Deborah Sosin's Open Salon Blog

November 22, 1963: Remembering JFK

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 08:11:05 -0500

I sat alone on the floor at the foot of my parents’ bed, staring up at the flickering black-and-white images. The TV was a 12-inch RCA with a green plastic exterior. I loved watching TV, but that Friday my stomach felt upside-down and inside-out. Everything felt different, as if things would never be the same.

November 22, 1963, was a special day for the fourth-grade class at Milton School in Rye, New York. Our teacher, Miss Drury, was getting married the next day and we were throwing a surprise party! Sally Lamb and I had collected nearly 14 dollars to buy a yellow-flowered casserole dish, which the white-haired saleslady wrapped in spangly gold paper.

Miss Drury never suspected a thing. We’d asked Mr. Rogers, the principal, to call her to his office. While she was gone, we brought out a cake and Hawaiian Punch and put the gift box on top of her big wooden desk so she’d see it right away. We were about to burst with excitement.

Clickety-click—here she comes! She entered, gasped, and broke into a smile shiny enough to light up the whole school. I thought she was beautiful—tall and thin, with short brown hair and dark eyes. She was 24. A real lady.

After the party, the girls jumped into our one-piece royal-blue gym uniforms. We were having square dancing and couldn’t wait! Something was funny, though, because Mr. Drago was just sitting on a stool, two fingers twisting the whistle around his neck, a real serious look on his face. He looked up and said softly, “The president was shot.”

“President Kennedy?”

“Yes. He was shot in Dallas, Texas. I just heard it on the radio.”

Nobody moved. More girls ran in squealing but quickly stopped when they heard the news. We went back to class, but the boys didn’t know yet. “Aw, neat!” said Eric Williams, punching his right fist into his left palm. “Where’d he get shot?!”

Miss Drury told us to be quiet and pray. Sally Lamb sniffled and the boys thought that was pretty funny. Miss Drury dabbed her tears with a lacy handkerchief. No one knew what to do. The whole room felt eerie.

“Attention, attention, teachers and children,” Mr. Rogers announced over the P.A. “I have very sad news to tell you. President Kennedy just died. He was shot while driving in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas. They are trying to find the person who killed him. You will be dismissed early today. Right now, please come to the playground while we lower the flag to half-mast.”

At home, all I could do was watch TV. The flag-draped coffin rolling through Washington on an open carriage. The rhythmic beat of the snare drum tapping TUM TUM TUM tadadada TUM TUM TUM tadadada TUM TUM TUM tadadada TUM TUM ta TUM.

I was numb. Staring at the TV, hour after hour. Watching Jackie and Caroline kneel in the Rotunda, hearing about the capture of that evil man Lee Harvey Oswald. The Texas School Book Depository. The policeman who got shot too. Suddenly nothing made sense. Suddenly scary things happened and you had to try to figure them out the best you could.

Then some man Jack Ruby walked up to Oswald in the jail—he just stepped through a crowd of people and shot him in the stomach! I watched that replay at least a million times—Oswald’s twisted face, the tall sheriff with the cowboy hat lunging after Ruby, the confusion, the shouting.

In 1960, I had shaken President Kennedy’s hand at a campaign rally! He was so tan and handsome, with gleaming eyes. On TV press conferences, he always smiled and told jokes and everyone laughed. His singsong accent sounded strange to my New York ears, but it had a comforting quality. Caroline had a pony named Macaroni. Jackie spoke in a whispery voice I tried to imitate. When my family had visited the White House in 1962, I remember wishing I could move in with the Kennedys. Bright colorful rooms full of dreams and hope.

Four days of watching the flickering black-and-white images of death. It’s as if they extended beyond the screen, into the space at the foot of my parents’ bed. Black-and-white clouds merging into muted gray, a grayness that would return on many days of tragedy to follow. A gray that, right then and there, surrounded my innocence and dimmed it forever.

It's the Impulse Control, Stupid!

Thu, 9 Jun 2011 10:06:12 -0400

“I take full responsibility and I deeply regret any hurt or pain I might have caused anyone by my actions and indiscretions.”

How manly. How mature. Yes, I’m talking about Anthony Weiner, and the long punch line of men (I really can’t think of an equivalent errant woman) who have eloquently apologized for their misdeeds—after the fact.

Let’s back it up, shall we? The pundits ask, How could you be so foolish as to tweet, cheat, stray, deceive, and so on? Or they wonder, Why would you risk power, position, family? Were you so deluded that you thought you’d be the one not to get caught? Theories abound about narcissism and power, which help us understand the confounding behavior. Think Bill Clinton or Arnold Schwarzenegger or . . . well, you know the list.

But before the sneaking and the secrets and the lies and the cover-ups comes the impulse to “act out” in the first place.

“Oh, but it feels good. I want it,” they think. Or, “Because I can.”

True responsibility, Weiners of the world, is not acting on the urge in the first place.

What they’re missing is good old-fashioned impulse control. You know, the kind we’re supposed to learn as kids. The kind that keeps us from eating every cookie in the cookie jar just because we want to. The kind that keeps us from beating up our little brother whenever we feel like it.

And that’s not so easy in a culture that celebrates instant gratification and pleasure over mindfulness and maturity.

I’m a therapist working with drug addicts and alcoholics. Most of them are in treatment because they’ve gotten into some kind of trouble— physical, legal, financial, marital, academic, professional—as a result of their substance abuse. Some are in treatment because they want to be, some because other people want them to be.

In my recovery groups, we talk about relapse prevention. One strategy is to identify triggers—people, places, things—and learn to manage them. Another strategy is called “playing the tape all the way through.” If I act on this impulse—this desire to feel good or powerful or numb—what will it lead to? What has it led to in the past? Stop. Think. Project into the future. How will I feel about myself? Is it worth it? What will I gain? What will I lose?

I have a kid in one of my early recovery groups, let’s call him Mack. Mack is nineteen and drank beer and smoked marijuana all through middle school and high school before getting into painkillers like Percocet, Vicodin, and Oxycontin. He became addicted and, because of the expense, picked up a heroin habit. Not an uncommon path.

So Mack hasn’t used anything in a few weeks. He comes to my group late, chomping on a big, thick chocolate bar, high-fiving all the other guys upon his entrance.

“Mack,” I say. “You’re late. Please sit down and put away the candy bar.”

“Whaddya mean?” he says, flashing an angry look.

“You know the rule. No food in group.”

“When did you ever say that?” he says.

The other boys jump in, “Yeah, you never said that. Why shouldn’t he be able to eat? He’s hungry! He’s probably had a hard day! He deserves it.”

“Mack,” I say. “You can choose to leave the room and finish your candy bar and come back next week, or you can put it away and eat it later.”

He continues chewing. He tries to stare me down. Then he jumps up with a dramatic flourish, walks past me, and throws the candy bar in the garbage can. Later, he apologizes profusely and promises it won’t happen again, after I threaten him with a few weeks’ timeout from the group.

Bottom line: We don’t get to do whatever we want whenever we want to. We don’t get to express our every thought and act on our every whim. It causes problems. And apologizing after the fact doesn’t cut it.

But how do we learn to control our urges and impulses? Practice, man, practice. Counting to ten. Taking deep breaths. Redirecting action. Identifying triggers. Asking for help. Putting as much time and space as possible between the thought and the action. Then we’re at least empowered to make a better choice.

So back it up, boys. Grow up. Think before you act.

And if that’s too much to ask, at least keep your candy bar in your pocket.

Spring Cleaning: Deep Inside My Bedroom Closet

Tue, 5 Apr 2011 21:04:34 -0400

Not long ago, I purged my bedroom closet. I’d ignored it for many months. Purging is one of those tasks that falls under the “someday” category: “I really should, but not today,” “I’ll get around to it,” “It’s not really interfering with my life, so why bother?”

But I had a couple of promising job interviews coming up and, rather than go shopping on my non-budget, I figured I’d troll for prospects at home. Purging requires music, of course, so, aptly, I cranked the Spring Awakening cast album and set to work.

My categories were: Keep Here, Switch Closets, Throw Away, and Goodwill.

Keep Here included anything that still fits and that I would actually wear. That would thin out the bulging rack. I even organized the results: sweaters, tops, jackets, blouses, skirts, pants. Wow. I sure do have a lot of black clothes. And I’m not even a Wiccan or anything. I guess it’s that “black is slimming” thing. At least I found a good interview outfit I wouldn’t have thought of, which was the whole point of this purge anyway.

Switch Closets included summer clothes, clothes I hope to fit back into “someday,” and clothes with sentimental value that were hogging space, like the oversized cuddly flannel shirt that my boyfriend from 1992 gave me, which I still love, the shirt not him, but haven’t worn in years.

Throw Away yielded some shocking entries, including a pair of black pumps with cracked soles and crumpled heels—what was I thinking?—and a stained pair of white summer sandals that would take three bottles of shoe polish to restore to wearability. Toss. And a little black skirt with a broken zipper that I apparently thought was worth keeping just in case I lost half of my body weight someday and could afford a seamstress. Buh-bye.

I filled the Goodwill bag with belts from the 1980s that wouldn’t even get around Barbie’s waist, brand-new full-size sheets that don’t fit my queen-size bed, four winter scarves with unsightly pilling, and another little black skirt whose zipper works just fine but will never, ever happen no matter how hard I try. Let someone else enjoy it.

Maybe when I get a new job I’ll get myself a new little black skirt, one that I can enjoy right now, instead of waiting for someday.

Some somedays have turned into nevers. Tucked way back on the rack, almost forgotten, I found an adorable blue-and-white cotton-and-denim onesie that I bought for a friend’s baby over 20 years ago. It was carefully covered in plastic, dangling from its cute little baby hanger. I loved the outfit so much, I ended up getting my friend a different gift and kept this one, waiting, hoping for the day when I’d have my own child.

What category did it belong in? It couldn’t be Throw Away. Not Goodwill. Maybe Switch Closets. But the baby outfit is a part of who I am, a connection to something that might have been but never was. Although I won’t have a biological child, I can create and give and love in other ways—through my writing, through my relationships, through my clinical work, through being a kitty mama. No. I decided on Keep Here.

Done. Purged. Brand-new closet. Brand-new week. Looking ahead to a new season, with new projects and new challenges.

Now what about those 9,067 emails in my inbox? Maybe someday.

Three Blind Dates, See How I Run

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 07:08:13 -0400

A simple truth: Dating sucks. And dating over 50 comes with its own inestimable challenges. What used to be perky now sags. Hair grows where we don’t want it and disappears from where we do want it. If we’re lucky, we have aging parents. Some of us have children, still young or already grown. Some of us don’t. We’ve got our respective baggage full of broken hearts, unyielding habits, and not-so-unyielding expectations.

We’re all out there, trying and hoping. Because, bottom line, we don’t want to die alone. At least I don’t.

This summer I signed on to a free online site that has a decent array of educated and interesting men who suited both my fancy and my pocketbook. I’ve been on and off the scene for years. Whenever I consider trying again, I shrivel at the thought of crafting yet another peppy profile, much less plumbing through piles of “honest, independent” guys who in reality still live with their mother or their ex. Or profiles by Yankees fans. Or athletes who hike, bike, kayak, sail, jet-ski, and surf. I get tired just reading the list. Or the testosterone-laden men who say they love to kiss, cuddle, hug, make passionate love, or give full-body massages. Maybe this is a turn-on for some women. For me? Yecch.

I found a few of interest. And a few found me. The formula is basically the same. There’s the requisite initial exchange of “enjoyed your profile” and “seems like we might have a lot in common.” Then the requisite “are you an ax murderer if not let’s meet” phone call, followed by the requisite rendezvous at a mutually convenient Starbucks.

So, after the preliminaries, I ended up on three blind dates recently, all in the same week. Herewith my report:

DATE #1: MARK, THE HAIRY POLITICO

The Basics: 58 years old, tall, long white hair tied back in a ponytail, divorced, unaffiliated religiously, master’s degree, politically active, jazz musician, intellectual. Interesting profile. Points for perfect spelling.

The Pre-Date: Pleasant email exchange. No phone—just an agreed-upon date and time. Cut to the chase, I say. 3D yields more info than any profile or phone call.

The Setting: Outdoor table at a café on a sunny Sunday morning at 11:30

The Date: He’s waiting for me. I’m prompt. We shake hands and enter the café for takeout. He orders coffee and a blueberry scone. I get raspberry herbal tea. We pay separately. We sit outside. I lead off: “So where do you play music?” His voice is uncomfortably loud, which makes me self-conscious, as a handsome African-American man at the next table reading the New York Times can probably hear every word. One subject leads to the next. It is not a chat. It is a monologue. One hour later I know about his sister’s hysterectomy, his father’s phlebitis, his lackadaisical coworkers, and his views on green living and stem-cell research. He’s barely touched his scone. He hasn’t asked one question, even in a lull I decide to impose just to see what he’ll do. I go to the bathroom. Perhaps the break will give him a chance to remember he’s on a date.

I return. His scone and coffee are gone. “So, you’re a writer,” he says. “What do you write?” I say four sentences about my memoir-in-progress of being a teenager in Germany. He says, “Oh, Germany! I traveled in Germany once . . . ” and continues with tales of Berlin and Bremerhaven. I look at my watch. “Oh! It’s 12:43,” I say. “I didn’t realize it was so late. I’ve got to get going.” Pause. “Nice to meet you, Mark.” We stand up. We shake hands. “Take care.” We part. I might as well have been a cardboard cutout.

The Outcome: Mutual silence. Fine by me.

DATE #2: TONY, THE CLOSE WALKER

The Basics: 64 (which actually turns out to be 67), 5 feet 8, Italian Catholic, balding with white hair and a beard, divorced with adult children, songwriter, semi-retired businessman, marathon runner, fun profile with cute sense of humor.

The Pre-Date: Two emails lead to a phone call. He opens with, “So tell me about yourself.” I say, “Wow. That’s a broad question. Can you be more specific?” He says, “OK, tell me about your left leg.” I do. He asks, “Tell me about the last time you had your heart broken.” Oh, come on. Can’t we talk about the weather? I tell him I’d have to know him a little more before divulging my cardiac history. We set a date to walk around a local reservoir. “That way, after 40 minutes, if we don’t like each other, we’re done, but at least we’ve gotten some exercise,” he says. Points for directness.

The Setting: Thursday morning, the reservoir, a popular place for dogs and runners

The Date: I’m on time, at the golf course parking lot, inhaling secondhand smoke from the local golfers getting ready to tee off. No sign of Tony. Ten minutes later, he pulls up in a pickup truck, beeping. He waves. I wave back. He parks. “I just left a message on your phone,” he says, as he opens his arms wide for a hello hug. I don’t know him. I don’t feel like hugging. He’s late and he’s sweaty in his tank top and shorts, but he has a bright smile. His chihuahua, Margarita, bounces beside him.

It’s a gorgeous day and, despite the awkward start, we chat easily—I’m on the inside of the path, along the fence guarding the reservoir. He is walking close enough that I occasionally feel his bristly white arm hairs brush against mine. I edge away. He moves closer. It’s subtle. I try to accept that we all have different values about personal space. He learns that I see clients with drug and alcohol problems. He tells me he’s a recovering alcoholic. He’s glad I’m not judgmental. I feel the urge to put on my therapist hat but I suppress it. I’m off duty.

We run into a mutual friend—my neighbor, who runs a doggie daycare, knows Tony and Margarita from the path. We chat. He runs into another dog-walking buddy, Monica, and her two bulldogs, Ruby and Rhinestone. We sit on a bench. Tony sits too close. Ruby pees on my leg. After the 40-minute roundtrip, Tony wants to have coffee at the golf course café. I don’t. I’m sweaty and I need to change my pants. I tell him I enjoyed the walk. He gives me a sweaty hug goodbye. I don’t like hugging strangers.

The Outcome: I drop him a “thanks, it was nice to meet you” note, because despite the close walking, the age-fudging, and the tardiness, I want to keep an open mind. He writes back ten days later and tells me to call him if I want to go out again. We’ll see.

DATE #3: JONATHAN, THE EAGER DEPRESSIVE

The Basics: 64, tall and thin, shaggy dark hair, Jewish, former software person, now does nonprofit work, into meditation and literature, eclectic musical tastes, no mention of marital status, very long profile, perhaps too long

The Pre-Date: He emails me with a list of questions plus commentary on “things I like about you” and “things I like not quite so well.” I try to lower the volume on my “eek” radar. Just get out there, Debbie. You don’t have to marry the guy. We progress to a phone call on my suggestion. He talks nonstop for a half-hour. It’s late and I’m tired. I don’t care that he doesn’t ask me anything. I want to watch the Red Sox.

Two emails later, we set a date. By now, I know about his digestive problems, his psychiatric history, and his views on religion and meditation. He knows I’m female and a writer. I’m willing to give him a chance, God knows why. Oh yeah, I don’t want to die alone.

The Setting: 10:30 a.m. Friday at a Starbucks

The Date: I’m on time, he’s late. We both get hot water for our herbal teabags that we brought from home. I do not share my digestive problems. He does. We talk about meditation—we’re both longtime practitioners. He is smart. He looks gloomy, but he says he’s happy because he’s found a solution to his lifelong depression via a new dietary regime. He tells me about his first two wives and his third wife, who died of cancer. I empathize. He talks about death. I tell him I’d prefer not to talk about death. I want to talk about life. He says death isn’t depressing. I feel depressed.

He asks me questions. I tell him about my writing workshops and singing. After 90 minutes, I say I have to leave to get ready for work. Which I do. His face changes. He grins broadly, like a little boy, and asks, “Would you like to join me in evaluating this date?” “Excuse me?” I answer. “Let’s talk about how the date went,” he replies. I suppress the urge to laugh or flee, but somehow I feel a blog coming on, so I say, “Well, I have a couple of minutes, but let’s at least go outside—it’s so nice!”

We sit on a bench. He does not sit too close. He tells me that on his first date with his third wife, she asked him to evaluate the date. He says they agreed it was a “boring date,” then talked for three hours in the rain and fell in love. I sense he wants an encore. He continues, “Now this was the best date I’ve had in a long time, because I felt comfortable with you. You were on time. You maintained eye contact. You didn’t grill me like some women do, probing for information about finances and marriage, as if they’re going down a checklist.” (I’ve heard this before from men—that women approach a date like a job interview, sizing up the guy’s qualifications according to a specific paradigm.)

“Well, I enjoyed meeting you,” I say. “You seem very nice. At this point, I’m trying to be open, go out and meet a lot of people, but I really don’t feel like evaluating something that just happened three minutes ago. I’d rather just digest the experience and be in the present.” He says he appreciates my answer. I appreciate his forthrightness. I’m so done with this. He gives me his card and asks me to be in touch. I say, “I’ll let you know how things are going.”

The Outcome: He writes a thank-you email and follow-up about how his digestion is improving. I reply, saying I don’t think it’s a good match and best of luck. He replies, saying he is disappointed but respects my choice and says my future partner is a lucky guy. I smile.

Onward.

(NB: All names and some identifying information have been changed to protect the well-meaning but unfortunately incompatible.)

1 Year on OS! Reposting "Moon Fever: An Apollo 11 Flashback"

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 09:07:44 -0400

It was July 20th, 1969. My family crunched together on the couch watching our black-and-white German TV with the sound down. We leaned in close to catch every word on the Armed Forces Network radio broadcast.

Beep. “Roger. Go for landing, over. 3,000 feet.” Beep.

My heart was pounding and my stomach was doing flip-flops. I could barely breathe. Part of me was going crazy waiting. And part of me was utterly distracted—reliving the sublime feeling of Heinrich Gerhardt’s hands combing through my hair the night before.

Crackly voices spouted numbers and positions. “Four forward. 30 seconds. Contact light.”

Then, “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

I was fifteen years old and I was moonstruck. Although my obsession with boys was still blossoming, I’d been a NASA groupie for years. I knew all of the astronauts’ names, and their wives’ names. I collected 8 x 10 photos in a glossy two-pocket folder and pored over launch schedules and spacesuit diagrams. I memorized terms like “perihelion” and “translunar injection.”

My family had been living in Munich since 1966. My father was an executive with Radio Liberty, which beamed its programs behind the Iron Curtain. In those days, he was considered an enemy of the Soviets, so I was more eager than most Americans to beat the Russians.

By December 1968, the Apollo program was on course to land a man on the moon before the decade was out, as President Kennedy had pledged. My romantic life, however, was on a bumpier trajectory. I wanted a boyfriend. When Franco Zeffirelli’s movie Romeo and Juliet came out, I cried for the star-crossed lovers. I wrote sonnets about “souls that doth meet in heaven” and “my heart’s anguish.” And I cried on Christmas Eve, when Apollo 8 orbited the moon and Borman, Lovell, and Anders shared their wistful message of hope and peace.

That winter, I resolved to launch my love life. I had a scorching crush on a German boy nicknamed Clipper, the shaggy-haired blond drummer in my brother’s rock band. One day in March, Clipper slowly removed my floppy felt hat and Jackie O sunglasses, took my face in his hands, and kissed me. Shakespeare would’ve approved. In my diary, I wrote a three-page account of the scene, ending with the postscript, “Watched Apollo 9 splashdown! Can’t wait for moon!”

The crescendo was building, in more ways than one.

In May, Apollo 10’s lunar module, Snoopy, rehearsed maneuvers just ten miles above the moon’s surface while the command ship, Charlie Brown, flew solo. I cheered but, sadly, my own maneuvers with Clipper had failed and I was unattached once more.

Over the lazy June days after school was out, my best friend, Elaine, and I biked along the Isar River, chattering about boys and life and love, wondering about our future. Together, we counted the days until Apollo 11.

Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins blasted off on July 16th. Three days later, around the time they entered the moon’s gravitational field, Heinrich Gerhardt was driving me home in his green Citroën. Heinrich had long black hair and big teeth. He was no Romeo, but he was nineteen and funny and he liked me. We kissed, and kissed, goodnight. When he dropped me off, I hoped my parents didn’t notice my rumpled hair and flushed cheeks.

The next night, the Eagle landed. It would take the astronauts a few hours to prepare for descent, so I went upstairs and napped. Dad woke me up to watch Armstrong climb down the ladder at 3:56 a.m. Man was on the moon!

The images were clear, but I don’t remember what we said. I just knew the world had changed. It felt like everything was changing—new, irresistible forces of nature and gravity and history were beckoning me into their arms.

I tried to fall back asleep but couldn’t. My thoughts roared like waves, one over the other, remembering the moonwalk and Neil and Buzz and the flag and one giant leap for mankind. And Heinrich.

Around noon, I called Elaine. “I’ve got moon fever!” I said.

“Me too!” she answered.

I hopped on my bike and pedaled to the neighborhood park. We rode around and around in circles, giddy as little girls, shouting, “Prepare for trans-sidewalk injection!” and “We have liftoff!”

When we got tired, we lay down on the soft grass, looked up at the sky, and talked about sex and Apollo and sex. We were fifteen. Nothing else mattered.