I don’t know if any of you do this, but when someone I don’t know walks through my space (think apartment), I start to see the surroundings through their eyes. We’ve got a new manager here at the apartment complex who’s been doing walkabouts to meet people. When she stepped into our place, she went into a kind of this-is-delightful-what-you’ve-done-with-the-place dance and I was pleased, yes, but I also started to view the things we’d done to personalize the cookie-cutter nature of this fine&dandy structure as if for the first time. Forgot that I actually live here. Who are these people who have big paintings on their wall (thank you, T.B.Ward)? They must be into, oh, I don’t know, art. Wow, that’s an antiquey-looking couch, and a well-worn leather chair, they must be into brocade fabrics, supple-soft leather, and stuff. Then I snapped out of it and remembered that, yes, of course, how we present is how we are received. Usually. There are times I’ve held on too tightly to the “One of these things is not like the other” mentality I brought to this Inland Empire from NYC. Mostly that’s just a bit of folly though. Dennis and I are not the only non-gun-owning, abortion-rights-supporting Democrats in the vicinity. Having flown our small-size Biden-Harris flag during the election, we didn’t get snarked at or any other such thing. I accept we all carry our clichés with us and my I’m-a-liberal-feminist-white-lady-of-a-certain-age-who-still-wears-funky-sneakers-and-has-blue-hair-ness slots me into a certain type. I’m OK with that. From one angle, I can see myself taking up all that space yet if I move slightly back, I have no idea who I might appear to be.

My dad’s 97th birthday was Tuesday. My people, this is completely WILD. While he’s the same jazz-loving, martini-drinking man I’ve always known him to be, when I look…really really look and sometimes just glance, I can see how he’s changed substantially. Particularly in the last ten-ish months. The sense of him: tremendously present while also startlingly diminished. But we forget. Make accommodations in increments for the changes. Big ones such as no more operating of motor vehicles but also subtler things like how an upset stomach might really affect him. To me it feels like so.much.more than just an upset stomach. This happened today and while he’s feeling much better now, my action-figure self hoisted on the special I-can-handle-it belt which is never far from hand and flew into let’s-do-this mode. What was the right thing to give him? What was the absolute wrong thing? In the end, they were just a series of decisions based on a conversation with him, experience, and light internet searching, He’s over the hump. By which I mean his stomach is settled, his eyes alert, his speech clear, although he is very tired. And we’re still getting to the place where he’s comfortable just taking a nap in front of me and would absolutely not go lay down until I got into the Rocket 88 and drove away. I figure this is because he wants to be seen is as my capable dad. He’s also never been comfortable showing any sort of need or injury. We’re cat people. Finding a dark place alone is quite preferable to a fuss. Yet still. I left and continue to think I shouldn’t have and am tempted to go back to check on him and will most likely call. Maybe twice.

He tells the story of himself and how he wants to be seen. Obviously so do I. So do we all, right? Whether the present or the past. When I say to myself, This is what’s happening right now, sometimes it’s followed by and once this moment is under control, I’ll have more time for [finishing the third draft of my novel, swimming regularly, taking long walks]. Sometimes the thought follows as such, This is what’s happening right now and so it will be for however long this moment lasts. Which is ultimately more realistic. I’m not at all annoyed with where my life is: I love copyediting, being in the home office, watching the cats be daft and adorable. Dennis back from the road. Him liking his current gig. Reading good books (currently Small World by Laura Zigman with Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra up next), etc. But also I’ve come to realize there are a few things I need help with.

The last time I did talk therapy was almost twenty years ago when my marriage was coming apart (although shockingly, I didn’t even realize it was happening and we didn’t talk about it) and I’d run screaming from the music industry (also, shockingly, the impetus for that was never discussed) and I was teaching workshops as a writer in residence at about a gazillion NYC public schools to make ends meet (we briefly discussed the stress around working with special-ed students and how I had no feckin’ idea how to really get through to any of them especially given that many teachers used writing as punishment, so there was that). We talked mostly about my relationship with my mom. And my dad. But mostly my mom. It was helpful. Then I ran out of money to be able to afford therapy and I packed up the tools she’d given me and carried on. The very shaky structure fell over many times, was rebuilt, roof caved in, patched it, and so on.

These days I still use some of the tools but I’m also a helluva lot more self-realized (thank you, meditation practice, reading, thinking, talking to very wonderful&helpful friends). But still. A little help is a lotta excellent. As many of you who know me or read this blog on the regular know, I’ve been involved in a frouple with Lisa, Deb, and Joseph, the Jungian therapists who deliver weekly This Jungian Life podcasts, for almost three years now. It’s a one-sided affair. They don’t know I exist, and yet they blow my mind with almost every episode. When I realized I needed some help managing my own moments around my dad, Dennis, getting older, accepting my day-to-day, and all of that, I decided to find a Jungian therapist I could call my own. So last Thursday I met D and started talking. And here was another instance when I had a glimpse of myself through someone else’s eyes. The first fifty minutes was the getting-to-know-you portion, or rather D getting to know me. I noticed some things in telling my story: I have a few that have been told so many times they’ve become like stones at the bottom of a riverbed, soft and smooth from the water’s constant attention. Identity markers (“I was the Rolling Stone intern who wouldn’t leave.” “I got the job as a writer at SPIN because the owner liked to steal people away from Rolling Stone.” Please to notice the self-deprecation and self-minimizing in both of those statements.) Watching D’s face as I waded deeper into my history—moving to NYC, becoming my music journalist best self—I felt she was processing these things as great accomplishments so I decided to stay in that moment. Then when D said as much out loud using her words, I didn’t fight it even as an aw-shucks-it-was-nothing knee-jerk tried to pinch me silly on the inside. I just held on. It shouldn’t be that hard, but sometimes it is. We carried on. I got teary talking about my mom (some things never change), then I told about the dream I’d had the night before and damn if the last ten minutes of our session didn’t light a few things up in my soul. How the subconscious can deliver a few well-placed scenarios during sleep that usually make zero sense to me when I wake up, then upon discussion with someone who thoughtfully thinks about these things and presents them back in a filled-with-possibilities way, can flip a switch of recognition is mind-blowing. Who knew that a blocked sink. Menstrual blood. A stranger’s bathroom and a decision to clean it all up could add up to an important set of questions and life narration is, to overuse a current favorite word, wild. (Last night I had a dream about escaping kittens, so, you know, that could be something.) So while I’m both excited and cautious about this work I’m setting off to do, it’s becoming ever clearer that there’s no time like the present.

A view in on myself as seen through the eyes of another and refocused back onto me. The long and winding. The riverbed of stories, rocks rubbed smooth, jagged edges snagging, coming up for air, tumbling back down. Why not?