Loop, Whorl and Arch

Never Done: Got fingerprinted

I must have been fingerprinted before -- maybe in high school while studying forensics? Did we study forensics in high school? Do I remember anything we learned in high school? But I digress. And so quickly after starting this post! It was definitely the first time I had prints taken electronically, and I think it was the first time I had them taken outside of the classroom. Although I was arrested in college, and charged with illegal sale of alcohol to minors, but I wasn't printed. (It's a long story, and one that seems like it should be told in relation to another Never Done activity, not this one. If we get to the end of the project and I still haven't written about it, someone should remind me and I'll do it then.) Also, another digression: how can I write a post about fingerprinting without mentioning that my bestest friend in Portland is a fingerprint ID tech for the Police bureau. She's also a wonderful artist and crafts person who doesn't feel very bonded, shall we say, with the Portland Police bureau, and doesn't always like to say where she works. So I always encourage her to say she's a print maker. It's not a lie.

So I was fingerprinted. Electronically. For the adoption process. At a place called, ridiculously, L-1 Identity Solutions. Doesn't that sound like it's straight out of a Robert Ludlum novel? Their website says "With the trust and confidence in individual identities provided by L-1, governments and businesses around the world are better protecting the public against terrorism, crime, and theft fostered by fraudulent ID." Great. Just great. I do understand why New York State wants to find out if I have a criminal record, if they re going to entrust a child to me, and I can scarcely imagine another bureaucratic situation in which I'd feel as relaxed and positive about getting fingerprinted.

But here's the thing. It wasn't all positive. Josh and I arrived at 9:30, when we had an appointment, and were greeted by a smiling young black woman. Before she got a chance to ask us anything, her boss (a white guy) asked us our last names, and when he didn't find us in the computer, he asked us if we were being printed with ink or electronically. We had no idea, so he asked to see our paperwork. We showed it to him, and he still couldn't find us in the computer, but could see that we needed electronic printing, and told us to go sit in a row of chairs. We went over, and I smiled and said good morning to an Asian woman who was sitting there waiting. (In case you are wondering, there is a reason I am identifying everyone by race.) Within 30 seconds -- literally before I had a chance to sit down, he called us over to get printed. First me, and then Josh -- with two different women -- a Latina and an African American. He told me to sit down and pointed to a chair at a desk, so I sat there. When the woman came over to print me, she asked me to move to the other chair -- I was in hers. I apologized as I moved, and she said kindly, "It's just a chair." My printing went mostly fine. The machine kept rejecting my prints, and she had to press my fingers down harder on the glass before the machine would accept them. But she got them all, handed me a receipt, and told me that was all.

But I was holding two forms that needed the signature and date of the person who printed me, and so I handed them to her, and asked her to sign them. She froze, and again showed me the receipt, and told me it was all I needed. By now, I'd seen her boss blustering around the office, annoyed and everywhere. Most noticeably, I had heard him yelling at the Asian woman who was waiting when we arrived. "Your name is not in the computer. Do you understand me? Am I not clear?" "Yes, she replied." "You don't have to talk loud just because your name is not in the computer!" In case you were wondering, he was the one talking loud. And also, remember how he treated me and Josh when we weren't in the computer? "Come on in! Have a chair! We'll be right with you!"

So when my fingerprinter told me I needed to ask him about the form, I imagined it was going to cause another blustery show. But instead, he looked at the form, and told her that yes, this was a new thing they had to do, and to please sign it.

Just then, 18 (I counted) Asian people came in. The boss got agitated started telling people to be orderly, get in line, and wait their turn. (They were actually already doing all those things.) And then he turned to me with a big smile and said, "You got here just in time." I felt pulled in two distinct directions. I wanted to leave, to get the hell away from him, to get on with my day, and to get back to work, because that is after all why I had scheduled the earliest possible appointment. At the same time, I wanted to stay, to try to be a more positive force for this group of people who I expected were about to have a much less welcoming experience than I had just had. And this, I believe is, the heart of the Mussar practice -- how do we balance out conflicting concerns? Our material concerns (get to work) with our spiritual concerns (care for others, interrupt racism)? The yetzer hore vs the yetzer tov. How often do we stop to notice these conflicting concerns? Sometimes it's super complicated to figure out, but in this situation, it didn't take me long to notice that I was probably not the best person for the job -- that there were three kind women of color who worked there, who were already treating this group of people thoughtfully and professionally. In fact, things would probably go quite weirdly if I would stick around once my appointment was over. So I gathered up my papers, and my two forms of ID, and my big down coat, and I thanked my printer, and I excused myself for breaking through the line, and I left Identity Solutions, with a little bit more trust and confidence in my own individual identity than I had going in.

And one step further through the adoption process (yet still pretty close to the beginning.)

Bells are Ringing. Bags are crinkling.

Never Done: Bells Are Ringing

I feel a little sheepish that I'm writing so many posts about seeing theater -- like I should be engaging in a greater variety of activities I've never done -- and also I feel like I should warn you that the marathon is not quite over. (In other words, expect yet another theater post tomorrow.) But one of the reasons I live in New York is to see theater and film that I can't see anywhere else, and this has been a tremendous week. My friend Jesse took me to see the Encores production of Bells Are Ringing, a 1956 Broadway musical about a boundary-loose woman who works for an answering service, and who can't help but get involved in her client's lives. Romance ensues.

I love the spirit of Encores. They do concert readings of musicals that have been rarely heard by today's audiences. Every now and then, an Encores production becomes a Broadway revival (I think this is how the most recent Gypsy made it to Broadway) but often they just live for a long weekend on the City Center stage. We sat in phenomenal seats -- front row mezzanine -- which afforded us a clear view of every orchestra instrument. And since Encores features the orchestra prominently on stage, instead of in a pit, I got to pay more attention to the instruments than I usually do. And I noticed some things for the first time. (Shehekhianu.) I noticed that I could hear every instrument in the orchestra -- literally every instrument -- except the piano. I could hear the harp, the violins, the violas, the guitar, the reeds, the flutes, the horns, the drums ... (I hope I am not leaving anything out) but I couldn't hear the piano. I asked Jesse about it at intermission, and he explained to me that the piano doesn't take the melody, and that unless it's got a specific solo, it is there to double the strings and rhythm instruments, to add texture to the sound. For all the orchestral music I have listened to, I had really never noticed this before.

The other sound we noticed, because it was impossible not to, was the elaborate meal the people sitting behind us unwrapped and masticated throughout the entire performance. I literally turned all the way around in my seat at one point to see what could be making such a noise, and saw that it was just an oversized cookie in a little paper bag. (A cookie that I could have extricated soundlessly, and eaten silently.) But this couple didn't seem interested in being soundless or silent. They crunched and crinkled and squeezed and chewed until finally Jesse turned around and spoke to them clearly, firmly, and somehow warmly -- and to my amazement, they put away their metaphorical peanuts and crackerjacks, and we heard to the rest of the show as it was meant to be heard.

I wrote yesterday that this week's mide (character trait that we reflect on in Mussar to help us lead an ethical life) is equanimity: rise above events that are inconsequential. I also wrote that the challenge then is to determine what is of consequence and what is not. There's a reason we're not allowed to bring food into the theater -- it's loud, it's messy, and it smells -- all things that interfere with other people's enjoyment of the production. In other words, it's totally against the rules to bring food into the theater, and even if I'm one to bend bureaucratic rules here and there, these people were also violating all the social rules. So why was it so hard to turn around and ask them to stop when the very rules validate that our concern is legitimate?

In Mussar practice, we are encouraged to ask how difficult situations are for the other, not to focus solely on how they are for ourselves. This is a real sticking point for people who have been socialized to always think about the other and to subsume the self. Luckily, as I've written before, a modern interpretation of Mussar recognizes this dilemma, and asks us to determine what is the legitimate concern of the yetzer hore (the selfish impulse.) It can be a complicated process. I think Jesse and I went through four of the five stages of grief before finding the path to address our legitimate concern.

Denial: That can't be Tupperware. And even if it is, they just need a little snack, and they'll put it away soon.
Anger: Seriously? Cellophane? Seriously? (Turn around and stare at their main course.)
Bargaining: Just let me make it to the intermission.
Depression: What's the point? There's nothing we can do about it.

The fifth stage of grief is acceptance: I can't fight it, I might as well prepare for the worst. But when Jesse decided that we had a legitimate concern, he transcended acceptance and went to a place of powerful engagement. He did it kindly (taking care of the other.) He did it firmly (taking care of the self.) And the end result was that he did it effectively. And I rewarded him with some chocolate I had stashed in my purse.

You Gotta Believe!

Never done: Spoke with an adoption agency. This is a big one. I knew when I started this project that some days would feel insignificant and some days would rock my world. Well, rock on. I had a long talk with Mary Keane, from You Gotta Believe! which is a program (let's not talk about that strange name, which sounds like it's a booster for the World Series underdogs) for older child adoption in New York City. Over the past year I've called literally every adoption agency in the city, and received not one, not two, but NO return phone calls. It finally dawned on me to call the LGBT center, and ask them if they could be a resource. Terry Boggis called me back immediately, and has started to reach out on my behalf. She also recommended that I start going to GPS/MAPP classes. (GPS/MAPP stands for Group Preparation and Selection/Model Approaches to Partnerships in Parenting.)

So I called Mary, who leads the class at the Center, to tell her I would start going in early November, and we had a big full conversation. I always thought I would adopt. I grew up across the street from my (now) oldest friend, who is the only biological child in a family of four children -- her three younger siblings are adopted. They were all adopted as infants, and I think I imagined that's what I would do as well, but I've gotten to 47 without doing it, and my partner is 62, and so it's started to make more and more sense to consider adopting an older child.

I hear it already. "It's so hard." "Once they're that long in the system, they can't learn to trust." And yeah -- these are my exact fears too. But should the thousands of kids who are waiting for families never get them because potential parents think it will be hard. Well, it *will* be hard. Parenting is hard. I don't expect to go into this blindly -- or to pretend that I have no limits on what I am capable of. On the contrary, I know that there are certain things I can handle as a parent, and certain things I can't. (And hopefully the GPS/MAPP classes will challenge me on what I "know.") Isn't this a wonderful example of how to balance out the needs of the self versus the needs of the other? There it is again, the heart of Mussar practice.

Here's what I believe: I believe that every person is capable of learning to trust, no matter how badly trust has been broken in the past. I don't think it's always possible -- or useful -- to rebuild trust with the person who broke it. But I do think it's possible for a person who has been very, very hurt to heal. Repair. Tshuve.

Eternal comedy

Tshuve: I joined the Armory YMCA as a charter member last winter, and I got a wonderful cranberry inaugural jacket with a New York Y insignia on the arm. You see them all over the neighborhood -- members sporting them like we are all on the same hipster team. The new wonderful Armory YMCA has no showers though, and my old apartment was a little far from the gym, so I didn't like going, getting sweaty, and not being able to get clean. So I stopped going. But now I have moved 3 blocks from it, and so I am back lifting weights, running on the track, and using the elliptical machine. It's not just a return to the Y -- it's also a return to a certain kind of physical activity. I've been quite physically active since not going to the gym -- running and swimming and doing yoga -- but that's not the same as going to the gym, which gives me a deep sense of tshuve -- return -- to the most grounded place in my adolescence, to which I have returned and found strength, both literally and figuratively, many times over the past 30 years.

Never done: I went to a reading of Nahma Sandrow's brand new translation of a Yiddish play, Yankl der Shmid (Yankl the Blacksmith) by David Pinski. Nahma is a gifted translator, and I loved the play, which is really about the main character's struggle against the yetzer hore, which Nahma translated as the "evil impulse." Yankl is a drinker and a womanizer, but he wants very much to change his ways. He falls in love with a lovely young woman -- an orphan with few prospects -- and she marries him despite his reputation, because he is super good-looking, she believes he can change, and she doesn't think she has better prospects. The play is about the struggle between good and evil -- his in action, and hers in faith.

In Mussar practice, one way we look at yetzer hore is as focus on self, whereas the yetzer tov (good impulse) can be seen as a focus on the other. It could be thought of as a moral conscience -- the impulse that reminds us of god's laws when making decisions. Yetzer hore is selfish nature -- the desire to satisfy personal needs like sex, food, shelter, etc without taking into consideration the moral consequences of fulfilling those desires. What most interests me about Mussar practice is right at the nexus of these two impulses: how do we balance out our own needs with the needs of our communities? With the needs of the environment? With the needs of the world? This is something I, like many socially conscious people, have struggled to understand for myself for many years. Buddhism taught me to hold my own needs in one hand while holding other people's needs in the other hand. Therapy, the same. But it's still not easy for me; years of subsuming my needs for the needs of the family made it difficult for me to gently, confidently, easy-goingly stand up for myself without over-asserting my self. It is also not easy for Yankl the blacksmith, who is tortured by the yetzer hore, or for his beautiful orphan wife Tamara, who is constrained by the yetzer tov. But their lives are a melodrama in four acts, and mine is, hopefully, an eternal comedy.