Chicago Cabaret Professionals/Aisha Believix

Monday again! Darker these days but still getting up at six and gloomy today - it's been so rainy here in Chicago. Highlights of the weekend were Chicago Cabaret Professionals annual gala and seeing all the great singers including my own teacher Spider Saloff who received an award as well as the amazing Marilyn May who was also feted. She is amazing, in her early '80's, and there she was up on stage strutting her stuff complete with chorus line kicking! Her voice is rich and nuanced and her high big notes are still there in full force! And her sense of timing? - Impeccable. What an inspiration! These days I'm greatly inspired by a bunch of older gals from Adrienne, my new friend I've been hanging out with. She is up there in age but fun and hip and really active. Friend Linda who I met on the dog beach is also older than me but her schedule makes me look like a slacker. Used to be leery of older people - as if their agedness would rub off on me and cause me to prematurely age! These days they're not the enemy - the ones who are living life fully like Marilyn May are my roadmap. Getting old doesn't have to be ugly and grim!!

Other highlights were breakfast with Lucas (Liza) - she and I have carved out Sunday mornings as our only face time now that she spends four days out of the week in Urbana (where Henry's new school is). What I continue to love about Liza is that she always does the right thing without undue hand wringing. At the end of the summer, the noose started to tighten and she was all but boxed in, evaluating her options for Henry. She knew he couldn't return to the same anemic program he was in. With the implants he can hear now but none of it makes any sense to him, having been profoundly deaf since he was six months. It will take a skilled group of professionals years to get him caught up. At the old school, the plan was for him to be taught by two teachers, one with a heavy Indian accent and the other profoundly deaf herself with a deaf person's garbled voice.  Liza surveyed the landscape, quickly researched all the other programs, found one she liked and applied, but Henry was turned down because he is so far behind other kids who were implanted at a much earlier age. She considered home schooling him and getting quickly up to speed on deaf pedagogy, she looked for a private tutor and more. None of the options were viable. That's when the rest of us would have resigned ourselves to the lesser evil of the choices. Not Liza - she widened her net and found the program in Urbana, did a big gulp and a leap of faith (somehow the universe would provide the funding) and decided to do the heroic thing which is move she and Henry down there four days a week for the next 2-3 years.

Sunday, she told me, laughing, about the room she's staying in, in a Jewish orthodox center. It is occupied on the weekends and is full of someone else's stuff. Her and Henry's belongings are stowed in a corner of the room and they sleep together on someone else's bed. She has no use of the kitchen so each day she takes him to the grocery store and buys something frozen and heats it up in the microwave in the store's little dining area and, while Henry is in school, she searches for a job or reads in the grocery store.

Other weekend highlight was making Mei's halloween costume yesterday. Anna was in tears over the whole ordeal but we made short work of it. She is a fairy and not just any fairy - something about Aisha who is a Believix - or something like that - TV show. Halloween crisis averted.

Today, I'm thinking a lot about grace - deep realizations over the weekend. I have to be a little coy in talking about the inspiration for my revelations because I don't want to hurt someone's feelings, so I'll speak in generalities. I have a friend who is deeply unhappy but who is amazing in a lot of ways and has so much to offer. He is caring, sensitive, deep and very talented. There is another side of him that, to my eye, doesn't serve him well. He flits from woman to woman seemingly insatiable, not finding what his heart tells him must be out there. I mention him because I'm grateful for the lesson observing him has brought me.

What I would tell him, if I knew him better and could be truly candid, is that he's leading an inauthentic life. His actions and behaviors are not in line with what his heart desires. What's worse is that, if his soulmate found him in his present state, she would be repelled by what she saw - she would run from him. His dance card is so fully of unfulfilling distracting relationships there would be no room for the real deal if she were to make an appearance in his life. Somewhere in his gut he knows this - knows he is running from intimacy. Thinking he might be terrified of the thought of giving his heart to someone worthy. And that's where the inauthenticity comes in - when your actions and behaviors don't align to what you really need. You make do, you justify and rationalize but inside you there are clashing Titans battling it out. Forces of good and evil, lightness and dark, two discordant songs playing in your head.  Crazy making and the stuff of suffering.

The lesson for me here? It's percolating. I look at him critically (it's so easy to see faults in other people!) and wish for him grace and patience. I want to tell him to stop being a player, to stop using people, to stop measuring his worth from the notches on his belt, to just stop it all and focus on other things in his life. Clear an attractive space for something new to grow. Till his garden, plant some seeds and then just WAIT. Pot calling the kettle black, right? Thinking I'm guilty as charged. Sarah, the femme fatale, the taker of lovers, the coquette. My behavior does not support my dream of finding someone really nice and relaxing into a trusting, rewarding relationship with him. All the therapy, the writing, even the singing share the same desire for experiencing intimacy and being authentic which is one of the scariest things we do. I understand why so many of us distract ourselves from it.

Challenge today could be asking yourself about the quality of your relationships. Are you moving towards or away from intimacy with the people in your life?  Are you running in place, distracting yourself from the fact that you're absolutely terrified for people to know you as you really are? Are you afraid that, once you lower your defenses, they will leave you?

Peace,
Sarah