Hating, Leaving, Visiting and Warming Back Up to, New York

The title is a variation of the one in a book I found at the Strand in the Village--called Goodbye to All That: Loving and Leaving New York".  My title reflects the circle of my particular relationship with the place.

I must have mentioned somewhere in the various incarnations of this blog that in the late 1970s and the very beginning of the 1980s, when I was in my 20s, I had a dark epiphany on the Express Bus to Manhattan on my way to work. Not only the morning but the streets and the buildings that passed before my eyes looked dreary and dead. This was the Koch years, when the city was crime ridden. You couldn't walk in Central Park. Bryant Park was needle park. The subway was cold in winter, hot in summer and devoured by graffitti. Folks might have been singing the praises of the place since the 1920s, but for me it was an overwhelming world smelling of trash, turds and tar all at once.

Most of my immediate family had lived, and died, in the Bronx or Manhattan, or, if they got out, in the "wilds" of New Jersey. A couple of my braver, more securely employed friends, lived, as roommates, in brownstones in the still seedy but slowly up and coming area of Columbus Avenue. Yes, there were half price Broadway tickets and restaurant evenings out, but only if someone had a car, the subways at night were no where to be.  I had good friends from college I didn't want to leave, and some family, but the natural gray within me--I tended toward anxiety, obsessiveness and depression anyway--was burgeoning as the press of the seemingly decaying city pressed from the outside. I had seen the more open space and the nearly always blue sky of California, and the blue ocean so nearby urban Los Angeles, and I was craving, well, anything else than where I was. I worked in a cramped, virtually windowless office on Madison Avenue, by Grand Central, with a screamer of a lawyer whose favorite word began with "F". I was loved by my widowed father but his overprotective fearfulness for me  had since become my fearfulness for myself.

I had to escape. Maybe I didn't really hate New York, though it surely felt like it.  Maybe I had to reject New York in order to try something different from the life I had always known. I had to show some gumption.

I have told that tale here, the six week plan, finding a job, taking the California Bar. Although I was in "Hollywood" where the sitcoms were mostly still written, I had little time for that dream with long work hours.  I lost a writing partner who remained in New York and connected with another aspirant. I was sad at the loss, but I have never otherwise regretted the now 35 year arc of this life.

I never really became a Californian, at least in my soul. The antipathy for New York that drove me out of it to the land of palm trees did not change the fact I was a New Yorker, and always would be. Why did that mean something? I don't know. It just did. It does. The extremes, the energy, the intensity--I suppose I am much like New York, the good and the bad of it. I think I wanted to like it again, though I knew I'd never go back to three months of humidity and five or so of cold and slush. I came back every few years and after a while the smells and sounds became less unpleasant and the city was cleaning itself up. Formerly dank and dangerous parks developed flowers and restaurants and the flow of business people eating lunch and sharing after five happy hours. A revitalization began.

My last visit, until the middle of this month when I picked up that book about New York vibes at the Strand, had been in June 2010. I had a short, happy, and what would be a final encounter with a college friend, Noreen, who would die toward the end of that year. I enjoyed myself, but was delighted to leave behind a week's worth of humidity. After I lost my job in 2011 in a political shake-up that ultimately would claim nearly all of the management team, moved apartments, made a short trip to Boston for a graduation,  I just didn't get back to New York.

But this time, with another graduation to attend in the Boston area, and in real need of a change, and the realization that six years away from the few family members I have in the area was too long, particularly for an 89 year old aunt, my mother's sister, I felt myself being drawn back.

I stayed at the Old Roosevelt Hotel on East 45th Street, a place where Guy Lombardo once held his New Year's orchestral bashes in days gone by. The location allowed me to walk, and walk, and walk, east side to west side, uptown to the 60s and 70s. Maybe it was nostalgia, seeing my aunt in her Manhattan high rise, looking through old photos with her, and my cousin Carol and her husband, walking past the horse carriages awaiting passengers for a Central Park tour, attending Mass at the renovated St. Patrick's Cathedral, reconnecting in person with a childhood friend I had not actually seen (though we had spoken) in about 35 years. I shed a tear at the site of the new World Trade Center.  The speed of the city has, if that is possible, increased. There are even more people, from even more places, walking criss-cross and parallel to each other. Everything is hawked on street corners, from food to clothes. Bringing the LIRR railroad to Grand Central, meant jackhammers in the night. I supped at  Circo, took in The King and I, driven in a town car hired by my childhood friend. I spent many hours with my aunt and cousin, the only thing I had "planned" and everything else just happened, catching up with a few, though not nearly as many people I might have hoped, and always on the fly, at restaurants they chose, French, American bar (PJ Clarke's), Greek (in Hell's Kitchen, still a mix of seedy and slow to develop gentrification), Middle Eastern.

I was oddly relaxed in the midst of a whirlwind. I didn't live in New York, but I wasn't a tourist. That appealed to me.

As I sit on the terrace of my little West Hollywood condo, the palm trees being brushed by a late afternoon breeze, I know that I would never be happy living in the chaos of Manhattan or even the suburbs of Westchester.  I like my life in California. Still, although I may not love New
York enough to go back to it, I like it again, very much.

I'm a Millenial; I Have a Porsche; I Can Do What I Want!

Ok, it could be, "I'm a Millenial; I have a BMW; I can do what I want!".  I have no chance with my Toyota Rav4. Oh, and I'm not a Millenial. I am not even in the same territory as a Millenial. That's a subject for another day.

It's bad enough that traffic in Los Angeles is apparently the worst in the country. The powers that be encourage use of public transportation, but public transportation in Southern California has nothing in common with say that of New York or San Francisco. You can go from certain cities to others, but the lines are just too short. Truth be told, though, even if they extended and connected the lines, I wouldn't ride. Been there. Done that. For 27 years as a Bronx-ite. And you can sell it any way you want, being one of the sardines in the car isn't something I plan on going back to, God willing and the creek don't rise.

I love to drive. I just don't love the twenty somethings who think I can read their minds as they dart in front of me with their cool cars with nary a signal.

You'd think it would be only the guys. Oh, no. Often it is the young women with a left hand flung with studied casual-ness out the window, flicking a cigarette. She must not mind if I get the benefit of the second hand ashes flying back my way.

So, I might be at a cross-walk waiting for that pedestrian with an I-phone in one hand and a Starbuck's half-caf, soy latte in the other to pass, and an impatient young one with places to go and people to see, will give several short irritated honks. I have, on occasion, put my left hand out of the window--and pointed, using my index finger--I promise-at the person in front of my car inhibiting my ability to get out of the way.

Such haste resulted in a happily not serious accident a few months ago. I was on Fountain Avenue. A young woman left her garage and instead of turning right, she blocked my way to turn left. The young men behind me were clearly impatient as I heard them move around to my left and smack into the young woman's car before she'd quite completed the turn. No one was hurt. But it was a clear case of comparative negligence.

Uh, oh, I may break out in a chorus of "What's the Matter With Kids Today" from Bye Bye Birdie.

Not all of them, of course, (I know several who are terrific, whose parents taught them that the sun does not shine out of their, well you know) but here in La La land, way too many.

Hey kids, go ahead vote for Bernie. He believes in redistribution of money and property. Maybe I can have your Porsche. Happy to give you my Rav4.

Contrasts

These two images have nothing obvious in common, except that I saw the two films, one for the movies, one for television, and made some fifty years apart, today. And they spawn thoughts, such as they are.

Let me recapitulate. I have been felled by one of those colds that you think is gone, and you go out and live your life as usual, and the darn thing comes back in full force. That has been the last two weeks for me. And then today, I really really think, as the sun sets, I think "Yes, I am over it, this damnable cold."  And a friend calls and says, "Wanna see a movie?"  And I suck in my breath for fear of tempting the cold gods and say, "yes."  And the movie we select is "Hello, My Name is Doris" which has received laudable reviews. Rotten Tomatoes gives is 83 percent.

So, off we go, Len Speaks and I, to my local theatre, the Sundance, where no one under 21 is allowed and where one can purchase and eat a full meal, with wine or beer, at one's seat, built in tables to your left or right provided. Good. Not very far from my bedroom, or living room. Literally, it is three and a half blocks away.

I loved what the movie tried to do. A woman of a certain age, who has given up much of her life to take care of her mother, while the rest of her family fulfilled their dreams, finds herself "free".  Mother has died. But she has forfeited the joys of a younger life and a middle age life in order to be a care giver and now, all that remains of her is a caregiver minus an object of care. She could have married, was even engaged once, we find out in the course of things, but she could not leave New York to be with her sole beloved. The choices she made, while good and true, have limited her own existence. And now? She remains an employee of what once was a staid company, but was bought out by millennial hipsters. It is a Google of apparel. Chairs are swapped for exercise balls (that was one really idiotic screenwriting choice I thought among others, that doomed this film), and everyone talks in this techno, babble speak. She is probably like 65 or 70 and they are like 25 or 20. She survived the merger, although how that was possible is beyond logic. It is not that she is older. It is that she is not like any older person I have ever seen. She wears mismatched colors and skeins. She has this odd ribbon in her hair all the time. She wears the cat glasses, with sparkles, that were left behind in the 1960s. She would not have survived the merger as the only older person to keep a job. I have friends, my age or more, who work for such companies, but they are mainstream stylish for their generations. And, our Doris is a hoarder besides. Doris basically sets her sights on a new young executive, John, as a potential break out for the first time in 45 years dating object. There is comedy, of sorts. And tragedy of sorts. She has friends and family whose stories are half developed. I thought of this film as a trying for a "Being There" vibe, mixed with Walter Mitty touches (Doris has these reveries). I wanted it to work. I really did, because I resonate with the road not traveled so far and hope that it is possible for a way late start, but it just was a mish mash from start to finish.

I did enjoy my chicken barbecue quesadilla and two craft beers. And it was nice to spend a few hours with a friend after a nearly monastic couple of weeks.

When I got home, I flipped to METV and there was Star Trek. I was fifteen minutes late for the beginning, but I have seen the episode who knows how many times since it's denouement in 1960 something. "The City on The Edge of Forever" written by science fiction scribe Harlan Ellison. Dr. McCoy, one of the triumvirate of the universe of Star Trek, is accidentally injected with a drug that generates paranoia. This is not a good place for him to be paranoid as the crew, the stalwart Captain Kirk and the loyal Mr. Spock among them are on  a planet with an arch that has the ability to send those who pass through it back in time. The Dr. flees through the portal. And as in all such time travel tales, the other heroes, Kirk and McCoy, must get him back before he changes the trajectory of history so much so that their very existence is in peril. But the tale of the threesome, once on earth, each drawn to one woman, a generous, forward thinking settlement worker of 1930 earth, Edith Keeler, is powerful and timeless in a time travelling tale. She is the focal point. Kirk and Spock become her charges, helping around the mission, and she and Kirk discover a kinship first, and then a love of the ages. The problem is as it turns out is that in the original skein of time, she died in an auto accident, and that death was essential in preventing a sequence of events that would have allowed Germany to win World War Two. In order to preserve the integrity of the time line, Edith Keeler must die. Heart or History? The emotion and happiness of one or the preservation of millions. Edith Keeler finds McCoy before they do. She helps him. As she and Kirk are walking on the way to a Clark Gable movie, she mentions McCoy's name. Kirk runs across the street to the settlement house, and the three men are reunited. As Edith distractedly walks across the street toward them, she does not see the truck barreling toward her. McCoy sees it and begins to intercept her. Kirk holds him back in an heroic reflex, closing his eyes against the unthinkable. Spock absorbs his friend's expression. McCoy, knowing none of the backstory, chides Kirk, "Jim, do you know what you did, I could have saved her!"  Spock responds for his friend, "He knows, doctor. He knows."

A little television show a half century old writes about sacrifice. They really don't make 'em like they used to. I am afraid "My Name is Doris" will fade into obscurity. But I think "City on the Edge of Forever" will find its way into the data banks of the 24th century, if we make it that far as a species.

A Frenzied Nation Without Faith or Reason

I remember, when I was about 14, that play among myself, and two cousins, got out of hand. You might think it nothing. But I remember how I felt at the time, that something was off kilter, out of control if you will. I remember the fear and frustration I felt that nothing I could say, no cajoling, or logical argument about the cruelty (small in terms of the world at large, but terrifyingly real to me at the time) would have an impact on their laughter. They didn't do anything cosmically horrible except to take my glasses (I was profoundly nearsighted) and throw them back and forth out of my reach taunting me with each toss. They knew my mother. If those glasses broke in the course of this "game", my mother would not have blamed them, but me.  And yet, I, the elder of the three of us was unable to interdict the escalating craziness.

Another childhood memory pops to mind. I went with another cousin of mine to a playground near our apartments where you could play handball or paddleball. Basically, there was a large concrete wall, and kids could pound their Spauldings against it on opposite sides. Usually if your ball went over to the other side of the wall, someone would throw it back. But one day, my cousin caused her ball to go to the other side and it did not come back. I was the elder here again, so I went to the other side of the wall and saw that one of the girls, older than I, and larger than I, was mockingly withholding the ball. I asked for it back. The next thing I remember is that several of her friends had to be held back from hitting me. I can't remember if we got the ball back. I do know we got out of there.

What could these tales possibly have to do with our nation? There was a time of orderliness, if you will, in our society. Perhaps things were too rigid. Yes, in some ways, they were. There were lots of rules from written ones about spitting on the street and unwritten ones about how you dressed and what things were proper to talk about in polite company. It was all very "either/or".  There was a strong frame on behavior in public, and even in private.  Children like myself and my cousins knew the consequence for breaking rules. They occasionally broke them, of course, and engaged in what would be called bullying behavior, but they knew they could be sanctioned, if they got caught.  They grew up and learned well the rules of public and private discourse. In conversation or behavior, there were just some things beyond the pale. They just didn't happen.

My father was prescient, I realize in retrospect. In the late 1960s, he was prophesying the end of our nation, the end of the social contract based upon an idea of Judeo-Christian morality. He was decrying children who did not learn to control their impulses, who grew into adults who did not control their impulses. I still followed the rules, of course, but like everyone of my generation, I mostly pooh-poohed his agitated concern.

My father has been dead eight years, but even before he died, I began to inherit his feeling about the direction of an America I no longer recognized. It had been an imperfect union, to be sure, but always seeking perfection based upon foundational values of liberty and the embracing of all immigrants who sought to join those values under the protection of a just God.

That billboard pictured at the beginning of this entry? There have been others that jolted me, that stand for me as an illustration of the demeaning of ordinary life in our country. I can read on some billboards about the varying sexually transmitted diseases that I might contract if I have unsafe relations. I can see a tee shirt worn by a teenager on the street that doesn't blank out the uc and the k of the word pointedly "obscured" on the billboard. Life then must be good, right? Don't like it?  Too bad.

"Fxxk the tux" is emblematic of a society devolving. The Presidential debates, primaries and caucuses seema great deal to me like that paddle ball court of my childhood, a penultimate culmination of a diseased liberation from faith and reason. We aren't quite up to crucifixions, like our brethren in the Middle East, but we are well on the way to that particular frenzy. Now, speech is offensive and your career can be demolished and your reputation. Soon, your very tongue will be in jeopardy. Don't think so? History books are replete with tales of societies that doubted the reality of the fall of civilizations.

God help us! It is a good thing His Love is unconditional.  

A Pleasure to Meet You Mr.Shorthouse

The meeting has not been a traditional one. Mr. Derek Shorthouse, you see, died in November 2012, in England.

A glory of life is its moments of unexpected synchronicity.

I have, I think I have mentioned in these pages, a fondness for Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman, that extraordinary thinker and convert to Catholicism from Anglicanism back in the 19th century. I have read several biographies and lately have been collecting some of editions of his letters and diaries. The latest one I received via an Amazon third party, a bookstore in the U.K., is of his Oxford Movement days when he hoped with his friends and colleagues to reform Anglicanism. This volume was in perfect shape, a pristine cover, and with not even the slightest marking in its printed body. It almost looked unread. But there was one clear indication of a prior owner, a colorful
"Ex Libris" with the name of one Derek Shorthouse. The name bespoke a literary time past. For a moment, it seemed impossible this book belonged to a real person.

And then I did what modern technology commands. I googled Mr. Shorthouse. There he was! He did not have a large presence on the net, but enough of one for me to get a sense of the man. His interest in Newman was not mere intellectual curiosity. At one time, Mr. Shorthouse had been the bursar at Oriel College Oxford, Newman's alma mater. I don't know how he came to it, the internet does not give that much information, but Mr. Shorthouse was scheduled to be received officially into the Catholic Church on December 8 but died on November 27. He had made the decision, but God took him to His Heart before the formality.

He was, as well, a chronicler of his family. I have printed out and saved photographs of Derek and his family which he gathered together.

He had four children, two girls and two boys; one boy appears to have grown up to be a successful financial expert.

Something touches me deeply about having this man's book in my little apartment in West Hollywood. There is an earthly immortality about it. I don't know if Mr. Shorthouse ever travelled to the States in his lifetime, but a part of him is now here, in the form of the book in my library, his memory now firmly in mine.

Postscript February 13, 2025. I noticed that there had been a few hits on this short blog entry. I also notice that what picture I had placed on the entry back in 2016, when I made the entry was gone. So, I googled again, and found less than I had back then, which saddened me. I found a brief obituary and an entry from the Gloucestershire Heritage Club which I now post here and hope it will survive. 

Derek Shorthouse was educated at Wolverhampton Grammar School and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he read Latin and Greek. He worked in industry as a Chartered Secretary for most of his career, with an interval of a few years as Treasurer and Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. He lived in West Gloucestershire for many years and was an active member of the local community, including the local church, Dymock Cricket Club, and serving as constituency chairman of the West Gloucestershire Conservative Party; he was also a councillor on the Forest of Dean District Council for many years. His historical interests included local history and late 19th and early 20th century English political history, and he was a member of many societies related to these subjects. He was a founder member and first chairman of the Friends of Gloucestershire Archives and was an active member of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, serving as a member of its Library Committee for several years. He died at the age of 80 on 27 November 2012.

45 Years: Mesmerizing

I am surprised that I was so taken by this movie, the tale of a 45 year marriage tested deeply by a husband's past relationship. The story unfolds so very slowly but I realized two things, first, that the various scenes felt like real life to me, unremarkable but yet meaningful and secondly, by the end I found that these two people had become real to me. And as the credits rolled, I wished I could know what would happen to them. But this is not a sequel film. It is more like real life in that. What's going to happen to these two individuals is up for grabs, but it isn't looking good at the end, although the husband (Tom Courtenay in a performance I wish had been nominated for an Oscar) may think his wife (Charlotte Rampling in a performance that was nominated for the Oscar) will be able to begin anew with him.

The slow pace builds not only the characters but the drama of the relationship between this childless husband and wife who appear restrained by nature and history.

Kate Mercer has been arranging a 45th wedding anniversary party for the couple. They did not celebrate at their 40th because Geoff had by pass surgery, from which, it appears as the movie begins he has not recovered entirely. He is functional, but, as he describes himself, he is decrepit. Their life together is quiet, and peaceful, walks with the dog and quiet meals at the kitchen table of their rural (Norwich, England) home. And then he receives a letter.

The body of a  woman that Geoff knew, and loved, in the early 1960s, someone before Kate's entry into his life, has been found in a mountain crevice in Switzerland. No, there is no issue of foul play. It's not that kind of film. The death of the young woman (Katya, note the similar name; though never discussed, it does not seem accidental) was an accident during a climbing expedition at which there had been a guide. The guide and Katya were ahead of Geoff and she simply fell. Her body had not been found then, but now, with various climate and topographical changes, it has. The girl is frozen, literally, and in time. Geoff had moved on to marry Kate. But what becomes an issue to Kate, had he ever moved on? Kate knows of Katya, and that she died. Geoff did not hide that when they met. But he also did not reveal the depth and nuance, contained in one fact that Kate discovers in going through attic memorabilia while Geoff attends, reluctantly, a party thrown at the cement factory of which he was once a manager:  Katya was pregnant when she died. He could have been a father, something not possible with Kate. Kate remains quiet about her new knowledge. But Geoff had already told her that he would have married Katya, had she lived. We can see the torment in Kate's eyes--she and Geoff would NEVER have occurred had Katya lived. The obvious torment for Geoff, the need he cannot ultimately fulfill for health reasons, is that he wants to see where the body still remains, visible, but not yet recovered.

The cinematography mirrors the mood, perhaps even reflects it more strongly than the tamped down interactions between husband and wife. The cold rain, the tempestuous wind, the darkening sky, with occasional flecks of sun--I could feel them via the camera. They have this party coming. They are pulling away from one another in the week before it.

When the night of the party comes around, there seems to be real hope. He is in tux. She is wearing the lovely necklace (which she tried on gloomily at her dressing table, having found it before the gathering) Geoff gifted her. She has been unable to buy him a gift, but he seems undisturbed by that. He has promised to, and does, act as a man who loves his wife of many years. He talks of choices made that refer, really, to his life before Kate, with Katya, and the one with Kate, after Katya. They dance to their wedding song, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes". His movie long torpor toward his wife seems gone. He is a loving husband. She, we can see in closeup and in long shot, that she is questioning, and tense. You want her to relax, to trust, to forgive Geoff for having loved so much, and so long, someone long dead, for feeling somehow dismissed for 45 years.

And then the music stops, and Kate wrenches her hand from Geoff. He doesn't seem to notice. The partygoers continue their revel. The movie is over. Life goes on. Life bumps on.

What I Am Giving Up for Lent, Good Luck to Me!

There she is, the prideful one in progress. Or, as I find myself thinking, "The little executive who is not pleased."

That's projection, no doubt, on proceedings I don't remember. I remember generally though that I did not like it when my mother staged these little photo productions because I never adequately posed and I hated posing in the first place. I hated the itchy dresses and the carefully constructed curls. I know myself well enough that the rigid hand locks around my waist were not of my own doing. But the picture serves as a launch point for this day's posting.

Whatever else is going on in that picture, I know that the one thing I felt was annoyance. Somehow, though I was in the picture, I well, really wasn't. That what I perceived in my unformed brain I needed or wanted at the moment (to be able to be myself, whoever that was working itself out to be, for the photo, or not to take it at all) was not in any way being considered. Heck, I look like I am fuming in that photo.

I was a little bundle of hurt pride.

Over the years I have realized, as most of us, except deluded doted upon Hollywood Stars and the occasional millionaire/billionaire entrepreneur, do, that my pride hasn't been a good, or useful, trait.
Besides, it is one of the deadly sins. And when it comes down to it, it gets you nothing of that which you crave, validation, love, respect, attention.

But it's built in. It was built into at least some of the angels, Lucifer being the most obvious example. And clearly, it was built in to Adam and Eve, who decided that they wanted divinity on their terms. I suppose that it is a consequence of that free will given to us so that we could choose God, our Creator, over ourselves, in love and thanksgiving.  With free will, somehow there came pride and the inclination to be gods ourselves.

Pride is also cultivated by our parents, and society. I, at least, and I don't think my experience was unique, was given to understand that I was being watched very closely by the world, that I had to do well in everything. I had to achieve, and I had to worry about what things looked like. By my actions in achieving and being seen as achieving, I would, I must have come to reason, be "in control." Not to be exceptional and valued for that trait, was failure. The behavioral training that results in such distortion is innocent enough, and perhaps even necessary in molding the tabula rasa of a child's mind who would otherwise be inclined toward laziness. So, in my school, the measure of one's value as a student was either a gold bow or a blue bow, and if I recall one that was both. The bow was bestowed to be worn on your uniform blazer, if your grades were outstanding. The gold, of course, was for overall grades somewhere in the 95 region. I think the blue was in the region of 90-95.  I can tell you that my mother, as many a mother of the time, was not happy if I did not have a gold bow. I got it a lot. But not always. And that creeping pride was deeply wounded when I did not. Without it, my value appeared to diminish. This need to achieve to public consumption, or so it seemed this was the lesson, could arguably be said to have been at odds with the Catholic Christian goal (I was in Catholic School) of being last, rather than first. I know, its all more nuanced than that. It might have been that to be number one or as close as possible to it, was only for the Glory of God. But in my muddled child brain, I missed the nuance. I have apparently been missing it every since. I have a lot of growing up to do.

Two childhood examples. I am ashamed I should say up front that they still resonate with me, but there you are. I said I have a lot of growing up to do, and I ain't got much more time. But here goes. I had a partial scholarship to high school. Naturally, you had to maintain grades to keep it. I usually had that 95 average, but I was also very bad at algebra, and geometry, and anything having a number or curve. So, one year, my average fell to 93. The principal, or some other administrative staff nun, (at the time it was all nuns, now it is mostly lay people), called me to the office and told me I was in danger of losing my half scholarship. A 93 average wasn't good enough. Way earlier than that, back in say, fourth grade, though I was a good student, I liked to play with the other kids in our apple tree filled grassy knoll near the convent building. A classmate, and you can tell how much this affected me by the fact I remember her name, Claire Callahan, used to read during recess. As many a mother would do in trying to motivate their child to more approved behavior, she asked me why I wasn't more like Claire. In that Claire was number 1 in the class and I was close, but not there, as my mother and sister so and so reminded me more than once, this type of comment was bruising.

Like everyone else, I have a million examples, right up to the present day. I mean it cannot but be an assault on that carefully internalized prideful self to have a job for 25 years, to move up in the ranks, to be management, to have yearly commendable or exceptional reviews and then be dismissed in all of five minutes with the cliche, "We're going in a different direction. . . ." POW! It is today, five years after I was dismissed, to me, and to them, as if I never existed there.

It's a hard lesson, but trying to be number one, or getting the attention for our talents and achievements, is something a whole slew of people are doing, and we can't all get it. More than that, we aren't going to be consulted on most things, if anything at all. So being pouty about it is futile, and just plain stupid. Our hurt pride is irrelevant and corrosive. And doing things to be seen or rewarded, really is a mistaken notion, however motivating it might have been when we were young.

And it all goes back, in my mind, at least, to the Garden of Eden. Pride and grasping gets you precisely nothing. In fact, it loses Paradise.

Look at Christ. One day He was being lauded and hailed, with palms, as a king of the earth. As the Messiah who would conquer Rome in the way men expect to see victory. Another day he was being hammered into a Cross. He didn't view the moments in which he was lauded as having any meaning. He did not act out of pride. He lived and acted in utter humility. If He did well, He did it only to achieve His Father's mission, His own mission as the Second Person of the Trinity, to save the other, to save humanity itself.

I think pride, and its consequences, anger and resentment and fear, are my worst sins. I know this, because as I write, I feel them all with an intensity that makes me want to send the potted plant in front of me crashing to the terrazzo below.

I want to give them up. But it isn't as easy as giving up wine, or chocolate for forty days, and frankly, pride, anger, resentment, and fear, are things to shed completely, not only to obey God, but I believe in my gut, if any happiness on this earth is possible, before Eternal happiness in heaven.

My pride tells me I am being dismissed, all the time. Maybe I am being dismissed; maybe I am not. It shouldn't matter either way, if I am looking at the things of heaven rather than the things of this earth.
So, what I am praying about giving up for Lent is Pride. I pray God will give me the Grace, for the forty days, and for the duration of my days.