A Pause, and Just When I Needed One

This is going to be a little unorthodox, as it is not directly related in my mind, or overtly, to writing. Except that it is, in a way--in the way that writing is related to my constant low level anxiety about my own accomplishments, my incessant thinking and talking and yes, whining, about finding or not finding or striving for or not striving for balance in a life that makes me feel like I am always running, running to get to the next place, the next thing, the next accomplishment, and never ever ever getting there. Is this how anybody else feels too? Sometimes I wonder--or right now I am wondering, writing this--what would happen if I just stopped. Just stopped striving, I guess is the word, or a word, not quite right, as I am too lazy constitutionally to be a true striver, but still I strive. Always. I started to go into how, but I deleted: it would take too long, and I suspect that anyone reading this has an inkling of what I mean about myself anyway.

Today, I was sitting at my desk having just sent out what I thought was a very funny e-mail to six members of my high school class soliciting donations from them in honor of this, the year of our twentieth reunion. Now I hate reunions, have maybe never been to one, ever. I also hate both being solicited for donations and soliciting donations, which I have rarely done. But I did want to become more involved in my high school, which I love fiercely still, and when I was asked to be a "class agent" (see, why do they have to give it such an ominous, militaristic name?), I gritted my teeth and said yes. But one of the ways in which I am always striving is to differentiate myself from some unnamed "other"--in this case, I guess, the mythical prototypical "class agent"; thus my funny--possibly ill-advised e-mail which I really, really want to include because it was pretty funny in spite of being ill-advised, but I will resist.

Anyway, so I was sitting at my desk feeling pleased with myself, when the phone rang. For some reason, I answered it, as I didn't recognize the name that came up on the little screen, and a voice I haven't heard in maybe ten years said, "Amy?" It was the one of the six classmates I'd known the best--someone who had been a real friend. He explained that he'd just read my e-mail (and "laughed out loud," she added, to bolster her case that the solicitation was, indeed, funny) and decided to pick up the phone and call me (I'd included my number in case there were actual questions, not expecting it to be used), and so he did. "How are you?" he asked, and I told him. Not the whole shebang, of course, but I went on and on about the new baby, who I guess isn't really technically new-new anymore, and stress about ongoing schools, and sleep-deprivation, and my struggles to find time and space to write and read, and I can't even remember what else, but replaying my monologue in my mind does not make me beam with pride, let's just say. I wasn't as complainy as I've been at many times over the past year or so, but I was by no means at my best.

It took me a little too long to get around to asking him how he was but eventually I did. "Well," he answered slowly. "It's been a rough year." And then I was finally quiet, listening, remembering how much I had liked and respected this person as a kid, for we had been kids when we were friends, 14 years old when we met, and as I was listening to him I pictured a grown-up, and it was a little jarring to look down at my lined knobby hands and see a grown-up's hands, holding the phone, clenching in fists, for what he was telling me was not easy to hear.

His daughter, born so close to mine, with the same name, even--a parallel Lily--had been diagnosed with autism, first with a terrible prognosis by an ignorant "professional," and then, apparently, more helpfully, by a kind one. His wife and daughter were living eight hours away, in an apartment in a city not their own, so the little girl could attend a special school while he worked, teaching (a born teacher, he is, and a true student too), long hours, hard work, while transforming their garage--alone, at night, I imagined--into a room where the daughter could do occupational therapy when she and her mother returned.

I can't make you see or know this old friend, this kind, good person who suffers in no way, shape or form from the kind of incessant striving, all-consuming running, low grade stereotypical navel gazing angst that I do, but I wish I could. And I wish I could make you understand how lucky this little girl is, this parallel Lily, to have father like him: a father who made a life for himself that he fits into beautifully even if the life itself is not always beautiful. A father who said to me, ten years after I had seen him last, at my wedding, I think, or someone else's, said to me today about his little girl, after I'd complained that two little girls were so much harder than one, and he'd said, well it depends on the girl: We do what we have to do. You'd do the very same thing.

Well, that's very generous, old friend. Sure, we'd all like to think so, I'd like to think so. But not, not for most of us, as graciously and selflessly and intuitively and relentlessly and sagely as you. I know this, somehow, about him: that this is who he is, who I knew on some level would always become. And I have been thinking about him, and his little girl, whom I also know somehow is a remarkable little person, all day, all evening, and now into the morning of the following day.

And maybe someday, I won't need such signposts, such glimpses into other people's lives, to remind me of what I should already know.