June 27, 2009
This morning, over coffee in Cafe Bellagio on Hornby Street, I read articles about Canada’s national identity. And articles about the reality of America versus the long-held fantasies. And I began to wonder how a national identity is constructed.
From where I sit, there is no national identity in the U.S. None. Nada. Zilch. We are a conglomeration of very different, inward-focused people with a sense of entitlement and superiority for being American. Plain as day. And maybe we deserve it. Or maybe we don’t.
Don’t get me wrong - I am quite proud of and thankful for my American citizenship. Hands-down, my nationality entitles me to carte blanche protection and open doors in most parts of the world. I’ve just spent a week in Canada and did not formally change my dollars into loonies and toonies not even once. Because my currency is universal.
Still. We are in quite the pickle in America these days. One Globe and Mail article speculated on the impact of new American frugality and a saving-money trend that may well forestall global economic recovery. How can it be a bad thing for Americans to start saving money? It’s something we should’ve been doing all along.
Another article lamented the lack of local diners and charming shops in rural America and spotlightedhow urban blight has turned into open fields with wildlife running through it. My city perhaps a prime example - months ago, in my father’s car on a driving tour of his childhood memories, we found two of his formative homes still standing but one completely wiped away except from memory - and all that was left was a vacant plot with wildflowers swaying in a rapid breeze.
And so a national identity for Canadians involves a canoe and the versatility of surviving in and near the Arctic freeze. It also involves looking south to determine long-term fate.
Walking Vancouver’s streets, I’ve noticed a multiracial melting pot with a multicultural inflection. Fifty-five percent of this city’s population is Asian. In one quick meeting, I encountered a woman from east Africa, an Iranian woman, an Italian girl and a woman who hailed from Germany. Working together in a common shop.
Not where I come from. Diversity is stratified and segregated in Detroit. Always has been. Here live the Jews, here live the WASPs, there live the Polish, and over there, yet another identity altogether. Never the twain shall meet? What do we see if we stare only at others who resemble us so closely?
Today my children are walking familiar streets to synagogue, in what I’m told is oppressively hot weather. Sudden summer come on strong. Today I board a plane to return to life-as-I-know-it and life-as-I-prefer-it. Vacation is only good because it is a world away from the diurnal. From the familiar.
Their little voices on the phone, their plaintive pleas, my baby’s almost-wail of, “I love you too.” I’ve had a good run this trip. I’ve kayaked in ocean waters against 25 km winds and scaled sheer rock faces. I’ve looked ahead, looked behind, tasted the sea, slept uninterrupted.
And now, I am going home.
June 23, 2009
As if the initial ascent wasn’t steep enough. Or silent beside the music of a whispering stream and hidden creatures under the ferns and old growth forest rising up from the dust. As if my heart wasn’t beating in my ears.
And when the tree roots cut in diagonals across the incline and I kneed myself up and over to reach yet another step on my way to the summit of Mt. Finlayson, I determined that enough was enough. So what if I didn’t go all the way to the top? I never even swiped my hands in the cold waters of the stream trickle over which I stepped on my way to a place I didn’t yet know.
I was here in the forest in the Goldstream Provincial Park halfway between Victoria and Sooke Harbour, breathing in deliberate gulps and not thinking of anything at all.
It took the prodding of yet more new friends and the comforting chatter of exploratory conversation to take me to the sheer rock faces just beneath the summit. And I do mean sheer, and I do mean rock face, and I do mean scary as hell.
My hands caked with the soot of time from grasping the smooth stones. My bum sliding me down from pinnacle to pinnacle until we returned to the comforting cover of tall trees. It was almost a mirage when we spotted in one direction nothing but view and nature and earth and in the other, the high-rise of quick development and fast money. Even this corner of the earth is being built up.
On my drive back, I almost couldn’t focus on the road for the sheer beauty of the Olympic Mountains across the channel. The hefty covering of snow on their rocky summits, the clear sunlight shining off that sheer white.
Last night, I chose the messenger rune from the velvet sack. I am receiving messages, signals and gifts. A new life unfolding, new lives begin with new connections, surprising linkages directing me onto new pathways. This interpretation from the elementary book of runes.
Expect the unexpected. The message is always a call, a call to new life.
And the phone rang as I traipsed through the gift shop at Butchart Gardens. “Mommy?” It was Eliana. I’m so glad I gave her that cell phone. She called me after awakening this morning and before going to sleep tonight. And thus began a rainfall litany of all she did today - putt-putt, a rented movie, pizza for dinner, a visit to her grandparents. A full day, bookended with my voice and her voice like a channel of deep water and beautiful landscape on either side.
Draw from the well to self-nourish. Exploring the depths, life’s foundations, integrating the conscious with what lies deep within.
June 22, 2009
“As a people, we believe more in linear movement than in anything circular.” True West, William Least-Heat Moon
June 22, 2009
early morning
Victoria, B.C.I arose later than expected, having fully acclimated in one night to my time zone. I am at the edge of my hemisphere. Across the bay, the sun gleams on the snow-topped Olympic Mountains. The wind is fierce this morning but I am calm. Gulls crest and careen over the dark blue waves. Rocks and forgotten logs below the cliff face, a precious sea wall.
A spotted dog named Jersey left his owner to walk with me. He lifted his eyes to mine and offered a familiar glance.
Yesterday, three pods of killer whales lifted and dove in the cold waters of the Active Pass. I do not believe in coincidence.
On the plane, I tore pages from magazines to remember inspiration after I return. Beside me, Joel Tyler commented, “You know, you can keep the whole magazine.” I laughed and gave his wife Lisa my Saveur, sans three pages. “I am trying to eliminate the weight,” I told him. “There are seven magazines in my backpack. I want to leave the plane with less.”
And then we were friends.
This morning, the scent of long grasses overgrown and swaying, of brambles and thistles, of honeysuckle along my walk. Of sea water, salty and cool. Of a breakfast made decadent and with purpose. We eat with all our senses.
Last night, seaplanes lifted and soared in my view. Sailboats were quiet at the dock. The winds again. I tasted the sea. Lisa is illuminating convergences. I read the signs. No coincidences. Eagles soared in my piece of sky.
This is not a story about canoes. It’s a story about metaphors. About finding truth. (LSA Magazine Spring 2009) At the University of Michigan, Professor Vince Diaz teaches the positions of 32 stars that orient a canoe at sea; how waves indicate location; the idea of etak, that islands aren’t static, that they move. He links social, environmental, physical.
But aren’t they always linked, even if we don’t acknowledge?
June 20, 2009
The cork popped, the wine spilled into clear glass. It was 4:30 in the afternoon. Slicing zucchini, tomatoes, hearts of palm. Blending garlic and mayonnaise and cider vinegar. Massaging the steaks with bare fingers.
The children ate their way through the day and into the night. Snacks followed by meals followed by snacks again. Red, white and blue popsicles dripping on the patio. Fingernails caked with dirt, faces sweat-streaked and smiling.
Ending the night on the backyard swing with the sway of tall branches doing their own configured dances and the light of fireflies still a desired scene yet to come. What-ifs permeated the air. Left unspoken so as to savor the moments.
The night darkened velvetly and then in the early morning, thunderstorms shook the foundations. A memory of the children caught on tape to play on the morning news, the strawberries picked by hand long since consumed.
A lazy morning ensued with an overdose of television and long lingering stretching yawns from beneath soft pajamas. It was our last full day of this little vacation.
And so the dinner that night, inviting a weekly respite, was sublimely light and full of the flavors of the tongue. Cheese pancakes, another full-bowl salad, salmon croquettes mashed by a fork and a hard-working hand. After-dinner conversation flowed river-like until the children clamored so mightily it was time for everyone to collapse into bed.
Today is many days in a single day. Humid, muggy, thundering and raining then dry and sunny and ominously warm. Trees shake off their final drops from last night’s rainfall. The friends have left and lifted into the air toward their home. Two children are sleeping. And I have yet to pack for my own journey.
June 17, 2009
“Lynnie!” My father calling.
“Leo” - my sister, with a smirk.
“Mommy…” - my children, plaintive wail, needs-a-hug, reassurance-seeking.
A lover’s call in the dark night. A child’s fear-filled search. My parents’ quest for their hopes and dreams to live on in me.
I chose each of my children’s names carefully and deliberately. I wanted them to carry meaning and good wishes in the names that the world would know them by forever more. In choosing their names, I wanted to bestow upon them success and strong identity.
My neighborhood is pretty built-up with few old trees. When I find one, I linger, like the pine tree that hangs over the street two blocks away. When I power-walk up and down the streets, I often stop under that pine and inhale my favorite scent - the mountain-fresh aroma of evergreen.
Hebrew for pine is Oren. I hate that name but love the meaning. Almost gave it to my second son but didn’t because, well, I hate the name.
How I feel about Schreiber…
When I became engaged, my husband-to-be’s mother took me to lunch and asked quietly if I might consider taking his last name. “Schreiber is German for writer,” she said. And I smiled and nodded and took on his name, which I had always planned to do, for I didn’t like the ding-dong-doorbell sound of my first name and surname together.
For the past ten years, I have been known as Lynne Schreiber. And now, husband no longer, I carry on someone else’s surname. And I don’t like that.
Back then, I believed there was serendipity involved. If his name was Schreiber, and I am a professional writer, well then we must be destined for each other. Beshert.
Obviously I don’t think that anymore. And still his name hangs around my neck.
Yes, it is my children’s last name and that is one argument in favor of keeping it. But I am their mother regardless of my name and I am me regardless of whose name I tack on to my own.
I am a modest feminist - not bra-burning, but not wrapping myself in the cloak of separation and quietude any longer. And yet, I don’t love the idea that women are prodded, pushed, obligated in some parts to bear the name of some man - a father, a husband, etc.
What would I name myself if I were to do so? I’ve contemplated simply going by Lynne Meredith. Two names given to me by my parents 38 years ago tomorrow. I would revert to Cohn, my father’s name, if it weren’t so damn confusing to my work. And besides, does it change who I am, how I see myself, how others know me, to change my name?
The power of naming - it IS a power, don’t kid yourself. The names we select for others can elevate them or it can kill them. The power of words is no subtle thing.
And I begin my morning with a kiss of my little boy’s cheek and the knowledge that his middle name, Matan, means gift. Truly. Have a great day.
June 15, 2009
In everyday speech, I don’t always choose my words carefully. Sure, I think about what I’m saying and reach into the depths of my intellect for powerhouse articulation, but sometimes, it’s all I can do to roll the thoughts off my tongue as quickly as they come to mind.
There was a man once who taught me about the power of language. Glen Gearhart, my high school English teacher. I think I took every class he taught in the Advanced Placement track. I graduated from North Farmington High School in 1989 and ever since, when I come across a “Gearhart word” - hoary, querulous - that’s exactly how I think of it. A word given to me by Mr. Gearhart.
His vocabulary tests were legendarily easy. Mr. Gearhart chose a list of 10 or 20 words, many of which held similar definitions. And then in the brilliance that was his and his alone, he assigned a one-word definition - often the SAME word - to explain what it meant. Easy to remember. Easy to get right.
Mr. Gearhart taught me that learning did not have to be an uphill climb and gaining knowledge didn’t have to come with obstacles or barriers or pages upon pages of hard-to-penetrate language and configurations. When I got to college at the University of Michigan and took a poetry class, I bristled when the professor told me my understanding of a poem was wrong. How could it be wrong if it was how I read it? Mr. Gearhart would never stand for that!
I ended up with an MFA in Poetry you know. Mr. Gearhart was right.
I never saw him after 1989 and every so often, I’d wonder where Mr. Gearhart was, what he was doing, whether he was wearing his gorgeous suits somewhere else in the world. I had fun in his classes. Once, when I was trying to get my parents to let me go to Cedar Point with friends, unchaperoned, Mr. Gearhart helped me write a compelling speech that considered my parents’ perspective but was ultimately so persuasive that they had to let me go.
They didn’t. But before my mother said her definitive NO, she said, “That was a great speech!”
And so, when I read in the newspaper a few weeks ago that Mr. Gearhart had passed, I felt a pang in my chest - of memories, of mourning, of profound impact.
I posted on my Facebook page that he would be missed and immediately classmates posted their memorial replies:
from Susan Gartenberg, a NFHS parent: When did he pass away? We all loved him!
June 10, 2009
It was a lovely early summer night, on the cool side, and I sat in the garden patio at The Whitney, an old elegant mansion-turned-restaurant in downtown Detroit. Stephanie Mills walked between the ten-or-so tables, explaining the process of several labels of Courvoisier cognac and inviting us to sip each different brew.
My friend Jan sat beside me and to my left were three men I’d only just met that night: the first, whose name I didn’t catch, I’ll call Nimble. A skinny man with long hair that shook as he spoke and an accent I thought to be Italian but which I later learned was Iraqi-Chaldean. “I own a wine store and an alarm company,” he said. Sweet man. Divorced, mid-40s or older, two children he never sees.
To his left sat Claiton, a man from mid-state with a teddy-bear body who threw Yiddish words around like he knew what he was talking about. Three years younger than I, a divorce attorney, lots to say but charming in his own way. And to his left was Eduardo, the half Mexican, half Chinese owner of several elegant restaurants. My age, divorced, with one teenage daughter.
We sipped cognac, and then Nimble ordered a bottle of red wine and we laughed and played at conversation and tried to figure everyone out. When Stephanie joined our table, she spoke about versatility and how people like options and how every city has its unique wonderful qualities. A consummate politician working for a high-end luxury cocktail company.
I’ll tell you first that I didn’t like the VSOP but the Exclusif went down smoothly and I sipped at the XO. I’d never drunk Courvoisier though I’d learned the word in high school French class when a student named Brandy was searching for the French version of her name. The brand rolls off the tongue, a fun word to toss around, and it turns out that I, a lightweight drinker with an affection for smooth, refined tastes, actually liked two of three versions of this cognac.
In any case. Stephanie sat with us in her to-the-floor flowing summer dress (which was beautiful) and a black amorphous wrap (it was a cool night) and her shock of hair like a beautiful bird’s defining characteristic. I asked her how she came to have this position as National Courvoisier Ambassador. “Destiny met opportunity,” she said.
And she told me how a friend mentioned the job posting and she pursued it, really not aware of what it entailed. “They flew me to their headquarters in Chicago and asked me to present something I was passionate about,” she said. Stephanie led a tasting of Chimay, a Belgian beer that elicited passion in this New York girl, and because she was speaking of something she knew intimately and loved, she got the job, 1 of 300 applicants.
Stephanie travels throughout North America hosting cognac tastings and marketing Courvoisier.
At our table, she said things like this:
“I think we have to evolve to take into consideration anybody’s taste.”
“You have to be creative in growing your business.”
“It’s about being in the right place at the right time and being open to opportunity.”
As Jan and I waited on the cobblestones for her blue two-door BMW, I asked her what her impression had been. I’d learned in the night that she liked her beef tenderloin well-done while I prefer mine bloody. The twice-baked potato was smooth, the green beans buttery. The layer cake and coffee were delightful afterthoughts.
Jan, who was laid-off recently from her executive automotive engineering position and has been interviewing relentlessly for a new post, took this away from the night: “I think Stephanie is a great example of a woman who beat the odds and landed a fabulous job that she loves.”
Interesting, I said. Colored by Jan’s current employment situation, she gleaned a different meaning from the same conversation.
And me, a former journalist and current marketing and public relations maven, I saw an earnest, high-end, unnecessary luxury brand vying for its very survival in an economic downturn. I saw a massive marketing campaign to attract new customers, a zealous and sincere effort to spread the word about a product that probably previously didn’t need such a push.
I took away the notion that as smooth as the cognac went down, it is an unnecessary product in a time when even the necessary comes under scrutiny. And Stephanie’s job has become that of politician and diplomat along with marketing director.
However, I now know a lot more about Courvoisier and cognac than I did before the night began. So perhaps I have become a potential customer.
I will say also that on its website, Courvoisier’s clever tagline is find greatness within. An awfully karmic directive for a luxury drink company.
Maybe what I took away in the end supports my whole business model. That face-to-face conversation, that relationship-building, can sell and promote and further a brand better than just about any other strategy.
June 8, 2009
When the air was still and the breeze cool, she looked off the horizon and stopped thinking. It was a wispy Sunday night, full of imprecise directions and unclear forecasts. And while she dwelled in the world of words, she was beginning to see that sometimes, words created nothing but clutter.
The only real way to make something happen, she thought, was to sit face to face with foes, partners, friends. Across a heavy wood table, decisions are made.
In the amorphous air of a phone call or the lofty nowhere of an email, nothing. Flesh to flesh, palm pressed into another, eyes not askance but in direct pressing view. Personal connection. Surmising the surroundings, understanding nuance, learning the details of looking away.
He called at 5:30 to say he was an hour away. “Could the kids be late?” Exasperated, she slipped into flip-flops and drove to get them on the early side. They leaped into her arms and ran to her car, ready to dwell in the comfort of love and home.
The righting moment - there have been many. But the biggest, the most profound, was the ride down a brief escalator in a tall glass-windowed building two years prior, after the lawyer meeting, after she saw the clear view of her new horizon, free of complications and of pinball-ricocheting madness from a mismatch.
She’d known it all her life, that listening to the little voice inside, that thing called instinct, would never steer her in a wrong direction. It was the second-guessing of herself that led every path astray, sometimes into collision. The first thought, the first assessment, the instinctive decision, always right.
She took that into her bedroom at night and into her work and let it inform her every morning when her daughter pleaded to do something unexpected (today it was not wearing a coat to school).
I’ve never been good at endings.
Why do you expect this to end?
No answer. Just a long, soulful glance into eyes in which she saw her own reflection. She nodded. And she nodded again.
June 3, 2009
Why does it take so long to get clear? Years of muddling through the misery of other people’s opinions and judgments until, finally, you have no choice but to trust ourselves and those inner voices that have been screaming into the silence for so long.
An anecdote from Suze Orman’s 9 Steps to Financial Freedom: Parrots in the market square stood on their perches, surrounding their owner. Why don’t they fly away? Because he taught them that their perches were safe and secure and nothing else was. How can you teach them to let go and come back in their own time?
If it’s not money, it’s love, it’s a body beside you in bed at night, it’s the illusion of connection, it’s a belly-filling meal on the table with conversation and clinking glasses. There is no security or safety. It lies within, like the tiger at the gate, like the wooden perch, which is nothing more than a post in open air, exposed to the elements and opinions and tirades and protected by nothing.
Or everything.
Eleven years ago, I hiked the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming, waxing philosophical to the swaying trees and slanting trails about the beauty of Sabbath observance at a friend’s house.
An hour of minutes, my voice trailing the wind. I was as far away from that notion as I could be and it was all I could see - not the trail before me or the dirt path under my feet or the snow-melt lake beside which I ate a picnic lunch of smoked meats and cheese slices and fruit.
Did I see where I was then? And better question - when I returned and slunk into the wrap of Sabbath silence in Oak Park, did I even see that? Or did I count the minutes until I could turn the light switch and clean the dishes and go on a date with someone I imagined would ignite my senses?
I don’t know about you, but I have long chased illusions and I am finally finished with that senseless trail.
Children know in the infinite that truth lies within. They do not see superficial nor do they judge. An old person’s hand shakes and they grasp the bent fingers to feel the softness.
We lose that perfection, that trust somewhere along the way - when fifth-grade bullies make fun of hair or the jeans we wear or when that first boyfriend chooses someone else to kiss. And most of us spend a lifetime searching for the voice that never left. If only we knew.
The tarot cards line my sidewalk and the stone runes are buried in the laundry basket. Acceptance and story, all the same. Truth lies within. It always has. Not in the mall, under the spin of the credit card, and not in a glass of wine drunk too fast. Not in the never-ending therapist sessions we turn to for answers that never appear. You’re better off shaking the magic 8 ball and closing your eyes.
Today the weather is unclear. Gray-hazy, not warm, not cool, not really much of anything. I get my children back at 3:15. The chicken in the crockpot roasting with the juice of a just-squeezed orange, a drizzle of olive oil, carrots and celery chunks and onions. Dinner tonight will be magic. As will the cleanup. As will the tucking-in, the story-reading, the silence that is never silent.
And then a new day.
The voice within. The voice without. The reaching hand grasping soft skin as the sailboat untethers and heads for the seas.
June 1, 2009
In the gray downfall of a rainy day, she sat before the open window, listening to the drip drip drip of the elements playing with the wind. It was innocuous and prescient, a red beetle in the middle of the gray.
The cut greens from the farmers market, the berries plucked off the bushes, melted on the tongue. The children asleep in the tender light of night, the mother at rest and at ease.
Everything in time, she uttered to the darkness. Nourishment of ambition satisfied, probing the meaning of money and the definition of gain. She wondered if personal wealth were really an illusion, the true mark of success an ability to rest easy in the onset of night.
All this darkness talk and yet it was bright day! What could be the antithesis of seeing? There were so many illusions swirling like tornados and lost souls and long-since-departed loved ones - this world colliding with so many other worlds, a coffee in the mid-day, a runner’s stretch to the finish line, maker’s mark, a smooth cool breeze at dusk.
So many ways to nourish the self. Was she doing any of them really?
Out the window, a squirrel cracked a nut. The tall weed in the yard was gone, lay spent in the grass under the shade of three very tall trees. The squirrel squired away his desire for more, satisfied with just a little. She understood the metaphor. She understood the rain.
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Filed under: family value — LynneSchreiber @ 10:44 am 
