Janis Jaquith's Open Salon Blog

Silly Putty Lust: A Cautionary Tale

Wed, 3 Dec 2008 10:12:57 -0500

There's a scene in Miracle on 34^th Street where Natalie Wood is feeling glum because Santa Claus didn't bring her what she really wanted: a house.

On the way to visit Mr. Kringle in the old-folks home for Christmas dinner, Natalie's looking out the car window when she sees it: her house!

She leaps out of the car, runs inside, and lo and behold, it's vacant, for sale, and Mr. Kringle has left his cane by the fireplace, so we all know it really is meant to be the cozy nest she's been craving while living in a New York high-rise.

Many years ago, I had a similar experience, but the outcome wasn't anywhere near as rosy.

A girl in my second-grade class brought her Silly Putty in for show and tell. She demonstrated how you could press the shiny, beige substance onto a portion of a Mutt and Jeff colored cartoon from the Sunday paper, and when you peeled it off -- like a miracle -- the cartoon would be reproduced, backward, on that gorgeous putty.

You could then stretch the putty and control the height and breadth of Mutt and Jeff: you could reverse roles, and make Mutt short and squat, and Jeff tall and slender. Not unlike God, Himself. You could be master of the Silly Putty universe.

To call it a mere "toy" is to undervalue the phenomenon. Silly Putty was a passageway to another level of reality.

So, when December rolled around, Silly Putty was high on the list that I mailed off to the North Pole. Come Christmas morning, Santa Claus had, as usual, been ridiculously generous with me. The living room couch was covered with toys -- a Tiny Tears doll with layette, and Tinker Toys among them. But no Silly Putty.

I unhooked my stocking from the nail at the top of our bookcase, dumped out the Hershey's kisses, the miniature candy bars and jacks, but – surely there was some mistake! – no Silly Putty. I stuck my hand between the couch cushions, even looked underneath, but apart from some coins and crumbs, I came up empty.

As was our tradition, we went to Mass, then spent the rest of the day making the rounds to relatives' houses. By sunset, we were at the home of my wild cousins, the four Cassidy boys.

They got the kind of toys I would never want to play with. Nothing but guns and cars on racing tracks, that kind of thing. These guys had little appreciation for what Santa Claus brought them, and every year, by the time we got there, they would have broken most of their new stuff.

I was sprawled on their living room floor, sighing, yearning to get back to my own house, my own toys, and escape from these noisy, brawling Cassidys, when my gaze fell upon something under their couch. It was blue and round – could it be? – I thrust my arm under the couch and felt that egg-shaped smoothness. It was Silly Putty! Oh Santa Claus, you didn't forget! You got the wrong house, that's all.

Suddenly, I was Natalie Wood -- I had my own drama with a happy ending! Unlike Natalie, though, I thought it best not to share my excellent news with anyone. They might not understand. I sat up, hiked my pant leg, and slipped the blue egg deep into my knee sock.

Back home, by the hallway light that fell across my bed, I popped open the egg. Inside was the glistening, pristine putty. Not so much as a fingerprint on it. I marveled at the smoothness, the foreignness of this substance. Obviously, Santa Claus had made a simple mistake: he'd left my gift at my cousins' house. Understandable, what with all those deliveries to make in such a cramped time frame.

And none of the Cassidy boys had even opened the egg. Proof positive that they cared not one whit about this precious gift. It would have been totally wasted on them. I didn't touch the putty, either, preferring to keep it virginal until I could direct my full attention to it.

I rolled it under the bed, and was settling back into my pillow, imagining myself stretching and kneading the putty, merrily distorting the faces of Uncle Scrooge and Casper, when my mother came in and sat on the edge of my bed.

Was there anything I wanted to talk about? Uh, no. And I knew, didn't I, that stealing is a sin? Oh, man.

Feeling horrendously misunderstood, I hung over the edge of the bed and reached way under for the Silly Putty. I handed it to Mum. It belonged (or so everyone apparently thought) to my cousin Gary, and she would return it to him. And by the way, Janis, Santa Claus doesn't make mistakes like that. He knows who gets what.

I knew it: I should have locked myself in the bathroom with a stack of comic books and the putty. At least then I would have some memories to cling to.

Maybe it's because I forgot about it, but I never did get my own Silly Putty. And, to this day, I don't know why Santa Claus would have set me up like that.

What heartbreak feels like

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 21:11:53 -0500

Your blood pressure falls. You're shaking so bad you can hardly hold onto the phone. You're too weak to stand, too weak to sit. You slide down onto the floor.

This is what heartbreak feels like. Surely, everyone has experienced heartbreak. But, for those of you who have not felt this way, for those of you who have done this to the rest of us, this is what it feels like.

Lying on the floor, the phone still in your hand, you make a pathetic attempt to mask your grief, to sound normal. But the huskiness in your voice betrays you.

You say, "I understand. Really. I'm okay. No, look, I think this is for the best. You're right. Yes, yes, of course, we'll always be friends."

Oh, right, friends. That's the worst part. What you want to say is: look, my friends don't rip my heart out, stomp on it and set fire to it. My friends don't tell me they don't want to see me anymore.

I used to think that a happy marriage would erase those old wounds, make me mentally healthy and evolved. Hah. All it takes is a movie, or a friend's crisis, or just an empty afternoon to set me to brooding all over again.

A few months ago, I was sitting on the couch, leaning up against my devoted husband and reading the newspaper over his shoulder, when I came across an article about Carroll Spinney, the fellow who plays Big Bird on Sesame Street.

In the article, he tells of the time when his wife left him, and he was so heartbroken that he found himself weeping inside his Big Bird suit -- sobbing, inside his Big Bird suit.

Doesn't that story bring every heartache you've ever had right back to the surface?

Many's the time I've struggled to hide behind a mask of bravery and go on with life, as though my heart were not hemorrhaging. It doesn't work. Instead, I become transparent. Sorrow infuses my every movement, my every word. I am marinating in grief, and I fool no one.

And in this twisted state of mind, I'm hoping that someone comes along and rips his heart out someday. Someday soon.

Is this love? I don't think so. I'm not sure what it is. But the memory of it makes me powerfully grateful for my happy marriage. Today, memories are all that remain of old heartaches. Now, I can give the appearance of a woman who is evolved and unshakable in her contentment.

But all it takes, even while cuddling up and sharing a newspaper, is a story like the one about Carroll Spinney crying inside his Big Bird suit, and it all comes back.

If the truth be known, it never really went away.

I don't know what the future holds, but I'd like to know where I could get my hands on a Big Bird costume, just in case.

A virtual undertaking: I conjure the dead on my iMac

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:11:02 -0500

This is a huge undertaking, and I am obsessed with it. I've gathered a few hundred photos, and I'm putting them all on a DVD: creating a display for my family -- a reason to gather, tell stories, and remember.

I'm scanning these family photographs, feeding them into my computer, and one by one, they appear, like magic, on my screen -- afterimages of youth and life.

Hunched over my iMac for hours, I forget to eat, forget to sleep. The room around me fades away and I am drawn into the luminous image on my screen. I don't want to stop. I tell myself: Just one more picture. And then, with the click of a mouse, I conjure the dead.

These pictures are familiar, I've seen them in albums and shoeboxes over the years, but the paper photos are different. They are small, the people dwarfed by sky and trees and sand, by furniture and wallpaper. Those Brownie cameras and Instamatics were not close-up friendly.

Look at this paper snapshot of my parents as newlyweds -- it's faded and yellowed, there are tiny white spots all over it. It's mostly houses, beach, and strangers on blankets. My parents are the ones looking at the camera. But now I'll scan it, feed it into my computer, and watch what happens.

One click, and the extraneous background and the strangers fall away, and we're left with the entwined young couple, who now fill the screen.

Using every software tool I can think of, I enhance this photograph. What time has faded and yellowed, I resurrect with color correction and sharpened contrast. I erase the spots on their skin, in their hair, fill in scratches and creases.

And then, the magic happens. I sit back and marvel at the restoration of my father -- a young man brought back to life – and of my mother's astonishing, improbable youth. Scenes from the past so real, I inhabit them.

Now, I see the expressions on their faces. My mother encircles Dad's neck and shoulder with her arms. Her head rests against his; she smiles hugely at the camera. Everything about her says, "This guy is mine." Dad tilts his face toward Mum's but his eyes are on the camera, and there's a wicked twinkle in them.

Before, I knew from the writing on the back that this was a picture taken in 1941, in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Now, I know that this is a picture of what being in love looks like.

Fussing with these images feels like a kind of grooming, the way I once looked after my dolls, brushing their hair. Then later, with my kids, using Kleenex and spit to forefinger a smudge from a cheek.

Now, I'm grooming, nitpicking, fussing with images, preserving the past the way a mortician cares for the dead: Displaying for family what has been lost, and providing a reason to gather, tell stories, and remember.

Thanksgiving in Paris (...there's no place like home...)

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:11:59 -0500

It's Thanksgiving morning. A low, lumpy sky spits rain into my face as I run to catch the train to the suburbs. I collapse into the seat, take a deep breath, close my eyes and try to conjure up the smells that will saturate my mother's house today: apples, cinnamon, and that thick, welcoming smell of turkey innards and onions simmering on the stove.

Ingredients in our annual American Communion.

The train arrives at my stop and as I walk out into the street, the smell of diesel fumes reminds me that I am in France, and there will be no turkey feast today.

In France it's just...Thursday.

I hurry to the theatre where I meet my fellow Junior-Year-Abroad American students. A director will lecture us about the play we saw here last weekend.

We gather in a meeting room right next to the auditorium, which is packed with noisy little kids. Luckily, when the door is closed, the hubbub disappears.

The director sweeps in. He's wearing a calf-length leather coat and it swings freely from his shoulders, like a cape. He is a walking parody of an eccentric French man of the theatre, expounding on the play while pacing and gesturing hugely, pausing only to suck on the short cigarette held between his thumb and forefinger.

Keeping a straight face is not easy, but we make the effort and try to pay attention. Someone is quietly passing around a big bag of M & M's. You can't get M & M's in France. They must be part of someone's care-package from home. I hope there are some left by the time it reaches me.

And then it begins.

The soundtrack to -- of all things -- The Wizard of Oz comes bursting through the wall. There is no way we can pay attention to the French director now. It's hopeless.

I recognize the instrumental version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow and look around to see that we are all flicking tiny, discreet glances at our fellow countrymen, enjoying the shared surprise and recognition.

We continue to feign interest in what the director is saying to us, but the music is very loud, and I long to be on the other side of that wall, watching as Dorothy Gale of Kansas once again finds her way home.

All eyes are on the director as he pauses to light another cigarette. On the soundtrack, baby chicks are peeping.

Judy Garland begins her sweet, sad crooning of Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Now, no one is looking at the director. We are not focusing on anything in that room as the soft shadow of homesickness settles on our faces.

Wordlessly, the bag is passed to me and I shake out a single M & M, a tan one, before I pass it along.

I pop it in my mouth and silently give thanks for this tiny feast.

Can cancer induce joy? Worked for me.

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:11:33 -0500

“I’m going to hang up now, so I can scream.” Still clutching the receiver, I sank to the kitchen floor and let out a howl. A nurse had just relayed my biopsy results.

Although I hope that you, gentle reader, never require a biopsy and never have to wait by the phone like a desperate girlfriend for the verdict, I am here to report that this experience has been an exercise in joy and love, and I’m grateful for it.

I’ve long suspected that life is an elaborate hallucination. If only we could step back and observe ourselves, like lucid dreamers -- aware they’re in a dream state and directing the course of the drama -- we could influence the events of our lives through methods beyond work and worry.

For decades, I’ve been devouring books on hypnosis, meditation, past-life experiences, near-death experiences – the kind of stuff that makes my kids roll their eyes and wonder when someone is going to throw a net over their mother. I’ve never gone public with these weird interests of mine. But, due to unforeseen circumstances, I decided to blow my cover.

During a routine colonoscopy in late July, the doctor beheld my innards on the TV monitor and said, “That’s a tumor. About the size of a golf ball.” The ultrasound test done at the same time showed that the tumor had grown nearly all the way through the intestinal wall. That’s how she knew it was cancer – the benign ones don’t invade like that. Appointments were made with a radiation doctor, an oncologist and a surgeon.

While riding home from the colonoscopy, I made a decision. I would be one of those plucky people who have awful things happen to them and declare they wouldn’t change a thing because it has been a great blessing. I had no idea how they accomplished that perceptual feat, so I took a leap and just decided that this would be a wonderful gift.

As it happens, my recent focus in the world of the hippie-dippie has been “the power of attraction.” Here’s the gist of it: Our thoughts literally create our world. Joyful thoughts create things that we like and fearful thoughts create things we don’t like. Therefore, if you can “raise your vibration” by feeling joyful (regardless of external circumstance) you can cause joy-inducing events to happen in your life.

Well, now. My very own cancer diagnosis -- could there be a better opportunity to test drive this cart-before-the-horse approach to reality?

A big part of the power of attraction practice is not mentally rehearsing outcomes you don’t want to materialize. That meant NOT thinking about my hair falling out from chemotherapy, NOT thinking about getting burned from radiation, and NOT thinking about an incision in my abdomen. Not easy.

So, I contacted family and friends, asking them to envision me “happy, healthy, whole, and healed.” Soon, Quakers were holding me in the Light, Catholics in a prayer circle were visualizing me unscathed, and my atheist friends were embracing an image of me intact and thriving.

Meanwhile, I withdrew from my normal routine and spent every waking moment trying to induce joy.

I would wake up in the morning, remember the diagnosis, think, “Ah, jeez…” and shuffle off to the bathroom in a funk. By the time I’d finished brushing my teeth, and reading aloud the list of positive affirmations stuck to the wall with a Band-Aid, I’d be feeling optimistic.

I listened, all day long, to a collection of songs I’d compiled – ones that make my heart rise upon hearing the first few notes. I listened at home, in the car, at the gym. You might not think that hearing “Put On Your Sunday Clothes” (from Hello Dolly) over and over again would make your heart soar, but it worked for me.

Already, this tumor was feeling like a gift because it served as a catalyst: I was experiencing more total, visceral joy in the days following that diagnosis than I have in my entire life.

Then came the preliminary (the first of three) biopsy results four days after the diagnosis: Benign. My doctor found it hard to believe that was possible, saying, “In my heart I have to believe there are cancer cells in there.” After all, it had grown into the wall. Totally benign tumors aren’t supposed to do that. So, she did another biopsy.

I waited a few days for that report, still dancing around my living room, emailing people and reminding them to keep up the good work. Result: those cells were benign, too.

It was looking like I could skip the chemo and radiation and go right to surgery. Of course, surgery involves losing a big chunk of innards, and ending up with plumbing that might never work right again. Still, things were looking up.

At my appointment with the surgeon, I was seen first by a resident who looked at the ultrasound photos and said, “You understand, don’t you, that these photos indicate that what you have is cancer.”

I took a deep breath and concentrated on my favorite affirmation: I am surrounded by everything I need to solve this problem.

The surgeon came in, took a look at the colonoscopy photos and said, “Hm. Looks like a big polyp to me. Doesn’t look like cancer.”

Plans were made for the surgeon to attempt to remove this golf ball of a tumor by way of colonoscopy rather than surgery, just three days later.

Meanwhile, people prayed, held me in the Light, and I leapt around to show tunes and the DMB song, “One Sweet World.”

This procedure might work. Might not. Might poke a hole in me requiring emergency surgery. Might be cancer cells lurking within, calling for surgery and chemo, after all. The final biopsy would determine my future.

I crowded out thoughts of incisions, baldness, nausea, and death with thoughts of gratitude – gratitude for what I have (loving friends and family, health insurance, great medical care) and gratitude in advance for the clean bill of health I was hoping for.

I hiked alone up on the Blue Ridge, sang and danced in my house -- I even got a Tibetan singing bowl to help with meditation. (And if you ever want to induce eye rolling in any of my children, just ask them about the Tibetan singing bowl.)

Here’s what happened: The surgeon removed the tumor the easy way, no complications. And when the phone rang last week, it was his nurse telling me that it was benign. Totally benign.

Miracle? Misdiagnosis? I don’t know. And to tell you the truth, I don’t think I should look too closely at it. After all, it was a gift.