Holidays, Rah, Rah!

Every year, I am blindsighted by holiday panic. It creeps up on me, entering my body along with all the usual stresses, invading quietly. All of a sudden, I am nearly paralyzed with indecision, overwhelmed with what to do, for myself, for others, for the universe. I have this moment when I feel amazed that I am in such a dither, where I stop and wonder, 'how did life get so crazy, so much crazier, even, than usual?' And, then, I remember. It is an AHA! moment every year when I realize why I might feel suddenly so much more inadequate even than usual, when I feel even more as if I am well behind where I should be, that I should be doing so much more.

I am, sometimes, a rational person. But the holiday season is the ultimate marketing campaign, one that has worked on people for centuries. Even though I wrote about marketing's insipid ways for a decade, it still works on me. I still find myself standing, dazed and confused, in the middle of a holiday bazaar in Union Square, imagining that life will be as it should only if I buy the perfect, beautiful gifts and put them under a perfectly decorated tree as I bring out a variety of delicious home-baked cookies and egg nog to my guests in front of the fire. It's all wrong, the image. I'm Jewish, I have no tree, no fireplace and egg nog doesn't really do it for me. But, still, this is the kind of pressure that was working on me the other day as I shopped. I got nothing accomplished. I was just acclimating myself to the annual discrepancy between fantasy and reality, to the idea that, indeed, all I could hope for was to share a few small tokens of appreciation and, ideally, time with family and friends this season. The less pressure the better.

Last year, when I ran into the umpteenth woman looking as harried and hazy from holiday stress as I, when I heard the thousandth tale of intended cheer turned to chaos, I laughingly suggested I should set up a booth where I could administer some sort of serum to relieve the stress, to happy the sad. I wasn't yet giving out gold stars. It may not be as effective as some specially-devised holiday serum, but I get a new shipment of stars on Wednesday, mercifully. I'm still considering setting up a therapy booth, like Lucy in Peanuts, though I can't imagine charging even five cents since people's purses are already open far too often this time of year, adding to the stress.

It was so hard to focus the other day on shopping, I just wandered the Union Square bazaar in a daze imagining that if I were to find the perfect gifts, place them under a beautifully decorated tree around which I served home-baked cookies and egg nog to appreciative family and friends around the fire, all would be well. The image just shows how marketing works, how easy it is to succumb to the marketing of the holiday season, even when it doesn't even vaguely apply. I am Jewish, after all, I have no tree and egg nog just doesn't do it for me. Even so, I had to work hard as I meandered around with other freezing, hopeful shoppers, to separate fantasy from reality. I bought nothing, except my favorite sesame chicken salad at Union Square Coffee shop. I contemplated, instead, what I would buy.

I had exactly a few hours yesterday to shop for my kids for Chanukah, just enough. Any more and additional hundreds would have been spent on useless items my marketing-addled mind told me would matter. As it was, my kids loved their gifts, we ate home-made latkas with pork chops (a nod to both Jewish and Wasp roots in our house) and enjoyed one another immensely. I tried not to be too hard on myself that it took 'til 8:00 to serve dinner, that presents weren't wrapped at all let alone beautifully much before then, and that the few paltry decorations I'd picked up at the last minute from the picked-over quarter-aisle the major drug stores devote to Chanukah weren't even put up. Oh well. I'm trying. It's all I can do.

Purpose...

We don't really even understand how judgmental we are of ourselves or others. It is like in Avenue Q, the song that offers insightfully, "We're all just a little bit racist." Sometimes, our own ideas are so deeply ingrained that we don't even notice them, certainly don't question them. Not unless somebody else forces you to, and even then...

I saw Avenue Q last night, finally. It has been running for many years and I have for the last couple at least been meaning to get there as one of its creators is now a friend, lives in my building. I think there was a reason I didn't see it until yesterday. It's messages resonated in a way they might not have before, in perfect tandem with what I am thinking about now as I set upon my own mission, my own purpose.

The idea of one's purpose in life plays large in the modern musical, arguably the first of its genre, which uses puppets and lighthearted tunes to soften the blow, to ease the burden of grappling with The Big Question, the one we are often, many of us, afraid to ask: why am I here anyway??

The central puppet, Princeton, has graduated from college with an English degree and finds himself unemployed and out of sorts. Without a handy job to distract him, the "opportunity," aka free time, to explore what he might really be meant to do is offered. Suffice to say, it is not easy for him to figure. Panic, self-doubt and sexual escapades ensue. Conveniently, it being a play, there are some conclusions drawn, some reasons why, for example, he eschews love to find his higher purpose. It is never quite so simple in real life, though the lessons drawn from such smart art certainly can help.

I was thinking of this when I embarked on a conversation with a gentleman in Parco this morning. I have seen him sitting, reading, there often, but we have never chatted. Today was the day. It turns out he is a professor, of English. I laughed, telling him about the confusion of the Ave Q character after graduating with an English degree and still not knowing what to do. I said I gave people stars, though, just for trying. He seemed to understand, but then, as we talked, he would shake his head at points when I explained the moments a person might feel they deserved a gold star.

"Like after they've done the laundry, and looked around to wonder who's noticed," I said.

He narrowed his eyes, curious. "But is doing laundry really deserving of a reward?"

I laughed. "Yes! It is effort expended, it is not for me or you to judge if it is enough, that is the point!"

He thought about it and nodded. "OK," he said, "Fair enough."

I told him how, yesterday, a parent at my kids' school and a former Peace Corps volunteer, who got a gold star for her heroic efforts running the Book Fair, told a story of living in Ghana where, she said, "It is a big saying there, it is high praise, to say, 'You try!'" She laughed and recounted an instance where she had gone full bore on something only to have a woman walk up to her and say, "You try, Sistah!" Judging the comment by American standards, judging it as an effort unrewarded, unsuccessful, she was at first offended, until she remembered: in Ghana, it meant a job well done.

"It's sad that in this country, we do not see trying as enough. I think people come here to succeed, especially to New York, and they are very hard on themselves," I said to my new friend.

He thought about it and shook his head. "No," he said. "They come here, or did, because there are more jobs. It's not about that idea of 'success,' they just need jobs."

I laughed. It was funny because Ave. Q's theme of higher purpose is, of course, working on a higher plane. Of course, Princeton had parents who floated him money while he searched for greater meaning. He had the luxury. Others have no choice but to get a job that often sucks them of the energy to think about something else. But that something else, that larger possibility lurks there, somewhere, in the back of their minds, I'm convinced of it.

"I think we all work simultaneously on two planes," I said. "Even if we're not consciously thinking about let alone actively working toward Higher Purpose in a tangible way, even if we just move to New York to 'get a job,' there is always the thought in the back of our heads that something will happen, that we will be discovered or that something extraordinary will pop into our lap that gives our lives meaning."

He nodded hesitantly. "I agree with that, I think," he said. I liked him a lot, not just because he agreed with me. Mainly because he was willing and interested in thinking about something in a new way, he was curious. I gave him his gold star happily.

After he left, a new seatmate arrived and we, likewise, discussed the meaning of life, the questions that arise in middle age.

"There are no answers," she said. I nodded.

"All you can do is look at everything and keep asking questions," I said, giving her a gold star for doing just that.

Noticing

She walked in, totally prepared for the driving rain, in her hooded waterproof poncho and galoshes, water-resistant outer gloves covering her knit ones. But there was nothing she could do about her glasses fogging up when she entered Parco, warm and moist as usual with all the baking being done in back. Sometimes, there is nothing you can do, no matter how prepared you are, no matter how hard you try, I thought. She giggled good-naturedly at her momentary blindness, at the reality that there were likely to be negative affects of the dreary day. She leaned out her cheek for her star appreciatively, having no hands to take it as she held her bag and reached for the knob.

"I needed that," she said.

I laughed. "I noticed," I said.

Sad to say, sometimes nobody notices. Or they notice and don't care. But I love where I live, 'cause I love to notice people. Yesterday, for example, I noticed the graceful dancelike motions of a waiter at the diner I frequent. I laughed as he returned toward me, having swirlingly offered up menus as one might in a movie scene where drama turns suddenly into musical. I mentioned this to him, that I love movie scenes like that, like the one in 500 Days of Summer where he is happy and the whole of the world around him joins in with song and dance.

My friend, the waiter, blushed slightly but nodded.

"I love that kind of shit," he said. "I always imagine what would happen if I just broke out into a musical number."

I laughed. "I knew it," I said, "I could see that..."

He told me, sheepishly in front of his friend who might laugh, that Enchanted was one of his fave movies, Fiddler on The Roof his fave soundtrack. If you saw him, this might surprise you. You cannot know what resonates with a person, though, by how they look. You have to watch them, you have to notice the little things they do.

Funny, we are often so busy thinking about our own selves, that we fail to pay attention to the realities of others' inner lives, the realities of even the most rich and famous, to give people the benefit of the doubt. Every day in Brooklyn, I meet people who have moved here, to this country, to be who they want to be, to find a way to get their unique message out into the world, to take advantage of America's foundation of "freedom" to parlay their inner selves outward.

Last night, I jumped into the corner deli for some salsa for our weekly Family Taco Night. It's always a good night when we have tacos, everyone munching happily, don't ask me why. It was the same for me, growing up. Anyway, I said a hearty hello to the young man working in the store and then complimented him on his pin, the bold, bearded face of a man who obviously inspired him.

"Do you know who it is?" he asked.

I am painfully uneducated on world leaders. He looked like Nostradamus to me...

He laughed. "No. It is Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia." He went on to tell me of Mr. Selassie's reign and his efforts to modernize and globalize the African people, to lead them to peace and prosperity. He was in a reggae band, he told me, was working on so many things outside his job at the deli.

I gave him a gold star. He was thrilled.

"Wow, I haven't been given a gold star since I was in grade school," he said.

I was cheered, not thinking the gold star was given outside the U.S., and he was obviously not from here. He was from the Carribbean, he said, and there, "they gave out gold stars, and silver!"

Today, I received an e-mail from my new friend, telling me he was a poet as well as a musician, sharing with me amazing heartfelt words, a window into his inner self. My favorite line played off a theme I just was discussing yesterday with a Greek friend, the idea that the foundations of this country, because of rather than in spite of its idealism, present a bit of a bait and switch. If I may borrow his line, pay homage to his efforts: "For some reason I feel like a slave in the land of the free and the home of the brave."

We are told, so often, that we are free to do what we want and by so many cultural standards we are. But some days, it is still hard. Despite what you put on, despite how prepared you try to be, despite even your successes, it is still a struggle.

To borrow again, from today's yoga instructor, from a friend's earlier e-mail, from a favorite song lyric refrain, JUST BREATHE! And, of course, don't forget to notice those around you...

Death-Defying Hope

Death is a hard concept to get your head around so, like most difficult things, we tend to avoid it, to push it out of our conscious thoughts. There is nothing we can do about it anyway, right? Well, maybe, maybe not. We can at least look at it, talk about it and feel a little tiny bit less alone in our concern, like in all concerns.

Flying in an airplane just naturally raises one's consciousness about possible death. It seems impossible to fly in a metal contraption thousands of feet in the air and survive. My kids love flying, exhibit no fear. Except, their questions show they are obviously hip to what's happening, to their potential demise if the plane should down.

As we walked on to one of the many planes we flew on recently, Eli asked, loudly, "Why do planes crash, Mommy?"

"Shhhh..." my husband said, then quietly added, "we don't talk about that."

I laughed. Strange that we don't talk about it when everybody is thinking about it, isn't it? But he's right. It's bad form to talk about crashing when you're getting on a plane. But, still, I did explain to Eli when we sat down that there are so many reasons planes crash, usually different ones every time that get studied and studied and studied so it doesn't happen again, which is why it happens so rarely. He loves rare things, he is an odds man, for sure, so the idea cheered him as I knew it would.

"Anyway," I said, "there is nothing that your worrying about it is going to do, so you might as well enjoy."

That is true not just on airplanes but everywhere, right? It is only that airplanes present a seemingly tangible image of a particularly gruesome way to die. But we are forced, usually, many times a day, to consider the possibility of death. Especially those who choose to watch or read the news. I opt out, like last night, in the car on the way home from the airport, listening for two seconds to 1010 Winds, I heard so many disgusting tales of death, I asked the driver politely to turn it down, or off.

It is good to be able to face the truth of one's eventual demise, to help our children grapple with their own concerns, but to fixate on the many horrible ways it happens to others...not my cup of tea. Just like listening to the painful miseries of the rich and famous doesn't float my boat.

Death shouldn't be the elephant in the room. It can be something we laugh about, if we're lucky. Take the other day. I had asked a family friend if she wanted to join us at our hotel with her kids, to swim. Even though it was freezing, the pool was heated, fine for us New Yorkers.

She shook her head. "Too cold," she said, "And, anyway, my waxer died..."

I threw my head back in laughter. I felt a little bad laughing at death but, really, it was a great line, delivered perfectly.

"I'm sorry for your waxer, but is it possible you might replace her, or..."

"Well," she said, shaking her head, "it just happened." She was young, the circumstances were a little strange and my friend was clearly sad about it but, still, she had used it to make a joke. She was dealing with her upset in a healthy way. No surprise, her father is a psychiatrist. I overheard him giving advice to his son-in-law and something occurred to me that I guess should have occurred to me before.

"Psychiatrists are very hopeful people, aren't they?" I asked.

He thought about it for a minute, then looked at me. "Well," he said tentatively, "I hope so." Great, perfect.

"I didn't even mean to say that..." he said. He had just,honestly, felt hopeful. It's all we can hope for, to be hopeful, actually. Death will surely come, there is no denying it. But, in the meantime, there, hopefully, is hope. It is all I can give my children when they ask about their own death and when it will come.

"Hopefully," I say, "you will live a very long life..."

Desire Means Doing, Not Trying

I think a fair amount lately about the idea of conscious unconsciousness. People that I meet who I trust to advise me all advise not to think, just to do, like my headstand teacher. Interestingly, my tarot card today advised the same thing, though phrased it in a different way, a thought-provoking way. It said: "Trying is not needed, only desire to do."

Wait a minute, I thought. I reward people all the time just for trying. What is this idea of not feeling it necessary to try, just desiring to do? Maybe, I thought, it is this same idea of conscious unconsciousness, this idea of not stopping to think and control and thwart intuition. Maybe it is simply important to be aware of desire and then trust that, if you're patient, you will be led down the proper path...Hmmm, interesting. Trying too hard, it turns out, can be a problem.

I have often looked back and realized, only in hindsight, that I got what I desired even though, at the time, I didn't really think, consciously, that I had. I have realized recently that I have designed my life in ways I could not have guessed I had any hand in. But, of course, I did. I just hadn't consciously tried, I had just desired. I feel like we all do that, it's just a question of if we look back and take responsibility, recognize our role in things turning out as they did, as they do.

Today, I gave out a slew of gold stars and my niece gave out a bunch too. It was the Day After, the relaxation after the build up to and completion of the Main Event. I love Day Afters. As my sister pointed out, though, so insightfully, the Day After could not feel so good if you don't have the Day Of. It is like trying to enjoy Apres Ski without skiing, not the same at all.

My immediate family all got the biggest stars for trying, each in their own way, to make it through the events without major mishap. Other family and friends got medium and smaller stars. If I could, I would buy all big stars, but they don't come that way. I have to see if I can special order, but usually I don't give out stars en masse. As I have said, they seem to lose their power that way, except on special occasions, like today, where most of those around me had played a part in the design of my life in obvious and not-so-obvious ways.

I never realized, for example, that the friends of my mom's that I most related to were New Yorkers. Only now, talking to them, does it occur to me that it might not be at all coincidental that I ended up in New York, having grown up in a new upstart city but having longed for the kind of roots that these friends talked about having had in New York.

"Funny," I said to an old family friend, now a Colorado resident but a native New Yorker, a one-time Tucsonan, briefly, but long enough to meet my parents, "Saturday Night Fever made me long for community of the kind that Brooklyn has in spades..."

"Oh, yeah, that was filmed in Brooklyn," he said. His wife and I were talking later, and she spoke of the days when she was in Tucson, homesick for New York, and how she watched Jack Lemon in the Out-of-Towners and loved it, how she would try to watch other New York-based movies.

"Not hard, since you realize so many movies are based in New York..." I said.

Between the New York-centric media and entertainment industries and the warmest people I ever knew coming from New York, it is no surprise that I am where I am, that my unconsious brought me to now, to life in Brooklyn.

Now, I don't mean to say that I will stop trying, that anybody should. But, maybe, if we trust ourselves and trust in what feels right, trying won't seem so taxing, so impossibly hard. Maybe our desires will be better fulfilled by relaxing and letting what feels good and nice wash over us and not putting up such a fight.

Maybe It's Nice, Maybe It's Not...

I am in Arizona. It is 3:30 in the morning and I am wide awake, being that it is 5:30in New York, my normal wake-up time. I am happy to be here for my adorable niece, who is so excited for her special day, her shining moment, the day that marks her definitive move toward maturity. When we arrived yesterday, any hassles we'd experienced with the inept security system at the Jet Blue terminal at Kennedy faded when I saw my niece with her hair blown out, looking every bit the big girl her Bat Mitvah shows she is.

"I look too old," she complained when I asked if she was 18 yet...

I laughed. "You don't want to look older?"

"No. I want to look like me."

She is awesome, happy in her own skin, her current self. I am glad I am here to witness it.

The funny thing is, though, much as I'm happy to be here, two back-to-back trips are tough. It seems, though, that I am not allowed to complain. I am lucky. "Must be nice..." everyone has said when I told them I was going away again, to another supposed warm-weather climate (though, strangely, the temperature here is almost the exact same as in New York.)

The other day I gave a gold star to arguably one of my most loyal fans who had abandoned reading the blog after she read that I was in Costa Rica.

"You bitch," she said, only slightly in jest when she saw me on the street the other day. "I can't believe you were in Costa Rica..."

We started chatting about it and I told her about something and then said, "Well, you read about it already..."

She shook her head. "No. I couldn't read after the first one, I was too angry and jealous."

"Nice," I said. What could I say? "Sorry?!" I offered. I gave her a big gold star and tips on where to go when she was able to take herself to Costa Rica.

I thought about it as I walked away, thought about the low numbers on my blog last week as I regaled people with the wonders of my rare luxury adventure. I had pegged it to it being the holidays, but now I wondered: did other people feel similarly angry and jealous? Maybe it was like why I don't read Vanity Fair or Vogue. Sometimes it can feel fun to live vicariously and sometimes it can just remind you where you're not.

The last few days, much as I've tried, as usual, to avoid the media, I have been forced to listen to the disgusting privacy-invading jokes and barbs about Tiger Woods. I was alerted to the story on the day it broke by my father, one of Tiger's biggest fans.

"He didn't do anything, he's squeaky clean," my Dad said. Without knowing anything, I knew that couldn't be true, that the media often lies but that stories are rarely totally fabricated.

"And what if he did cheat on his wife? Why do you care?" I asked. "You like him because he's a good golfer, don't you? What difference does it make what he does?"

My father sighed, loudly, over the phone. "He's a good person, Stephanie."

I laughed. "And he can't be a good person if he cheated on his wife? I don't agree. Life is complicated, and it's none of our business."

The problem is, in our society, we want to have heroes whose lives we hold up as perfect, who we can aspire to be, and we also want to see them fall, to see them punished for the mistakes we, in our own lives, would be punished for on a much smaller scale, in much smaller circles.

I can only imagine, based on my own limited experience with the "Must be nice" comments, how someone like Tiger Woods might feel. Sometimes, it doesn't feel completely nice but you can't complain when you have something enviable, you aren't really allowed because you are lucky.

For Tiger, obviously, despite his beautiful wife and children and money and talent in his chosen field (or the one chosen for him by his father) it isn't enough. All that he has doesn't cut it. That is spoiled, surely, but also reality, and real life is often so different from the pretty pictures others paint of a life they can really know nothing about. We can't understand how it feels from the inside of someone else's mind. Until the tell-all biography...And even then. There is so much behind any behavior we exhibit that we don't even understand ourselves, even when we sit down to try to examine it and share it.

I can only hope, optimistically, that the world moves on to another story and leaves the poor Woods family alone to deal with their personal problems. For they are personal, despite his fame and wealth as probably the most popular golfer ever. And, after all, who are we to judge? We admire these people who get to the top, fighting for what they want, then we are shocked that they go for what they want in every arena of their lives, that they are not satisfied standing still. Tiger gets a gold star, as does his wife, for trying to live their lives under a microscope, for trying to cope with all that they have to cope with while the world tells them they have everything.

Oh So Grateful...

I've given out a ton of gold stars over the last two days. I am amazed, back in a heavily populated place, at all the examples I see around me every second of people trying.

I myself have been trying pretty hard, facing off with the fourth load of laundry, an empty fridge and major make-up homework to oversee among the many things I have to do between back-to-back family trips. I leave for Arizona for my niece's Bat Mitzvah on Thursday. I began to lose any sense of renewal vacation had offered, but then, I did handstands.

I had some help. My headstand teacher, formerly referred to here as Saturday Night Fever, showed up yesterday at the gym, just as I needed him, to offer up his inspirational wisdom on what the body can do if the mind lets it.

"You're thinking too much," he said, as I attempted in vain to throw my legs over my head, against the wall, just as I have so many times in yoga class. "Why aren't you doing it? Just decide you're going to do it and do it, with speed, like this," he said, throwing his hands smack against the blue mat and forcing his feet staunchly against the wall, arms and legs strong and straight.

Next thing you know, can't-do thoughts pushed aside, I was upside down, my arms amazingly holding me straight up. I think, in part, I was so grateful for this near-stranger's help and concern, I couldn't possibly let him down. I had to get up, and I did. He got a gold star, of course.

This morning, I went first thing to the mat to make sure I had the guts to do it again, my handstand, unspotted, and I got up on the first try. I was thrilled, grateful anew for my generous trainer and his efforts to help me get over a major lifelong hurdle, to really try my best.

As I worked out in the weight room, I started chatting with a woman, a college professor, it turns out, who was, like me, feeling the strain of the week ahead. For her, grading papers was looming large.

"What do you teach?" I asked.

"English," she said, "a freshman core course at Seton Hall called Journey of Transformation."

"Wow," I said, "that sounds cool. I want to take that class. What's on the syllabus?"

"A mixture of things, from Plato to the Bible to Dante's Divine Comedy..."

She said her students were writing about the career and/or personal transformations of one of a number of people whose stories she had read about whose names she threw into a hat.

"So cool, to have to think about that..." I said.

Transformation, I know firsthand, is a tricky thing, something it is a luxury to be able to spend time thinking about, writing about. I gave the professor a big gold star for helping these freshmen, these young, eager hopefuls she said were "cute, like puppies, and, like puppies, they sometimes pee on you..." Her role in their transformation is no easy feat, for sure, her extended school vacations hard won.

I hit my fave diner for lunch and was met, as usual, with the friendly smile of my friend behind the counter.

"How are you?" I asked, giving his smile straight back.

"Great," he said, "I'm trying to get laid again tonight."

I threw my head back in laughter. "Really?" I said. "Same girl?"

He shook his head, no. This was a different girl, one he had been eyeing for a while and was finally following to a Brazilian Capoeira dance class to prove his affections.

"Wow," I said, "I hope you're good, otherwise it's going to be a deal breaker," I said.

"Oh, I'm good..." he said. "Plus, I think it just looks good that I'm there, trying." He had a point. I always got annoyed at guys who said they couldn't dance or wouldn't. It showed, I thought, a real lack of fun, though I often regretted forcing someone onto the floor who then flopped around next to me for a bit before I finally relented that maybe they were right to have refused...

Either way, this was my friend's plan and he was not to be thwarted, not even by his colleagues making merciless fun of him. We chatted a little about his sincere interest in this girl, beyond just the sex, which, we agreed, is usually pretty bad if you don't connect with someone's personality too. Pretty can only take a girl so far...

"It's hard, though, you know, to get that perfect balance," he said. He looked off then, in thought and added, "But, sometimes, actually, the not-so-pretty ones work harder, actually. They feel they have to, to make up for it, to compete..."

At this, I died laughing, in both surprise and happiness at his candor. "Wow," I said, "In bed, you mean, the unattractive ones are better?"

He looked at me with the "duh" face I get from my kids. "Yeah," he said. "In order to keep you satisfied, they have to go that extra mile..."

"Amazing," I said. Could this be true? "I love talking to men, honestly," I said. "The things you think about it, the theories that you come up with..."

Mr. Trying to Get Laid grabbed his colleague. "Isn't it true, man, that the not-so-pretty-girls have to try harder in bed?"

The guy looked perplexed, as if asked a totally stupid question. "Of course," he said without skipping a beat.

This was too much. I didn't even want to continue, for I cannot help but put myself into any equation I am given and I began to wonder where I fit into all this, where they might classify me...I didn't want to go down that road. That is the danger of being a woman talking to men about women.

As I left them, though, wishing my friend good luck with his dancing and afterward, I began to think about it. As with me and my handstand teacher, maybe it's gratitude that makes people try harder, makes them want to do the job well, makes them have to work harder to transform. Certainly, a girl who has not had a lot of luck in love, for whom chances don't come around that often, would certainly feel grateful to someone who gave her a shot. Harsh as the whole thing had sounded, it made sense.

I smiled to myself as I walked down 8th Ave. Trying is certainly its own reward, even if I'm not there to give out the gold stars.