(No) Regrets Only

February, I used to say, is a gypped month.  It was my birthday month-- the Presidential birthday month-- the home of Valentine's Day, Mardi Gras, Ash Wednesday.  So many expectations for a mere four weeks; anyone who pays monthly rent feels a little resentment. But I was always a little sad when it ended; the probability of childhood snow days nearly disappeared... and the coming of spring brought with it expectations and celebrations that felt premature.  I wanted to hold onto the 'youth' of the year... 

In winter months I traditionally interview prospective freshmen for my alma mater.  Generally I am finished by January, but this year they piled on some stray incomplete applications.  It's becoming a little more awkward as I age; I can't imagine many highschool seniors want to speak to a chronological senior about their future.  My 'class of...' tag betrays me; since Covid I find doing a blind telephone interview has its advantages-- less judgment, fewer visual cues. While much of the process is more or less a formality, I try to engage students in a real conversation-- to sample their insight, curiosity, intelligence.  I actually enjoy most of them, although there are some who are obviously over-prepped, steer the discussion to a sort of script they have maybe written out.  Some even research me on the internet and say things that will resonate with my career or my interests.  This is downright creepy-- a boldface violation of privacy but inevitable in this internet culture.  

At the end of the interview I often ask if they have any questions for me.  Most of these are the kinds of things eager students raise their hands and inquire in class-- canned or generic queries that seem predictably rhetorical.  But this year-- one of these last-minute girls asked me if I had any regrets.  Regrets, I asked her?  You mean pertaining to my education?  My life?  A film strip on high speed played in my head-- ex-boyfriends... should I have gone on tour in 1990?  More children? My blogs and poems are well stocked with my naked mistakes and failures-- past loves, apartments, residences... people.  Do 17-year olds think about regret-- was she reading some introspective novelist who woke her up to the complexities of life? Was she already beating herself up for not having taken AP chemistry or skipping varsity practices?  

At 70 now, I am as old as her grandmother.  Maybe she figured the topic of nostalgia was appropriate.  But the short answer, I explained, was No, I regret nothing; I have valued and loved my life.  She seemed content... although after we hung up I had flashbacks of my own first year at college... whether I had considered the concept of regret in this first year of independence, of responsibility.  My mother had taught me to write formal 'regrets' to invitations I turned down.  I knew the word in that context.  She had notecards with little doves on them;  the word reminded me of a bird. Egret with an extra 'r'?  I also remembered how I was convinced by a series of painted valentines and notes a sophomore boy put into my mailbox.  They were beautiful (there were also birds and flowers painted in)-- they were evidence that he loved me, and I turned away from another and began to love him in return.  Did I ever regret our relationship?  I didn't marry him, I didn't follow the obvious narrative.  But I didn't really regret that. 

Did I regret not taking a course?  Not doing well enough?  Wasting time at college, failing to accomplish one thing or another, quitting ballet, dropping out of choral singing?  Not really.  I tried hard to conjure my college-girl psyche and regret wasn't really any part of that.. nor could I imagine asking such a question of an adult. It seemed vaguely disrespectful, like asking a middle-aged woman if she missed not having children. 

My first year at college I was housed in a suite of women.  One of my roommates had an eating disorder.  I used to wonder what was in her head-- she began meals with healthy salads and finished gorging on stacks of desserts and cookies.  Then the inevitable in-house vomiting.  It was time-consuming and counter-productive. A form of actual, physical regret... and maybe a lesson that you can't really erase your actions-- you can  stick your finger down your throat, but the way in and the way out seemed equally punishing. I wrote a story about her, but it felt sort of invasive and I never published it. She's actually successful, despite all that wasted time.  I wonder if she regretted her nutritional drama.  I avoided the bathroom and eventually moved in with the boy who drew the hearts. No regrets there.  Life went on.

Recently I went to dinner with the younger brother of an old highschool friend and he blurted out during the meal that his whole life was a string of regrets.  It's sort of an unbearable thing to hear-- and how does one respond, except that it is a point of view, a judgment... obviously there were decades of going to work, getting paid, accumulating security.  But maybe not much besides a pension to inspire him in old age.  I also have friends who had many children, who regret not taking time for themselves.  There is now, I always tell them-- this is still life-- going forward.  Don't regret the present and forego the future, I say, but it seems self-righteous and annoying. We have what we have.  There are 'reins' if we can find them.  Some are hidden, some are difficult... but you can steer things.  Or you can regret.

I have another childhood friend who spent most of her life drowning herself in some of kind of family dysfunctional soup.  It existed, I will attest, but you get up and leave the table... you don't eat it over and over, every day, like my bulimic roommate.  I can't imagine what her response might be to the question of regret.  I regret her wasted life; no one was more talented and interesting, but she cooked it away with her incessant self-absorption and acidic resentments. 

Of course I waste a ton of time; maybe a little less because I don't use a cell phone.  These have eaten up disproportionate hours of creativity, I think.  People post their creations constantly but nothing seems to rival the output of say a Shakespeare or Milton or Mozart. And these people did not have tools for recording work... it was tedious and time consuming.  Having just finished a book, with all digital tools, I am a little overwhelmed with the process and marvel at these older artists and writers.  

I've failed, I've missed things and people; I spend way too much time watching films and listening to things...  In the mail today was a formal invitation to participate in some public ceremony-- a sort of stage...  Regrets only, it said.  I will not attend;  I don't really need extra slices of someone's enormous pie, or I may end up like my poor overstuffed roommate.  But it occurred, sending back the reply-- besides this final last attenuated February week, the  never-ending piles of unfinished songs and poetry-- I will not take on the burden of regret.    

Sisters of No Mercy

I've bookmarked on my computer a piece from the New York Times which follows the four Brown sisters via forty years of an annual photographic portrait.  Maybe it's because they are all around my age that I find the slow transformation so riveting.  And here we have just a visual-- a snapshot-- an annual moment... but we infer things-- there are deep emotional changes-- darknesses and distances.  The body language of the girls shifts and alters.  One year they are tightly embracing...  another year they seem isolated.  The dynamic between sisters changes-- the hairstyles, the clothing... what they seem to represent.  We are given so little information and yet so much.  It's like a sad film without a soundtrack... and why is it sad?  It is sad to me.  It is life-- the effects of time which are the only way we can really understand it.  Passages.  One of the women is the photographer's wife.  She seems to be a little more mothery... one or two of the others seem to be going through a more traumatic metamorphosis-- maybe a gender or sexual identity thing.. who knows?  But I keep speculating... observing.

Maybe it is because I'm so estranged from my own sister that this fascinates me.  I mean-- I have so many close girlfriends who feel like my family-- a kind of girl-intimacy I've always enjoyed since I was small and shared bunks and cabins at camps and schools.  But the sister thing-- the genetic similarity, the familial DNA blood-bind... to have lost this is tragic in a way, although so often necessary.  I would say I am more the victim than the perpetrator of familial betrayals and they hurt, even though we do without and go on and have a rich life in spite.  My son, on the other hand-- I can't imagine anything coming between us.  My sister-- there was a sort of underlying competitive schadenfreude I became aware of only in middle age.  It seemed so contrary to the sort of thing I felt-- wanting to make things and give things to my sister.. loving her children, sharing their joys and sorrows... it was shocking and terrible. It was an awakening and a lesson.  I moved on.  I tried to learn to share my affections where they are at least respected if not reciprocated.

There is a small human drama I have been observing now for two or three years.  A girl I used to pass in Harlem, with her pimp, or her dealer...  pretty, white-- mid-20's-- out of place in the crowd she hung with on corners late-nights: people smoking weed, slapping one another, playing loud music-- a local party and social 'club' for some.. for others, opportunities to exchange things, make some deals, etc.  More recently I began to see her on her own, walking quickly like a dog with a scent-- underdressed in winter-- disheveled and nervous... or walking slowly and without linear sense because she is high and distracted.  The last few months I see her outside crack houses and project yards-- begging, pleading.  The hood boys have a way of ignoring these girls.  They are blocked.  But I have observed that each Friday her sister comes uptown, hunts her down-- hands her an envelope-- maybe cash, maybe some disability check she receives for her.  I watch the sister and her boyfriend.  She used to buy her a sandwich or some food-- sometimes they'd eat somewhere.. and then the sister took off, back downtown-- sometimes looking backward, with teary eyes... sometimes just looking down.   Lately there is only a cursory hug-- the using sister is emaciated and her face is marked with sores and infections.  Her arms and legs are covered with needle punctures gone bad, track marks and other scars.   I am obsessed with this story-- what I infer-- the enabling, the attempts at rehab, the kidnapping, the betrayals; I know well the path of addiction with and without intervention-- the rocky  stumble downroad and the pain of loved ones watching as though through a television screen-- unable to prevent, unable to touch.

My own sister and I were reasonably close; of course, you are thrown together-- share bedrooms and toys... but as the younger, I always assumed too much-- that I would have a protector, a team-mate, a
sympathizer.  I was fiercely loyal and covered for her, took some parental hits.  At a certain point, her life became unmanageable and she just walked out of her old self the way moulting snakes slither away from their skins.  I can scarcely remember her scent-- maybe her acne preparation she wore at night-- I even thought bad skin was cool, craved it back then-- although I hated the smell of the gunk she used.  Shalimar, by day.  Years later, in my 30's, I reached out one night--- my second marriage was deteriorating and I was hitting a wall.  You go back to childhood for clues... No, she said, I never think about that.  A slammed door.

I have always been a girls'-girl... I have tons of great women friends who are my family, who have my back... my acquired sisters-- even my beloved cousin, who shares my heart... we are honest and intimate.  My sister is not only lost to me forever, but she has re-invented a story in which she is the true heroine-- the good girl, the one who inherits the birthright,  like a twisted version of the Biblical tale where the hairy brother shaves his arms and pretends.   When I see this sister in Harlem-- taking the difficult trip uptown -- I know I would have done this... I do this, for my 'other' sisters, for the women in my life who need uplifting or assistance or even a nurse.  The word itself... the way it is used for nuns-- yes, it is a privilege, a title-- a sacred thing... not a mere juxtaposition of birth and DNA.

Looking at the Brown sisters-- their subtle movements and frozen gestures, their metamorphosis and transformation from girls into women-- from strong into vulnerable,  mature, complex beings.. like a painting which evolves... which deepens and completes.... I still feel a kind of sorrow and maybe envy.  This tableau of intimacy and womanhood, of genetic similarity and connection-- it fascinates and evades me.   I am missing this, despite all of my wonderful and fulfilling friendships-- old and young--- I am somehow a failed sister, an orphan of sorts, a disconnected twin.  It is loss, in life, that makes us realize what we have had; I have learned this, and maybe this is the lesson of my family.  I have tried-- once or twice-- at my father's funeral, for example, which was a 'show' run by my sister-- I have tried to sense the missing in her.  But it is not there.  I do not recognize the woman she is; I do not feel her or know her.  Not for a second was there the smallest opening, the millimeter of Achilles heel.

No one in my original birth family is quite like me.  They resent and despise my honesty and truthfulness.  They fear it, in a way.  I suppose this is a kind of power I do not fully appreciate.  I write, I confide, I disclose to my friends, I absorb their vulnerabilities and never betray.  Never.  The younger-- my son, even my niece, although I should not betray her-- they sense and love me.  But familial estrangement is in itself a kind of betrayal.   Among four sisters there is room for relationships to wax and wane.  But between two sisters-- it is like a marriage that either thrives or ends in divorce.  There was so much at stake, for her.  She had to be the winner, and I am glad, in a sense, to have conceded that.  If only that had made her feel complete.   My poor father went to his grave misunderstanding me (this was important to her), and I forgive him.  My success as a human has little to do with his version.  I was valuable to my sister as long as I gave and donated, have come to terms with the harsh reality of this.  In our fictional moving portraits over 40 years, there would have been so little touching, so little revealed-- just the aging, and in her eyes, the desperation and subtle anger-- the determination and the deception.  Here I am, I am what I told you I was.  As for me, my eyes would be watery, despite everything I know... I am breakable and here I am-- anyone's sister, trapped in a loveless photograph without a birthright, wearing last year's sweater.  I am what I have done, what I have left behind, the love I have had, the love I've been given, the failures, the betrayal:  I do not love being photographed but I no longer mind if you look at me.  I stand alone.

Deja Alanon

So I'm having a bad week. Full moon, pending dreary elections, moody weather, and ending a relationship which feels like a final farewell to anything vaguely impulsive and the last of my serial midlife crises. While virtually everyone in my life disapproved of the guy, now that I've broken it off, they've chosen this moment to rub my nose in the degradation of it and punish me when I'm down and solitary.

Tonight, reluctant to call a therapist and hitting a new bottom, I decided to go to an Alanon meeting. After all, the guy was apparently a drug addict-- or at least an alcoholic, and I'm a lifetime enabler. Not knowing the protocol, I entered slightly late, missed the 'reading' which was the catalyst for the sharing... and I'm listening to person after person trying to be thankful for some kind of abundance but hating themselves, their life, confessing to weakness, sounding totally self-involved and 'stuck'. Still, it is all I can do to keep from crying because I am feeling not just fragile but exhausted from 2 weeks of sleep deprivation and emotional abuse. I relate to everyone... but actually to no one. I pass when it is my turn to share, until there is a request for newcomers to speak....
A young attractive girl begins to cry, she has been engaged to marry a very successful and handsome young executive and has found instead that he is an addict, has witnessed her life falling apart, and she needs to know, wants to know... is there any 'tip' or suggestion as to how to simply get through these nights... it has been a month and she is inconsolable, angry, devastated....doesn't anyone have anything to offer?

And of course, I-- the dysfunctional meddling classic enabler, do the absolutely verboten taboo thing and answer her. I tell her--- I was in exactly her position, 22 years ago... the perfect husband, the perfect marriage, the envy of all my friends... but I was pregnant, and in another country... and it all unravelled. It will be okay, I tell her... you will find something to hold onto, you will find a way to get through and you will be okay.

So the guy who spoke endlessly about putting his left foot in front of his right until the timer-person had to stop him...interrupts me, and tells me there is absolutely no 'crosstalk' permitted at an Alanon meeting. Meaning this is not group therapy, but each person just 'shares' and the rest listen politely, pass a 'hat', hold hands and recite the 'serenity prayer' even though their boyfriend at home has just been threatening them with a switchblade, their mother is dying of some oozing horror and it is on their shirt, or their kids have just locked themselves in the bathroom and are smoking up many grams of crack.

Meaning also that in my current state of utter failure as a romantic partner, as a friend, as a musician because my emotional state is affecting my performance... I have now not only Failed at Alanon, but sabotaged the whole program. Of course, one kind woman sheepishly offered the pathetic defense that my transgression was heartfelt, and it was... but this did little to dispel the aura that there was a traitor in their midst and that the poor young girl whose boyfriend was in rehab was now damaged beyond repair by my maternal instinct and my obviously shitty advice.

I was once warned by an 'ex' not to ever enter these 'rooms'... that this is not the sort of thing I could find credible, that I would absorb the deep unhappiness of each of the participants and I inevitably would question the appropriateness of my candidacy for the program as a whole, as did he...

Of course since no one of my friends is speaking to me, I may now seek refuge with the pitbull himself, or I may have to find a 12-step program for people who fail at 12-step programs.... or I may have to weigh my cross and my star and my horoscope and see which of those might lead me to find my higher power. I seem to gravitate to the lower power, you see... and there doesn't seem to be a B-side to Alanon, or AA, or to any of my issues tonight. I seem to have learned very little from my relationships, except that love still seems to be the thing that all of these people cannot master, despite the steps, the meetings, the higher power thing... that whether or not we love ourselves, we seek some kind of company... and sitting in a circle in uncomfortable chairs, like a pro-tem anti-depressant, is not going to heal me or that poor beautiful girl who was trying desperately to assert that her boyfriend didn't 'deserve' her. Someone will, I wanted to say. Someone will... at least we hope so.

Truth is, we deserve nothing. We get what we get, we give what we give. Some of us give too much and it feels good... or it hurts. People hurt us, things hurt us, we hurt ourselves. This is how I know I am alive. Love hurts, birth hurts, death undoubtedly will hurt too. I read a great Bob Marley quote this morning... he seemed to know something about love...'Truth is, he said, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.' Healthy, addictive, generous, selfish... we all come back for more in some form or other.

So pick up your pen or your guitar and get over it.