Reading between the lines… or How did I get so lucky to have the most insightful Best Friend in the Universe.
Anyone who knows me for more than 4 minutes usually gets all the necessary information. I hold nothing back. I read like an open book, or should I say trashy magazine to be more accurate. Within minutes of meeting me, most people know the following:
I am Jewish.
I got married late in Life (34)
My father died when I was 9.
My father was a Holocaust Survivor.
I am in an enmeshed relationship with my mother, Becky, who I call my oldest child.
I met my best friend Roberta, when I was 5 on my way to kindergarten. She is more than a best friend, and more than a sister. It is impossible to describe our relationship.
After getting what I consider to be all the necessary information about myself out of the way in order to demonstrate I am someone you can trust and be completely open with, I ever so smoothly make the transition to move the conversation into the direction of where I really want it to go…
Enough about me, what about you?
I then dive into my research mode as to who YOU are. I have a deep curiosity and interest in other people’s lives. I am a life story detective. I want to know everything about your life. Then I want to analyze it. What could possibly be more fascinating than someone’s personal journey through the Universe? This is why I quickly share so much up front. I want to make you comfortable. If I show you mine, then I am hoping you will show me yours. I need to know, and I want the details. Are your parents happily married? Were you ever abused as a child? Where did you grow up? Do you have a sibling with whom you never speak? Are you happily married? What do you do for a living? What does your spouse do? The questions are endless and I have no boundaries or inhibitions. It is this quest for knowledge and understanding of others that often binds Roberta and me. When we are together we make Woodward and Bernstein look like amateurs. We are a dynamic duo with radar that is so sophisticated; technology has not caught up yet. We need to start an advice column since not only do we love to explore the emotional and psychological landscape of everyone’s lives, we love to come up with brilliant insights unraveling mysteries that have puzzled people because they were just “too close” to the situation to really break it down scientifically and understand the cause and effect.
Did I mention Roberta is a chemist? A real scientist at heart and a scientist of the heart, the emotional pretty shaped one you see on Valentine’s Day cards as well as the physical one pounding in your chest. She can unravel medical mysteries as well as solve complex psychological puzzles plaguing ones development and ability to move forward. Sometimes I think Roberta has some rare super power allowing her to approach every internal war on two fronts, getting to the root causes of both psychological and physical issues. I cannot count the number of times she has provided me with just the right questions to ask in order to clear up medical problems for me, my mom, my kids, my husband and other friends.
Some people are more defined by their relationships than by what they do for a living, what they own, or accomplishments. I could never be an Olympian because those people need to be dedicated to achieving a personal goal demanding an inordinate amount of time focused on training their bodies. I spend my time thinking about relationships. I spend more time thinking about the relationships I have with people than I do with the actual people themselves. What sport is that, Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, or Laziness? It does not really produce anything of substance or use unless you are willing to count “epiphanies.” Roberta and I produce epiphanies like McDonald’s makes hamburgers. We really should be writing them down somewhere, keeping a log so at least we will have something to show for all our hard work. They could sit ready in the warmers just like those little burgers, waiting until someone comes up and orders one.
I know I am the luckiest person in the world. I really do because I have Roberta always ready to analyze and make sense of the world with me and often for me.
With all the unfulfilled dreams and fantasies running rampant around my mischievous mind I often miss understanding what is really important. This is where Roberta comes in to rescue me from my own nearsightedness. In a previous Blog Post I wrote about having to share my soul with my mother. I looked at it as if it made my life more complicated and worst in that it prevented me from accomplishing some greater purpose for which I was born. Roberta read it. She had an entirely different perspective. She sent me an email and gave me permission to use part of it on this Posting: This is what Roberta said:
“I read your blog. Yeah, you "coulda been a contender". We all could have. Everyone regrets the path not followed because we fantasize the outcome. There really is no way of knowing how good things could have been if you had, for example, become a lawyer, but one thing is probably certain: you would have had less time to spend with your mother while she was healthy and especially now while she isn't. Your relationship would have less dimension and quality. What seems like more for you is almost always less for others, and that fact alone can often mean less for you.
Much of what your mother repeated regularly, from the aphorisms to the complaints, held a deeper truth or attempted to conceal one that could only be revealed at a safer time. When she regretted her lack of schooling, she drummed into you and your brothers how important education was. It wasn't about you feeling bad that she didn't have something, but that you should go out and get it. That was about your own identity, not hers, about you leaving and becoming your own person, not staying and mirroring her life. You may have physically stuck around, but you were always encouraged to develop a soaring spirit, something that has no boundaries. 6242 was not a cage, but a nest.”
I cried after reading what Roberta wrote. She is a more beautiful writer than I will ever be. She remains the smartest person I know. I have written about “the building” aka 6242 a lot over the years and shared much of it with Roberta. Relationships are complicated and fascinating whether they are between two people, or one person and a place. I think of Scarlet O’Hara and Tara, or Dorothy and Oz, Alice and the Wonderland, or Wendy and Neverland whenever I think of my Family and 6242. The building was our livelihood, it was a safe harbor for so many of the tenants who came and went, it was a museum holding artifacts from our families history, it was an anchor that tied me to one place, it was a ventilator that I needed in order to exist, and in the end it was the golden ticket for my mother and answered the question hounding her for 8 decades:
“What will become of me?” The answer: You will be able to live in dignity, amongst familiar faces in a warm beautiful apartment, no cockroaches, no chicken coops, and no hunger pains gnawing at your 9 year old stomach. I did not do that for Becky. She did that herself. She took care of the building and of her children the best she could and it turned out pretty well. I think what Roberta was trying to tell me was how important I was to enabling my mom to accomplish so much. And that is something I can be proud of, just as proud as anyone who owns a big home on the lake, or is appearing on Broadway tonight.
I love the idea of a “nest”. It is so Roberta. She is so much more grounded and practical than I am. I would have compared the building to a “launching pad” so I could think of myself as a rocket soaring into the sky, but that would have just been another escape fantasy like the ones I had walking to grammar school where in my head Scotty was already read to “beam me up.” Roberta is more maternal and caring herself. While I pretend I want to run free, she understands and respects the Universe and its gravitational forces. It must be why she is a master gardener and someone who loves birds. Roberta believes in the need to always return to the earth in both body and mind. I am the one with her head in the clouds while she is swooping down and building the nest, a soft place to land when my imaginary wings fail to move me across the sky.
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