The Lesson

Nothing’s ever convenient in a life that’s packed wall to wall with obligations and goals. When a cog in this ridiculous machine comes loose something out of the usual schedule, say a family visit, becomes even less convenient.

I’d been doing my best to keep up on all my various writing projects, care for my animals, keep my house clean and handle the tasks of my side job that (barely) pays the bills. In general I do all this with the motto of do no harm. I try to do good deeds, help when I can and stay in integrity in all my communications. Imagine my surprise when a communication hit the fan.

As my sister arrived for a rare visit, I found myself embroiled in a crazy misunderstanding between industry friends that was being blown completely out of proportion. I am not used to people thinking ill of me. It makes me very uncomfortable. When I’ve done nothing wrong and people think ill, it’s really hard for me to accept.

As I took my sis around town I fielded phone call after phone call from various supporters and detractors. I floundered to come up with spin control and any kind of positive communication plan. As my sister and I walked on the beach, my stomach was in knots wondering how I would positively resolve the issues at hand and restore friendships where now there was upset.

My sister left later that day and I waved her off as I jumped on yet another phone call. I was so busy trying to manage people’s misinformed bad opinions of me, I hadn’t even taken her to frozen yogurt like I’d promised.

A friend called me later that night. She listened patiently as I told her the ins and outs of the crazy communication breakdown.

“People in Hollywood are nuts,” she wisely barked. “They always will be. You need to grow a thick skin and not give a crap what they think about you. You just focus on your good work and screw the rest. If they don’t like you, screw them.”

I had never considered the possibility of just letting go. Clearly these people were not any BFFs of mine if they would jump to the conclusions they jumped to, never checking in with me; if they would hold onto the drama of what was truly a non-issue to effectively end our friendship. The whole ridiculous incident felt like High School again and the letting go of the craziness was like fast forwarding the years back to the present. A relief.

All along I kept asking myself: what am I supposed to be learning from this? The thick skin was certainly part of it. Letting go of other people’s opinions, too. I thought about the crazy anti-fan mail some of my famous friends deal with. Certainly, there was value in that. But that still wasn’t quite it.

Before she left, my sister, out of the blue, gave me a necklace. A silver Celtic knot style pendant with the words “warrior spirit” stamped on the back. As I drove away from dropping her off and saying goodbye, I rubbed the pendant. And then I got the lesson. I had had one of the most important people in my life with me for 24 precious hours and instead of enjoying her, I had been worried about some crazy bullshit that I probably won’t even remember in ten years. Worried isn’t even accurate. I had let it completely absorb me. And my sister was leaving.

In the end, all the stuff resolved itself. Not in the way I would have thought. But as it does, it resolved in the way it needed to. More importantly, I got the lesson: don’t let the crazy bullshit take you away from the stuff that counts.

A Page From Nancy's Book

Need your couch moved? Have a new living room that needs painting? A ride to the airport? I’m that friend. I’m the one that you know you can count on if you need something. I have to be. It’s what makes me valuable as a friend, right? Besides, I always feel too guilty to say no to the “Help me move and I’ll buy beer and pizza” emails. I know what it feels like to need help at those times. Yet I’m never surprised when friends say no to me.

“You give too much,” a wise friend mused last week. “Where do you think that comes from?”

Without skipping a beat I deadpanned “Middle school.” I was that kid that sat alone at the corner lunch table and got shit on by everyone. Hence I was willing to do anything to have someone be my friend. It’s taken me a long time to learn that people are your friends based on who you are with them, not if you’ll carry their couch. At least the ones that count.

I was sitting in the living room of a fabulous and wise couple I know, asking Mr. Wise for advice. A girlfriend of mine had just asked to borrow a sizable chunk of my DVD collection. When I got her message I felt a pit sink in my stomach. For me, it wasn’t a question of if I’d fork over the movies. I felt like I had to. I had a resource and she needed it. The question was how much of my own mind would I speak in the process?

The thing was I had never let this particular friend know how upset I’d been after she’d done me the favor of pet sitting for me over the holidays. I had arrived home to find my pets alive. And that was about it. Nor was that much even immediately apparent. The cat was gone as she’d left a window open. It took me several hours to find him hiding in some neighborhood bushes and hungry from three days outside. My dog meanwhile, mused over a Tupperware of chicken bones she’d inexplicably left on the floor. If my dog had gotten into the Tupperware, he’d have been dead. In my preserve-the-friendship mode, I chalked these things off to the fact she was not a pet owner and wouldn’t have known. The rest of my house though there was really no chalking off.

My favorite wooden spoon was missing along with my dish scrubber. My favorite pearl-handled knife had a huge black melted scorch down the handle and a chip in the blade. My prized Africa photo album that’d I’d specially left out for her to enjoy had greasy food stains on the wooden cover. Other photo albums of mine had photos slipped out or crushed in the bindings. Several DVDs were missing including still-wrapped ones that I had for sale on my Amazon seller account. I’d had to apologize to buyers and refund their money when I noticed their purchases were in fact not present.

All this, and the fact that she’d never acknowledged the earrings of mine that I gave her as a thank you, was stewing in the back of my brain. As I ran through this litany of negligence and carelessness, Mr. Wise stared at me. “You’re clearly not loaning her anything else, right?”

It was like a bolt of lightening. “You mean I don’t have to?” It had never occurred to me to just say no. For me keeping a friend always meant a yes and I just had to deal with how good or bad I felt about it. With this friend, I intended to loan her the DVDs. My only question was: do I tell her how much her ‘pet sitting’ upset me or not?

I am amazingly capable of talking myself into the fact that I’m really the jerk in a given scenario. After all, how lame was I to be attached to material things like a knife? The pets were alive in the end and the rest is bygones, right? I didn’t want to seem ungrateful. And frankly when I thought about really airing my feelings, I was afraid I’d turn in to a screaming monster. Sitting on the rage was clearly the healthy choice. At least I still had a friend that way.

“Yeah, great friend.” My advisor scoffed. “Wouldn’t want her out of your life.” I took his point but at the same time, this girlfriend is someone whose company and world view I really enjoy. But Mr. Wise wasn’t going to let me off that easy. “You’re not being a friend by not sharing how you really feel. You’re short-changing her.”

I went home and thought about everything I wanted to say to her. I took it out of accusing tones and kept it all to how I felt. Then I called her and told her I would not be loaning her any DVDs and I felt free. If she chooses not to be my friend anymore. That’s OK.

So what I’m learning is that it’s OK to say no. Nancy was right back in the day. There may be a few bumps along the way but I like who I get to be when I say no to something that makes me feel used. And the friends that stay will be the ones who value that. And yes, I’ll still help you paint your kitchen.

Guest Genius

Favorite Meta-Movie Moment of the Weekend:

Dad, a huge fan of the Everly Brothers, et al, catching a scene or two of Christopher Guest's "A Mighty Wind" and remarking: "The Folksmen? I don't remember those guys."

How to explain to someone not familiar with Spinal Tap?

Runner Up Favorite Meta-Movie Moment:

Regarding a movie advert - having to answer dad's question with: "Well, they are cars and trucks that turn into these robot-warrior things. But they're actually aliens and some want to save us and some don't. See?"

Silence.

Have I mentioned loglines are not my forte?

Sharing, American Style

In general, I consider myself a person of generous spirit. I’ll help you move, help you paint your kitchen, let you borrow stuff and all that. General generosity. Except when it comes to food.

Not all food. I love to cook for friends. Host a party, that sort of thing. But my friends know better than to ask for a bite of my dessert because, as I have explained, you never know when a world shortage of cheesecake will hit.

An Israeli woman I sometimes work with recently invited herself to rummage through my purse and pull out the bag of almonds I carry in case of blood sugar crashes. She stood there, popping them in her mouth and asking me if they were smoked or dry roasted as I stared at her in disbelief.

“You didn’t even ask me if you could have some,” was the most civil response I could manage.

She made a big deal about handing me the bag back and then lectured me about how much she shares her food and that my selfishness was such an American thing. I snatched the almonds back and hid my purse. Then I pondered her point.

When I’ve been abroad, I’ve been shared with by people from many countries on an almost universally consistent basis. I’ve had passing conversations with people on trains who, upon discovering I had no hotel booked, insisted I stay with them. And there was never a concern this would be an awkward or unsafe choice. It’s just the way it’s done. Some of my best travel experiences have included meeting these locals’ families and sharing basic humanity with them over homemade gnocchi.

Sadly, that sort of hospitality is something I’ve never experienced on these shores. Nor would it ever occur to me to invite a fellow plane or bus traveler in for the night. We just don’t do that here. Maybe she had a point. Americans aren’t so into sharing. Or maybe it’s just me.

I flashed on a memory from second grade. I, in my Girl Scout preparedness, had brought a tasty cookie to class only to be faced by that age-old refrain: did you bring enough for the whole class? I had glared at the teacher in my seven-year-old indignation and responded with what I felt was great logic: “If they wanted cookies they should have thought of that at home and brought their own.” I could not grasp why what I saw as everyone else’s stupidity should result in any loss of cookie for me.

Needless to say, that did not go over well and I spent the afternoon, as I often did, in my itchy wool uniform in the Principal’s office.

So while I like to lament that America just isn’t as generous as some other countries, perhaps, as they say, regime change starts at home. I am blessed with plenty of generosity from many different sources so it’s not like my imagined cheesecake shortage is a viable scenario. You do always seem to get what you need in the end.

So next time I see my Israeli friend I won’t worry so much about running out of almonds and offer her some if I’ve got them. I won’t, however, be thrilled though if she rummages through my purse again. That’s just un-American.

Wait To Worry

This is one of my aunt’s mantras. And it makes sense. When I think of how much time we spend – I spend – concocting upset only to have the thing I was stressing about turn out just fine, it’s silly. What inane creatures we must seem from the point of view of dogs or space aliens.

I know it’s partly a control issue. We like to imagine we are in control of a situation or caring about it by worrying when really all we’re doing is giving ourselves ulcers. Now as a writer, my version of many of these worries tends to run to the melodramatic. To put it mildly.

My father had surgery today. Never the kind of thing you want to take lightly. But by all accounts his was a fairly routine procedure and most likely we’d have nothing to worry about. His girlfriend was tasked with calling me when he came out of surgery to let me know everything was fine and then I would call other family members to report. The appointed hour of his surgery came and went and I hadn’t gotten a call. I tried to stay calm and positive. But I kept finding myself running down the “What if they’re not calling me because it’s bad?” track.

After several more silent hours passed, I was beside myself with worry. The sappiest dad/daughter hallmark cards were getting me choked up and I found myself saving his voice mails from that morning. After all, what if they were the last ones I ever got?

Finally I called Information in his county and got a hold of the hospital. The first lady I spoke with had no record of him as a patient. OK, that’s not worrying. The second, third and fourth bounced me from department to department. Finally I ended up talking to an orderly in an operating room.

“Oh yeah, we’re just cleaning up that room.” He informed me. From what? Massive blood loss on the Linoleum? He didn’t know the status of the patient.

I finally got a friendly nurse at yet another department front desk. I gave her my father’s name and she sweetly asked me to wait and then put me on hold for an eternity. As the canned Chuck Mangione trickled over the phone, my imagination ran away.

Why is this taking so long? Clearly it’s because the records were not there. Or they were there…but she doesn’t want to be the one to tell me. She’s trying to find a doctor or someone else to break the horrible news that my father has passed away. Oh my god. How am I going to deal with everything if he’s gone? His business dealings, his investments I won’t know how to handle, his crazy dog I’ll have to take. Did I remember to save that voice mail from this morning? Did I tell him I love him before he went in? How could I face life without my dad? I am not ready to be an adult!

Tears were running down my face as the hold music blared. I scolded myself: Get a hold of yourself, woman. You don’t even know what’s going on and some poor nurse could pick back up and you’ll be a blubbering mess. It’s hard to explain to a stranger that you are crying over an imagined possible scenario.

At last a nurse came back to the line. “He was released hours ago. He should be home. Everything’s fine.” Resolving to smack my dad’s inane girlfriend for letting me stew in my own worry for hours, I thanked the nurse and blew my nose.

The next day, when the drugs had worn off, dad called me and everything was indeed fine. I felt funny telling him how upset I’d been. It’s kind of odd talking to someone about the effect their death will have on you.

Of course it’s hard not to worry about someone in surgery and I’m sure there are plenty of morals in there about making the time you have with people count. The important thing is now my dad knows I save his voice mails and worry about him. For me, I’ll try to contain the worst-case-scenario musings to the page.