Ann Bancroft's Open Salon Blog

Yes, There’s a Hole in Your Bucket

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 01:07:34 -0400

Americans are quite comfortable about discussing our own mortality, but preferably when it’s "like in that movie," or involves all the cool death-defying things we think we can do before we, you know, die.

Not surprisingly, it was Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman acting like (funny) dying people that got us all – particularly us boomers -- to start feeling the imperative of writing lists of those things. Now the movie itself is all but forgotten, but still people are thinking and talking about their lists. If you’ve shared enough meals with a person, the Bucket List conversation is bound to come up.

You’ll hear about cross-country bicycle trips and volunteering in Africa and getting PhDs in art history by the age of 89.

“I’m thinking I’d like to see Antarctica. Israel,” I say. “Take a hike in every state. Learn Italian. Help even one homeless person get his life together…”

The list grows. Antarctica gets crossed out in favor of South Africa, I never sign up for Italian class and I start to think maybe it’s hubristic to imagine changing the life of a homeless person so what about just volunteering with the food bank again?

Suddenly I’m feeling incredibly guilty. Out of shape, selfish and unfulfilled, too. Plus, I don’t have the cash to visit every state, let alone travel clear across the world.

The damned bucket gets heavier and heavier in this way, so I push it out of my mind and sheepishly, inadequately, live my same old days, one after the next. These days are enjoyable, sure. My friendships are rich, I love my family, and live in a beautiful place. I do work I enjoy, just for the joy of doing it, and when someone needs my ear, a meal or spare change, I’m there.

Still, that list isn’t getting any shorter. Life is.

Then last week I did something that put me even farther away from checking off one of those Things to Do Before I Die. I dropped out of a class, on the very first day. It was a worthwhile class, a challenging novel writer’s workshop with an instructor I admire. The point of enrolling in the first place was to help me Finish My Novel, and that’s pretty high on the list. I’m almost done with the shitty first draft (writer Anne Lamott’s description of all first drafts), almost ready for people I respect to tell me as nicely as they can how bad it truly is. The class would’ve helped me get to that special place.

I dropped out, though, when it occurred to me I really don’t want to spend the summer doing homework and getting critiqued by people I don’t know and reading and critiquing other people’s first drafts, even if doing so would make mine better. After feeling guilty about this for a few seconds, a tremendous sense of liberation took hold. Instead of feeling the weight of something I should do, I was buoyed with the lightness of a thing I do not have to do.

I began to list some other things I don’t have to do, and was soon giggling in the giddy pleasure of creating a Hole in the Bucket List:

1. I may never make it to South Africa, but I don’t really have to. No one will suffer if I don’t.

2. Even better, I never have to go to Houston, Bakersfield or Sudan.

3. I never have to wear pantyhose or (4) learn to make flaky pastry crust or (5) spend time at a corporate meeting about anything, anywhere.

6. No algebra problems for me, ever again!

The list of things I don’t want to and will not do for as long as I live keeps growing. Instead of being overwhelming, though, it makes me feel empowered and lucky as can be.

I can’t recommend this highly enough, boomers. When everything on your bucket list seems out of reach and even the thought of it stresses you out, make yourself a Hole in the Bucket List. Put on it everything you choose not to, and don’t have to, do.

Then spend a moment looking around, taking in the people and places and things you love, and breathe in satisfaction with it all. I’m pretty sure Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson would approve.

Breathe. Be Grateful. Buy Shirt.

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 14:06:42 -0400

We’ve all been told the healthy things to do when life is freaking us out, when we find ourselves unable to serenely detach from things like the computer crash, our brother’s indictment, our spouse admitting an affair.

There’s going to a quiet place, even for a few moments, to deeply, consciously breathe. There are calming mantras and gratitude lists and hugs from someone you love. Why, then, don’t we automatically turn to one of these simple refuges of peace?

Most of us have a favored alternative. We drink. We overeat, or we run and run beyond the capacity of our knees. We scour the floors, plant 300 tulip bulbs, or cook for 15 instead of our family of three. We have sex with someone we just met, or drive aimlessly down the freeway smoking the cigarettes we supposedly quit at 22.

I’ve done most of these things at one time or another but, growth being the apparent goal of our souls, stopped doing them when it occurred to me that what I wanted was not more food, wine, tulips or nicotine, not more living on the edge or running away. Clean floors and Clorox-wiped cabinets didn’t seem to be tidying the real messes in my life. What I needed was calm, a sense that all is right in my little world, or at least the belief that I am strong enough to accept the way things are.

So I dropped those irrational responses. Most of them. Most of the time. When the shit hits the fan I do try to gently turn away and breathe.

But then an urge strikes that is more primal than food or sex or compulsive cleaning, more basic than planting flowers or driving down I-5 really fast.

I buy clothes. Not for myself, but for my son.

Irrational, but there it is.

Years ago, as my father wasted away from cancer, I’d stop at a shopping center between his house and ours, loading up on bright new duds for my little boy to wear in first grade. The kid had more striped t-shirts and jeans, more sweaters and jackets than a Macy’s catalog. Not expensive, high fashion clothes, just clothes.

When it was work that threatened my sanity, I ran this drill too. As my marriage fell apart, I went into serious boy’s department overdrive.

My son couldn’t have cared less, but it made me feel settled, somehow, to know he would be warm, that he’d never want for clean socks or a sharp looking jacket that fit his lanky frame. Something was in order. Somebody looked well put together. Bright and promising and cute, too. I’d taken care of him, as best I could, even while falling apart myself.

As my boy grew older and my jobs more intense, I’d pop into Mervyn’s to visit the young men’s racks, coming home with unnecessary, unwanted jeans, shirts, and socks. Often, I’d return them. Costco was an excellent excuse for even more socks, and who could resist those polo shirts, $9.99?

He would have happily worn the same pair of jeans, the same Guns ‘n Roses T-shirt, every single day of the year. Now, as a young man in Manhattan, he’d wear the same torn shirt with the same baggy jeans if it weren’t for his fashionista friends and their eye-rolling intolerance of non-metrosexual dishevelment.

In winter, a free floating anxiety about cold places urges me to purchase a nice wool watch cap, some gloves and yes, socks, because surely he needs those thick woolen ones for that dreadful East Coast chill. And when things are seriously askew, my fight/flight instinct sends me straight to a men’s sale, to clothes I think he might think are hip but that are, of course, not.

After my own cancer diagnosis a few years ago, the online catalog boxes started arriving at my son’s apartment, from Zappos, Macy’s and J.Crew. Things got a little out of hand.

“Great sale!” I would claim. He was always grateful, or feigned gratitude, at least. I knew he knew it was I who was grateful for him.

This maternal stress response has nothing to do with a desire to shop. Mostly, I loathe shopping. I’m not an indiscriminate consumer of stuff. In the past four years, I’ve stepped foot in a big box store just once. If I must go to the Target near my house to buy, say, a baby gift, you can bet I’ll be in and out of there in 15 minutes flat.

No, the irresistible urge to purchase not just one short-sleeved cotton shirt but two, when the Manhattan heat wave hits the news – it’s strictly a mom thing. Let the shrinks have a field day but meanwhile, consider the marketing opportunities here! If there are other women out there like me – women who would not venture to Macy’s but for a primal need to clothe their offspring even well into adulthood – can you see the untapped market?

Department stores might consider discreetly putting flyers in places where people are likely under stress. In the oncologist’s office, for example, am I more likely to pick up yet another magazine featuring the benefits of a sea kelp diet and substituting free weights for sex, or a 30% off coupon for Levi’s?

Now that I’m well, I’ve almost eliminated this stress response. At least, when life gets a bit hairy, instead of sending clothes my son does not need or might not want, I now send a little cash so he can eat out or just not stress out. So one of us, at least, can be unstressed.

After last week’s MRI, for example, I expected the technician to say, “Your doctor will have results on Tuesday. Give a call Wednesday if you haven’t heard.” That’s what they usually say, something like that. Instead, after looking at my scans she said, “When’s your appointment with the oncologist?”

“I don’t have one,” I said.

“Oh,” she said. “Well. Results should be to your doctor on Tuesday. But why don’t you call Monday to set up an appointment – so they can go ahead and get you in?”

I told myself it was probably just that one technician, being nice, just doing it her way, unlike the way all the others have done it in the past. Sure, that’s what it was. But just to set things right, to settle myself, I drove straight to Wells Fargo and made a little withdrawal from our savings account.

“Deposited $100 in yr account,” the text to my son read. “Buy new shirt, whatever. I love you.”

(The scans turned out fine. I think my son went out to dinner, or paid the cable bill. Inhale, Exhale…Thank you. Life is good.)

He Served, Not Blindly But Well

Fri, 27 May 2011 13:05:38 -0400

This weekend little American flags will fly over the graves of my father and the 30,000 other servicemen buried at the Presidio of San Francisco. Having the best view any dead person could hope to have was one of the perks of Army service, my dad joked. Also, his ashes were laid to rest near Civil War Generals, Medal of Honor recipients, Buffalo Soldiers and a Union spy.

Now that he’s been gone nearly 23 years, I hope it is okay on this Memorial Day to remember how irreverent my Dad was about the military aspects of being a military man.

Growing up in the Army during the Viet Nam war was a recipe for cognitive dissonance, particularly with a mom who thought the Officers Wives Club was a “crock” and a dad who took off his uniform at the end of each day and poured a gin and tonic while muttering about the "horses asses” responsible for the war.

Dad was not a foot soldier or war strategist or drill sergeant, he was an orthopedic surgeon. The military had paid his way through one of the finest medical schools and for that he was grateful. He was good at what he did, and rose through the ranks for 20 years, saving some lives and many limbs. His job, mostly, was to stitch, staple and cement back together the war wounded and, far too often, to amputate the limbs of 18-year-old kids. He was a patriot, but more pacifist than gung-ho.

Master of the wry aside, the quiet chuckle and twinkling eye, the almost imperceptible eye roll, he never railed, yelled, ordered or commanded. When he was angry with his daughters, all he had to do to bring us to shame and obedience was state our full names. The surgical residents he trained nicknamed him “whispering Jesus,” because he was so quiet and they adored him. Though he wore it proudly, the uniform he wore did not define him. He was happy when able to grow his hair long and never again be referred to by rank.

The day I snuck off to an anti-war protest in Golden Gate Park, my dad was applying for his first civilian job, his 20 years almost up. It was a weekday afternoon, so he still wore that uniform, the rank of “full bird” on his shoulders. As he left the medical office where he’d negotiated the next phase of his life, a woman spat on him. “War monger!” she shouted.

“What should I have done, quit when the war started? What would that have done, deprived the Army of one more doctor?” That’s all he said about that at dinner. I said nothing about the protest, but felt both angry and ashamed.

On Memorial Day I honor all who served -- the privates and the generals and the seamen and the SEALS, the pilots and mechanics and quartermasters, the medics and Marines. Our country was and is made safer and better by their service. I honor their families, who sacrifice home and ease and security for the demands of a military life. I honor my father and all the other men and women whose allegiance was not blind, but who served their country well.

Thanks, Arnold. Really, We're Over It.

Wed, 18 May 2011 03:05:03 -0400

I am considering exactly how best to word a thank-you note to Arnold Schwarzenegger for keeping his mouth shut even when he couldn’t keep his pants zipped. Not that I approve – I surely don’t, but whether or not I approve is immaterial. It’s just that, had Arnold not so egregiously lied, I wouldn’t have met some of the dearest people in my life. I wouldn’t have had lunch with those dear people today. A whole series of “what ifs” different from the ones I have lived might have followed that one “what if” – had Arnold Schwarzenegger told the truth.

Talk show callers sputter in outrage and pundits continue thumb-sucking analysis of where the bounds of privacy should be drawn in a politician’s life (can we all agree that raping a chambermaid is not okay?) Whatever. I’m with the political analysts who conclude that even in blue-state California, voters would not have chosen Arnold Schwarzenegger to be Governor had they known about his love-child. They probably would have let my former boss, Governor Gray Davis, stay in office instead.

My coworkers and I wouldn’t have stood outside the State Capitol, futilely waving “don’t do to California what you did to those women,“ signs, after the LA Times’ exhaustive reporting about the dozen or so women who’d accused Arnold of groping and harassment on the job. We wouldn’t have been out of our own jobs, “swept clean” by the man who vowed to “blow up the boxes” of government in Sacramento. (For the record, in two terms no boxes were blown up. Nothing shrank, certainly not Arnold’s ego, as the state’s deficit ballooned to $26 billion.)

In August 2003, before all the Arnold Schwarzenegger jokes started in earnest, I was at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, camping on the last night of a spectacular rafting trip. Because I only had a week off from work, I planned to hike out of the canyon by myself the next morning and another woman named Ann would hike down, taking my place with the group for the remainder of the 18-day trip. Unfortunately, the other Ann brought with her a San Francisco Chronicle, the first news we’d seen in seven days. “Recall Set for October 7,” read the banner headline. I considered staying in the canyon. Why wake up at 4 a.m. for the most grueling hike of my life, when I could imagine the nightmare back home? But I did hike, and then for six weeks I walked precincts: “No on the Recall!”

People thought Gray Davis was dull– no SAG card for him -- but he was a straight arrow kind of guy. No boozing, no immoderation in anything, except seeking reelection. No one ever even hinted at him being a womanizer. When the Enron-engineered energy crisis hit, at the same time as the dot-com bust, Rep. Darrell Issa thought Davis weak enough to pump some of his car alarm fortune into the cockamamie recall election idea (“Step AWAY from the car! And Vote for Darrell Issa!”). No one took it very seriously. Then Arnold Schwarzenegger entered the race. Celebrity, money, Hollywood, Cinderella all in one. We could feel our doom, and I planned a “comfort and consolation party” for the night of the election. About two minutes after the polls closed, the announcement came.

The man who’d just a year earlier been reelected by a comfortable margin-- giving his staffers the confidence to buy their first homes, start families, feel settled – now was out, and so were we. We’d worked our assess off for five years, full of hope for better schools and cleaner air and all the other things we believed were possible to achieve. That night we were dumbstruck, and scared. The old Prince song, “Money Don’t Matter” blasted from my stereo and we drank wine and vodka and ate mac and cheese. Soon, we’d scatter. Some would be unemployed for many stressful months, while others would find soft landings soon.

Things worked out eventually, as things do. California was certainly no better off, though some of the tearful souls at my mac ‘n cheese party wound up being so.

I was “rescued” by the state superintendent of schools, the nicest boss there ever was, and my co-workers from his office became and remain close friends. Many on Davis’ old team also stay in touch, bonded by the surreal experience of getting the shaft from a bodybuilding action hero-turned governor.

Today, a few of us had lunch to catch up. It was wonderful to see everyone, happy in new phases of their lives. We spent only a couple of minutes talking about Arnold and the News. We felt sorry for Maria. Sorrier for our state. We did acknowledge, though, that if it weren’t for Arnold and his lies, we might not be enjoying friendship over lunch. So maybe a thank-you is in order, from a few survivors of an election we’d rather not recall.

Judgment Day -- What to Wear?

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 03:04:43 -0400

It says so right there on the billboards. These are Southern California freeway-priced billboards, so somebody’s paid some serious dough to get the message out:

JUDGMENT DAY

May 21, 2011… The Bible Guarantees It!

Now, there’s a slight chance that these billboards were bought by a bunch of Christian high school boys, all pitching in their allowances for a common purpose. My guess is that on Friday night, May 20, these boys will take a walk with their virginal girlfriends, someplace quiet and dark. Each boy will whisper urgently, “C’mon, baby, the world’s ending tomorrow! Didn’t you see the billboards?”

It had to have been the boys, don’t you think? But what if it wasn’t the boys at all, but someone with the inside scoop -- the kind of scoop nobody in the history of the world has ever had? If that’s the case, you can’t be too prepared.

Of course there’s no need to worry about life insurance, or getting the house cleaned or finishing that project at work. No worries about grocery shopping or paying your late taxes or buying anything for Father’s Day (sorry, dads).

Kinda liberating, isn’t it? Except for one thing. What to wear. Are you kidding me? Of course that’s something to be considered. If you fear the ambulance may come when you put on torn underwear, don’t you think you ought to put a little consideration into what you put on for the End of the World? This is the greatest wardrobe dilemma of all time! I, for one, have been shopping my closet for weeks.

Those black spiky heels are normally just too damned uncomfortable, but if I’m going to be damned anyway…? No. Once you’ve committed to the shoes, the outfit has to complement and, please, there’s no way I’m wearing a business suit or a cocktail dress to this event. Work will be so over, and provocative probably isn’t appropriate. (Also, at my age “provocative” is something more along the lines of a hijab, and I’m guessing that would raise a whole host, so to speak, of other issues.)

You might say, “I came in naked, so that’s the way I’m going out.” But have you considered we might have to wait in some kind of line?

Pajamas? Nice ones -- silk? Given the big sleep and all? But, as I said, there could be a line. Comfortable is probably good, but not sloppy, for heaven’s sake. Or too warm in case it’s, you know…not heaven.

Now I’m starting to think it’s not the outfit at all, but the color scheme that should drive this decision:

White – Signifying that I am pure, way down deep. Also, that I forgive everyone (that includes you, mean mom of my 8^th grade boyfriend who said I was a slut when I wasn’t, even.)

Red – I’m guilty of other stuff, so everyone who agrees, forgive me. Please?

Blue – This is all a little depressing, don’t you think?

Green – I loved those trees!

Yellow – Of course I’m afraid. It’s Judgment Day!

Black – Well, duh.

If we’re all going out together, though, maybe we should agree on a dress code. Something special, Auld Lang Syne-ish. Shoot, now I’m back to the black spike heels.