Last night I saw the Diane Keaton movie, Darling Companion, which will open April 20th.
It’s a dog lover’s movie. And that’s not me. The movie is also a valentine to the older, sensitive male, played by Richard Jenkins.
Kevin Kline plays a know-it-all doctor who lacks the Jenkins character’s smooth ease with people. (Jenkins is, also, according to Dianne Wiest’s character, a “generous lover.” I love Wiest’s and Jenkins’ sexy-ness!)
At one point, Kline is chastised for his lack of emotional intelligence. And I think emotional intelligence is underrated.
My daughters and I are still reaping the rewards of a girl empowerment weekend, where we were able to talk freely about our feelings. We learned how to navigate conflict — an awesome learning experience through the Girls Leadership Institute.
A February opinion piece in the New York Times, Building Self-Control, the American Way by Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang, offered this: “programs to enhance social and emotional development accelerate school achievement.”
So emotional intelligence helps with school intelligence. I don’t think we can underestimate the importance of helping our kids handle their emotions — it’s just smart to be aware of and articulate our feelings well.
In the Times article, the authors prescribe imaginative play, aerobic exercise, and studying language as tools to help children succeed emotionally and intellectually.
As for ageing adults, like Kevin Kline’s character, how do they (we) become more emotionally intelligent? In Darling Companion, the advice was to:
value our pets more than our cell phones;
define ourselves in ways beyond our work;
get lost in nature;
and be open to prophetic wisdom from people we consider marginal or flaky.
Last night on 60 Minutes, I watched some excellent reporting on the hazards of sugar in our daily diets.
I needed to be reminded because, like most Americans, I need to cut down (out!) my sugar intake.
The information was not new to me. In high school, I read Sugar Blues and it changed the way I ate. The bestseller showed how a diet high in sugar was addictive and pernicious. Beyond obesity and diabetes, sugar was shown to cause mood swings or an emotional crash an hour or so after indulging.
Yet biologically, we are wired to love sugar — there’s nothing sweeter than mother’s milk.
I cannot cut sugar out entirely. I’m not giving up a glass of red wine, a thin slice of chocolate cake, or fruit yogurt. But I am going to slim down my portions.
I will try to follow the government’s recommendation on the food plate (formerly, the food pyramid). I think eating a variety of healthy foods, with an occasional sweet thrown in, is best.
There’s nothing better than an apple, a strawberry, or a handful of blueberries to satisfy a sweet craving. I’m constantly amazed that something so good tasting can also be so good for you. Because it’s way better to eat an orange than to drink orange juice, I’m cutting out fruit juices too.
This Lent, I gave up gossip. This has been tough. I miss the way gossip clarifies your values. It’s like when you watch Nanny 911 and you feel so good and smug about your own parenting skills. You think to yourself, “I would never do THAT!” (But let’s admit, we’ve all done much worse. We just, thankfully, did not have a camera crew following us and recording our parenting failures! Not too worry, those incidents will be remembered by our children who will blame us for years to come.)
In the fall, I met a church executive who told me she left church work for a while to sell Mary Kay cosmetics when her husband was in the military. She said in the Mary Kay biz, you were not allowed to gossip or criticize one another. (I don’t know how they enforce this). But she said it was a good and productive way to work and that she wished she could do this again now that she’s returned to church work.
I know there are positive sides to gossip — studies show it can bind community members together and other studies show that gossip lowers your heart rate. Whatever. From my own experience, gossip undermines creativity and productivity and inhibits trust in coworkers.
At work, I’ve felt stuck when a colleague wants to gossip about another colleague. I have no way to extricate myself.
Should I?
1. Say nothing, which makes the gossiper think I agree so they keep on gossiping.
2. Say, “I hear you. But I gave up gossip for Lent, so, much as I’d like to join this gossip gravy train right now, I can’t.” No, this makes me feel all holier-than-thou.
3. Don’t talk to anyone. Umm, that’s not happening.
Without gossip, I’m losing an opportunity to bond.
On my Twitter feed the other day, another woman church executive wrote a tweet, something like, “We remember best the people who supported us most.” I want to be that person — the one remembered for being supportive, creative, and productive, not negative or gossipy.
I do want my heart rate lowered and I do want to bond with my colleagues. So after Easter, I may have to dive back in the gossip pool. Or I may not. There’s a lot to talk about besides each other. And there’s a lot to admire in one another. I’m a big fan of admiring my colleagues. And I want to keep admiring people more (not less).
But as one other coworker told me, “I never gossip. But you want to know who does???” (ba dum bum!)
At lunch time the other day, I walked around Union Theological Seminary, where the trees in the center courtyard were just past their full bloom, carpeting the lawn with their petals. This seminary is a hidden jewel in New York City with its gorgeous arched passageways and quiet corridors.
The chapel is always a hub of colorful, creative worship with bright banners swooping down from the ceiling. The last time I was there, I was reporting on the Poverty Initiative, a movement that grew out of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign.
As a writer, artist, worker, mother, wife of a chronically ill spouse and person of faith, I am often looking for quiet and sanctuary, hoping for hidden nooks to reflect upon my life in the big, busy city and recharge my soul. Union Seminary is just such an oasis.
Words really can’t describe how beautiful my bike trip to work is. So I will let my pictures show you. Every day I ride 45 blocks to work in New York City. I never stop. I ride through Riverside Park. I don’t pass any commercial establishments. I ride along the Hudson River. There is beauty all around.
Last weekend my twin daughters and I spent the weekend at Grace Church School in the Village for the awesome Girls Leadership Institute.
I was surprised to learn that girls’ friendships are their whole world. Hearing about the scenarios of the other girls reinforced this. In our role playing, there were many examples of small snubs that deeply, deeply hurt — like not being invited to a party. It is tough to be a kid!
One of my takeaways from the weekend was learning four steps to navigate a conflict.
1. Affirm the relationship
2. Use an “I statement”
3. Admit your contribution
4. Solve it together
I am pathologically nice and avoid conflict at all costs. So this was good for me. I realized that I skate over step #1. And #3 too. Somehow I never fail to notice and feel the wrongs done to me, but I may not always see or feel my contribution to a conflict. (Me? Perfect ole me?)
I have to acknowledge that, “In 99% of arguments, both sides somehow contributed to the conflict…” That blew my mind. Everyone is always quick to blame others. But realizing that we each have a role in the conflict may make the solution more accessible.
At times, I felt a little strained in the workshop, because I was the only parent there with twins. The twelve or so other mothers all had just one daughter to intensely talk with or role play with. I was trying, as I always do, to be fair and distribute my attention equally. The facilitators were supportive and sometimes worked with one of the girls one-on-one, but I don’t think they were used to twins with one parent.
All in all, it was a totally excellent weekend. We learned a lot and we are already implementing it around the house (although their big brother is a bit dismissive (maybe he’s a little jealous?)) I think I need to affirm that relationship with my son, maybe even use an ‘I statement,’ admit my contribution, and then we can solve it together. That will be fun.
For book club we are reading Diane Keaton’s Then Again.
I can’t find the passage but at one point she says we mustn’t blame mothers for all of our adult unhappiness. Mothers do their best. I agree. The book is a collage of memories, a collage like the kind Diane’s mother created – scrapbooks and journals.
I am having trouble staying focused on my reading. Fortunately, occasionally, the choices from my work book club and my other book club coincide, like when we read The Glass Castle by Jeannette Wallsin both.
At my work book club, we are reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Catch-22 and for Mother-Daughter Book Club, we are reading the Robin Benway’s The Extraordinary Secrets of April, May and June. The girls and I recommended that book; we’ve already read it. Very funny. (But if you don’t like it, don’t blame me, a mother.) Phew. I have one less book to read.
I’d like to blog more on this topic, but yes, you guessed it, I have to get back to the Diane Keaton memoir. Book club is Tuesday night and I have hundreds of pages to go. I might just skip ahead to the Warren Beatty part.
Desperate to escape New York but can’t afford a beach vacation for the entire family? Consider a trip from March 3-4 to The New York Times travel show where for just $15 (kids enter free) you can go around the world at the Jacob Javits Center.
There is an amazing variety of people and places in store: You can go to Israel and eat tasty olives and chips; dig sand art in the Caribbean; watch penguins waddle at Sea World; dance on a stage with teenagers from South Africa, (which we did this last year, and, in exchange, received tee shirts and hugs).
You and your kids will love the experience. At least mine do. We’ve gone for two years and will go again this weekend.
Our route around the convention center is circuitous. I wish I could advise you on the best route to travel the convention hall, but we just wander to different regions, from Alabama to Zimbabwe.
We stumble upon good advice and useful information. We learn how Peace House in Tanzania builds schools; how the plays of George Bernard Shaw changed social justice attitudes in Ireland; and how easily you can obtain a tourist visa to Cuba.
There is a holiday atmosphere to the travel show, as if all of the vendors, performers and travelers are a big cruise ship, sailing through a winter weekend into spring.
Last year, when we entered, I bumped into my coworker, Dan Licardo, who was there with his two daughters. He was lugging a bag so full of giveaways he could hardly carry it.
“It’s like trick or treating,” Dan exclaimed. “Or real international travel – only you don’t have to declare anything when you go through customs!”
We grabbed our own booty bags, from the first booth in our eyesight, India, and began collecting booty.
At almost every booth, my 10-year old twin girls picked up free stuff – candy, mousepads, bags and pens. I drew the line at glossy brochures. I tried to impress my daughters with my knowledge that what we were collecting was called SWAG – stuff we all get. But they weren’t listening; they were collecting brochures.
At the Indonesia booth, a nice lady gave us magnets of a rice field. Occasionally, even today, I approach my refrigerator door with the thought, ‘We ought to travel to Indonesia. People are super nice there.’ I like nice.
My girls scaled a climbing wall so many times I got a neck ache, watching them ring the bell at the top of the wall. I even tried it and made it to the top to ding the bell.
It’s unclear to me which state or country paid for the climbing wall. I do know that nearby Ecuador gave away Frisbees, because we still use them. We should visit Ecuador.
Maine looks nice.
The climbing wall was near the best state in the union, which according to the people of Maine, is Maine. In Maine’s vast exhibit area, a watercolor artist painted a beach scene; a moose mascot roamed around; and a textile artist spun wool. Okay, I was convinced. Maine is the best state in the union.
The first year we attended, the highlight for my twin daughters was scuba diving in a warm (and small) pool. We donned the wet suits they provided in some makeshift tents, signed waivers, and learned to breathe underwater from two hot young scuba instructors. We dove for plastic fish and smiled at each other through our masks. Afterwards, we learned there are scuba schools in New York and we almost signed up, but instead, we took a brochure.
People smiled as we exited the pool area, not rushing us at all. There was a friendliness between fellow travelers that you don’t encounter at an airport or in a foreign country when you’re traveling with kids. Maybe it’s because there’s no need to rush in an exhibit hall. Or maybe it’s because you’re traveling the world, yet you know you can sleep in your own bed at night.
There are stages with world music performers, panels with international chefs and book signings with travel writers but, due to my kids’ restless pursuit of SWAG, I’ve never attended any of these. Maybe this year.
I did have a celebrity-sighting thrill when I met a favorite writer whom I read in the New Yorker and follow on Twitter, Susan Orlean, as she came up the escalator with me.
“I love your work,” I told her sheepishly. Damn, I thought, she’s talented AND pretty.
“Thanks. I’d like to chat. But I lost my boots somewhere.” She yelled down to her husband who was holding their son’s hand at the bottom of the escalator. “I can’t find my boots!” Ah great, I thought, talented, pretty AND disorganized. Just like me! NICE!
“You’re going to need them,” I said, looking out to the city street where the snow swirled around Manhattan, turning to slush as it hit.
I wasn’t quite ready to hit the dirty, snowy city streets yet.
Fortunately, at that moment, Dan spotted me. He called, “Mary Beth, they’re giving out shots of rum in the Caribbean.” I joined him back at the Bahamas.
We’ll head back to the travel show this weekend. I doubt I will visit many of the 500 countries, states, cities or communities that exhibit there but I’m grateful they still want us to visit. The girls are looking forward to more SWAG. New York Times Travel Show
Last night I saw the Diane Keaton movie, Darling Companion, which will open April 20th. 
100 Days of Poems and Pics 