to ponder this.

Sam is honored at an event at her father's club  (Lions, Masons?) as his stand-in. After accepting the award, sitting at a a bar with  his best friend, the "best friend" hits on her. She leaves as he protests. On the way out she sees her father in a chair in the lobby.

They high five. 

The Eulogy Episode- so indescribably touching I refuse to spoil it. Too moving, healing, full of the love rarely expressed while we're alive. We wonder what people will say at our funerals, but wouldn't think to get a preview. Some of this episode is up on YouTube, but don't do it. See the show from the beginning or it isn't meaningful. And it is a meaningful enactment of how healthy people relate to one another.

Rereading this, it would seem all I care about are shows about dying, friendship, parenting, and being parented. Could be.

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*The producers reached an agreement after the accusations against him of sexual harassment so that Ms. Adlon could work without Louis CK on the set, or maybe not as an active partner, either, pretty sure.

Envying the Rich

Matzah the poor man's bread

I don't remember my parents ever envying the rich, only enjoying their friendship-- my father, anyway. It made him feel rich, golfing with someone who had a medical degree (in his day medicine meant money) or playing poker with a man who didn't mind losing a few dollars by midnight, when the men went home to their wives and lied that they came out even. The night after a poker night would be a good time for me to hit my father up for pocket money.

My parents would return from a destination wedding and regale us with the details, simply happy to be a part of it. I do think that they were happy with their lot, that they were ash-rei b'chelko (rhymes with posh-tray-b'-well-tow, happy with one's portion), albeit ever striving for more. Both grew up poor. My father liked to tell me that he picked feathers and lice off of chickens at his first job in America, immigrating from Poland. (He had stories about being the new kid in class, speaking no English). My mother, born in Chicago to immigrants, describes not having a nickel to buy a coke at the local "drug store" like the other girls. She really was envious of them, come to think of it.

No matter. I'm more like my father, maybe, one of those people who marvels it what others have, what they buy, and think, This makes them happy? All I want is to have enough left over at the end of the quarter to pay the IRS. Someone once said to me, I love paying my taxes. Some of us get that.

How does one get to a a point of no complaint?

I don't know.

I liken it, however, to accepting things as they are, not exactly mindfulness, but surrender. The winter in Chicago, for example, simply having the wherewithal to get through it, this is the key. Then just when you think it is over, it snows in the last days of April, and you're not happy, but you do what you did all winter, get on with your life.

We just finished Passover, which is like moving out of your house then moving back in. You clean it first, top to bottom, everything, your ovens, refrigerators, remove every vestige of leavening agents or things that have yeast (or flour!) from your home and then settle into the holiday and eat matzah for 8 days. It is a tough holiday, tough on us physically, gastro-intestinally, too. We bring up Passover dishes and pots and pans from the basement and eat off of these for the week. Then we pack them all back up and bring them back down after the holiday, put the kitchen back with the everyday appliances, the food processor, toaster, coffee maker and microwave tray to get our lives back in order. During the holiday we didn't use them, wouldn't risk contaminating our unleavened food. A crazy holiday.

Exhausting.

Rich people go away to resorts and eat food that other people have cooked for them, supposedly under the close supervision of a rabbi. Friends of mine, rich or not, won't do this, fearful that the rabbi isn't watching very closely, fearful of breaking the law, eating something that perhaps isn't even kosher, let alone, not kosher for Passover.

The holiday accomplishes one thing, however, rich or poor It makes us happy for what we have. The matzah is what it is all about, the poor man's bread. It is emphasized in the telling of the story of Passover, and naturally, all week long with butter or cream cheese. In the biblical story, the Jews, running from the Egyptian king, the Pharaoh, who is about to change his mind about letting them leave slavery in Egypt, are commanded by their Higher Power to take their dough, not wait for it to rise (as I am doing right now) and leave Egypt immediately.

It turns out that unleavened bread, difficult to digest, is filling and would go a long way during that long trek from Egypt, the perfect camping food. The Jews would theoretically be going camping for a month before they reached their destination.

So much more to the story, but suffice it to say that matzah is and always has been the Poor Man's Bread, and the reason it has so much to do with Passover is that we are to be reminded, when we eat it, that not only were we poor, but we were slaves for over two hundred years in Egypt. Being poor, we are reminded for one week out of the year, having no real bread, is where we come from, all of us in my tribe.

We may feel like slaves every day as we head off to work early in the morning. We may resent those who don't have to work hard, who don't have to rob Peter to pay Paul, and for sure, we are likely to be envious of the heated sidewalks of acquaintances when we're forced outdoors, shovel in hand. But to a great degree we are free. We have free will. There is so much that we can do as our own boss to a  large degree.

Leavened bread, wheat bran

Why are some of us less content with what we have than others? I think it has to do with hope, more than anything. If we have that, if we can keep striving, trying, plotting, planning, creating, whether or not we think it will get us anywhere, we can dream, and take pride, and hope for a better tomorrow. It is when we lose that, when we cannot push on, that the things that others have reminds us of our ultimate powerlessness. And we don't like that.

Religion being a great equalizer, we can pray together, rich and poor, and connect, occasionally socially, work on projects for the common good. Some will even play poker, golf.

Last night FD swept up, but I just finished putting away the toys and vacuuming up the last of the crumbs of the holiday this morning. And I thought: I wouldn't trade a day it with family, with all of my children here at my table, or playing Chess and checkers, Mancala and Connect 4. That's rich.



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One Teenager Killed Himself. Six More Followed

You may know that therapists run differently, some falling into two camps. In one they are interpreters who divine meaning that may or may not be there, from words. In the other they are more client-centered, assume that the meaning the client attaches to her words is the one that really matters. The rest of us, like me, are a combination of both. But if you tell me that you think the sky looks green, then I'm going to go, Wow, she sees a green sky! What else is she seeing up there?

Snowfall April 14, 2019

I get to the office on Sunday morning about 30 minutes early because the Sunday bus is reliable at 8:00 a.m., but not necessarily at 8:20 and I start seeing patients at 9. Taking the earlier bus also allows me time to pop into Tony’s to buy some produce, and I always buy too much to carry on foot comfortably. But that's just what happens. 

So when I do get to the office I’m a little out of breath, but not cold--  even though it is snowing on April 14, 2019, at this writing, a wet sleet-like nasty snow that will turn into big fat snowflakes in about an hour.

And I think, wow— I really did master winter this year— probably because of the fashion invention, leggings.  Under a warm skirt, these are phenomenal.

Layering up is a metaphor that we might apply to surviving dysfunctional families and/or dysfunctional work environments, too. People layer up, defend with coping strategies against the craziness. The healthy ones hide out with friends, confide in them or not, or they play sports, slap paint on a canvas, write songs, journal, study, create. They tend not to need therapy unless they can’t sleep or feel too much sadness or anxiety, or powerlessness and unworthiness become overwhelming. The unhealthy ones drink to much, use drugs (the wrong ones or too much of the controversial substances, pick your poison), identify with the aggressor and bully others to feel better about themselves, that insecure narcissism we see in so many successful people, oddly enough. 

Some kill themselves. Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal ran a story about copycat suicides— six teenagers. No longer with us.

How do kids survive the world we’re living in? How do they layer up? How are they handling the attention deficit they know they have that makes concentration in school and at home so difficult, the known cause that constant electronic bombardment (only during waking hours), all that too much information consumed in the form of entertainment, games, social networking, even on television? Not that this is a cause of suicide, but it's a problem. And the violence, no question. A problem. 

We have to talk about this. 

Okay, my 9:00 will be here soon. So not now.

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