An Influential Book

I just learned that Geneen Roth has a new book out titled Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything. Haven't read it yet, but put in a request to my public library. I first stumbled upon Roth 25-odd years ago when I read her book Breaking Free From Compulsive Eating. Despite the rather awful title, the book is really terrific. I turned to her chapters "On Wanting" and "On Having" and "On Trusting and Befriending Yourself" over and again as I learned how to tune into and "feed" my own deepest needs rather than reach for food as a quick fix, as had been my conditioned behavior since childhood. For several years this book was my bible. Similar to an old woman who used to wander around Cambridge with actual Bible in hand, mumbling phrases to herself, I studied and underlined passage upon passage until I could live into Roth's words.

Some short excerpts, profound and practical:

Imagine your body is absolutely fine the way it is. What happens? Where does your attention go? What takes the place of wanting? What is the crescendo of the day when wanting is absent?

When you sit down to a meal you don't want, you can wrap up your meal and put it away.

When I glowingly describe a person I have met to Sara, she says, "They sound wonderful." Then she pauses and says, "So what do they struggle with?" Obviously I don't know the answer, but her response immediately puts my canonization of them into perspective.

It's not a matter of changing what you eat. It's a matter of changing how you live. When you work on the root level of compulsion, and begin allowing yourself to experience discomfort, then you won't need to eat to push it away... The richness and quality of our lives depends not on pain or the lack of it, but on how we use it.

When you hear yourself say, "I'm fat," ask yourself what you are feeling fat about--your work, your children, your friendships, something you did or didn't say. Think of feeling fat as a metaphor that describes just about anything uncomfortable.

Pay close attention to the point at which your focus moves from how good the food tastes to the urgency or desire to eat all you can while you can. The shift usually occurs after you've had enough and before all the food is gone... If you were told you could have food again anytime you wanted it, would you still be eating it?

Eat sitting down.

Practice asking [for what you need]. When you ask, the very worst that could happen is that someone will say no. And that's painful. But something takes place in the asking that lasts even longer than pain: a confirmation of your self-worth. When you ask, you have decided that you are good enough to ask.

Here's a video clip of Roth touting her new book. In fact, it sounds a lot like the old one from 25 years ago. It will be interesting to read if she's hit upon any new or useful insights.

Mr. Rabbit, Mr. Rabbit

I've been listening to a wide variety of kids' songs lately, lullabies, folk tunes, collections of animal songs, bug songs, hopscotch songs. I'm in the process of adopting a beautiful three-year-old boy from Russia and compiling a song library to have ready for him when he gets home.

Last night it was getting late and I was all set to turn off my CD player and turn in when this song, sung here by folk singer Bill Staines, stopped me in my tracks. The talking rabbit tickled my whimsy. The bouncy tune perked me up. But it was the matter-of-fact, unapologetic truth of the chorus that stirred something deep in me that I didn't have any idea needed stirring until that moment. Shine, shine. So what if your ears are too wide or too long or your coat is too grey. Every little soul's gonna shine, shine.

It can be really hard to remember, in the face of conventional "wisdom," that shining is not only an option, but the truth of who we are. Conventional, commercial thinking would have us less-than-perfect beings instead hide, hide or shame, shame or change, change or buy, buy in response to our imperfections. Thank you, Mr. Rabbit, hokey penny whistle notwithstanding, for what feels like vindication.

Listen to the song here (click the triangle on the left).

"The nature of this flower is to bloom,"

says Alice Walker. And she ain't talking flowers really, but you and me of course.

Faces, at 14

Do you remember 14? It wasn’t one of my banner years.

There were high points, for sure. Congress passed Title IX which meant I could take shop class with the boys instead of sewing or cooking with the girls. Goodbye blueberry pancakes, hello bread boards shaped like fish. My masterpiece was a cribbage board shaped like a “J” that my mom (Judy) still uses. I got really into beveling the edges and drilling each of the 121 little holes, plus 4 extra for peg holders.

But mostly 14 was a series of let-downs. I had an intractable case of acne that lasted the entire 12 months. Daisy my cat was killed, most likely by a raccoon out back. And half-way through the year my parents divorced. It had been a long time coming, but still, how do you prepare to swim in a sea of heartache? Dad moved out in the early morning. It was still dark out, and pouring down rain, and I pretended not to hear him tiptoe into my bedroom and then lean over and kiss me on the forehead. He didn’t wake me up to say goodbye, and I didn’t open my eyes either, not until he turned away and I watched him close the door behind him. The latch clicked shut and all I could see was a single sliver of light beneath the door. Then his car started, tires crunched the gravel as he backed out the driveway, and he drove away. “Goodbye, Daddy,” I whispered, and then pulled the covers up over my head and sobbed and sobbed like I imagine Niobe must’ve sobbed when her children were slain, even after Zeus had turned her to stone. Rain pelted down. That was the saddest moment of my young life, the one that still echoes across time whenever anybody close to me leaves.

It's right about then I began my serious study of women’s faces. The timing was no coincidence. Mostly did this at coffee hour following Sunday morning church where a corps of women set out the faux crystal creamers and kept watch over the cookie plates. I studied the ways crow’s feet etch from the corners of a woman’s eyes, especially when she smiles. I noted the single or double worry lines that crease the brow between a woman’s eyes, especially when she frowns or is skeptical. I noticed, as a rule, wrinkles run unevenly across a woman’s neck, like fault lines across the earth. Old ladies sometimes had double chins or, more horrifying, stray hairs popping out of places you don’t expect to see hair, not on women anyway.

Then I’d go home and scrutinize my own face in the mirror, trying to figure out how not to age. If I never raised my eyebrows, I deduced, I’d avoid getting lines on my forehead. If I never squint, I’d ward off worry marks between my eyes. If I scrunched up my face and extended my lips all over, like a circus clown, my neck and cheeks would stay taut. First I practiced with eyes open, watching the effects in the mirror, then with eyes closed, so I could replicate them at any given point in a day—walking the railroad tracks on the way to school, doing algebra in study hall, drilling 121 little holes in woodshop.

Seen one way, I get a solid “A” for assiduousness. I devised a semi-scientific research study, collected field data, drew conclusions, and put results into direct practice. A budding applied scientist, you might say. Seen another, I get a “D” for downright dumb and distressing. The problem wasn’t only my self obsession. It was the way that I judged and outright pitied these women their looks, and at church no less. I had no mercy.

What now? What am I to do with this memory decades later, with my own face showing its natural age? I guess it’s a good sign that I feel some remorse.

I try saying I’m sorry, retroactively, to the coffee hour women and asking forgiveness. Forgive me my heartlessness, my youth, my fear. I thank them for their generous service, for being so kind to newcomers at church, and for feeding us each week. Although I barely remember them, I wonder about these women’s lives beyond their looks. What matters most to you? What captivates and delights you? Whom do you love, and who has loved you well? How have you struggled and come through?

This seems like a decent start. There’s palpable relief in owning up to my part in past mistakes. But it’s not enough. This is no substitute for making a living amends, for doing something different—the diametric opposite of my past behavior, if possible—that affects real people right now.

So here it is early May and finally spring is in the air. The daffodils are back, along with the tulips, the graceful white petals of the magnolias, and people. People are out in droves, euphoric in the fresh air and on the streets. I stroll through Harvard Square watching them all.

“May you be happy,” I say under my breath to an old woman in hot pink pants sitting on the steps of the Christian Science church. “May you have peace of mind,” I say to a tall teenage boy in hipster glasses talking loudly on his cell phone. Silently, secretly, I offer well wishes to everyone I see, especially people I’m tempted to judge or to overlook. I leave no one out. Not the obese man eating junior mints whose weight unsettles me. Not the college girl with a mane of thick hair whose beauty intimidates me. Not the black guy in the wheelchair, the Indian woman in her green and gold sari, the beggar outside the tobacco shop.

A spiritually-minded friend once advised me to pray that other people get what I want, which seems like an exceedingly shrewd way to outwit selfishness. So I try this too. “May you have a clear sense of purpose,” I say to a man in a white undershirt with a huge beer belly hanging over his belt. “May you know love,” I wish a Korean school girl with thick eyebrows. “May your day be filled with graceful surprises,” I whisper to a woman with bleached-blonde hair, a salon tan, and a surprisingly husky voice.

Full disclosure: the undershirt guy with the big belly? My first impulse is to dodge him. I want nothing to do with him. But upon second glance, after I’ve wished him well, this guy and I are related somehow. I’ve invested a teeny-tiny share of my heart in him and it’s uncanny how hard it is to write off someone I have an emotional stake in, even if it’s a unilateral, one-way stake I’ve conjured up myself and held for exactly five seconds. God speed, my brother.

I read somewhere that the reason Jesus could heal the leper wasn’t because he had any extraordinary supernatural powers, just natural visionary ones, available to any of us. Jesus overlooked all illness, all imperfection, and saw only the truth in a person, only the love in him or her. Whether or not it’s true, and even though I'm far from a practicing Christian, this story gives me cause for hope. Pray and meditate as I might, the last I checked I’m still no miracle worker. But luckily I can choose how I see and perceive things, and I’m choosing to see differently than before. I'm sick of being a card-carrying fault-finder. I'm making a conscious effort to see others through kind and loving eyes, and to act accordingly. And while I’m fairly sure that my gaze hasn’t healed any lepers lately, let alone a friend’s sore throat, it is healing me. It's salving/solving that merciless part of me.

One last thing. I don’t leave myself out of the equation. I choose to see myself through kind eyes too, me today and especially my young self, at 14, who didn’t know any better. Bless the girl who had no control over what was happening to her family, the girl who tried valiantly and in vain to control what would happen to her face.

Hips

In February the world lost Lucille Clifton, a wonderful poet I had the pleasure of hearing read back in the '80s at the Center for the Arts on Staten Island. She had a way of taking the most common, everyday things--in this case, her own hips--and helping us appreciate the power and beauty in them. Listen to this short poem... It's always a matter of perspective, isn't it?

If you want to know more about Clifton, The New Yorker published an interesting remembrance.