Mara and Toni Observe Parents and Their Kids at Work Together

From Mara:

We’re having an EV charger installed at our house. My daughter has a Volt and we are having a special charger installed that allows her car to charge quickly.

As usual when I need to have something installed at our house, I go onto the web and find places to call for estimates. I found a place where the installation price seemed reasonable and they seemed knowledgeable, so they’re now installing the unit. It requires some piping to extend the electrical connection from our electrical box that is located on the side of our house to where the charging unit will be located near or driveway.

The electricians are a father and son. And if you look at them, they look like father and son—the son a younger version of the father. They're both very friendly. The father is clearly the owner of the business, but the son has been working with him a long time and probably will take over ownership when the father no longer wants to work. 

And as I sit here and listen to the pounding and noises of pipes being attached to the side of our house, I can hear them talking back and forth to each other. They’re not speaking English (maybe Russian?) but the tone struck me as familiar. They sound exactly like my daughter and I when we are trying to get stuff done—when there’s a problem to be solved and we both have input to give about how to solve it. They're not talking in a relaxed tone. There are sharp quips and static responses, but it’s not aggressive. It’s familiar. It’s comfortable. It’s the conversation of two people who know each other so well they don’t have to be polite and they don’t have to use complete sentences.

And although I have no idea what they’re saying, I can imagine it in my head, “Hand me that thing. Don’t do it that way. Stop pulling. Can you hold this?” And it makes me smile. I like the idea of kids working with their parents. I don’t know that my daughter and I could ever do it, but I love that there are people out there who can. I love that this father worked hard to create a business where he can work with his son. I love that the son appears to enjoy working with his father. It makes me happy that I found them.

From Toni:

I love Mara’s piece because I’ve had the same experience with a man who does work for us when we need it. His name is José. He’s a U.S. citizen, originally from Mexico. His English is pretty good although there are a lot of idioms he doesn’t understand (I always ask if he knows what I mean when I use one).

Whenever I hire him to do something (build a hand rail for our steps, rebuild a gate on the side of the house), he brings his sons with him—one is a pre-teen, two are teenagers. As they work together under José's guidance, they speak to each other in Spanish (even though his sons’ English is flawless). I’ve never seen José speak sharply to his sons. His tone is always kind and loving. 

What I love about these interactions is the same thing that Mara wrote about. But there’s something else I appreciate. Here is a family who came to this country to fulfill the American dream, and they’re working so hard. José has a full-time job during the week for a cement company, but he works these additional jobs on the weekends because the family needs the extra income. I don’t know when he takes time off. 

I also think about his sons. While most kids I know are hanging out with friends on the weekends or practicing sports or doing other fun things, José's kids are working. They’re handing him tools. They’re sawing wood as he carefully shows them how to do it correctly. And they never complain. Seeing the family working hard together to fulfill the American dream moves me deeply.

Change Is The Only Constant

My mom refers to it as impermanence, but I call it change. And both words are are accurate. Nothing is permanent—everything changes. Sometimes the changes are small and sometimes they are big.

Last week my daughter got her driver's license. For the past 8 months, there have been almost daily conversations about driving: learning to drive; thinking of what it will be like when she can drive on her own. And now it's happened. 

And for the most part I am relieved. The burden of driving her all over a city the size of Los Angeles was starting to wear me down. I was spending 3 or 4 hours a day in the car just getting her to and from school, dance, auditions, friends' houses, the store, restaurants...on and on. And it was causing us to fight. She felt stifled by the limits I imposed as to when or where I was willing to drive her places.

Suddenly this morning, I woke up and watched her get in her car and drive away. As I watched, there was almost a painful physical sensation, as if there had been another invisible umbilical cord that had held us together all these years and it was suddenly cut. But unlike in the hospital, when the nurse cut her umbilical cord because she no longer needed it to survive, this time she cut it...because she no longer needs it to survive.

She's growing up. She doesn't need to me to constantly watch over her. She doesn't need me to make sure she knows the proper directions and knows exactly where she's going. 

It's taken me almost 40 years to realize I don't like change. Change is scary for me. When I was younger, I didn't think about it. Change would happen and I would simply adjust. But as I've gotten older, I find myself fighting things that are unfamiliar. It's hard to learn new routines, and it's hard to make adjustments to habits that make my days familiar.

And now, if I find myself confronted with impending change, I immediately find myself worrying. I assume that changes will be for the worse, and I have to remind myself that all of the good things in my life were brought about by change. That change isn't always bad. Sometimes change is pleasant. At the end of the day, we just don't know. Sometimes things I thought were good changes, ended up being negative experiences, and sometimes things that were changes I hadn't wanted ended up being blessings in disguise. 

My mom refers to her state of sickness as her "baseline." I've sort of adopted the idea of a baseline as the place where I am able to balance the good and the bad, the happiness and the sadness. Sometimes there are days where I am thrown off my baseline because I am feeling particularly sad. And there are other days where I am feeling excited and happy. 

When I find myself feeling out of sorts, if I take a minute to re-center myself and think about what I'm doing, I can usually find my baseline again. I can find that place within me where I can see that most changes, whether they feel good or feel bad, are not actually movement higher or lower, up or down, but more parallel. I can see that most change doesn't mean things get "better" or "worse." They just shift around.

So, as I sit here with a slightly heavy heart, I am reminding myself that my sadness about my daughter being able to drive, being able to have independence, is joyful for her, which brings joy to me. And the changes that feel painful to me because she is more independent are necessary for her on her road to becoming an adult.

I can't always stop myself from wishing I could stop change from happening. But I know I can't stop it. Nothing can stay the same. Nothing should stay the same. 


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Here's my interview with my mom on this topic:

You often write about impermanence. Would you say this is a concept that became more important to you after you became ill?

I don't know whether it became more important, but it certainly became more evident. I realized that my life and the world was all about change, change, change—which is the name of the chapter on impermanence in one of my books. Impermanence is a universal law. It doesn't just come from Buddhism. It's recognized by all religions and by science too. 

But change can be wrenching. Your essay talks about that. It certainly was wrenching for me when I got sick and had to give up a profession I thought I'd be in for another 20 years. Perhaps because it's a universal experience, the Buddha focused on change a lot—how we'll all grow old, and we'll all experience illness, and we'll all be separated from those we love. 

Many people think about separation as referring to death, but it can apply to any separation. For me, it applied when you and Jamal [Mara's brother] moved out of the house. That separation was really painful. You talked about Malia now driving on her own, and I thought that, as much as it was a burden for you to have to drive her everywhere, it did put you next to each other in the car. And that physical closeness nourishes a relationship. So suddenly you're not in the car with her, so I see that as a kind of separation that may not be easy for you—and maybe not for her either. 

When I write about impermanence, I always focus on what I refer to as its corollaries: uncertainly and unpredictability. Because if change is ever present, then we can't be sure what's going to happen next. Uncertainty and unpredictability are uncomfortable, that's for sure. No wonder we don't like change. Imagine if we could control what's going to happen next, whether it be in our personal lives or globally—it would be easy to be content. But that's not the way life is. So one of the things that helps me is to work on making peace with impermanence and the fact that we control so little. 


Are there specific Buddhist practices you can share that help with coping with change?

My books are full of practices. I write about impermanence and unpredictability a lot. So I'm going to share something I've never shared before. This is something called the five remembrances. It comes from the Buddha's list of what we're all going to experience in life at some point, like it or not. A lot of Buddhists recite these remembrances daily. I offer it here, knowing that it might not suit everyone. If it isn't right for you, that's fine. 

So here are the five remembrances:

• I am of the nature to grow old. 
• I am of the nature to have ill health.
• I am of the nature to die. 
• All that I cherish and everyone I love will change. I cannot escape being separated from them. 
• My actions are my only belongings.

Whew. Talk about tough love! But don't take the Buddha's word for it. If you think about it, all of these are true. The first four are about change. They describe four experiences that are a natural part of the life cycle. This is why it helps to make peace with them. 

I'm sharing them because I've been finding them helpful. Here's how I use them. I don't automatically recite them every day, but if something related to one of them pops into my mind (for example, a concern about growing old or fear about death), I immediately stop whatever I'm doing, and I recite the five remembrances silently to myself. 

This is definitely having a positive affect on me. At first, reciting them felt strange to me—even shocking at times—but gradually, it's helped me to regard growing old, being ill, dying, and being separated from those I love as a normal part of the life cycle and that's taking the fear of them away. That's why I'm sharing it—in case others find it helpful.

Sometimes after people experience a big change in their lives, they feel regret. Do you have any advice for people who find themselves stuck with regretful thoughts?

There are two kinds of regret. First, we can regret the paths we didn't follow, the dreams we didn't pursue. With those, I suggest saying to yourself something like: "Everyone experiences this kind of regret. Everyone has dreams and plans they wish had work out. I may be disappointed but I'm going to move on with the life I have right now, today."

Second, there's regret that arises when we do something that might have hurt someone or even made ourselves feel bad. That kind of regret feels really bad. In my view, when something feels really bad—like guilt, for example—it rarely serves a useful purpose. Here, though I'd say that this kind of regret does serve one useful purpose: you may be able to learn from it. 

Here's how I suggest handling it. First, don't blame yourself—forgive yourself for what you did. If you don't forgive yourself, it's hard to move forward. Next, see if you can learn from whatever you're regretting by investigating it—thinking about it. Was it something you said? Or some unkind thought? When I talk about action I'm including thoughts, speech, and actual behavior. So, it could just be a thought—for example, rushing to judgment about someone. I used to do that a lot. 

Usually this kind of regret arises after you've acted out of greed—you want something and you don't care who you hurt to get it—or out of anger or ill-will towards someone. So look for those things. Were you being greedy or harboring ill-will for someone else? 

Once you can identify what you did that's making you feel regret, resolve not to do it again. (Remember that fifth remembrance: your actions are your only belongings.) And if you find yourself doing it again, investigate what happened, and renew your resolve.

Bottom line: everyone has regrets. But if you get stuck on them, you're living in the past. For me, life is too short to do that. So I would say, forgive yourself—why not? You've said something unskillful, or you snapped at someone, or you didn't spend enough time with someone—just forgive yourself. Then resolve not to engage in that behavior again.

Having done that, forget about it. Move on. You can't control the thoughts that pop into your mind. So, if you feel regret—you feel regret. Don't make it worse by dwelling on it and assigning blame. Acknowledge it and move on.  One thing I feel certain of: living in the past is the road to bitterness and anger, not the road to happiness.

Penny For Your Thoughts

I found a penny today while I was jogging. I was breathless and tired, but I stopped and picked it up and clutched it in my hand for the rest of my workout. Holding small items like that in my hands while I’m exercising is not something I particularly enjoy. This is because my hands get sweaty and it’s hard for me to not drop things like my phone. And I don’t like stopping when I’m jogging because when I stop my momentum, it’s very hard for me to get started again. But I stop for pennies. 

I haven’t always picked up “lucky pennies.” There have been years when I just ignored them. But I have a friend who believes that money she finds are gifts from her mother in heaven. She often posts on social media about how she knows her mom was sending her love that day because she found a penny. So for a long time this idea about pennies was always floating in the back of my mind. I would see them in the street and think of my friend, but I rarely picked them up.

Last year I went through a very tough time. I take medication for both my depression and anxiety, and all the medications needed to be adjusted. Combine that with trying to raise a teenage daughter without all of us losing our minds, and it made for an emotionally unbalanced time. During my darkest moments, I started noticing money on the streets. A dime. A nickel. A penny. Two pennies. I wasn’t convinced that it meant anything, but at some point I realized I didn’t need to be convinced. I just wanted to be open to the possibility that maybe the universe was trying to send me love, hope...anything. 

So I started picking them up. 

One day I texted my friend a picture of a bright shiny new penny I found and told her I was thinking of her. She replied, “Put it in your bra over your left boob.” I replied, “That’s a very strange suggestion” and she wrote back, saying, “It’s the closest to your heart and that’s the closest to heaven.”

I’m still not doing that because my brain can’t reconcile the idea of jogging with pennies in my bra. But I do clutch them in my hands for the duration of my runs. It might be for a block; it might be for several miles. But I do it. And having the pennies in my hands reminds me to be grateful. It reminds me to be present. It reminds me that there might be something bigger out there in the universe. 

About a month ago, I was on a long walk. I was debating about whether or not I felt like it was the right time to start looking for a job. My daughter is older and much more independent, so my main role as her caretaker and driver is no longer taking up as much of my time. But I wasn’t sure I was mentally ready to get a job. I’d been having such a rough time. And, after 16 years of not working in traditional settings, I was feeling insecure about whether or not I could even do a job, let alone figure out how to get someone to hire me. I was feeling confused and frustrated. 

At some point during that walk, while I was giving myself a little pep talk about not letting my insecurities and anxiety stop me from trying, I realized that I might try and not succeed, but that not trying at all would be worse. And at that very moment I saw a dollar bill on the sidewalk right in front of me. It was folded up into a little square and laying in front of me as if someone had put it there for me to find. Again, I’m not particularly superstitious, but I truly felt in that moment that it was a message encouraging me to follow the positive thoughts I was having. Perhaps the universe was telling me that this was the path I needed to follow. 

Within a month I found a job. 

Today the penny I found was in a little puddle of water from the recent rain. It was old and corroded, its surface barely recognizable. But I instantly felt love with that old penny. No matter what it had endured, it had survived to provide me a little hope this morning. 

Thank you penny. 

"Sick Upon Sick": Handling Sickness When You're Already Chronically Ill

Early on in our lives, we learn that being sick is no fun. When we're kids, being sick feels bad and it means we don't get to play or go to a birthday party. When we get a bit older, being sick becomes even more burdensome because it means we can't get our homework done or we have to miss work. But for me, it wasn't until I became a parent that being sick took on even greater significance.

As the mother of an infant, being sick meant that I wasn't sure I would be able to take care of my daughter. And that terrified me. I was already sleep deprived and feeling lost as to how I was supposed take care of a little human life. The addition of a fever or an infection made me realize that my own health felt like a secondary concern compared to what my other responsibilities were. I couldn't not feed my daughter just because I had a fever. She still needed me to change her diaper or put on her jacket.

And during periods of severe depression, the worry about how my own mental illness was affecting my daughter compounded the confusion, guilt, and anxiety I had always felt. 

For my mother, getting an additional illness on top of her chronic illness is hard to cope with. She calls it, "sick upon sick." I often wondered, how a person who already feels sick all the time feels when they are more sick. 

For people who are generally healthy, getting something like a cold can be an annoyance. But if you are already so sick that you can't leave your house, how does the effect of a cold or a fever impact you? 

Here are some questions I asked my mom about this.


Because of how limited you already are, do you worry about your current illness getting worse, or getting a new illness, or becoming injured?

It's not that I sit around and worry every day that something else will happen. But if you ask me and I think about it, I have to say that I do worry. Not so much about my original illness getting worse because it's been almost 16 years and so I feel as if it's settled into what it's going to be. But I do worry about the last two things you mentioned. 

And I did in fact get a serious additional illness, on top of the original one—breast cancer. I'd been chronically ill for 13 years when I was diagnosed and it's become an ongoing additional health issue for me. The medications I've been given to prevent a re-occurrence have side effects that I have a lot of trouble with, and we think it may be because of my preexisting illness. In fact, one of the side-effects is that the medication exacerbates the symptoms of that illness. So yeah, it's been hard.

I also worry that something will happen and I'll have to be hospitalized. Part of my concern about that comes from reading other people's experiences about how doctors and other hospital staff seem not to understand that a person can be very sick but look fine. So I have a plan that if I'm ever hospitalized, I'll have the doctors get in touch with my primary care doctor so that he can explain my illness and how it might impact or be impacted by various treatments. Actually, this is what my primary doctor told me to do since many people in the medical profession don't understand Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (now called Myalgic Encephalomyelitis or ME/CFS).

When I got breast cancer, the doctors and medical staff were fantastic except for one thing. Only one of them acted as if my chronic illness was relevant. It was the anesthesiologist, and he asked me a bunch of questions about it but only because he happened to know someone who has ME/CFS.

At some point you broke your ankle. How did you handle that?

Ah, yes, that was my experience with an injury being a kind of "sick upon sick." I write about it in my first book, How to Be Sick. My husband was out of town, so I was on my own. If I hadn't already been sick, I would have gone to the doctor right away. Instead, after I tripped down the step and knew something was terribly wrong with my ankle, I crawled to my bed, pulled my laptop over, and looked on the internet. It said that if I couldn't walk on it the next day it was probably broken. So I waited and spent the day crawling everywhere I needed to go.

When I couldn't walk on it the next morning, I called a friend. He took me to my doctor who had me get an x-ray and then put a cast on it. The healing was a lengthy process. My doctor arranged for a physical therapist to come to the house for several weeks. He also wanted me to see an orthopedist so I had to do that. He ordered his own set of x-rays and then put on a different kind of cast. 

The whole experience was way outside the zone of what I'm comfortably able to do, given my chronic illness. So although it was only a broken ankle, it exacerbated the ME/CFS for weeks. So yeah, that was an injury that made my chronic illness worse because it forced me to be more active than I'm able to be. 

What's the worst thing about being "sick upon sick"?

When I think of "sick upon sick," I tend to think about a cold or the flu, not something like breast cancer. I'll answer your question based on those first two—what I call acute illnesses. The worst thing about getting an acute illness is the effect it has on my sleep. The single most important thing that determines how I'm going to feel on any given day is how well I slept the night before. I can sleep well and still feel lousy, but if I sleep poorly, I always have a rough day ahead of me. When I'm sick upon sick, like most people, I don't sleep well. For someone who's otherwise healthy, it's no big deal. But for me, it makes my ongoing illness worse.

A close second to sleep is the emotional impact. It's hard enough feeling sick all the time, so having an acute illness is like a second blow. I have to remind myself to use the practices I teach other people—that everything is impermanent and will pass, like the a rain storm; that I still have blessings to count; that life always has it's ups and downs and this is simply one of those downs. Those kind of things.

Oh, there's one other thing and that's that often the medications I'm given for something acute can exacerbate the ME/CFS. That's tough. For example, I suffer from chronic bladder infections. When they come on, it's terribly painful until the antibiotics start to work. I do have a prescribed pain medication I can take, but it makes my chronic illness much worse for some reason. So there's always this dilemma that medications that help with an acute illness may make my chronic illness worse.

What advice would you give people who have become "sick upon sick"? 

I would advise them to remember that healthy people come down with colds and the flu too. It's not reasonable to expect that because you already have a chronic illness, you won't get something on top of it. So, don't think of yourself as having been singled out for bad treatment in life. Illness—and injuries too—are a natural part of the human life cycle. So, recognize that and don't blame yourself for what's happened.

I'd also say that if you get an acute illness, pamper yourself. The law of impermanence will be your friend here, because the acute illness will go away. In the meantime be as nice to yourself as you can.

Have you ever worried that an acute illness will turn into a chronic one? 

I have but, you know, some people who are healthy have told me that they worry about that too. When an acute illness makes my chronic illness worse, I do sometimes worry that I won't get back to what I call my baseline; but I always have. Even though that baseline isn't very high, it's still my baseline. It's what I've come to know and accept.

Is there anything positive you can think of about being "sick upon sick"?

It's hard to think of positive things. There is this crazy positive thing that some doctors have mentioned. We think my chronic illness is caused by an immune system dysfunction of some kind—that my immune system is upregulated, meaning that it's overactive. And so, there's always this hope that some kind of traumatic event to my health could reset my immune system—like restarting a computer. Unfortunately, doctors don't know how to do that with the immune system. My doctor and I joke about it sometimes, but we're actually serious. We even shared that both of us were hoping that maybe the radiation I got for the breast cancer would re-set my immune system. It didn't. But I guess this shows that there's a potential positive aspect to everything.

When you've recovered from an acute illness do you ever think, "Wow, I'm not as sick as I could be"? That would be a positive.

I guess that does happen. It certainly happened with the breast cancer. It took me nine months to recover from the six weeks of radiation treatment. It gave me extra fatigue to the point where I was having trouble functioning. So when that extra fatigue cleared up, I did feel relieved not to be as sick as I could be—to be more like my "old sick self" as I sometimes call it.

This doesn't directly relate to your question about an acute illness, but I do hear from people who say that they're glad they became chronically ill because it forced them to live a more relaxed and slow lifestyle. But I hear from just as many people who feel trapped and miserable due to pain and illness. It's nice to know, though, that there are some people who have found positives in it.

I tend to say to myself, "This isn't what I chose and I wish I weren't sick, but I'm going to make the best of it because this is the life I have."

Some of Our Favorite Movies...and Why We Love Them

It's award's season time. Many people probably don't think about all the different awards shows, other than the Oscar's. However, because I live in LA, award's season is a big deal. There's the Golden Globes, SAG Awards, People's Choice Awards, MTV Movie Awards, Kids Choice Awards, Emmy's, Independent Film Awards, and on and on.

So my mom and I thought it would be fun to list out some of our favorite movies. We'd love to hear what your favorites are!


Mara's Favorite Movies:

Hidden Figures—Great movie. Great story. Great acting. Octavia Spencer is one of my favorites. Cannot recommend it highly enough. So inspiring.

Schindler’s List—The acting, direction, and story are exquisite. This movie haunts me. I was absolutely obsessed with Ralph Fiennes’ character even though he gave me nightmares. This is one of the few movies that makes me cry every time I watch it.

Sense and Sensibility—I’m a Jane Austen fan, and an Emma Thompson fan. And a Hugh Grant fan. And a Kate Winslet fan. And an Alan Rickman fan. And Ang Lee makes every frame of this movie look like a painting. It’s stunning. 

Zero Dark Thirty—The acting and the story are riveting. It’s smart and thought provoking.

The Departed—I love the acting in this movie. Vera Farmiga, Leonardo Dicaprio, Matt Damon, Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen, and Mark Wahlberg are all fantastic.

The Godfather—Classic. I’ve seen this movie a hundred times. 

Raiders of the Lost Ark—It doesn’t get better than a young Harrison Ford.

Gosford Park—Not really sure why I’m so drawn to this movie, but I love it. 

A Few Good Men—Aaron Sorkin at his best. My favorite Tom Cruise movie.

Sleepless In Seattle —I am not a huge fan of romantic comedies. I like them, but they rarely stick with me for long. However, Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks are so charming in this film and Nora Ephron's direction make this my top feel-good movie.

Runners up: Sliding Doors [Note from Toni: I love this little-known movie too!], Elizabeth, Love Actually, Star Wars, Pretty Woman, Field of Dreams, Broadcast News, The Bourne Identity, 48 Hours, Zodiac, Bend it Like Beckham, Apollo 13.

Toni’s Favorite movies:

Remains of the Day—Almost all of the Merchant-Ivory movies are favorites of mine, but this one is flawless. [Note from Mara: oh I love this one too!]

Sense and Sensibility—Because of what Mara said. (I wrote my list before I saw Mara’s so it’s nice to see we have several favorites in common. Some of our joint favorites surprised me, including the next one.)

The Departed—My favorite Scorsese film. I agree with Mara that the acting is terrific.

Christopher Guest’s mockumenaries—My favorite is Best in Show, but I watch the others whenever they come around on cable. 

Gosford Park—The predecessor to Downton Abbey. Need I say more? I guess I will because I see it’s on Mara’s list too. Julian Fellowes wrote the screenplay and then went on to create and write every episode of Downton Abbey. 

Gosford Park has it all. It’s a murder mystery; it's a comedy of British manners with a hilarious bungling detective thrown in; and director Robert Altman cast just about every famous British actor he could find. (Judi Dench must have had a prior commitment.) 

One more thing (I could go on and on about this movie). It's final line, spoken by Maggie Smith's "Lady's Maid" has become a kind of "checking in" mantra for me when I'm about to do or say something that I think is justified but may make matters worse for someone. I ask myself, "What purpose would it possibly serve?" Many thanks to Julian Fellowes for writing that line.

The Painted Veil—based on Somerset Maugham’s novel. There have been many movie versions of his books over the years. This one is special because of its setting and its acting. It was filmed in a lush but unforgiving remote area of China and stars Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, and Liev Schreiber. I’ve watched this movie many times. I find it mesmerizing.

Juno—I know this is a silly movie to have on my favorite's list, but J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney are hilarious as Juno's dad and stepmom, and what Juno writes on a scrap of paper and then tapes to Jennifer Garner’s front door gets me every time.

Fargo—One reason: Frances McDormand.

Cast Away—I think this is an underrated film. Tom Hanks does a spectacular job of being centerscreen for the entire movie. Even more, it’s a moving personal story. The final scene still haunts me.

Radio Days—I love Woody Allen movies, even the bad ones (The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Whatever, Hollywood Ending—to name just three). And I love many of them that the critics panned (Scoop, Cassandra’s Dream, To Rome with Love). I picked Radio Days as my favorite because it's rich in character development, and because Allen filmed it with a purposeful nostalgia that captivates me, and because one of the storylines is that of my immigrant parents.

French Kiss—My favorite romantic comedy. It stars Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline. In my opinion, Meg Ryan was the best comic actor in the movies for many years. I also loved her in When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, Prelude to a Kiss, and You’ve Got Mail. Unfortunately, French Kiss was largely overlooked. If you get the opportunity to see it, I hope you will.

This was fun, Mara. Thanks for the idea. I hope to pick up a few new movies to watch from the comments!

From Toni: A Short History of My Life Before Chronic Illness

When big events happen in our lives, it's easy to forget that there was life before we were married, or before we had kids, or before we got into an accident.

When you meet my mother it's hard to believe that she has ever been anything other than the loving, gentle, adult person that she is now. If you met her after she became ill, then it might not occur to you that she was once a high-powered professional, working in a high stress environment as the dean of students at a law school and as a law professor.

But as is the case with everyone, the life experiences we accumulate form who we are. They become the roadmap that guides our future decisions. 

So here's a piece my mom wrote about her early life. She has written extensively about the years when she became ill. But this is the first time she is writing about some of the critical events from her formative years. 

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Thanks for this idea, Mara. It's certainly been odd for me to write about my life before I became ill, but I've enjoyed it a lot.

I’ll start with my father. I always start with him because he was one of the great joys of my life...and one of its great sorrows. When he was an infant, his family fled modern-day Ukraine to escape the pogroms (government organized or condoned anti-semitic riots in which thousands of Jews were killed). 

He grew up in a poor area of Los Angeles. He didn't have money to go to college so he started a business and became very successful. He and his sister, my Aunt Jen, opened one, then two, then three, then four upscale gift shops throughout the Los Angeles area. As a little girl, it didn't seem like anything out of the ordinary to me, but looking back, it was an impressive accomplishment.

Their offices were on the second floor of the store on Hollywood Blvd. This was when the boulevard was still glamorous. As a young child, I’d go to work with my dad when school was out. He’d give me “grown-up” things to do in the store. Then we’d go to our favorite lunch place and always order the same thing: a hamburger and a vanilla milkshake for each of us. Afterward, I’d spend time on my own walking up and down Hollywood Blvd. I wasn’t even 10 years old, but it was completely safe.

My dad was always fun to be with, whether I was going to work with him, or watching him in his little backyard carpentry shop, or just hanging out together. He was soft spoken and gentle. I have not one memory of his being unkind to me.

Then, suddenly, my world fell apart. My dad got leukemia and died within six months. I was 10 years old. I mourn that loss to this day, although I’ve come to terms with it in the sense that I’m able to see our life together as a complete life, even though a short one.

My mother tried to take my dad's place in the gift shop business, but it was too hard. (They were an interesting match: my dad with his high school diploma and my mom with an M.A from Stanford—a rarity for women at that time.) The strain of raising two children on her own, running four stores in different locations across the L.A. area, and having my domineering aunt as a business partner was too much for my mom. 

She told me about the day she decided she had to get out of the business. She was driving home from Hollywood to West L.A. where we lived. She was so tense and exhausted that she suddenly found herself driving on the wrong side of the road. That was it. She told my aunt she was finished, and they sold the business. The result was that we became downwardly mobile instead of continuing the upward climb we'd been on due to my dad's success in business. While our family friends moved to more upscale neighborhoods, we moved to a more modest one.

My junior and high school years were not happy ones. I missed my dad all the time, and I was embarrassed because I was the kid whose parent had died. I felt guilty about that embarrassment because it contained an element of anger at my dad for dying and making me stand out like a sore thumb, as the expression goes. 

That guilt lasted until I read Dick Cavett’s memoir when I was in my late teens. He lost a parent when he was ten, just like I had. It was his mom. He wrote that he felt guilty because he was angry at her for dying and making him feel embarrassed around other kids. Knowing that someone else felt how I did made the guilt and the embarrassment go away, just like that.

When I was in the 10th grade, my mom was swept off her feet by a man named Nathan who was, shall I say, not honorable. He was handsome and charismatic—and she was very lonely. They got married and life became miserable for me and my older brother, although as a senior in high school, he didn't live at home for long. I have dozens of stories I could tell about Nathan, but I’ll only share two. 

The first is that he made a pass at me. I fended him off thank goodness, but it was traumatic. I told my brother in secret but he went straight to my mom about it. She told me that the reason Nathan had tried to seduce me was that I reminded him of her when she was my age. She actually wanted me to feel sympathy for him.

When the story got out, my mom and Nathan were "driven" out of L.A. by relatives (on both her and my dad's side of the family). The two of them moved to England where they lived for the rest of their lives. He died about 10 years before she did. After his death, my mom and I tried to mend our relationship. She visited me in California every other year or so, partly because I was now married and had a baby. 

It took a long time, but eventually I forgave my mother for how she handled the incident with Nathan. I realized that her taking his side reflected how desperately lonely she was…and how desperately in love with him she was. Forgiving her was something I did for myself. I know, because it felt so good.

A second dishonorable thing that Nathan did was to raid a trust that my dad had set up for me and brother. We were to come into a sizeable amount of money when we turned 25, but the trust had a provision that allowed my mom to get at the assets if she needed them to support her children. Well, she didn’t need money to support us, but Nathan talked her into going to the bank trustee and convincing that person that she did. And so, the money that my father so carefully set aside for me and my brother went to Nathan in large part.

When I went to college, I felt reborn. Not only did I get away from Nathan (they hadn't moved to England yet) but I entered a whole new world of learning and friendships. It was at the University of California—Riverside, that I met Tony, my husband. We were dating each other’s roommates and so found ourselves hanging out a lot together while we waited for our respective dates. That friendship slowly blossomed into love. We became a couple the night of Kennedy’s assassination. At the risk of giving you TMI, our friends had gathered, in shock, at someone’s house. All of us were drinking heavily. I got so drunk that I threw up, not in a bowl, but on Tony. We’ve been inseparable ever since.

We moved to Davis so he could go to graduate school (he has a Ph.d. in Sociology). Four years after giving birth to our son, Jamal, we adopted Mara from Korea. My brother was adopted, so it seemed like the natural thing to do after having had the experience of one pregnancy. Life was good in our family, although we had the typical problems: money was tight, Jamal and Mara didn’t always get along when they hit their teens. Still, those were wonderful years in retrospect. I love my children with all my heart.

After Mara had settled into our family, I went to law school and then joined the faculty at U.C. Davis School of Law. When Jamal and Mara went off to college, I agreed to go into administration and became the law school’s dean of students. I stayed on that job for six years. I like to joke that that’s when my hair turned grey.

When I returned to teaching, I loved being back in the classroom and, based on my evaluations, the students loved having me. My children were in good marriages with spouses whom I loved. In short, I'd never been happier, both personally and professionally. Then Tony and I took that trip to Paris where I got sick…and that brings me to 2001 and the chronic illness that I write about so often.

Thank you so much for reading this brief story of my life.

Some last-minute editing on the bed

Our Gratitude List for January. What Are You Grateful for This Month?

Sometimes it's easy to focus on the negative things in our lives. That's why we wanted to take a day each month to remember a few things that we are grateful for. Here are some things we are grateful for this January!

Mara:

—The rain. I am grateful we've had so much rain this month. Yes, I'm not always grateful in the moment—like when I'm getting soaked or my floors are covered in muddy paw prints. But I am thankful that we've gotten some relief from the terrible drought we've been suffering through. (I live in Southern California.) 

—An extra car. We purchased a car for our daughter last month. She's turning 16 in a couple weeks and we decided to get her a car early for two reasons: 1) we had time to shop during the holidays; and 2) with the rebates on electric vehicles, it made sense to get the car before year end. We debated about whether it was worth it to pay an extra month of insurance, but in the end we decided it was. Well, last week I was sitting at a traffic light when a truck turned left and ripped the bumper off my car. Nobody was injured because it was going slow (I wasn't moving at all), but it has taken my car out of commission for a while. So I am extremely grateful that there is a car on hand that I can use while my car is getting fixed. 

—Health Insurance. Ok, I know this is a repeat from last month's list, but with the pending repeal of the ACA, I feel it's important for me to remember how grateful I am that my family does not have to worry about whether or not our insurance will go away. A couple of weeks ago, my daughter thought she had pink eye. She's never had it before so we weren't sure, but because we have insurance it was not a problem for us to go to urgent care and get her medicine. We didn't have to wait to see if it got worse. We didn't have to decide if it was really important. We could just go and get her taken care of. It kept her eyes from become more infected. It made it less likely that anyone around her would get infected. We were able to catch it early enough that she didn't even have to miss school. So I am once again so grateful for health insurance. And I am taking this moment to say that I believe it is the right of all people to have access to medical care.

Toni:

Here are three things I'm grateful for this first month of 2017:

—Hail. Like Mara, I'm grateful that the rain has ended the drought for us for now (I live in Northern California). Last week we were treated to a rare occurrence in our part of California: hail that didn't melt right away when it hit the ground. When it started, we opened the back door and watched (and listened) as it turned the backyard white. My husband took a picture of this unexpected treat:

—Alex, dog walker and trainer. With all the rain, it's been hard to exercise our dog, Scout, and this is a dog whose energy is limitless. Alex takes Scout out three times a week no matter what the weather is like. At times this month, it was pouring rain all day, but Alex always showed up on time. I'm grateful for his reliability and for his willingness to watch Scout whenever she needs to be left alone for longer than I'm comfortable with, such as when I have to go to Sacramento to see the doctor. (Speaking of doctors, I agree with Mara about everyone having the right to medical care. Dozens of countries, many that are much poorer than ours, provide universal health coverage for their citizens. It's tragic that we may lose the gains we've made in this direction under the ACA.)

—My husband's work at Folsom Prison. He's a volunteer chaplain at Folsom. He goes twice a week, sometimes three, and teaches mindfulness meditation to some of the most hardened prisoners to help them with impulse control, pain management, and the depression that can set in when you've been in prison for decades. 

He is changing their lives. Every week he comes home with stories about one of his "guys" having shared how he's benefitting from what he's learned. One week, an inmate shared how he was about to start a fight with someone (which would land him in solitary) but stopped himself with some mindful breathing, which gave him time to realize that what he was about to do would only make things worse for him. Some of the men have even started feeling compassion for each other. The work my husband does there is remarkable and I'm grateful to him for it.

I wonder what February has in store for me.