The Cabin

Many, many years ago my grandparents bought a cabin in the woods near a lake in northern Idaho to commemorate one of their wedding anniversaries.  They paid cash. I think my grandma said they paid $5,000 for it. It was a summer cabin, just one step up from tent camping and small; about the size of most modern suburban living rooms with a small alcove off one end that could fit two twin beds, one along one wall and the other at its feet along the opposite wall.   

It didn’t have a heating system and wasn’t insulated. It sits high in the mountains where, even in the middle of summer, the temperature can easily dip down into the 40s. My grandpa was a furnace repairman so he built a wooden stove out of sheet metal and this was the cabin’s sole source of heat.  The only other amenities were a kitchen sink with running water, electricity, a hot plate and a refrigerator.   

It did not have a bathroom. There was an outhouse. The outhouse was smelly, dark and creepy. As such, it was a constant source of fascination and repulsion to us kids. We hated it, but couldn’t seem to stay away from it. We found seemingly endless ways to tease each other over it. 

There was the time my sister and my cousins convinced me that a chicken had fallen in and that we were gonna have to send down the skinniest kid (me) to save it. Or the time my uncle lined us all up under a tarp and made us stand in line in the rain while everyone peed before going to bed. Or the countless times we took flashlights in so that we could stare down into the pit of poop. If you were trying to do your biz, there was a 99.99% chance that someone would materialize outside the door to tease you saying things like “don’t fall in! Wipe fast and don’t look down!” or promise you that something creepy was going to come out of the ooze and drag you down with it.

I am pretty sure I spent most of my early childhood summers constipated. 

My grandpa eventually built a “bathroom” in the cabin. He installed a little toilet and sink off the side of the miniature bedroom. It was the size of a broom closet. Being a frugal man, he refused to open up additional fields of the septic system. To this day no one in my family can quite grasps the logic of this choice or how it relates to being frugal, but in doing so, everything made the little toilet back up. You could sneeze near this thing and it would need a couple of hours to settle down.  

My grandpa was obsessed with the toilet. It was as if he felt like he’d spoiled us all by putting in this small piece of modern plumbing. What was the point of a toilet when there was a perfectly acceptable and useable outhouse 20 feet from the cabin? He simply did not want anything to go to waste. Not even an outhouse. Therefore, the toilet came with a set of very specific rules:

1.     No Pooping in the Toilet Until Night Time. If you had to do #2 during the day, go to the outhouse.

2.     No Peeing in the Toilet Until Night Time. During the day, use the outhouse.

3.     If You Pee in the Toilet at Night, DO NOT FLUSH. Wait until morning and flush everyone’s pee at once.

4.     If You Poop in the Toilet At Night, You May Flush the Toilet ONCE. Any left overs could wait with the pee for morning. 

Basically it was a nocturnal toilet.

These rules created a weird sneakiness among my family.  I am pretty sure, although no one has openly admitted it, that everyone at one point sneaked in and used that toilet while the sun was up. I definitely remember slipping into the cabin after everyone had gone to the beach, making a mad dash, praying that no one would catch me and that damn thing would fully flush. 

But, despite the hassle of the Nocturnal Toilet, the cabin itself was a bright, cheery, cozy little haven. White washed pine walls and gingham curtains, a large red kitchen table, a huge oval red and grey rag rug and a front porch with two rocking chairs and a little hibachi. It was homey and sweet and simple. Everyone was welcome (provided they only used the toilet at night) and everyone had fun.

The cabin was the sum total of all my summer vacations. Every summer we went to the Lake. We’d play cards, read, swim, hike, pick berries, build bonfires, roast marsh mellows, skinny dip, have epic pillow fights, put on vaudeville shows, eat piles of junk food, laugh until our sides hurt, see moose, deer, elk, bear, rabbits, squirrels, collect bugs, rocks and pinecones. 

Looking back now I realize how lucky I was to have the cabin, however, at the time I felt like I was missing out. The cabin was small and cramped, it wasn’t on the water, we didn’t have a boat, our beach was communal and not private, we had the outhouse and the Nocturnal Toilet. I wanted Disneyland and Hawaii, a European vacation or even a trip to Yellowstone. Something I could take back to school and say “THIS is what I did on summer vacation!”

When my mom inherited the cabin she opened up the septic fields, put in a full bathroom, a washer/dryer and built a small bedroom. She knocked down the outhouse, put a shed over it and filled it with water toys and bikes. And now, I take my children to the lake lake every summer. It is the sum total of all our vacations. We hike, swim, pick berries, play cards, eat junk food and have a great time. 

We are very lucky.

One day while we were at the (public) beach, I was struck by the unbelievable beauty of the lake. I was overcome with sweet childhood memories and a wave of gratitude. I couldn’t believe how amazingly fortunate I was to have grown up coming to a place like this and that I was now sitting here with my own children.  I felt like my heart was going to burst from pure, uninhibited gratitude and joy. 

And then, I had a moment of contraction. Suddenly I was struck with a numbing fear.  We were going to be leaving soon. I may never see the lake again. I panicked. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to lose this moment! I didn’t want it to end!

But then it occurred to me, it’s already gone.

The minute I started to panic, it was gone. The depth of my gratitude, my peace and tranquility were gone. And I did it. I was the cause of both my peace and my panic. 

And then I had one of those moments that comes when you are truly lucky. I realized that contentment is something you can actually practice.

This is revelatory to me. Up until this point I have always thought of contentment at something you achieve, something you earn. Work long days, put in hard hours, study and keep your nose to the grind stone and some day you will get to retire and spend all your hard earned money contentedly sitting around. It never occurred to me that contentment is something I could actually practice right now.

In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the second of the “observances” (Niyamasa) is Santosha: contentment. The Sutras say that in order to become enlightened one must  practice being content. I am sure oft over-used yoga catch phrase of "acceptance" could be used as another way of saying "contentment" but to me that would be incorrect. Acceptance implies a kind of acquiescence, a rolling over and letting the world pass over you. To practice contentment means that you are actively choosing to engage in the world according to your own terms. It means acknowledging when you have enough and being satisfied with it.

In conversations with my friends and students the question of being depleted and being dissatisfied has been coming up a lot. And while I am by no means above the fray, I can’t help but wonder, how often do we think our needs are not being met when in fact they are?  How often do we actively practice being discontented and how drastically would our lives change if we did the opposite? Americans are constantly being encouraged to crave, to be dissatisfied, to hunger so that we keep consuming. The fabric of our economy seems to depend on us remaining discontent, believing that we are too fat, too ugly, too old and too poor.  

But are we? What would happen if we didn’t believe that?  What would it look like if we looked at our tiny cabins, and our outhouses and nocturnal toilets and said things like “Wow, this place is perfect. I get a respite from my life and time alone with my family. I need to take a crap and here is a place to do it. It satisfies my need. I am content with that.”

The Break-Up

I recently ended a 20 year love affair.  It's been an open, shameless, torrid thing.  We would meet any time of day; mornings, evenings, afternoons, sometimes multiple times a day.  There were times when I would go to bed thinking only of her, times when I would jealously guard her against anyone, refusing to talk to people or look at them until I saw her. She is my crutch, my addiction. She is my sweet, smooth lover. She is Coffee.

The first time we met I was 14.  I was manning the donut and coffee table at my junior high school's basketball tournament.  I drank a pot of Coffee and despite the sweats, the constant running to the bathroom and nervous jitters, I really liked her.  It was just a passionate one day stand though.  We didn’t get hot and heavy until I was 18.  That summer I had a job as an office go-fer.  Being an office bitch is, at its very best, mind-numbing. At its worst it's soul sucking.  Coffee was the perfect distraction.  She was a cheap whore in a Folgers can who would dress up real slutty in heaping spoonfuls of Coffee Mate and sugar. We’d slink off to my desk and she’d get me all overheated and pepped up while ensuring a constant need for bathroom breaks.

In college we became the perfect couple.  She effortlessly teased me into wakefulness through all four years of college and together we ventured into the steamy, aromatic world of Coffee Houses.  Our tastes started to change.  We dated baristas and fraternized with coffee people who introduced us to sexy, worldly ladies like Espresso Maker and Roasting Techniques.  I was becoming more discriminating in my choice of venues for her services and she was becoming more refined and expensive.  She no longer tolerated sugar or Coffee Mate, demanding that everything should be organic, fresh pressed or at the very least, it shouldn’t cost less than $9.99 a pound.

By the time I left college she was my mistress. Someone I couldn’t imagine living without and never imagined giving up. I’d bought her a penthouse in my body and I was going to continue to enjoy her aroma until I died.   

Then I had a week of debilitating migraines.  Now, I’ve had headaches all my life.  I’ve had headaches that last a week many times.  There was technically nothing different about this week of headaches than any other week of headaches I've had before.  The only thing different was that I’d finally had enough.  I’ve known for years that Coffee wasn’t serving me. I knew she was draining me. She’s horrible for my skin, terrible for my head and causes me more problems than she solves, but I could never cut the addiction because I never wanted to.  

Now I want to.  I want to because even though I love Coffee, like really, really love her, I hate my headaches more.  I simply hate my pain more than I love my Coffee. And that’s it. If Coffee didn’t give me headaches or cysts I would be all over her. Every. Day. But, she does so I am out.   

Happily, kicking Coffee out of my body has been pretty easy.  I started off by allowing her mother, Decaf, to move in. I made them share a room for awhile. Then I invited the healthy, super stable Cafix, to come over and let him share a room with Coffee and Decaf.  He’s not as sexy as Coffee and doesn't smell nearly as good, but he's respectful and quiet and I never feel jittery or crabby after hanging out with him.  Plus, he's been great about cleaning house. He pretty much did all the work of moving both Decaf and Coffee out for me.  

In the end, Coffee was really receptive to the transition.

I think in her heart she knew it was over too. 

The Study Group

This time of year, the end of winter into the beginning of spring, where nothing seems to be changing but everything is groaning for it is one of the hardest for me.  As winter yawns on and my gloves become mismatched sets of lost and displaced, my mood plummets.

Try as I might to hold onto the idea that this too shall pass, I find it very difficult not to indulge in my flight response.  I have a really bad flight response. It’s not just a “get out of town for a week to some place warm” flight response but a full-blown flee my life and everything in it response.

In my adult life I have moved back and forth from the west coast to New York five times. Each time it was on my own dime and each time I lacked a clear vision as to why I was moving.  The first time my aunt offered me a job for the summer, I took it and stayed.  The second time I moved to Oregon because I was tired of NYC and I thought Oregon sounded like a cool place to live. The third time, my then new husband wanted to move back to NYC so I agreed. Then we had kids and I thought we should live closer to family, so we moved to California (click here if you want to see what a train wreck that was!). I hated California so we moved back to NYC.  

Before each move I was always overcome with crippling anxiety and frustration. A feeling that nothing was ever going to be OK ever again and there was nothing I could ever do about it. These feelings were so intense I had to get away from them.  Each time I moved hoping that it would make the anxiety go away, hoping that it would be the defibrillator to get my life beating again.

The problem is, you just can’t outrun yourself.  No matter where you go, there you are. And emotional baggage never gets lost. It’s like the world’s most efficient airline employee.  It always makes it to the gate on time. It’s always waiting for you when you land.   

About a year ago, I started to get the urge to flee again and I finally began to wonder about this destructive habit of mine.  It was clear it was time to engage in some serious svadhyaya.  In yogic philosophy there guiding principles called the Yamas and the Niyamas. The Yamas are “restraints”, similar to the Ten Commandments.  They are the “shall nots.”  The Niyamas are the “shoulds,” the actions one does to align oneself with the Yamas.  Svadhyaya, self study, is the fourth Niyama.  To practice svadhyaya means to look at oneself and say “huh, that’s less than helpful. Why am I doing that?” If this sounds like modern psychotherapy, it should.  Psychotherapy is a form of svadhyaya.  (Yogic thought is blessedly broad in its scope and never says exactly what self study should look like.  It just says you need to do it.)  Svadhyaya means looking at your life, seeing the big piles of poop you’ve stepped in, acknowledging that your shoes stink and then deciding to clean it off properly.  Or as this lovely website so eloquently puts it: “It means to intentionally find self-awareness in all our activities and efforts, even to the point of welcoming and accepting our limitations… to burn out unwanted and self-destructive tendencies.”  (http://www.expressionsofspirit.com/yoga/eight-limbs.htm)

My father died around this time of year sixteen years ago. He was bipolar and had been in and out of mental institutions and on and off medication for most of my life.  At the time of his death his current medication was destroying his nervous system and, under the advice of his doctor, he was trying to wean off them. In the process he slipped into a manic state, wandered off, got lost in the woods and died from exposure.

I am haunted by his death and the trauma of growing up with a mentally ill father.  He is like my own personal Leviathan, constantly thrashing around in the ocean of my psyche.  At some points he’s my playmate, a person who taught me to be brave and bold and challenge conventions. At other times he’s a monster, a fearsome creature that fills me with shame and dread. Highly intellectual yet lost in delusion, extremely funny, yet ruthlessly sardonic, loving and cruel, a religious zealot, an angry atheist, a cheating, lying SOB and a loving, caring, attentive father. In the end he was like most people, an anathema; impossible to reach and never truly understood.   

Over the past two years I have been actively engaging in a conversation with my dad through a lot of svadhyaya.  It has not been easy because, 1. phantoms are painfully silent and withholding and 2. svadhyaya is rarely enjoyable. It usually comes with a lot of resistance, confusion and tears.  Trying to parse out answers to the Daddy Mystery has left me raw and often times unbearable to be around.  There are days when my urge to flee is so bad I have to go for a run to get away from myself.  Those are the days when I wonder why I even bother doing this at all. But then, something great happens. I get a light bulb moment like this one: 

Every time something happened to my dad, he ran away.

Now, it would be stupidly simplistic of me to say that my flight response is just something I was taught, that it’s just bad parenting.  Nothing is ever that cut and dry. But this little connection has given me a piece of the puzzle and this piece has afforded me peace.  Rather than sprinting through my life with blinders on I'm starting to slow down and experience the life around me.  Yogic philosophy is constantly reiterating that this moment is ephemeral.  If you get mired in the minutia of things as you think they "should" be you will miss the beauty of what is.  This kind of thinking is easy to talk about in the abstract, but without practical application, it becomes poetry and wishful thinking. That's where svadhyaya comes in.  Svadhyaya forces you out of yourself, out of self-pity and self destruction.  It forces you to see beauty in a very clear and practical way.  

To say, “I am cured! Halleluiah! Thank you Yoga!” would be ridiculous. I’m not.  But, through svadhyaya I have curbed my flight response considerably and I grow more and more confident that I will be able to slow down even more - maybe to a fast walk or a stroll. Who knows, maybe I’ll stop all together!

But, until then I intend to keep on studying.