To the beautiful girl on the bike

"To the beautiful girl on the bike: Please forgive me for being intrusive. I live in Playa Del Rey and often see you riding your bike along the Westchester Parkway. It seems to me that you are suffering in a way that I understand, because I have suffered in much the same way (and still do at times). What I refer to is the struggle with food and exercise, and the deeper and sometimes elusive reasons for this struggle. I am reaching out to you because I know, from experience, that this is a very painful and lonely place to be, and I want you to know that there are people who understand and are empathetic. No doubt, my imposition is awkward and might anger you, which is also understandable. However, I had to take the chance, because each day that I see you, my worry increases. Please consider calling or emailing me. I am not sure I can help, but I can listen and be your friend. Mora Finnerty 310.488.3263 morafinnerty@hotmail.com"

Dream Box

The last time I traveled to the East Coast alone, I returned by way of a connection in Denver. At the airport, I wandered around a quaint gift shop that featured an array of personalized trinkets. My daughter is forever searching, often in vain, to find her name on pens, mugs, and mini license plates. At the gift shop, I saw a rotating rack displaying tiny wooden boxes, each one small enough to fit in a child's palm. To my surprise, there was a whole row of boxes engraved with Ella's name, in cursive, above a detailed, mountainous landscape. Beneath the landscape, in all caps: COLORADO. When I arrived home, I gave Ella her gift. Only mildly excited (maybe she was hoping for a mini license plate, or even better, something soft and fuzzy she could cuddle), she dutifully read the label: Dream Box. On the back of the label are these instructions: "Write a wish on a piece of paper and put it inside your box. Every night at bed time, hold your Dream Box and think of your dream. Legend has it, if done faithfully your dream will come true." Ella tore a corner off of a sheet of paper and scribbled secretly in pencil. Then she showed me her wish: Make my mom nicer.

Waiting On Forgiveness

How does Pixar manage to make me cry every single time? I saw the movie Brave today, and twenty minutes in, tears were already streaming down my cheeks. It was the usual, age-old, mother-daughter strife that did me in: The mother is controlling, won't let go, wants to make the child's decisions for her, and the daughter resents her for it. In this flick (spoiler alert), the mother roars like a bear, the child calls her a beast, and soon, the mother literally turns into a bear. I have to admit, I relate to that transformation more than I'd like to confess. Never in my carefully calculated plans for motherhood did I think I would be the beast in my child's life, especially after growing up in a house rife with anger. But, as it turns out, I carry a legacy of rage within me that runs so deep, I have only recently begun to accept and name it. In short, I was a better parent before I became one. (Hopefully I am not the only mother who felt leveled by the subversive message of this film, because one of my biggest fears is suffering alone; at least, as another saying goes, there is comfort in numbers.) When we see something we dislike about ourselves, acceptance is usually the first step towards positive change. Through acceptance, I have begun to change my rage legacy, but some days it is hard. Some days, that giant, wild bear tries to claw her way through to the surface. I have made apologies to my daughter, and even to myself--apologies too numerous to count--because taking responsibility is another crucial step in the healing process. At the end of Brave, when the daughter is apologizing and wishing for her mother to turn back into a human, and their fate appears very bleak indeed, I realized a universal truth: Owning one's mistakes and saying sorry is painful, but waiting on forgiveness is downright excruciating. Is anyone waiting on your forgiveness?

Tea for Two

Have you seen her? On the Westchester Parkway? At first, I thought she was a ghost from my past, a reminder, but I have seen her too many times to know: She is real. She is real, and yet, each time I see her, she is gradually shrinking from this world. Months pass and I watch her disappear. And police cars drive by her, and I wonder, this is an emergency, why isn’t anyone stopping? Why don’t they turn on their sirens, throw down their flares, and intervene? She is as thin as a character from a Tim Burton cartoon. She pedals in the hardest gear, standing up, as rigid as a robot, as calculated as a wind-up toy. She wears short shorts and a thick scarf and oversized sunglasses and tiny Band-Aids on her forehead. I know she must be somebody’s angel--we are all angels to at least one person. She is an angel, I think, and I must try to save her. Maybe I can flag her down, ask her to lunch. No, not lunch. Am I stupid? Tea. Tea is enough; tea is safe. I am well aware: My intervention might anger her. She might tell me to fuck off. I am okay with fucking off. But I am not okay with not trying to help. So I made a plan the other day, to stop her the next time I see her, offer her my number, tell her, simply, that I want to be her friend, that I need her to be my friend, that I know she is in pain because I have been there before. I wish I could Google her instead, find her on Facebook, somehow get a hold of her name, her email address. But this confrontation must be face to face. The day I made the plan, when I felt brave enough, she didn’t show up. But today, when I saw her, I chickened out. While she pedaled past me this afternoon, with airplanes taking off from LAX to the south, I wondered, what, exactly, is she trying to escape? Could she know that I want to escape, too?

Kindness Learned

As we usher in future generations, many of us in our own households, it is important to consider what legacies we will—either wittingly or unwittingly—pass along to our human successors. For some time, I have wondered specifically about kindness, with one question in mind: Is kindness inborn, or is it learned? To study this topic, I first looked at my own personality. I tend to become irritable quite easily, which irritates me; imagine living with such a double-edged sword (that beats a chip) on your shoulder. For two decades, I have wondered why. Why am I irritable? Why am I bothered by seemingly meaningless details? Whether I like to admit it or not, I make snap judgments in my mind on a regular basis about the way other people live their lives. This is an uncomfortable habit, for sure. I have been troubled by this, trying to figure out why I am “this way,” and resenting myself for it, which only causes additional pain. Recently, I decided to examine my upbringing, not in an effort to blame anyone, but to find some measure of understanding. I reflected on the environment I grew up in, and recalled, with a bit too much clarity, how my parents, on a regular basis, gossiped about and ridiculed others for their appearances, their possessions, and their hobbies. We lived in an upper middle class white-collar neighborhood, and my family struggled to fit in, with our blue-collar roots. We were pretenders: We pretended to be rich, and pretended to be able to afford our membership at the local country club. My parents were undoubtedly insecure as telephone company workers amidst a community of doctors and lawyers. Maybe my mother and father put others down to make themselves feel better, for what they themselves lacked. What’s even worse is that they held grudges against other people and grudges against each other. Regardless of the reasons, their flagrant negativity left an impression on me—an impression that I have been trying to pound out and buff away for the last twenty years. I have been working to reprogram myself, to weed out the negativity and grow positivity in its place. Kindness, I have come to believe, is modeled and mirrored. Kindness, at its base, is a choice, but a choice made best by practice. So I ask you: How did your parents communicate, and how did their comments affect you? What was the climate of your childhood? Was it accepting, or critical? Forgiving, or resentful? Humble, or boastful? Grateful, or envious? What are you modeling for your children, or your grandchildren?

Everlasting Dawn

I am a tea junkie: earl grey, orange pekoe, pekoe black; spiced, flavored, infused. Non-caffeinated varieties like chamomile and peppermint lure me in, as well. Tea symbolizes the magic of daybreak: a glistening cup of hot, golden liquid, waiting to be sweetened, sipped, and savored. As much as I enjoy tea, the more substantial morning treats are worth mentioning: A banana—thick, sturdy, on the brink of ripeness—sliced and stirred into a heaping serving of Greek yogurt, decorated with a drizzle of organic amber honey. Two extra large eggs, scrambled easy over a melted slab of butter, served with a hunk of toasted Persian bread; more butter. Oatmeal, steel-cut, boiled on the stove, with chunks of peaches and a spoonful of plump raisins, cooled with half a cup of creamy low-fat milk. Forget about limiting these concoctions to breakfast; I will eagerly nosh them any time of day. In fact, like the Hobbits in Lord of the Rings, I often indulge in what I call “second breakfast.” The morning meal is sacred to me, just as the morning itself. Mornings, by their very nature, evoke memories of innocence, of purity, of possibility. I love to wake up to a freshly washed day, to open my eyes with childish curiosity, to step outside in wonder of what might happen or what I might accomplish. When noontime rolls around, there is a subtle but inevitable sense of loss, knowing that the day is half over, my chances half gone, my energy dwindling. By evening, I am longing for the next new day. This morning, as if by divine intervention, a word crept into my mind: Rededication. All at once, I realized why I have always wanted my mornings to last forever. The morning is a time for rededication. Whatever mistakes we made yesterday, whatever wrongs we caused, when morning arrives, we awaken with a dose of clarity; we can rededicate ourselves to being better. We can do this by remembering our early innocence, and we can rededicate ourselves to our youth at any age. We can rededicate ourselves to our values, to our goals, to our loved ones. We can commit ourselves to a lifetime’s worth of fresh starts, the newness that only dawn knows. We can make choices that help us feel alive the way a rich breakfast renews our energy, the way a sunrise stirs our soul. We can begin again. In the afternoon of my life, I appreciate the early hours more than ever. Perhaps it’s time to engage in a game of childhood make-believe, to imagine the duration of my existence as one long morning, cracked gently open on the edge of a hot pan, running free with everlasting opportunity. What do you do with your mornings?