My 40 days

About a month ago, I started to have mild panic attacks when thinking about anything stressful. I have certain triggers that send my anxiety into overload. Over the years, through therapy, reading spiritual texts,  developing a meditation practice and surrounding myself with wonderful, like minded souls, I've learned to manage my anxiety with the end goal being 1. a healthier me and 2. to stop the cycle of anxiety that runs deep in my family history. 

I was really surprised when one day, when staring at a pile of bills with contempt and frustration, my heart started racing and my throat felt like it was about to close. Very strange, very scary and a little wake up call that something just wasn't right. I ignored it for a few weeks - until it happened again. And then again. After seeking help from my esteemed physician, whom I've seen for 17 years and truly adore, I was advised to take anti-anxiety meds and perhaps a blood pressure medicine for the acute moments of panic. Let me state loud and clear: I have NOTHING against medicine. After my second baby, I had postpartum and was on antidepressants for a while. I have taken Ativan and it works WONDERS (does anyone really enjoy flying?) 

However, this season of my life doesn't need medication. I truly believe with a goal and a plan, I can manage my anxiety on my own, without meds. When I sat and looked at my life I realized the last 18 months have been a mindless free fall. I love the following quote:

music - the ultimate time machine

I'll never forget the first time I realized I would die. The first time I learned my mom and dad would die. I was seven years old sitting in the back seat of our chocolate brown 1976 Plymouth station wagon riding home from my grandparent's house on a hot summer Sunday. My legs stuck to the leather seats as the first notes of that God-awful song played on the radio. The haunting lyrics and strings and aching voice. Talking about how all we are is dust in the wind. On all that's holy I swear I can NOT hear that song without a shiver creeping up my spine, a fear trickling through my veins and a quick jerk of my hand turning off whatever offensive piece of technology the song blares from. Fear at it's finest.

Songs do this to us. They bring us joy, bring tears to our eyes and smiles to our faces. I can name dozens of songs that are linked directly to people, places and moments of my life that sometimes I want to remember and many I'd like to forget.  Music is the ultimate time machine. It is a direct link to any moment in time - Dust in The Wind - death and the station wagon.  Frank Sinatra - my mother dancing in our kitchen on Smith Lane. Rush - first concert, first time I smelled pot. Open Arms - first kiss in my friend's basement. Journey in general - Marijane. Yaz - Kathleen and our 8th grade poms routine. Michael Jackson - Andrea. U2, The Cure, The Call, Joy Division - nights at home listening to Triton College Radio as a teen. Prince - Diane and her awesome teenage bedroom.  That's the Way Love Goes, Marvin Gaye, Counting Crows, The Replacements - my first apartment. Phil Collins - my brother. Asia - my brother. Countless songs remind me of first meeting and dating my hubs - too many to even conjure! Hundreds of songs happily clutter my brain allowing me to relive my life.

Songs are like an outburst of the soul shooting out feelings of love, lust, sadness and redemption. Music elevates us, pumps us up for our run, soothes our hectic days, turns our bad moods into cheerful ones, takes us from happy to somber or just plain gets us in the mood. As I type, Aretha Franklin is crooning Chain of Fools. My shoulders inadvertently move up and down. My son bops in the room and I see a hip shake. Joy in the early evening. I imagine when I hear this song again, years from now, I'll remember typing key strokes and smiling at my handsome boy and his awesome dance moves.

Last Sunday we ate lunch at Potbellies with the kiddos and LA Woman (The Doors) blared overhead. While carrying on our conversation, my hub's head starts bopping infinitesimally to the beat and I know he's thinking of a road trip he took with a childhood friend. I was remembering a college bar, falling for a base player while he strummed the song clumsily with a college cover band. Music takes us back in time and runs us through a plethora of emotion. When we listen to music, we feel alive. It's glorious, yes?

I challenge you - go get in your time machine. Grab a sheet of paper, grab your laptop, grab your phone - write or type 10 songs and their memory counterparts - go back in time and enjoy the ride. Let me know how it goes. Next time you go to turn on the TV, turn on your music instead - whatever floats your boat. Whether it's country, classical, rap or pop or alternative - go for the music. You are what you listen to. Listen well and let the music take you.

embrace the crazy fan girl

As part of my quest for more balance and presence, I am coming out of a closet. My name is Nina and I'm a crazy fan girl disguised as a suburban mom attending parent teacher conferences, cross country meets and little league baseball games.

A sometimes CFG and myself at the Journey concert.

My addiction began like many of the millions of fan girls peeking out behind their venti lattes and premium denim. I was nine when I sang my heart out to 'Hey Deenie," a la Sean Cassidy. I wrote him a letter professing my unwavering love and devotion. At 12, I ripped out my first of many pages from  TigerBeat magazine. A picture of Steve Perry, front man of Journey sporting long hair and his large nose captivated me like no other and he gazed at me from the walls of my tiny bedroom singing to me about open arms...

It continued on and on with Michael Jackson, Prince,  Jordan Catalano (fictional but not to me,) Eddie Vedder and Justin Timberlake. Young girls are fickle, you know. Somewhere along the line, as age crept in and I traded "wisdom for lines around my eyes," I had to snuff out my open musings of the object(s) of my affection.  It didn't suit my blossoming professional image, not to mention my many (ha!) suitors, to drool over images of Eddie Vedder's long hair, flannel shirts and stage thrashing. This was before the days of smart phones and internet - everything was in print and I ran the risk of being discovered at Walgreens buying the latest issue of Rolling Stone, People or Us Weekly for fear of looking like the crazy star struck girl that I was (am.)

and.....she's off!

babygirl age four

I am the mother of a high school student. I am the mother of a high school student. I am the mother of a high school student?  Are you kidding me with this? In my mind, I AM the high school student. How is it possible this day has come? Better question: How is it possible I've accepted all the signs? Let's start with my wrinkles (you know I LOVE to speak of my wrinkles!), the fact that I finally started to color my hair and the best post 40 wake up call: it takes so long to lose weight and even longer to take it off and it takes Herculean discipline to stay fit - but one Oreo? ONE EFFIN Oreo? Right to my thighs. May as well rub those little cookies all over my backside because that's exactly where they land.

All the signs are present as I (kind of) gracefully pass through time, laughing at said signs and living the days go by. But the tangibility of my first born entering High School is sobering. Exciting. Terrifying. I feel like this is the start of something big, massive and lightning quick. Like a canon is ready to be shot and in four short years, my babygirl will be ready to leave me. She will leave me. She will leave me.

As a rational gal, I know I am raising her to do just that. To leave me and successfully live on her own. Making her own mistakes, her own successes independent of her Mama (sorry, I'm watching a lot of Friday Night Lights and I'm stuck with some Texan twang.)  I know this, I pray for it and somedays I long for the solitude of an empty nest. 

It's the beginnings and the endings that throw me. The ending of a life, the beginning of a career, the ending of a friendship. It seems like the doing, the living, with all it's ups and downs and laughs and grumbles goes on moment for moment. These transitions though always give me pause to reflect. 

365...Part II

365 days. All I can think about is my father's death. He died just more than a year ago. And what a year it has been. I'm not missing him any more than I normally do nor I am I feeling overly sentimental. But something has been quite wrong. I've felt tightly wound, desperately running away from an overall feeling of....'yuck.' A feeling so odd, so foreign and disturbing I type and delete the words I long to use to describe it. All I can say is yuck. Discomfort. Death is yucky. It's final. It's disturbing. My father appeared uncomfortable during his last days. His body labored. It was horrible to witness. That's where my mind keeps leading me...

A year ago, after my Dad passed away, I was able to grieve and miss him and smile for him and cry for him. I wrote a eulogy that poured from my heart to the paper. I shared my love, my funny and my memories of my father with the wonderful, generous and loving friends and family that came to his funeral. I was in a spiritual place that kept me calm, grateful and present. This allowed me a quiet, cleansing, authentic grieving period. I felt the loss deeply, it sluiced through me and I felt closer to my dad during those first months after his death than I had previously during  his illness when he was alive.  I felt as if I could feel him with me, see him clearly smiling and laughing and driving me crazy with his obnoxious antics. I breathed him in.

365 days later. I have grown distant from authenticity, from presence, from calm. I lost my balance. My life rolled out of control collecting stress after stress. My husband's business had set backs, which caused our family some setbacks. My mother moved in with us and not long after her move in, she was diagnosed with lung cancer. My zen like spirituality wasn't strong enough to hold up to the new shit storm brewing around me. As I wrote this post, a few edits from publishing it, I stumbled upon this quote:

365

365 days ago, my dear father passed away. I am posting the eulogy I wrote and read to share a little bit of my dad with you all. He was my biggest fan. I know this would make him smile. He loved being the center of attention after all.  Thanks for reading. It's a long read, so get comfy, and thanks as always, for reading...

Say not in grief 'he is no more', but live in thankfulness that he was.

~  Hebrew proverb

It doesn’t matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was. 

I remember my father, Leo Kushner, as a story teller. His story began on July 13th, 1927 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He loved living in Argentina, he loved saying “Argentina,” often talking of the busy city and the quiet countryside where he lived with my grandparents and my uncle. He loved to talk in detail about the colors of tucan birds and butterflies, while drifting into stories about his mother smacking him with a broom when got out of line. Which was often. 

My dad could tell a story like no one else. Whether he narrated in a loud booming voice or his quiet whisper, his hand gestures, animated facial expressions and uniquely hilarious observations made every story compelling. Sometimes he would break into song mid-story, just to make sure you were listening. I wish I could do it now, but he always told me I couldn’t carry a tune and would say, ‘Nina, a singer, you’ll never be.” He was right.

At 14, He moved with his family to Chicago. Can you imagine not only moving at 14, leaving your friends, your family, your cousins, your school, but moving to another country where you didn’t know the language, the customs, the dress? While my father understood some yiddish, he did not speak it, as in Argentina, his family spoke Spanish. So even though they moved to a Jewish neighborhood on the West side of Chicago, my father was quite nervous at first. He told me during the first week he was here, his mother sent him to store. He was so nervous he might get lost on the way home, like the mover and shaker he was, he decided to memorize the street lights since he couldn’t read the English street signs. So he saw yellow light, green light, yellow light, red, and on and on. Simple, right? They didn’t have street lights in Argentina, so he assumed they would stay the same. He goes to the store, gets what his mother told him, and he sets out for home thinking yellow, green, yellow red.... To his horror, on the way back, what he’d memorized was ALL wrong, and he wandered for hours trying to find his way home. When he finally and God only knows how he made it back home, his mother smacked him with a broom. Now  I didn’t do that story half the justice it should have gotten, because when he told it, he filled it with fake tears, and a frightened face and a terrified grimace when talking about his angry mom.