rachelmankowitz

Soundtracks

Posted on January 8, 2017 by rachelmankowitz

I went to a conference on Dementia recently, for social work school, and one of the exercises they did was to have everyone try to come up with their own list of songs. The theory of the Music and Memory project is that hearing the music she loves will wake a patient up from her dementia, at least for a moment, and allow her to feel like herself again.

I tried to make my list, but it was much more difficult than I’d expected. How can I know ahead of time which songs I’ll still want to hear? Music has such power over me: it can agitate me, and exacerbate the darkness; it can remind me of great joy, but also of alienation.

I started to think, though, how helpful it would be, when first meeting a new person, to get to listen to their playlist. If their playlist is monotonously the same, or chaotic, with no rhyme or reason going from song to song, or just out of sync with me, then that would be helpful to know ahead of time.

I wonder if Cricket and Butterfly have music in their heads all day, the way I do. Do they wake up to a persistent melody running on a loop? Or for them is it a smellody? A complex mix of dirt and bird poop and air freshener, wafting through their minds all day long.

searching for smellodies.

I thought I heard some of Cricket’s internal music the other night, during one of our evening walks. It sounded like “Pee in the wind,” a variation on “Dust in the wind,” but full of the high lonesome sound of a pee message blowing away before she could fully sniff its contents.

“Where’d the pee go?”

“Where?!!!!!!!!”

I’m pretty sure the music playing in Butterfly’s head, when it’s time for her morning treat, is “The chicken dance,” that frantic, ever faster, song that we had to flap our elbows to in elementary school. But the rest of the time, I can see Butterfly as a jazz baby, swinging her pearls, and dancing at a speakeasy. It’s not that I think she’d be a profligate drinker, it’s that she’s got such swing! She moves like she’s hearing the Benny Goodman big band in her head; not the complicated Jazz that you listen to for the esoteric-ness of it, but easy, breezy, swing band jazz that makes you snap your fingers and dance.

“I can hear the music!”

Butterfly even dances in her sleep!

Cricket makes me think of Beethoven; that’s the level of drama she lives by. And Barbra Streisand. If Cricket were human she’d sound like Barbra Streisand, with that dramatic range, nasal twang, and constant crescendos and decrescendos, like an Escher staircase going up and down simultaneously.

Cricket, um, singing.

But I struggle when I try to imagine the soundtrack for my own life. I’d want lots of Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole. Some Beatles, and a little Elvis. Martina McBride and Fiona Apple. Aretha Franklin and Etta James and Otis Reading and Barbra Streisand. James Taylor, of course. Salt N’ Pepa could be helpful too. And Yo Yo Ma’s Appalachian Waltz CD, with Allison Krauss on vocals.

I’m not sure how all of that would end up on one soundtrack, but I guess it could. There’s a female cantor in NYC who has a beautiful voice, and I’d love to have her version of Kol Nidre when the time comes. And there are a bunch of songs from sleep away camp that I would love to hear again, preferably in the off key, off rhythm versions in which I first heard them.

One of my favorite ways to choose music used to be to buy movie and TV show soundtracks, because the songs were always chosen for maximum impact, and made every emotion crystal clear. The Star Wars soundtracks were such a relief in that way, spelling everything out for me. Wouldn’t it be helpful if the Darth Vader theme played in the background when you met that seemingly nice guy at a party? Or the Jaws theme, before a particularly unfortunate job interview? Even if I didn’t take the hint beforehand, it would be so validating, in the disastrous aftermath, to at least know that the musicians saw things the same way I did.

I’m a little bit worried that Cricket has been hearing the Darth Vader theme in her head for most of her life: when the mail man comes by, or leaves fly past her head, or dogs bark. Maybe I should play It’s a Wonderful World on a loop, while she’s sleeping, to see if that could change things for her.

“Darth Vader is coming again?!”

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Cricket’s New Year’s Demands

Posted on January 1, 2017 by rachelmankowitz

Dear Mommy,

Why is it “beautiful” when birds chirp, but when I bark, you get mad at me? When Butterfly runs, Grandma says she’s full of joy, but when I run, you say I’m dragging you, and Grandma uses those bad words.

“This way, Mommy!”

Mommy, I think you have it all wrong. I think I should bark more, and have more chicken treats (at least more than Butterfly, because she’s shorter than me and she actually likes kibble). I think I should be allowed to grow my hair until it sweeps the ground, and I should be allowed to keep my eye goop, and be able to cover myself in mud and poop if I want to, and you should never be allowed to put me in the bathtub ever again.

“Barking is the most wonderful thing in the world!”

I should be able to go out to the backyard and catalog all of the sniffies, even if it takes me all day (squirrels and neighbors and cars and birds are distracting, so it’s not my fault it takes me so long).

I think we should start calling Butterfly “The Cat,” because it would be funny.

“I’m a cat?”

I think there should be a rule that whenever one of my humans returns from “away,” they have to stand still so I can sniff where they’ve been, and there will be no changing clothes, or going to the computer, until I’m finished with my investigation.

The beach should be closer to my house, so I can smell rotting fish whenever I want.

The library should have a dog section, with aisles and aisles of smell stories, like little humans get to have picture books. What am I? Illiterate?

I think Grandma should have a warm fluffy coat like mine, so that she never complains again that it’s too cold to take me outside.

I think there should be a slide from the living room window to the yard, so I can go pee whenever I want.

I think it should snow more.

I would like to know why I don’t have my own YouTube channel. I can climb in and out of boxes just as well as any cat!

I think I should never have to beg for people food again. Instead, I should be served my dinner on a plate. But, Butterfly doesn’t mind eating on the floor.

“Why is it empty?”

I think we should eat more steak. And cookies. And French fries. And chicken skin. Lots and lots of chicken skin. Every night. Forever.

“Chicken?!!!!!!!”

These are my demands, and Steven Colbert says that anyone who wears a big furry hat is in charge, and I wear a big furry everything, so that means I’m even more in charge than anyone else.

“I’m in charge.”

Sincerely,

Cricket

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Happy Chanukah

Posted on December 25, 2016 by rachelmankowitz

Happy Chanukah!

Chanukah, from what the rabbis tell me, means Dedication, as in the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem after misuse, when one night’s worth of oil lasted for eight nights. The dogs rededicated themselves by going for their pre-holiday haircuts (and kerchiefing), and Mom started a new tradition of sewing her holiday cards instead of buying or printing them. I’ve decided that I’m going to rededicate myself to joy, and love, and fun. It’s so much easier to dedicate myself to work, or exercise, or obligations, because the internal and external pressures towards those goals are enormous. But fun? The dogs think I have lost too much of my oomph in this area, and I agree.

Cricket before her haircut,

and after.

Butterfly before

and after.

When I was little, my mom used to make scavenger hunts for me and my brother, for each night of Chanukah, as a way to make up for how small our presents were. One night, we split a package of dimes from the bank; one night my father came home with a used VCR for the whole family that someone else was giving away; we got packages of plastic combs, and socks, and small bags of candy. But we didn’t care, because it was the time and care Mom put into those scavenger hunts that was magical to us. She’d write clues on index cards and hide them throughout the house, one card leading to the next, until we found the ultimate prize.

My brother was convinced that the size of our presents meant that we were poor, even thought we had a nice house, and two family cars, and we both went to private school (on scholarships). But really, Mom was so careful with money, because our father was profligate. He put a lot away for retirement, and bought himself presents, and liked to give gifts to other people. He didn’t understand why I would need regular shoes and sneakers. He was especially angry when my feet grew so fast that I needed a second pair of shoes in less than a year.

My brother chose to ignore the profligacy, and focus on the poverty, and aimed for a good upper middle class career in his adult life. I focused on the unfairness, and the confusion, and ended up as a writer and a fledgling social worker.

But both of us love the play time of Chanukah, and being able to remind ourselves of the joy of running through the house looking for those hidden index cards in Mom’s handwriting, letting us know that we were the most important people in the world to her.

The dogs like to think of every day as a scavenger hunt for treats that will magically fall from the sky just for them. They’re pretty sure that every day should be a holiday, full of treats, and love and joy.

“The treats are coming! The treats are coming!”

“The treats are hiding under the snow, Mommy.”

“Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!”

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Christmas Movies, Again

Posted on December 17, 2016 by rachelmankowitz

Mom is getting VERY tired of Christmas movies. I try to tell her that it’s either a Christmas movie or another two hours of watching the news, or, we can watch repeats of Law & Order for the tenth time each. She acts like I’m purposely making her suffer through Twee Season (see what I did there? Twee for Tree?), and blocking all of the sensible shows from the TV.

This is not my fault. Actually, there have been more than a few Christmas movies this season that I had to stop watching early on. Usually I like the sugary sweet love stories, and the magical touches that make everything turn out alright, but sometimes the acting is too unbelievable, even for me.

“Am I sugary sweet, Mommy?”

Poor Mom is stuck, because she doesn’t like the too sweet movies, and she doesn’t like the edge-of-your-seat-the-world-is-ending movies (or news), and there’s not much left in between right now.

“The world is ending, Grandma!”

This is the time of year when I wish I could forget the plot lines of all of the shows I love, and then I could watch the repeats for hours on end, in pure bliss. But, damn it, my memory is too good. If I try to watch the reruns, I get impatient with my favorite characters for making the same mistakes they made the last time I watched this damn episode.

And I still haven’t given in and joined Netflix, or whatever it is you do with Netflix or Hulu or Amazon. I still borrow DVD’s from the library when I want to catch up on episodes of Miss Marple or Foyle’s War (not kidding).

It helps to have something relaxing on TV while I’m doing my schoolwork at the computer, because if I paid too much attention to the darkness and despair we read and write about in my social work classes, my head would explode. Instead, I listen to Christmas movie dialogue, and reach down to scratch Butterfly’s head, and look over at Cricket’s enigmatic face every once in a while, for reassurance that we haven’t all gone to hell in a handbasket.

002

Ideally, all Christmas movies would star Jimmy Stewart, or Tom Hanks, and be directed by Frank Capra or Nora Ephron, and I could just relax my critical mind and let them take me on a floating journey. I could listen to Louis Armstrong singing about a wonderful world, and watch snow fall on the screen, while I sit in my warm, cozy living room, and believe, for a few hours, that everything will be okay.

Wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing?

“Yeah!!!!!!!!!”

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Physical Exhaustion

Posted on December 11, 2016 by rachelmankowitz

The level of exhaustion I can reach is hard to explain to people. Sometimes I seem fine. I can dress up and go out into the world and function well. The adrenaline gets me through, but then I go home and collapse, and I can barely imagine doing it all again, until I do. But each time, the exhaustion gets worse and the recovery time takes longer. Other people my age have three, four, even five times the schedule I have, and they would look at my life and think I was the luckiest person in the world, with so much downtime. I know that people, even those close to me, believe that I am overstating the problem, and that when I have to work five days a week I will be able to do it. But I’m really scared that they are wrong.

The other day, I saw a performance of a tap dancing troupe called The Red Hot Mamas, made up of women from age 59 to 87, and instead of being inspired, I felt like a loser. I would fall on my head if I tried one of the dance routines they were doing, with such obvious energy and enthusiasm. I used to love my tap classes (when I was four years old), and the sound of the taps when they hit the hard floor. None of these women were breathing hard or struggling for balance, but I would have fallen off the stage in the middle of my first high kick.

I feel guilty for being unwell, without even a diagnosis to name what’s wrong with me. I feel like I’m being lazy, and melodramatic, and should just get up off my ass and join a tap dance group. And I don’t really understand why I can’t.

I am jealous of Cricket’s great joy in running, and sniffing, and playing, as if every trip outside is her first. And I am in awe of Butterfly’s stubbornness. When she thinks a task is beyond her abilities, or wishes, she just stops. She doesn’t go along just because I want her to. She says, no, I’m tired, I’ll wait for you here. When it’s raining, she says, I don’t need to walk all the way down the block just because that’s what Cricket wants to do. I’ll stand here under the awning.

“Nope, Mommy. You can’t make me do anything.”

“Superpuppy!!!!!”

I wish I could do what the dogs do and nap between every activity. But when I take a nap, I wake up disoriented and still exhausted, and they wake up ready for adventure, or at least for snacks. Cricket generously tries to share her enthusiasm with me, however misguided her methods may be (scratching my face and blocking my airway are not pleasant ways to wake me up, Cricket).

“It could be worse, Mommy. I could wake you up with my gardening toys.”

The fact is, the adrenaline that gets me through the day takes forever to leave my system, and until then I feel exhausted and hyper all at once, and constantly afraid that I won’t get my work done in time. I barely finish my school work for one week, when I’m already two days behind for the next week’s assignments. Unfortunately, working my fingers to the bone with typing, and note-taking, and revising, does not burn many calories. This is very disappointing.

I need a break. I want to read a novel. Heck, I want to write a novel. I want to bake, or go food shopping without a list. But there are all of these deadlines to meet, and expectations and obligations to live up to. I feel like someone has pushed me off a cliff, thinking I would fly, but all I can do is fall. And those crash landings really hurt.

Maybe what I need to do is to follow the dogs’ lead and cover my body with a coat of fluff, so at least the landings would be a little bit softer. That could work, or I could just cover myself with my cozy winter blanket and take a long nap with the puppies by my side, and hope that when I wake up, I’ll start to feel better.

“Sleep well, Mommy.”

Fingers and paws crossed.

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Cultural Competence

Posted on December 4, 2016 by rachelmankowitz

I seem to have developed a growl reflex. It started a few weeks ago. At first, I thought I had a cough, or some kind of breathing disorder that would kill me at any moment. Butterfly looked at me with a wait-a-minute stare, as if I had finally spoken in her language, but it was my Mom who noticed that it only happened when the news was on.

“You finally learned my language!”

There’s something dissonant about studying to become a social worker, with all of the inherent multi-culturalism and looking out for the vulnerable and oppressed that comes with that, and then turning on the news and being told that all of these values are passé. There’s a free-for-all feeling to the news in America since the election, as if no one’s quite sure how to cover the President-elect and still be “objective.” Every day is unpredictable.

For a long time now, we’ve lived in a country where white supremacy and neo-Nazi propaganda was beyond the pale, and now, not only is it main stream news, TV news people are tying themselves up in knots trying to discuss these people and their beliefs “objectively” and “without prejudice.”

Note the irony.

Since when did objectivity require the removal of your backbone and integrity? When did this mass surgical procedure take place, and can it be reversed?

I’m trying to find out when we as a society decided that talking about racism became “identity politics,” and therefore something to be avoided. There seems to be a consensus in the main stream media that the Democrats lost the presidency because they were too focused on identity politics – aka the needs and issues of minorities and oppressed and vulnerable groups within our society. The solution offered seems to be that we should not think in terms of groups and differences at all, but only of society as a whole.

This, pardon me, is nonsense. We come together in groups when we have shared issues that need to be addressed, and know that the larger our group, the louder we can be, and the better chance we have of being heard. If we can’t come together and speak as a group, we are effectively being silenced.

The lessons people keep trying to take from this election are bizarre: it’s Hillary’s fault, because she wasn’t likable enough; it’s “identity politics” fault, because it made white people feel left out; or, it’s Black Lives Matter’s fault (a group which, by the way, has become invisible on the news since the election, though I can’t imagine that unfair treatment of black and brown people at the hands of the police has suddenly vanished in the warm glow of the anticipated Trump presidency).

The backlash against the Black Lives Matter movement may be as realistic an explanation for the election of Donald Trump as any, because while some Americans woke up to the reality of unfair treatment of minorities by the police and criminal justice system, because they could finally see the video evidence with their own eyes, many other Americans saw the resulting protests as a threat to peace and safety, and they wanted to shut it down.

The media has decided to take Trump’s election as a mandate to stop covering certain issues, and to stop advocating certain values, that had seemed to be universal in America. The media also seems to have decided to take Trump’s word for it that Steve Bannon, despite being the voice of the Alt-right, in his own words, is really not a racist, misogynist, anti-Semite. No, he’s just misunderstood.

My only consolation is that I have the loudest, most aggressive protester in the world living in my own household. Her name is Cricket, and she is a fourteen pound bundle of fluffy outrage. If things continue to get worse, I may have to pack Cricket into the car and bring her to Washington, DC to have her voice heard. I’ll just put her at the front of whichever march is underway at the moment: the women’s march (she is female, after all), or the rights of immigrants march (as far as I know, there is no such thing as legal citizen ship for canines, so her outrage would be real). She’d be willing to fight for a lot of different groups.

“I have something to say!”

But watch out KKK. Cricket may be a white dog, but she does not like bed sheets. You have been warned!

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For My Birthday

Posted on November 27, 2016 by rachelmankowitz

This year, for my birthday, I wanted to write up a list of charities and foundations and organizations that I wish I could donate money to, like: Alley Cat Allies, North Shore Animal League America, The Anti-Defamation League, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and on and on. But I feel overwhelmed by all of the rights I want to protect. I’ve been exhausted lately and maybe that’s why the fear hit me so hard after the election. I know how little energy I have left, to fight for my rights and my safety, and I just wanted someone else to take care of it. Some people are out protesting, and others are donating money to good causes, and still others are signing up for newspaper subscriptions online, to support actual journalism over the fake news we’ve gotten used to in our post-factual world. I want to do all of those things, except the protesting. It just looks so exhausting to have to walk through the city like that. Maybe if I had a golf cart…

“I’m good here, Mom. You go without me.”

I’d love to support an organization that helps people of all ages learn how to volunteer in their communities. This has been a lifelong difficulty for me. Where can I volunteer? Who wants my help? How can I find them? More often than not I feel rejected before I even apply, because the brochures are so complicated, and the application process makes me feel unqualified. I know there are groups for kids and teenagers that encourage them to volunteer, I just wish there were more of them, and that they were more sensitive to the less outgoing and confident among us.

I’d love to support an organization that brings pets to home-bound seniors, as well as seniors in nursing homes and rehab centers. Not everyone can take care of a pet full time, but everyone deserves the chance to absorb some of the joy my dogs bring to me.

I’d love to see better education, for everyone, about the services available at the local, state, and federal level, to help people in need – so that you don’t have to be at the end of your rope before you find the supports our society has to offer.

I’d love to see Human Rights and Social Justice classes at the high school and college level instead of just in social work school, so that we can learn the history of oppression in our country, and how we have worked to combat it, and how we can continue to work to move our country forward. Then maybe we could reach a point in our society where we don’t have to deny the history of one group’s suffering in order to take on the suffering of another group as well.

What else do I want for my birthday? I want to lose weight. I want a very long nap. I want to feel hopeful about the future. I want people to stop checking their phones every two minutes while they are talking to me. I want chocolate frosting to be good for my health. I want my dogs to be healthy and happy. I want my Mom to live forever. I want a Harry Potter coloring book. Better yet, I want to go to Hogwarts, or at least get a letter, delivered by an owl, telling me that I have all of the qualifications to go be a witch.

“Mommy’s a witch!”

I’m pretty sure that Cricket and Butterfly have already received their letters. Cricket’s is probably hidden under the couch in the living room, and Butterfly may have eaten hers (she loves the taste of quality card stock). I have to say, I’m flattered that they have chosen to stay with me instead of going off to become mini-witches themselves. It’s just not the choice I would have made myself. I mean, magic wands? Spells? All kinds of new creatures to meet, some of them fluffy? Who could say no to that?

“You can’t come in here, Mommy. Moose will stop you.”

“Did you know that this one tastes different from the TV Guide? Not better, just different.”

“I’m sorry, Mommy. I was desperate.”

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The Social Construct

Posted on November 19, 2016 by rachelmankowitz

The idea that we create our own worlds, or choose our own lives, has been overplayed. Americans believe so deeply in independence and individualism that we don’t want to admit that we are dependent on anyone else, even for the way we perceive the world we live in. But our reality is a social construct. We create it piece by piece through the stories we tell, the media we take in, and the institutions we live by, and many of those things are out of our control.

“Nothing is out of my control, Mommy!”

Somewhere along the way, our visions of the world we live in have become divided and foreign to one another. We can live in the same town and yet live in different worlds, with supermarkets and power lines in common, morning traffic jams and planes flying too low overhead, but otherwise, nothing is the same for us. It has reached a point where there is almost no common language among any two people. It is all negotiation of reality, in every interaction. It’s not just about having different religious beliefs, or opinions about politics, it’s almost as if the atmosphere, the oxygen content of the air, changes from person to person, on the same block.

I feel like I move between shimmering, mostly invisible, variations of the world all day long. I can’t keep track of how my point of view changes during the day, until I realize that the world I think I am living in at Five PM is nothing like one I thought I woke up to at Seven AM, when Butterfly licked my elbow and then barked at me when I refused to get up. Part of it comes from me and how I feel, physically and emotionally. The world can seem like a more brutal place when I am in physical pain, no matter what’s going on around me. But part of it comes from the people around me and what they assume about the world we share.

“It’s not dark outside, Mommy. It’s time to pee.”

Do we believe that racism is a bad thing, or an obsolete thing, or okay the way it is? Are people allowed to be gay today? Or is it suddenly wrong again? Part of my confusion comes from relying so heavily on the people around me to tell me who we are and how the world is, and not feeling safe enough just to go with my own perspective. I rely on the news media, and Facebook, and TV shows, to help me figure out which world I am living in, and who’s in it with me, so when they mislead me or just get it wrong, I’m in trouble.

I am jealous of people who are able to hold on to their own vision of reality no matter what changes around them. Cricket and Butterfly are great at this, ignoring the news and the anxiety in the air in favor of their predicable daily schedules. For me, it feels like the world is always moving under my feet, like I’m on one of those treadmill-like walkways at the airport, so that even when I stand still and remain the same, the world refuses to remain the same around me.

Cricket and Butterfly always know what’s important.

Even now, I admire the unmitigated gall of a sentence like, We hold these truths to be self-evident. We do? Self-evident? I could never have cobbled together that sentence, not in a thousand drafts. I would have had trouble imagining that I could speak for everyone, or believing that everyone might agree on any one thing. It has become clear over this past year, but also long before that, that truths are not as universally accepted as people would like to believe.

The problem is, no matter what we believe or see or recognize about the world we live in, we are all still living in it. Every day we make big and small decisions. We don’t have endless choices; but then again, the world is not given to us whole and complete either, we help form it, tiny piece by tiny piece: when we stand up against a bully, or stay silent; when we work harder, instead of giving up, because the goal is worth it to us; when we choose to stay home on Election Day, because there are only two choices and we don’t love either one. That’s a choice we’ve made, even if there are others who limited our choices in the first place, or rigged the system, or disappointed us. We can blame other people for the outcome, and we may be right in large part, except, we made our own choices too, and those choices counted, and they helped to create the world we live in today. You matter. I matter. We create this world together every day. And we can do better. Right?

“Are you asking us?”

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Empathy

Posted on November 13, 2016 by rachelmankowitz

Cricket is not an empathy expert. She tends to see the world through a fog of her own needs, interpreting others’ characters by how quickly and thoroughly they respond to her demands. I kept trying to help her learn to see the rest of us more clearly. When she bit me with her sharp puppy teeth I would yell “ouch!” like the teacher told us to do, but Cricket would go on biting me. When I was upset, Cricket would hop right over to me, not to offer comfort, but to steal my tear-and-snot-filled tissues.

“You don’t need this, right?”

It wasn’t until we adopted Butterfly, an eight-year-old puppy-mill-mama from the shelter, that Cricket started to get an inkling of what empathy might be. Butterfly was about Cricket’s size, and her species, and she peed outside (eventually) and barked, and ate kibble and chicken treats, but at first, Cricket saw all of these behaviors as a usurping of her role as “Only Dog” and resented her new sister. Butterfly persisted, though, offering up her butt for sniffing, listening to Cricket’s rants with wide-eyed wonder, peeing only where Cricket peed, deferring to her sister on every big and small issue of dogdom, until, eventually, Cricket had to admit that there was something to this sisterhood business. Because Butterfly is all empathy. She listens to Cricket’s complaints and either offers comfort, or takes up the barking along with her. When Cricket seems grumpy or sad, Butterfly sits nearby to offer solidarity and a fluffy butt to lean on.

Butterfly’s butt seems to be very comforting.

I’m not saying that four years with Butterfly have made Cricket into the queen of empathy, in fact, she still has very little interest in what other people, or dogs, feel or think, especially if it’s different from her own view of things. But she has come to respect the power of empathy when it is directed at her. She accepts her sister’s solidarity and comfort, and will even allow a small rebuke of her own behavior, as long as it’s cushioned with endless adoration.

Only Butterfly could get away with telling Cricket to tone down the barking.

Butterfly sends warmth my way too, and notices when I am struggling, especially physically, but whereas she can clearly relate to Cricket’s issues, as a fellow dog, she sees my problems as too human, and therefore hard to understand. I feel that way too, a lot of the time. I don’t know how to have empathy for myself. I tend to judge whether I deserve empathy based on whether I’ve received empathy from other people. So if I happen to be surrounded by people who can’t relate to me, or can’t see things from my perspective, or if everyone who cares about me is busy, or in a bad mood, I’m sunk.

“I love you, Mommy, but I don’t understand.”

My real world has been short on empathy lately, but as a result, I’ve been taking more and more comfort in the virtual empathy of my fellow bloggers. Even when I feel overwhelmed with school work, or the horrible, horrible news, I make time to write an essay for the blog, just because, selfishly, I want to feel the warmth and kindness that radiates from all of you in return.

Cricket is very lucky to have a Butterfly at her side, always ready to offer sweetness and comfort, and I think everyone deserves to have a Butterfly of their own, to keep them company through the rough spots. You, dear readers, are my Butterfly.

Thank you.

pix-from-eos-013

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The Third Act

Posted on November 5, 2016 by rachelmankowitz

I’ve always struggled with endings. I can write a beginning and a middle, and even a climactic confrontation, but actual endings, of stories, poems, songs, and especially novels, have been hard for me. I can write myself into a corner, like all of the experts tell you to do, with the stakes at their highest, and no hope to speak of, but I can’t write my way back out again.

We rely on stories to give our lives a more satisfying shape. We can tolerate the stress and conflict necessary in storytelling, because we believe we know that there will be relief and success in the end. But that’s never been my life experience. The tension never really abates. It just ratchets up and up until I get used to the higher level of anxiety. I may look back, a year later, and realize that I’ve solved a problem or learned a lesson, but I don’t feel the relief while it’s happening.

I’m always looking ahead. I can’t help it. Even when I read a book or watch a movie, and the happy ending comes along, I start imagining how badly the next part of the story will go instead of reveling in the joy. I must have accomplished things, or finished things, in my life, but it never feels that way. When I graduated from high school or college or graduate school, I was focused on the abyss ahead of me, rather than any sense of accomplishment at finishing something important. I never felt like I was really closing a book, or even a chapter, unless it was a chapter with a cliff hanger.

I am most comfortable with middles – where it’s just about doing the work in front of me, and not thinking about where I have to go next. But I’m not supposed to just stick to middles. I have to graduate, and start new things, and struggle all over again to figure out what to do, or why to do it.

The plan for my own third act (or fifth? Or ninth?), has been social work school, leading to a career, at least part time, as a social worker. But my third act is turning into a whole drama of its own, with a thousand catastrophes to overcome, and I’m barely a third of the way through the program.

One of the possible endings for a story, instead of a happy ending, or a tragic (everybody dies) ending, is simply getting up the next day to try again; the whisper of a hope of a happy continuation. This is what I’ve tried to tell myself, almost daily, of late: that it’s enough if I can get up the next day and try again. But I don’t really believe that. I want the relief of a happy ending. I want the denouement, the unknotting of tension, that I’ve been promised.

The dogs are so much better at shaping their stories. It’s the naps. Their days are made up of a series of short stories, conveniently separated by restful and rejuvenating naps. Cricket wakes up because she has to pee (inciting incident). She jumps on her Mommy, and cries and scratches, until Mommy agrees to take her outside (Cricket is the heroine of her own story). Outside, she sniffs, and barks, and chases squirrels and random humans, until she is ready to go back inside. Once inside, she stares at her Mommy and the treat bag, until the treat is given (the final climax). Then she eats her treat (denouement), and takes a nap (resolution). This neat structure happens over and over again every day, to Cricket’s great satisfaction.

“Wake up, Mommy!”

“Watch me, Mommy!”

“Where are my treats, Mommy?”

Sleepy time!

Butterfly hitches a ride on Cricket’s daily structure, but sometimes she gets to be the heroine of her own story: barking me awake, running free through the yard to finally relieve herself of her burdens. But she doesn’t mind being Cricket’s sidekick the rest of the time. There’s something satisfying in being part of someone else’s story, instead of always having to be the heroine of your own. But then again, it’s not like we have much of a choice. This is Cricket’s story and the rest of us are just her supporting characters. Just ask her.

Butterfly, the trusty sidekick.

Butterfly, the star of her own show!

And it’s sleepy time again.

Until,…

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Posted in Uncategorized and tagged dogs, memoir, pets, three act structure, writing. Bookmark the permalink.

rachelmankowitz

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The Third Act

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