Feedback

Feedback: more than just static on a mic!

I’m lousy at giving feedback (not so super at receiving feedback either). In my desire to never, under any circumstances, make someone else feel badly, I often avoid saying anything whatsoever (remember that old saw: “If you can’t say anything nice…etc.”?) Even though I know constructive criticism is a thing (a good thing), I infinitely prefer coming up with multiple superlatives to describe whatever I’m looking at/hearing/reading. 

My hubby and some of our kids are in jobs where giving feedback in terms of hiring/firing/performance reviews is an important part of the position. Steve needs, from time to time, to tell an actor that they are missing the mark. Chef Patrick needs to let cooks know that walking out mid-shift is actually unacceptable behavior. Rose and Julie frequently need to advise support staff when they aren’t pulling their weight at work. My feedback-giving family members all seem able to handle it without a lot of torturous soul-searching, quite unlike their wife/mother.

 

So naturally I have just joined an online comedy writing sprint group, where feedback is the main point. Oh, that and speed: the six of us are supposed to share five pitches and one completed draft of a humor piece every week. And offer detailed feedback on everyone else’s pieces. 

The most prolific among us (NOT me) posted a draft of a very funny parody of a Sondheim song she’d tossed off and asked for help finding a title and other feedback. While I have four other significant writing assignments to work on today, including prep for the two classes I’m teaching beginning next week, I spent a good 20 minutes thinking of possible titles for someone else’s piece. As soon as I sit “send” another group member wrote “I don’t know the song.” The writer immediately responded, “That’s what I was afraid of. I won’t continue with the piece.” It was the perfect example of someone identifying a core issue, and someone else wasting her time (I’ll let you guess which one I was).

 

I struggle as well with things like posting reviews of books, restaurants, plumbers and the like. If I’m satisfied, then I see no reason to repeat the same raves thousands of others have shared. If I’m unhappy, I tend to blame myself (how can I expect a real page-turner, excellent service, an unclogged drain, when I would be so inept doing any of those things? Plus they were no doubt just having a bad day!) and not post anything at all. 

 

I just got a message from one of my former students at church, asking if I could be a job reference. I said “Of course!” as I always do, ready to blab about what an amazing neurosurgeon/youth ministry worker/bartender they would make. It dawned on me that perhaps some feedback might be really valuable, and possibly save this young person from launching into the wrong career. 

 

Yes! I’ll do that! Right after I come up with many more titles for that discarded humor piece! 

Whatever this person is reading is FABULOUS!

Checking Expiration Dates

Check the date! Better not risk it!

I'm a constant checker of food and medicine expiration dates. Even though I’ve read that, in many cases, the item may still be good days if not weeks after its “use by,” to me, if it’s one minute past midnight, out it goes!! I’m proud to say that, on my watch at least, no Seyfrieds have gotten food poisoning, nor have they ingested any dud Tylenols. I’m making pork tenderloin for dinner tonight, and even though we have several more days in the safe zone, according to the package label, I’m still just a tad leery. 

Therefore, my dream the other night was a puzzlement: in it, I discovered my passport had expired. Surely that was just as nonsensical as most of my other nocturnal sleepytime adventures! Impossible to imagine I’d let something that vital slip through the cracks, right? Yet something made me go and check the following morning. You (may have) guessed it: it actually HAD expired, in April of 2021!! And we are due to leave for Europe in exactly seven weeks (too soon for a regular passport renewal to be processed and received). 

So it was a hasty and expensive lesson for me, ponying up first the extra $60 to expedite the application, then another $20 to overnight it to the State Dept., then ANOTHER $20 for them to overnight the new passport back to me. And I’m sure I’ll be pacing the next six weeks until it’s safely in my grubby little paws. I don’t want to think about the festive steins of beer and tasty German sausage that $100 might have purchased, so I won’t. But you can bet this sort of slipshod expiration date forgetting will never happen again!!

Pat and Julie in Germany, 2013--they didn't let THEIR passports expire!

I’m writing this on the final day of August, and it’s been a scorcher of a season. I’d love to look at this as summer’s expiration date, with cool and breezy autumn arriving right on time tomorrow morning. But that ain’t how Nature works (and it’s even worse now with the various and sundry climate changes). In fact, we just don’t know when the hot weather will end for good this year, nor can we reliably predict winter’s temps and snowfall. The seasons expire when they darn well want to, it seems! 

 

Appliances and technology also have only approximate dates beyond which they bite the dust (although that date is always, always after the warranty runs out). As we are not a family with the means to just buy an extra refrigerator to have on hand in case, we live with the realization that warm milk and rotten fish may be right around the corner. 

 

If I were Queen of the World (as Lucy in Peanuts would say), I’d have crystal clear expiration dates slapped on everything and everybody. Then it’d just be a matter of checking to see what day my wrinkles will reach critical mass, or when it’ll be no longer safe for me to drive a car. 

 

Guesswork. Such a nuisance!

Tipping the Scales

Work-life balance (photo by Elena Mozhvilo for Unsplash)

This summer I broke a 20 year habit, namely, my church career. You see, even down at the shore, I’d be busily plotting the next program year. There would be many emails back and forth with staff and church members, and numerous phone calls with the pastor. I might have been sitting on a porch in July, but it was December in my head as I was finalizing the Advent Prayer Center stations. I’d spend tons of time bookmarking ideas for games and crafts (because neither of those came naturally to me, at all). I’d read Scripture and commentaries, trying valiantly to stay a step ahead of my adult Bible study class. The goal was to arrive at Rally Day (the traditional kickoff) fully prepared for the seasons to come.

Since my May retirement, I’ve noticed that part of my brain still refuses to acknowledge that I am no longer a spiritual formation director. Why else am I continuing to jot down notes about Bible songs that’d be fun for the kids to sing in church, and how to make a popsicle stick Nativity scene? It isn’t that I have nothing else going on—now that I am a full time freelance writer there are constant publications to pitch, pieces to write, deadlines to meet. But I’m so used to the details of my old job that I need constant reminders that I am not employed there any more, so maybe it’s time to stop watching YouTube video cartoons about The Prodigal Son.

 

The pandemic has spawned quite a few new words and concepts relating to the workplace. There’s my personal least favorite four letter word (“Zoom”). How about “The Great Resignation," as more and more folks left the workforce entirely? A new one for me is “Quiet Quitting.”  QQ is really a misnomer; for the most part people haven’t given up on doing their jobs completely. But the shakeup of our priorities during the past three years has given many pause. Should they really not be taking ANY of their vacation time? Should they really feel guilty leaving work at 6 PM? So, a large number of people have decided to do exactly what they were hired to do, and not a scintilla more. They have chosen to have lives that include more leisure, hobbies, family and friends time, and less overtime. And I think that’s very healthy.

 

Needless to say, I was not a Quiet Quitter (by the time I left, my self-created job description was running several single-spaced pages). But now, for the first time, I can aim for a better work-life balance. I may even (gasp) turn down occasional writing assignments! For starters, though, I can at least stop checking out youth ministry websites and daydreaming about mission trip destinations. It will be someone else’s job to do as they see fit—and I hope, for their sake, they don’t wildly over extend themselves.  

 

How we spend our lives’ precious hours is our choice. Let’s choose wisely.

On a recent Sunset Cruise--ahhhh!!

In the Bardo

 

Steve and Ruth at Sheridan's wedding

I am writing this in Texas, at the Houston airport. It’s currently 4:45 AM. In typical me fashion, I insisted we get here ungodly early. We can’t even get coffee, as the restaurants don’t open for another hour. Here at gate C36, all is calm, all is bright (fluorescent lights). We are in liminal space now—neither with Steve’s family, who had gathered to mourn brother-in-law Rod’s death—nor yet en route home. 

 

I’m glad we are availing ourselves of this in-between place, so that we can begin to process the past few days. Rod and Steve’s sister Ruth were married 55 years, raised four wonderful kids and have 18 grandchildren (nine from one daughter, Leslie) The reminiscences from both family and his many friends painted a very consistent picture: Rod was a big Southern boy through and through, tough at times, but fiercely loyal and loving. We heard about his crazy childhood escapades. We also heard how tenderly Rod cared for Leslie’s family when her baby daughter Rose died. He was a pillar of their Catholic church, and had a great sense of humor. 

 

Rod’s last four years were brutal, with a lung transplant that led to continual infections and complications. Through it all, Ruth (his “buddy”) was by his side, unfailingly positive and upbeat. In the end, it was Rod who decided to stop all treatment; his poor body had had enough. He entered hospice care, and he and his beloved Ruth had time alone to say, as Ruth shared, “everything that needed to be said.” Rod continued joking around, but when he said, “Party’s over. Lights out,” his meaning was quite clear. 

 

During his last few days, Ruth tested positive for COVID, and she was unable to see Rod. The kids, however, rallied around so their dad was never alone. When Ruth finally got the all clear to return to the hospital, she didn’t make it on time. But Ruth was totally at peace, knowing she had been there for and with him, for over half a century. 

 

Buddhist culture describes the time after death as “the bardo,” a place of waiting for what comes next. A wonderful novel I read last year, Lincoln in the Bardo, re-imagines the tragic death of Abe’s little son Willie, and the grief that tears the great president apart. He stays in the cemetery, unable to release the soul of his child. But Willie needs to move on. 

 

I think of the bardo as a place where the dead, as well as those who mourn them, linger a bit. It’s just so hard to let go of this world. But, little by little, story by story, Ruth and her family are releasing Rod. He is free of pain at last, and it’s time to move on, and figure out life without him. 

 

May I, may we, honor our own bardos, when we'll sit in our quiet airport between death and what comes next, waiting, not with dread, but with anticipation and, even, joy. 

Child Prodigy

 

Aiden can write his name in the sand in Chinese! Genius, right?

I don’t remember explaining entire made-up worlds to my mother and father. I was not a fantasy book reader, for one thing, and for another, the internet had not been cooked up yet. My parental units and I shared a (very limited) knowledge base, and Mom and Dad knew about Tweedledum and Tweedledee, that Charlotte was a spider, and that Superman and kryptonite were not a good combo. 

But now! Aiden so very earnestly recites the many whimsical characters in “Prodigy,” his favorite computer game that (ostensibly) Makes Math Fun!!! Sister Mary Alphonsus (Alphonsus Mary? My memory doesn’t serve) had zero interest in Making Math Fun for us, even had Prodigy or its ilk been around in the 1960s. Math, like going to confession, was a trial you just endured, something that would, somehow, at some point, make you a better person. 

As the Nana-of-the-Year Wannabe that I am, I’ve been watching Aiden play, and learned the following: there are dozens of pets with catchy names like Bluefury Magmayhem and Shivertusk, which are monsters until you battle and catch them (maybe?), epic battles and quests. Aiden has told me the names of his pets approximately one million times and, again, memory doesn’t serve. I don’t even understand how math figures into this! But my grandson has been yearning to become a “member,” and finally this week he achieved that high honor. I assumed it came upon reaching a superior level of aptitude, but (SURPRISE) “membership” is a paid opportunity (the game is otherwise free). 

And even if there had been intricate online worlds of wonder for tots to explore, my folks would have been no more intrigued by them than the average parent of that era was (which is to say, not at all). I believe it was my generation that was the first to rewrite the old saw “Children Should Be Seen and Not Heard” to “Children!! Always Seen and Ever Heard!! Be Quiet, Grownups, Little Susan is Speaking!!” As long as we let them adult in peace, Joanie and Tom didn’t know or care what soap operas we were watching (say, boys and girls, can you spell “illegitimate”?) 

By the time my five kiddos entered the picture, we parents were expected to rattle off every single Sesame Street character, and have more than a passing acquaintance with the Goosebumps, Amelia Bedelia and Magic Tree House series. Sadly, this knowledge came at the expense of the various wisdom-nuggets we’d accrued before having children. Seems I cannot recite Robert Browning’s poem “My Last Dutchess” anymore, because that brain-space has been permanently invaded by the entire TV lineup on “TGIF.”

Thanks mostly to Ya-Jhu, the boys are not spoiled rotten, so I feel we can indulge them from time to time. And it is very cute to see Aiden bursting with delight when playing his beloved video game. Will he use these finely honed skills to become an astrophysicist? Doesn’t matter. To me, he (and Peter) will always be Child Prodigies.

Prodigy the Game (yeah, I don't get it either)

40 Years of RSCT--A Celebration

Tomorrow night marks 40 years since Steve and I opened the Rehoboth Summer Children’s Theatre. We have planned a gala celebration at the Nassau Valley Winery here, and invited current and former actors, board members, and friends of the theatre. Delighted to report that over 60 folks will attend, some traveling from as far as NYC and Massachusetts.

We’re especially tickled that four of five Seyfried kids will be here too—the gang certainly deserves recognition, beyond just being our long-suffering offspring. Over the years, Sheridan and Evan played keyboard for our musicals. First Rose, then Julie, baked the yummy chocolate chip cookies we sold before the shows. Julie was also box office manager, and helped with the theatre camps. Sher and Patrick even performed in several shows. All hands (and aching backs) were on deck for our annual, “fun-filled” strike of the set and stage (which had to be carried in pieces up to the attic of the church) after each year’s final performance.  

 

Looking back now, it’s hard to believe we pulled it off at all, juggling five little kids and doing everything else needed to produce a full season of mainstage shows, touring plays, and theatre workshops and camps every summer. But we were too naïve to understand that by rights we should have failed, and so we forged ahead and made it work. (Btw, this “ignorance is bliss” approach is how both RSCT and Family Stages have stayed afloat all these years.)

 

The other day, Steve and I posed in front of All Saints Church Parish Hall, our original venue in Rehoboth, for a photo. While so much has changed in town, the little beach block church (at least from the outside) remains the same. As I stood on the brick front walkway, I was suddenly overwhelmed with memories (good, bad and funny) and the bittersweetness of it all. Our program for tomorrow night will have both this photo, and a pic of us from that first summer in the exact same location. I’d love to tell you that we haven’t changed a bit, but it’s a sin to tell a lie. We look the just like the grandparents and senior citizens that we are. 

 

With Sheridan’s expert help, we’ve put together a video retrospective that we’ll show at tomorrow night’s party. It includes clips from our goofy version of “Aladdin” featuring a really young, super talented pair of actors circa 1995 (now parents of teenagers themselves!!) as well as a cute scene from “Snow White,” with Stevo as the beleaguered dwarf Mr. Lumpy, and yours truly as the airheaded ingenue. We’ll also sing a number from “Goosefeathers.” 

 

We joke that we are doing this anniversary up right because the odds of us still producing RSCT at the half-century mark are slim to none, but it’s true. And it does remind me (yet again) to savor every milestone on the road of life, a life that really has, on balance, been filled with blessings. 

 

Party Time!

Life As a Page-Turner

I’ve been spending beach time this summer reading memoir (I guess I should say “autobiography”, because technically a “memoir” is a book about a certain portion of your life, not the whole thing, although if you call it “memoirs” plural, you can probably get away with it). Here’s the tally so far, along with elements of each I could and should incorporate in my own future memoir(s):

Playing with Myself--Randy Rainbow

 

Randy Rainbow (real name!) grew up a proudly gay kid staging elaborate musicals in his backyard with the neighborhood gang, then progressed to making hilarious music parody videos in his NYC apartment which have garnered millions of views and several Emmy nominations. Randy became buds with Stephen Sondheim (the preeminent lyricist of his generation, who called Randy’s lyrics “brilliant—as good as anyone writing today.”) The great Carol Burnett is also a big fan. 

 

Note to self: Too late to change name to... “Elise Iridescent”? Sondheim may have passed away, but Lin-Manuel Miranda is still here! Send my knock-socks-off Hamilton parody as soon as I come up with one.

 

Going There--Katie Couric

 

Spunky, smiley girl next door Katie wrote an engaging book which really was just a rundown of her rather ordinary (!) existence. Listen, I watched the Today show too, and witnessed first-hand her many fascinating interviews, her effortless back-and-forths with Bryant and Matt, and for a while I wore my hair approximately the same way! Add that to my spunkiness and smiley-ness and you have basically the same person!

 

Note to self: Somehow re-frame my years as a church worker to reflect pre-dawn limo rides to studios where my makeup and wardrobe were completely handled. I did have a few pre-dawn (though makeup free) bus rides to catch planes to mission trip locations, so there’s that.

 

Bookends--Zibby Owens

 

Zibby is a well-known book blogger whose semi-charmed, ultra-rich NYC life is chronicled here. While she has had some personal tragedy, she also married her much younger tennis pro, went to Harvard Business School, and has four adorable children, plus homes on the Upper East Side and in the Hamptons. Her schtick is a series of podcasts and anthologies titled “Moms Don’t Have Time to…(Read Books, Lose Weight, Have Kids,") etc. 

 

Note to self: Too late to change name to… Zippy? And I could totally add “Moms Don’t Have Time to...Vacuum, Floss, Iron, Interview Maids and Nannies.” 

 

Happy-Go-Lucky--David Sedaris

 

Another wild trip through the funhouse that is Sedaris family life, this one anchored by the death of their very difficult 98 year old father Lou. David manages to make a beach house called “The Sea Section” sound almost normal. 

 

Note to self: Connect with David’s agent (he regularly tours all over, just reading from his books. ME TOO.). Make time to write incredible essays for The New Yorker, come up with several eccentric siblings, and live in an eccentric old house in France. 

 

My summer work is cut out for me!! NYT bestseller list here I come!! 

Mother Guilt

 

Mom and Little Me

I’m a DES Daughter. 

I’m a member of a club no one is clamoring to join: those of us whose mothers took a certain medication during pregnancy to prevent miscarriage, a medication which affected their female children later on. DES (Diethylstilbestrone) was widely prescribed during the 1950s and 1960s, hailed as a wonder drug for women at risk of losing their babies. This was also the era of that nightmare drug Thalidomide, which was used to treat morning sickness, but ended up causing horrible birth defects. By the time these were pulled off the market, a lot of irreversible damage had been done.

 

As a young woman, I was monitored carefully for cervical cancer and other issues which were beginning to appear related to DES (thankfully, I have had no serious problems all these years). A number of “DES daughters” had great difficulties becoming pregnant (clearly not a result with me). 

 

What I do recall about all of this was my mom’s feelings of guilt. Though there’s literally no way she could have known not to take DES, or reason to distrust her obstetrician, Joanie added this regret to a long list of other reasons to feel badly. 

 

Now that I’m a mom, I totally get it. Guilt, appropriate or not, goes with the territory. We stew for nine months, watching everything that passes our lips, making sure not to sleep on our sides (or was it our backs?). Then after our bundles of joy arrive, it’s all about reading to them to encourage optimal brain development, nursing them if possible (just long enough, though), rocking them to sleep/letting them cry it out (I tended to alternate these randomly, the worst of all possible parenting choices), reciting Dr. Spock’s advice from memory (until the meltdown when we encounter Dr. Brazelton and his rather different theories). 

 

For me, mental health issues are, first and foremost, what I hate to have passed along to my children. Why oh why did I “gift” them with tendencies to depression, anxiety, panic attacks? Deep down I know it’s not anything I did deliberately, any more than Mom taking DES was anything she did to hurt me. I think of the truly terrible parents out there (some of whom, ironically, have kids who adore them), and I realize I’m not Monster Mom. But still…

 

It helps to understand that it isn’t too late, not ever. We hurt each other, but we can also help each other heal. If some guilt is inevitable, it doesn’t have to define us. I was the best mom I knew how to be way back when, and, now that I know (a little) better, I can do better. Joanie, too, did her best, and only took that med because she so wanted to keep me. 

 

And by honoring her fierce love, the love I also feel for my children, I can try to let go of guilt, and, I hope, wherever she is now, Mom has let go of it too. 

Poetry in Motion

Image from Webb Telescope-- light from billions of years ago

Don’t know about you, but I’ve been waiting for the Webb telescope all my life. And today’s photos did not disappoint. After all, it’s not every day you get a glimpse of the dawn of time! What was truly incredible was the explanation that this first picture captured an area of the universe(s) so small that it was like a grain of sand held at arm’s length. Just wow.

So naturally I thought of the opening line of William Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence” (be honest, you did too): “To see a world in a grain of sand.” Lest you think I’m bragging, I don’t understand 99% of that, or any other, Blake poem, but I’m pretty good at recalling random verses of things.

 

While I have tried my hand at poetry at various times in my life (you know: puberty, the onset of mental illness, that stuff), I do not consider myself a gifted poet. My standout verses included the poem I wrote at age seven when JFK died (I’ll spare you the quoting), and the blistering parody of “O Captain My Captain” by Walt Whitman called “O Superjock My Superjock” that I wrote for my high school paper, and which immediately endeared me to football Coach Maloof (not). 

 

I once read a LOT of poetry, and had my faves (Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Browning, Edna St. Vincent Millay). In recent years, what scant opportunities I’ve had to read something deep and reflective, I’ve devoted to prose. But Evan has rekindled my interest, and so has Pat, my friend and yoga teacher. Ev writes terrific poetry, and is a connoisseur of great writing. Pat has assigned me the task of coming up with a weekly reading for the end of class (so I usually choose a poem). 

 

Guess what? There’s some seriously awesome stuff being written these days. I used to thumb my nose at “free verse,” thinking the writer wasn’t clever enough to tackle villanelles or sonnets. But I really enjoy more unstructured poetry now, and wonder if perhaps as I age I’m becoming a little less structured myself (nah). 

 

I love the “distilled” quality of a good poem: what would take me paragraphs, if not volumes, to say, is perfectly expressed in a few lines. It’s daunting, though, because with my blog, for example, I always feel I can meander my verbal way to my point within my prescribed 500 words, whereas haiku takes no prisoners. 

 

This is the summer of New Beginnings for me, and I’d really love to plunge back into the world of meter and rhyme. I’ve heard that poets make serious bank! (perhaps I’ve been misinformed?) Even if there’s no money in it, I’m going to give it a whirl and see where the syllables land. 

 

And who knows? Some distant day I might be quoted too, and thus achieve literary immortality, just like my good buddy Blake. 

 

“It was a dark and stormy night/I very nearly died of fright.” 

 

Maybe it needs work?

Moments of Truth

Took a COVID test yesterday, one of several I’ve taken since I was exposed 10 days ago. To my relief, the tests have all been negative. At this point, I am free to go about my business without fearing that I am Typhoid Mary, 2022 edition. 

As I sat waiting for the magic second stripe to (hopefully not) appear, I recalled the many pregnancy tests I’ve taken over the years. In most of those cases, I was rooting for a positive (and, “several” times, that result came to pass). For both of these types of at-home tests, however, I was well aware of all that hinged on the outcomes. With the one: was I infected, and about to become ill? If so, had I meanwhile been sharing the “gift” of coronavirus unwittingly? With the other: was I expecting? If so, was I prepared to be mom of (fill in the blank number)? While that was an exciting and mostly happy prospect, memories of my previous lengthy and excruciating back labors pretty much crowded out any incipient joy. 

 

Life is filled with these moments, isn’t it? When so much hinges on a single new piece of information, and all you can do is wait for it to be revealed? College letters come to mind (for my kids, not me. After high school I took a gap year, then enrolled in George State University, which in 1975 only rejected you, I think, if you misspelled the name of the school, and maybe not even then). But for my offspring, those fat envelopes held a significant clue about their paths forward. When Sheridan received his letter from Juilliard, he got on the phone with a friend who was super stressed, and they opened their acceptances at the same time (btw Sher ended up happily at Curtis). 

 

I’d like to reassure the legions of worried young people that it will be OK, no matter what the university letters say. After all, look at me! I didn’t even finish my degree, and I’ve had a fabulous career in neuroscience! 

 

Oh, wait…maybe that’s a bad example.

 

As for the other results, COVID has taught me to take every vaccine and other precaution (who WANTS to take their chances on a ventilator? Not me!) but then realize, as those infernal mutated variants continue to appear, that at some point I may get it after all. So a positive test wouldn’t be the end of my world. And the false alarms when I thought I was pregnant and wasn’t? Maybe it just wasn’t the right time for a child to be born. 

 

The course of our futures may hinge on a few pivotal moments (the job offer accepted, the house bid rejected), but our reactions to those opportunities and setbacks do make a difference. Whether it be “no” from Yale or “yes” from the sellers of a first home, the answers, and our responses, create the up-and-down, unique and precious adventures that are our lives. 

 

We got this, friends.

My favorite positive test results!