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Good morning this gorgeous fall-ish Sunday; I’ve been up for eight hours and I feel as if I am in need of a nap. So goes the story of those who rise at 3:30 am. I looked up insomnia and it appears it arises out of stress and depression, but also afflicts the elderly. Have I truly crossed into territory where I would be referred to as elderly?

I’m trying to make my list for the coming week and already I feel as if it is a squirrely one with not enough Yay, this week I am going to ________ – and it gives me pause. I have tag team therapists trying to get me to fill in the blank and try as I might – it doesn’t come to me.

What are you passionate about?
What would the good life look like to you?
Can you envision a life without should?

I feel like I’m tackling a big exam, only this time the subject matter is me, so all those times I took on work or a project and felt as if I didn’t know 9/10th of what I needed to know when I started, well, um, now that is just how I feel about tackling me – my waistline is about to burst thanks to a thyroid deficit, my hair is paralyzed because my body is freaked out, my brains are frazzled from enormous changes at the last minute, my nerves are spent on trying to hold it together, and and and.

I think there is only one thing to do and that is go for a walk. Take a few deep breaths. I have a session with my life coach and then a session with my therapist and meditation awaiting me daily.

On being trapped in the bulge bracket – this too shall pass.

I spent most of my life in my head and sometimes it gets so confusing up there, that it’s best to get out and take a walk. Yesterday, after preparing the house for rental guests to arrive, I decided to take a shower, put on a bindi and head out. I stopped first to see my friend at Swirl and she treated me to a fine cabernet. We caught up – me sipping my cab, her stocking her shelves – in the fashion that most friends these days do – on the fly.

Then I left and went to Canal Street Bistro where I was seated at the front table, overlooking their patio where three tables were full of lunchers engaged and hungry and the back drop was Canal Street and the trolley going up and down. It made for a fine vista, and then my food arrived. A big thumbs up. I got the Vegan Salad which had the most divine crisped herb tofu with chunks of grilled portobello mushrooms and black beans over a bed of spinach. I came home and wrote a review on Yelp.

Then I picked up cookies at Brocato’s and went to get Tin from school and the dogs from the vet. One came home with diarrhea all over the nicely groomed yard. How lovely. I then went to a playdate for me and for Tin and learned that new friends are leaving to move up North in January – reminiscent of when Steve and I moved here in 1995 – we stayed eleven months before California beckoned Steve home, and left me with some serious unfinished business – a home, a child, loved ones.

But move Americans must – they just can’t seem to put down roots. New Orleans folks have boomerang roots – they fling off but always crawl home. And here I am now, back at terra prima. But in the watershed of my life’s footprint, I am lately finding it hard to pinpoint me. It’s like I’m an organism that shifts and morphs as it moves through landscapes, relationships, work, but all this shape shifting leaves me weary of all the thoughts that float and don’t anchor into a form.

We raised our glasses of wine last night to toast to pregnancy, new job, moving, a pay raise, job recognition, a surprise check – it did not seem like 2012 for those moments – everything was about gain, not loss.

Tin and I drove home and made our way to the back of the house, where we sunk deep into the bed to read Bringing The Rain to Kapiti Plain. I can’t read it like James Earl Jones, but I must admit the rhythm of the words are mesmerizing no matter who is reading them.

When I climbed the stairs to bed, weary from my pre-dawn rising, I decided sometimes life is better enjoyed through the senses and not the mind – the streetcar click clacking down Canal Street, eating nourishing and tasty food, celebrating the bounty of/with friends, and a good read in a comfortable bed with a curious child tucked under your wing.

“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.” – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I have to say that at 53 1/2 years old I have more questions than answers, but I have over half a century of wisdom. Isn’t it about time I started listening to my intuition and untying the knot inside?

I woke this morning at 3am after a pretty rough day yesterday. Tatjana left for Boston and as has become the norm around here, Tin went into an utter meltdown. A friend suggested he might be suffering from separation anxiety having experienced it as an infant. It gave me pause. Because the way I was reading it is my partner’s gone, time to myself, and then WHAM BAM, I’ve got a child who went from loving me to wanting to destroy me.

Last night, when he asked for his story I gave him two versions. One was of a child who has a parent who travels and during the parent’s absence the child and the other parent have lots of fun and do things together. In the other version, the child creates a living hell for the parent who stays behind. We went to sleep in peels of laughter, rather than the tears I had started to shed at Zumba prior to my early departure.

I looked up separation anxiety and it is something that a child does not experience until they are eight months old. We adopted Tin when he was nine months old. He had been living with his great aunt and partner for one month. Surely this might have something to do with it. But what’s interesting is that he does not go through the same anxiety when I go away, it’s only with Tatjana.

Meanwhile, during my free time here at home, I’m living with a bully, someone who feels so bad that they want to make sure I feel doubly bad and for better or worse, he accomplishes just that. This morning, I lay in bed in the back, as we are renting the house this weekend and I transitioned back here last night. I saw two bright stars through the clerestory window – an opportunity that I would not have up front in my cave bedroom.

I decided to hell with it at 3:30 and went ahead and got out of bed. This should add to the grist of today. But maybe not, perhaps I needed this quiet, pre-dawn time to center fortify myself for today and what it will bring. I’m hoping for a good day, but I’m not going to bank on it.

A friend of mine says that she separates the world into those who have been through therapy and those who haven’t. For me, honestly, I can’t tell the difference. A friend asked me the other day how I was handling all of the issues in my life and I said, “Here’s the deal, number one, get a life coach, number two, go back to therapy, and number three start meditating, and number four … .” Before I could finish, my friend was laughing.

Seriously. I went back to see E today after a while away and it’s odd but going back to someone who has been there when you were going through a separation, a divorce, a parent’s death, an adoption is like going to the source.

I had been thinking about going back to therapy since last summer, but was reluctant because my therapist had gone through some challenging personal issues and I felt awkward talking about my own. But recently, we had started watching In Treatment and watched the first five episodes and I realized there is a time for therapy in everyone’s life.

There are just times when your wires get crossed like mine are right now – I can’t keep my grey zone centered – everything just seems alarmingly black or white. I don’t like my dogs, my cats, my bald head, the weight I’m carrying or a lot of things that I might otherwise not be so bothered by. And yes, Hashimoto’s and alopecia make you more irritable and definitely more focused on yourself and less tolerant of anything that requires you to perform in any way – but that’s not all of it, because I’m sort of grateful for the H and the A as it allows me to say NO, a resounding NO, when I often struggle with that word.

I was at Rouse’s this morning and a woman approached and asked, “How long has it been?” And I nodded in confusion. “Are you in remission? I’ve been for a few years now.” No, no, I don’t have cancer I have a thyroid condition. “Oh, ohhhhh,” she said, “A woman was in here not too long ago had the same thing, she said her hair is never going to grow back.” (inner scream) Well, I’m hoping mine might grow back. Ha. Ha.

E said a lot of her patients had seemed to be returning, and I know it is because she always has been a champion for my “self” and now, when I’m really alienated from my “self,” it’s good to know that someone remembers who I am.

She mentioned that a woman she knows who is young, bald (cancer) and beautiful wears bold red lipstick and big earrings and struts. Wears it. Some days you wear it, and some days you don’t – women get weary. It really just depends on which side of the divide you happen to be standing on at any given time.

I was thinking this morning about Lance Armstrong because something on a smaller scale happened recently. I met someone and thought they were truly fine and then out of the blue met mutual friends who said something ugly about the person. It gave me pause. But with Lance, it gives me big pause. Lance was a doping fiend – good god I thought when I heard this – what’s next?

Recently, I’ve been thinking about my mother, because we are getting to that time of year when she passed, and this year will make three years from that date. She seems to be ever present in my mind as if she were here with me – and I hate to say it – but telling me, “I told you so.” My mother, who used to tell me she was the strong one, the one who stayed with my (mainly verbally) abusive father because of her children. I used to think, “huh, yeah right,” because I spent a lifetime thinking she was weak.

Sister, was I wrong. Her unconditional love and pacifism had more underlying strength then my father’s aggressive, macho, chauvinistic personality could ever bear. So how did it come to be that I was so wrong? I think it is a perception you gain by being there and you align with that perception and it becomes truth for you.

I was backing out of the car uptown the other day, getting a friend’s child out of the back of the truck, and a young black man was approaching. As he passed, I turned to him and smiled and he said, “You are a strong woman.” Then he kept walking, and as he passed, I realized how young he must be – maybe 15 years old, with a school backpack and shoelaces untied.

I’m back to reading Beverly Daniel’s Why Do All the Black Kids Sit Together in the Cafeteria? and my thoughts were heightened about how my son will grow up and be perceived. But then as I drove away I thought of what he said, “You are a strong woman.” I wonder if my mother put those words in his mouth. But then I thought he most likely said that to me because I’m bald and most people think I have cancer. Or maybe he didn’t think that at all, maybe he respects any woman who bares her pate in public because, she must be strong.

Lance is a fool – he had the whole world in love with him – but we were all duped. How could we be duped by a dope fiend? I don’t get it. How could there be an underlying response to a young black man approaching you from behind that causes pause? How could it be that a child brought up listening to verbal abuse cringes when she hears it in her adult life?

Habit. We’re in the habit of looking for heroes, and for those to condemn. We want an athlete who we can exploit – like Drew Brees – I’m always half worried we are going to find out he is a pedophile because so much is at stake with his reputation. I think this city is in the habit of disposing of young black men to such a degree that it is almost conscious-soothing to think they are to blame for all our collective fears. I think kids who listen to abuse from adults either become abusive or recoil in a tight fist inside.

I think, I think, I think.
Cogito ergo sum.
Am I?
I am a strong woman

But maybe all I think is way too simplistic. I listened to Mitt Romney last night saying something about how families should be two parents, a mother and a father, and my stomach turned a flip flop. Oh yes, in that perfect world where there is a mother and a father and they are raising their children in this perfect world where when the kids need they could just borrow from their ‘rents and create jobs. Why does that set my nonexistent hair on fire?

So this morning, in order to come to terms with everything I don’t know that is pushing up against everything I feel so intensely, I opened the Tao te Ching and this is the page I found:

#8
The supreme good is like water,
which nourishes all things without trying to.
It is content with the low places that people disdain.
Thus it is like the Tao.

In dwelling, live close to the ground.
In thinking, keep to the simple.
In conflict, be fair and generous.
In governing, don’t try to control.
In work, do what you enjoy.
In family life, be completely present.

When you are content to be simply yourself
and don’t compare or compete,
everybody will respect you.

This is how the morning started:

And then Tin woke up sick, and then my day became absorbed with trains – lots of trains and tissues and no’s – and lots of my explaining that hey, IT WAS MY DAY THAT GOT HIJACKED not yours, buster.

Last night, I went to hear E.O. Wilson speak about a book he had just finished about his hometown, Mobile, Alabama. He said he has spent his adult life at Harvard and has never felt home there or in the surrounding Boston area because it is too fragmented, too big, and I would add, not natural enough. Instead he insists he is an Alabaman, who happens to be a Harvard professor. Afterwards, as I was having him sign my books, I had my photo taken with the great naturalist and the artist of the collaboration, Why We Are Here, Alex Harris.

I listened to Wilson speak about his native land, about how there is more diversity in the city of Mobile than in any other U.S. city. And about how while he was thinking about this book, out on the E.O. Wilson trail, a guy showed him how to hypnotize a dragonfly.

Like any curious person, his first thought was he wants to study dragon flies. Never stop being curious. Wilson’s focus during a career lifetime has been on ants and he said the major difference between ants and people is ants are warriors – they are always battling neighboring ants. While humans send young men off to war, ants send old women.

Before I had gone to hear Wilson speak, I had stopped into the Student Center for the signing of Lafitte In Exile and had Frank sign the copy of my book. After all, I’m in it, explaining how I came to gay life.

I drove home, thinking about my own identity; I’m a New Orleanian no matter where I am. And as for why I live here, maybe the video below is an indication – I was coming home from the grocery store on Sunday and a parade followed me down the bayou. This morning, a friend told me there was a ram’s head floating in the bayou, speculating this wily band of paraders might have done it – whether that’s true or not doesn’t really matter – it’s just possible if not plausible.

Already my calendar is full till the end of the year – well not quite – but almost. Now that is scary. I was speaking to a friend who said a young woman in the Bywater has started an open Shabbat service at her house. I can remember when we were young always being home on Friday nights, my mother lighting the candles, my dad saying the prayers over the wine and the Challah – dipping the little pieces in salt and passing them around, looking for his reflection in the inky sweet wine.

Another friend was telling me about his Quaker upbringing where twice a week there was a gathering of everyone in one room for 45 minutes of silence – the kids did their homework, but still it was a time of just being together, being still, being quiet.

We cut a lot out over here, our friends we see not often enough, I can’t tell you the last time we went out to dinner although we did stop and check out Serendipity (just two apps at the bar) the other night before heading off to the Tiki Party, so many movement classes, music classes, gymnastics and stuff that Tin could be doing round the clock – we do say no a lot. But take tonight – two panels – one on Lafitte In Exile (the book that I am in) being discussed at the LGBT center at Tulane, and directly afterwards E.O. Wilson appearing himself to speak. I have missed the In Exile book signings one after another, but truly want to hear Wilson so it’s hard to say no.

Then there is parent night and annual appeal committee meeting and then the Breast Cancer walk, but what about a pumpkin patch – something to really mark the season besides the sugar orgy of Halloween. And let’s not even talk about the fact that I have a weekend pass to Voodoo Fest. Lord Today!

Yes, the season is grinding into high gear as it always does in New Orleans around this time – just this past weekend was the Film Festival and the Blues Festival vying for attendance.

Onward, upward, weary soldiers.

We have a black cat that insists on body slamming the back door and creating a lot of havoc. This caused Tin one too many nightmares as she tends to do it at 2am or 4am. So after getting scared three nights in a row, we took the cat and put her in the laundry room for the night. It helped, but Tin unfortunately had gotten in the habit of being scared. Yikes.

So last night was a sleepless night – not wanting to go to bed, not wanting to stay in bed, and every few hours running down the hall like all get out. So no sleep at all.

Which means that this morning as I walked through the park, I did so through the haze of grogginess, and when I went for my swim I felt like I had been swimming for miles before I even started.

But I finally got myself together and am beginning the day in earnest. It’s Monday. The part of the week that commands you to pay attention. And so I’m all ears, eyes, and open to what the week will bring.