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Attention Must Be Paid

20 years ago, my world was the war zone of Bosnia and Croatia. At first, arriving with the UN as a peacekeeper, I felt sure the world was paying attention and action would be taken to end the bombardment of Sarajevo. I was wrong. The siege went on for years.

Do your eyes glaze over when reading about wars? Sometimes, mine do too. Food and gardening blogs are certainly more enjoyable. Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Sudan — the stories dispatched from these places are overwhelming and disturbing. Beyond sending money to organizations that provide assistance, (MFS is my choice) what can we do? I don’t know. The resulting feeling of impotence sucks. So I may switch my screen or turn a page to order seeds for my garden or catch up on trashy celebrity gossip or the latest buffoonery in the primary.

But this disturbs me: I spoke with people this week who knew nothing of the recent deaths of the war correspondents in Syria. Three brave and excellent journalists were killed because they believed they needed to tell the world about the terrible situation there. To be only vaguely aware, not so interested — feels shameful, and deaths of Marie Colvin, Anthony Shadid and photographer Remi Ochlik — who  lost their lives in getting the story out — even more heartbreaking.

I do not have what it takes to bear witness as, NYTs photographer Tyler Hicks writes so  movingly about his friend and colleague here. I salute the brilliance and insight we lost with these deaths — and vow to pay attention.

A Homecoming (Of Sorts)


This was the plan: I would have my baby in beautiful Cambridge, England. Not too far from N’s family in England, but most importantly, home to Chloe, a friend I’d made on the job at UNICEF-Croatia. A breast-feeding specialist as well as a mid-wife, I couldn’t imagine anyone else I’d rather have deliver my baby. There was no way I wanted to give birth in Zagreb where I was still living, especially after my obstetrician there prescribed tranquilizers for me, 6 months into my pregnancy. As a program officer for UNICEF I’d been in plenty of hospitals in Croatia and would prefer not to cross a maternity ward threshold as a mother-to-be.  Then, my husband landed a plum (and turned out, very temporary) job in Brindisi, Italy.  The baby’s due date was August 1. There was time.

In early June, I left Zagreb and joined N in the small town of Ostuni where he’d splurged on an incredible villa. I picked cherries and limes from the garden, filled vases with just-cut roses. I read and napped on the balcony, gazed at the fields of sunflowers and the shimmer of the Adriatic Sea in the distance. Seduced by the beauty and bliss of the place, I quizzed Chloe about what she thought about staying in Italy for the birth. She suggested a comparable choice might also be Sarajevo — still very much under siege. Southern Italian hospitals were poor and birthing attitudes very behind in terms of best practices for the mother.

So we stuck to our plans. I would depart for England in early July. There, I’d finally read the final chapter – about the 9th month – and face up to what I was in for. I’d bond with other pregnant women and learn to breathe and pant correctly. I’d eat fish and chips to my hearts content and revel in finally completely understanding everything said around me for the first time in almost 4 years.

Molly had other ideas: she was born almost 2 months early on June 13 in a tiny hospital in Ostuni. Whisked away from me to Brindisi Hospital, I barely glimpsed her, did not touch her. Chloe was right about the momma-care (it sucked) but not the neonatology department of Brindisi Hospital. Fancy facilities aren’t everything and the doctors and nurses who took care of (including singing to) my too-early Molly, were superb.

As I write, my daughter is back in Italy for 10 days with her high school’s Italian class. I mentally track her there – imagining what she is seeing, hearing, smelling, eating. I know she must be falling deeply in love with Italy. I can’t help but think she chose to be born there. The Puglia region is not on the school itinerary but Florence is – where I purchased a pregnancy kit that read “Si”. In Rome now, she probably sat on the Spanish steps, threw coins with her wishes, into the Trevi fountain. If the weather cooperates, she will visit Capri. We lost our camera on the boat back to Naples where her birth certificate and first passport were issued. Molly will cross the country by bus all the way back up to Venice, and every mile passed will pull her more deeply in love with this place of such rich beauty and spirit, this place where she first glimpsed the world. And in so many ways, this is a wish come true.

 

My Hubris

The roads are empty this morning as I drive to pick Molly up from a sleep-over so she can be at her weekend job by 7 am. I am thinking about what to write. The moon. No longer quite full, it hangs over the tree-line. Magical how the moon’s visibility is determined with reassuring predictability by the sun. Car heat cranked up against the cold, I sit in the friend’s drive and wait for my daughter to appear. Amidst messy winter bramble next to my car I can see a patch of green and white: snowdrops. A sweet harbinger of spring. I know where to find some near my house – I can get my camera and post them later – and write more about the end of winter.

But none of this clicks into inspiration this morning and I recognize that I am searching for something, anything to move me away from the subject I’ve been thinking about since finishing Bill Clegg’s Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man. Then, this morning I see the news that Whitney Houston is dead at 48, the same age N was when addiction won the battle.

I lived for years looking for distractions from the truth. Anything to avoid dealing with the reality of living with an addict. Hating myself, I welcomed the well-spun lies and chose to believe the crazy excuses for strange and bad behavior. Believing his promises, and making and breaking my own. Believing it was just a matter of time before he realized there was too much to lose, sure he would decide he loved us enough to quit.  Even as he shrank into a shell of a man, as his once hazel eyes turned empty – his soul swallowed into blackness, even then – an ember of hope remained that he would find an exit out of his drug-maze, back to us. Even when I’d had enough and finally was ending the marriage, I imagined his recovery as possible.

In the pages of Bill Clegg’s addiction memoir I glimpsed N. As I read, it was N I visualized living for his next hit, scoping out a bathroom to get high in. It was N I read about – a view of his secrets, of what he was up to, what he was thinking through all those missed appointments and lost jobs. In reading Clegg’s story, I stepped out of my own story of despair of living with an addict, into N’s world – the story of being the addict. This dark world, insane existence he lived while just beside me. And me a fool, so sure I held the light that could lead him away from his demons. What hubris in thinking there was anything I could do against such an enemy.

The Den

After my husband’s suicide, shock and fury masked my sadness for months. Molly propelled me to pay attention to grief one afternoon as I heard a friend ask her where her father was because she hadn’t seen him in awhile. Molly answered, “In England.” She could not speak this new terrible language of death and loss. Shortly after that car ride and 9 months after his death, I began taking 9 year old Molly to The Den for Grieving Kids. She was afraid The Den would require her to talk about feelings and make her cry like the therapist she’d rejected. The Den would be different, I assured her. She’d be with other kids her age who’d lost a loved one and they’d have activities. If she didn’t want to, she need not utter a word.  Immediately, Molly felt at home and marveled she was not the only kid whose parent had died.

There were years we never missed a session. Two Mondays a month, I’d make the drive down to Greenwich where we ate pizza and salad perched on tiny chairs in the pre-school classroom before moving into the big room for introductions. We formed a heartbreakingly large circle. We took turns saying our names and, only if we wanted to, who died.  Or simply: “I pass” because, at first, it was hard to get the words out: my husband, wife, father, mother and worse — child, brother or sister died. But over the weeks, as the realization and pinch of our losses grew into scars, it became easier to share the declaration of these deaths. At least with this group of fellow survivors.

From that very first session, Molly loved going to The Den, easily going off with a group of children her own age. In another room, us parents gathered in a circle, sharing stories, struggles, tears — and laughter, too. Initially, I found myself envying what seemed the tragic but uncomplicated grieving of the others whose spouses died from illness or accidents – not suicide. How could I admit to them, that in the mixed up soup of my emotions I also felt relief? I discovered no shame and much healing. Regardless of anyone’s tale, grief is thorny territory and we were all traversing it together, reluctant members of the same club.  The Den for Grieving Kids eased our travel on this road.

Seven years later, my daughter has decided it is time to say farewell to this amazing place.  For these few hours a month, she and I reflected on N’s death. Then, in the car driving through the dark towards home, the two of us shared stories, carefully paying attention to each other and our healing hearts.

Art Therapy

‘Only in confronting pain can there be real healing’ — I’m paraphrasing something Bosnian actress Vanesa Glodjo said during the Q&A with Angelina Jolie about their recently released movie “In the Land of Blood & Honey“.  She was speaking about the reaction of Bosnians to this film. Glodjo’s comment resonated with with me as I continue to ruminate on this subject.

This morning in the car, a discussion on global conflict resolution came on the radio. A Jean Paul Lederach spoke about the power of music, of sound, as healing: “…it this notion of transportability, we think,is a window into several places in which reconciliation and healing … this idea that vibration touches us… healing is about feeling like a person again…what music does is it permit people to touch again, feel touched by, and to even maybe touch their own sense of personhood and voice…you may not be able to explain, you may not be able to speak your way through certain things, there are times in which music and/or sound may in fact permit that to happen in a much deeper way.”  He goes on to talk about poetry, particularly haiku in the same vein.

This possibility of healing the psyche and soul through, as Lederach says, — the ineffable — through music, through art, fascinates me.  To facilitate recovery from the wounds of war, the damage done by addiction, illness, from violence, the deaths of our loved one, suicide. Time may ease or at least dull an ache, but art can help us to process grief and find a way to the other side.

 

Something Different: Q & A with Angelina Jolie (really!)

What are you doing  this Thursday, January 12 at 8:00 PM (EST)? Why not tune in here for a live online Q&A with Angelina Jolie.  She’ll be discussing her writing and directorial debut, In The Land of Blood and Honey. This is will be an interactive event and a chance to ask Ms. Jolie questions about the film, live.

 

I think of the Bosnian war as ‘my war’.  Of course, it wasn’t my country and my experience as a UN peacekeeping operation was muffled by armored cars, flak jackets and always having an exit. And leave I did – as the reality of my impotence and the potency of evil became too heartbreaking. But N and I met in Sarajevo and held our wedding there during a summer cease-fire. Our friends pelted us with relief-rice. A very different story than the one in this film – that I will watch with fists full of tissues.  Please join us on Thursday.

About the film:

In the Land of Blood and Honey has been nominated for a Golden Globe® for Best Foreign Language Film. Set against the backdrop of the Bosnian War that tore the Balkan region apart in the 1990s, the film tells the story of Danijel (Goran Kostić) and Ajla (pronounced Ayla) (Zana Marjanović), two Bosnians from different sides of a brutal ethnic conflict. Danijel, a Bosnian Serb police officer, and Ajla, a Bosnian Muslim artist, are together before the war, but their relationship is changed as violence engulfs the country. Months later, Danijel is serving under his father, General Nebojsa Vukojevich (Rade Šerbedžija), as an officer in the Bosnian Serb Army. He and Ajla come face to face again when she is taken from the apartment she shares with her sister, Lejla (Vanesa Glodjo), and Lejla’s infant child by troops under Danijel’s command. As the conflict takes hold of their lives, their relationship changes, their motives and connection to one another become ambiguous and their allegiances grow uncertain. In the Land of Blood and Honey portrays the incredible emotional, moral and physical toll that the war takes on individuals as well as the consequences that stem from the lack of political will to intervene in a society stricken with conflict.

 

 

Closing the Door on 2011

2011 was not a very momentous year for me. No significant beginning or ending, no major success or failure. No psychic (or otherwise) wound or scar to mark the passing of these 12 months. Except for a lingering rotten cold I breathe easy, grateful for the undramatic passing of another year. At least for me.

An alarming number of my women friends are closing out their year with fat medical files. Fucking cancer. I think they all have a heightened sense of  ‘Carpe Diem’, although none needed any karmic reminders about seizing the day. Their lives are rich and packed with love, good work and play. As with any disease, there is nothing fair about this one. But the year ends with my friends as victors: treatments done and clear results!

Seeing their battles, this up-close look at mortality, gives me a heightened attentiveness to life, a reminder, and an inclination to take to the rooftops shouting about the importance of maintenance. Consider this that shout. Get those uncomfortable check-ups and make sure they are thorough. (Insist on a trans-vaginal exam to check out your ovaries – a pap test is not enough!)

My friends’ struggles motivated me to finally take care of the medical assignments given to a 50 plus year old. I even got the genetic testing my oncologist had bugged me about for the last 7 years. Joyfully negative on all and good news to pass along to my daughter. I would have dealt with whatever came my way – I’m not sure how – but I would have dealt as my dear friends have this year and as I have before.

Best wishes for a very healthy Year of the Dragon.

Object of Loss

I lost my pen today. This pen was a present from my late husband and was probably ridiculously expensive. It was a very nice pen and while I am a bit saddened, I’m more philosophical. It was bound to happen since it no longer quite fit into the little leather loop on my wallet. I often had to dig for for it between the mint tin, checkbook, tissues and coupon mess in my handbag.  Just like I did today at the grocery store before I returned to the coffee counter where I’d last pulled out my wallet. No luck.

My husband’s presents were always over-the-top. He’d buy amazing gifts but ignore the stack of bills. His tastes in everything were extravagant; he liked the best clothes, cars — you name it. There was a time when he worked in the movie business in England when he made great money and could really afford to indulge his expensive tastes, or at least so he told  me. This was before my time. When we were together, he never quite got the making-versus-spending money thing. Now I know this is typical of an addict, especially a cocaine addict.  But even when he (we) could no longer afford things like Mont Blanc pens, he couldn’t resist. That’s what I lost today – a Mont Blanc pen.  I’d been carrying this slick black, too-expensive pen around in my wallet like a Bic for… I do the math from N’s death year 8 years ago, and figure I had this pen for about 10 years. A long time for a pen in my wallet.

When we first got together I admit I was impressed by N’s extravagance. After years of watching my pennies and rarely treating myself, indulging in luxury – at least by my standards – seemed possible. After all, I was making more money than I ever had in my life, socking all my wages in the bank for 4 years while living on a UN daily field allowance in Croatia and Bosnia. In the early years we took some crazy trips and stayed in nice hotels and I bought nicer clothes than my usual thrift-shop finds, but mostly, I stayed my frugal self. N on the other hand, showered me with pricey watches, Bally boots, cashmere sweaters – fancy pens.  His generosity and love of nice stuff was seductive. That was before I became aware that he was spending money he didn’t really have. Then it became painful.

I liked the way the pen felt in my hand but rarely used it to write more than a check. Somehow, it never really seemed like mine.

Looking Up

Today is my first day ‘off’ in 8 days. Frantic, grueling days of holiday retail. By the evening, I arrive home exhausted and wound up like a ‘Chatty-Cathy’ with a stuck string. Even after a glass of red, the reel of the day still whirrs through my head keeping me from my longed-for slumber.

I marvel at people — including a few of my colleagues — who work more than one job and routinely put in 50 to 60 hours a week or more, sometimes 7 days a week. And I’m grateful that other than this time of year, I don’t have to. I really enjoy the constant buzzing of people around books — just not for 8 days straight. Being ‘on’ and rushed does not make for good living — at least not the kind of living I’m interested in.

But thanks to my dog, I discovered a quick-fix.  A simple thing to do, almost like an instant-meditation. When Tetley first scratched at the door insisting he needed to go out, I complained a bit but pulled on a jacket, clicked on his leash and went out into the night.  The moon was almost full and spectacular in the night sky. I looked up and kept looking up. Just that – looking up – the beat of my heart slowed. I feel this any time I look up – to gaze at trees, a bird soaring across the sky, the clouds.  Such a simple thing – looking up – calms and inspires me to breathe deeply. Perhaps it’s the reminder of things greater than myself?

 

Working II

One of my ‘good-job’ barometers is that I should feel at least a slight rush of excitement upon arriving to work.

In the late 1980s I was a Public Information Assistant at the United Nations in New York. A classy job title: I gave tours in English and pretty atrocious Japanese. The UN felt like

the center of the world. Rounding the corner from 42nd street onto First Avenue I saw and – on a windy day heard – 180+ flags of the world flapping wildly. My heart always skipped a beat.  I loved greeting the security guards with a wave of my badge as I entered the employee-only gate behind suited diplomats, loved eating lunch in the cafeteria overlooking the East river (and the food was good too). Opening days of the General Assembly were particularly exciting; I ran charming photographers around the building for photo-ops with heads-of-state and once shook hands with Vaclav Havel. When Nelson Mandela was freed, I stood with my colleagues applauding madly for at least 5-minutes as he waited patiently at the podium to speak.  The massive hall of the General Assembly shook with emotion and then, as we settled and he spoke, you could have heard a pin drop as tears streamed down our faces.  Amazing times there. I didn’t want to live in NYC anymore though, so signed on to a UN peacekeeping mission and went to Europe. (Another story.)

For the past decade I happily walk into the bookstore 5 days a week. Less momentous than the world stage but still thrilling to me, seeing full shelves, spending my day with books and book-lovers. Much of my work happens in a messy little office in the back so these weeks during the holidays of being ‘out on the floor’ (by the end of my shift – I often feel like I could be knocked out on the floor) are a nice change. I enjoy random encounters with customers, sharing favorite titles with the youngest to oldest reader. We are connecting over books. Well, mostly. There are times these days, I also feel like an electronics salesperson. But still, we talk about reading — pretty good for the soul if you ask me.

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