Eldon’s parents came to visit.  They’re divorced.  He’s remarried; she lives with her boyfriend.  So he felt a bit strange when he made hotel reservations for the two of them.  Made sure to get separate beds.  They came to surprise his brother.  Apparently his family lives to surprise each other.  I asked how the weekend went:

I couldn’t get them to do anything.  All my family wants to do is sit around and watch each other grow old.

For some reason I found that last line both hilarious and profoundly moving.  It made me think that sitting around watching people grow old is perhaps the ultimate example of famil/friendy love and perhaps not. I don’t know whether to apologize to the people who came here last summer and I made them run around both Carolina’s in 100 degree weather.  They did come to see me, not for me to prove culture exists here.  So I’m pondering Eldon’s line .

Dissertations have been written on lesser lines.

And maybe that’s why I enjoyed this article in The Atlantic a little too much. And am still left with the question: what makes us happy? Does it turn out to be the story we invent for ourselves about our lives as we age?  The rationale for having lived the lives we lead.  So often spent sent sitting around watching each other grow old. I needed a more closed-ended answer but I understood.

Though I would like to think that the girl I was at 20–idealistic, fun (at least to me), inquisitive is the woman I am today–but hopefully I’m a better version

I’ve been working on a two or three part post for Psychology Today.  It’s not completed yet and I’m spent.

Like Cooper, who apparently I once called a germophobic slut–must have been under the influence of the moon or something, I’m archiving some old posts.  Only mine all have coding errors in the contractions and at the beginning and ending of sentences, so they take hours and I lack patience but if I’m going to leave a blog it’s going to be easy to read.

Here are 49 posts from Courting Destiny: the early days

I got a comment in one of my old PT posts by somebody who is either a student in mental health, a wannabe or somebody who just likes using language in as complicated form as possible.  I can’t imagine this person is actually a professional yet….

It made me realize that no matter how concretely I explain things people are going to think that NLD is a mental health problem not a neurological one.

Do you blame the mother when a child has Asperger’s?  Or do you say that the child is acting up to get love from the parents?  No of course not.  You would be stoned to death metaphorically.  Yet it’s OK to say that about NLD?  I don’t think so.

So much of my life was wasted in therapy trying to find answers to problems that are neurological not psychological.  I can’t stress that enough.  I see the difference between young women with NLD and me.  They are much more confident.  They haven’t spent their lives being blamed for not being able to organize themselves properly or looking at things their parents did wrong yet knowing that can’t be the true problem because they were secure in their family’s love.  Yet maybe this happened or that….No I can’t do this to myself anymore.

Twenty years ago yesterday my father had a stroke.  He died five days later.  I miss him more than ever.

I hope to be out of this mood shortly.  I also hope that during my lifetime people begin to truly understand that the depression and suicide rates for NLD are so high because it’s not a matter of trying harder.  It’s a matter of learning how to work around what doesn’t work properly in your brain.  It sounds so easy!

Sometimes this world hurts.  And by this world I mean the world of social media where people proclaim their expertise and want to teach you their tricks every damn day.  For a price of course.  They usually don’t even have a Google Page Rank, even a bad one like mine is currently or a proven track record but they’re experts just the same.  I want their chutzpah but my overblown sense of morals prohibits me from charging for something I’m not truly an expert in.

I have an overblown moral and ethical value portion of my brain but I don’t believe in God so my values are false to a lot of people–I’m talking both blogging (remember Pastor Craig on BIO?) and real world, here. I keep expecting Kevin Bacon to sweep into town….Oh we still do allow dancing though some of the clubs have been closed for more Godly ventures such as diners.  Southern diners complete with fat as a food group.  Our just chicken restaurant–don’t get me started on how unhealthy it is.

Back to the Internet.  Where I wasn’t supposed to be allowed to have opinions because some way sick radical rightists decreed so.  And the people I political blogged with would have rather seen blog than back me so it was up to my friends who I thank profusely and will always care about.

It’s hard for me to read blogs not by long time blogging friends as I read about being raped or getting nasty comments and people will comment about the blogger’s courage and how nobody talked about such things before.

Hello, here I am. Bet you weren’t told you kill little children because you’re pro-choice, etc, etc.  There was a time when I had to have Bone and The Wombat google me because it was too scary to look myself.

I did hate it and can’t help but want it validated that everything people talk about now as fresh and noteworthy is somewhere in the abyss called Courting.  I know how sick it sounds.  Credit for having blogs set up to diss me; blog posts changed to make me look like an idiot; comments that made me cringe.

The day I realized you weren’t going to go to bloggers hell for deleting was a wonderful one.

But I guess four-six years ago is too long in the new world of social media where all that matters is how many tweets you get.

I’m jaded.  I understand that.  I was so psyched about Psychology Today and the day after I was offered it Congresswoman Giffords was shot and that took the wind out of my sails.  I can’t help feeling nor would I want to change that about me.  But I wish I could have had one week no one month of pure enjoyment.  It’s that damn overblown sense of conscience and caring.

Summer’s coming and I’m getting my house ready.  But something inside me feels so sad as if I had a chance and blew it.  I’m good at not seeing what’s in front of me.  Maybe what’s in front is pure joy.  I hope.  I know I deserve it.  And it’s not going to cost anybody $499 plus materials and shipping & handling

No not the degrees you get in school  Degrees of NLD

My latest post for Psychology Today

Life goes on

I spent all weekend writing.

And my writing became darker and darker.  Yet I feel as if I’m not even a pebble that ripples through a lake that finds a tributary that finds a river that finds an estuary that works its way into the ocean–or something like that.  My waterway geography is a bit rusty and I’m from Long Island.  No excuses.

I have been staying away from TVs. Studies done after 9/11 showed that people who watched the most were the most depressed.  It’s just common sense I guess.  But there wasn’t the Huffpo then, and despite all the reasons I have never liked Arianna I find myself drawn to her paper as its coverage is the most dramatic and I think “no Pia, stop!!!.”

I miss home now.  Home being New York where I understand the people and they claim to understand me.  It’s not that I don’t like it here.  This is my home now.  But my closest friends here won’t be back for another two and a half weeks.

I wish I were a better person. One who could roll with all the punches and not feel so much.  But I do.  And then there’s the matter of the rapidly disappearing money.  Which is insignificant but it would have been safer under  my mattress.  Long story for some other time.  Maybe.

So I really have to focus on whether the world is falling apart or not.  Because maybe the world will come to an end in 2012, or I have heard the coasts will fall into the sea in October and now anything horrible seems possible no matter how crackpot the theory, and then I wouldn’t have to worry.

But I like to think I have focused on living a healthy good life so it could be a long and good one.  My own personal screw you to malevolent forces.  But it’s so hard.

I just have to remind myself I’m not even a pebble.

It’s heavy

Childhood dreams is a prompt from Studio 30 plus.

Because the 3WW prompt went I added it!

I stop talking and concentrate on putting fireflies into a bottle.  It’s going to be dark soon and the trapped fireflies will light up the skies.  We’re between ten and six years old and none of us have to be in until the adults unplug the TV’s from the extension cords hanging from the garden apartments in the courts to TV tables.  Some of the men smoke cigars.   They drink Coke and lemon soda, spilling the soda so that bees and flys flock around the tables and TV’s.  I stay far away from the TV tables.  There’s nothing dainty about them.  Plus I’m scared soda will spill into the extension cords and there will be a huge explosion.

It’s summer before my little sister and I go to camp for six weeks soon after my birthday.  Our parents encourage us to stay out late and play so we’ll be tired and sleep a bit later in the morning. Though I try to get up at six every morning of the year to read the encyclopedia.  I’m a word nerd that the other kids like because they can’t remember not knowing me.  My best friend, Ava Altman, is at a hotel for the summer.  My family goes to hotels but most of the families spend two to four weeks in bungalow colonies.

I don’t tell the kids that my family spent summers in bungalow colonies when we lived in Sunnyside.  Maybe my parents laugh at memories of the bungalow colonies when we stay at hotels near Monticello to visit parts of my father’s family.  His sister and her family live in Miami.  Poor me. Doomed to vacations in the Catskills, Miami Beach, and “educational places” such as The Pennsylvania Dutch Country.

We study the region for months before we go. I can’t wait for our first vacation to DC where we’ll see the FBI building which is about the most exciting building in the world to me.  The day we’re going to go we stop at my father’s client’s supermarket first and I throw up all over the entrance way to the store.  We go back to the court instead where I get over the measles in two days.

I like going on vacation. I especially like Florida because I get to spend the morning in the pool and the afternoon in the ocean.  My parents get two rooms and our cousins come and stay with us. We all get along.  My sister and I can still recite our father’s refrain: “relax, we’re going to be here for two weeks.  You don’t need to do everything today.”  Yes. We. Do.  We run through the hotel lobbies and downstairs store arcade.  If we’re in the 40′s at Collins Avenue we run to some houseboats that are on TV.  We’re going to meet some TV stars.  My sister who is two years younger doesn’t really care but she knows I only like the coolest of things.  That we never meet a TV star doesn’t phase me.  There’s always tomorrow.  Or next year.

I like being in the court. I like camp. I’m an indiscriminate life liker. I can’t wait to be a teenager and have a real boyfriend but I spend much time dreaming.  Ava and I have our whole lives plotted out.  Ava looks like a child movie star.  She has long dark wavy perfect hair, and is the prettiest girl I know.

Ava thinks I’m so lucky to be my mother’s daughter.  Unlike Ava’s mother who I secretly think is a witch who will get her coven together for a court haunting, my mother’s friendly and fun.

My mother has dark hair, large eyes, a huge smile, and is I know prettier than most of the other mothers. Before I was adopted my mother owned a fancy dress store in Forest Hills.  Her mother makes our good clothes.  Ava, my sister and I are the best dressed girls in the court.  Ava’s family has a housekeeper.  I take that for granted until I’m older and realize how tiny the garden apartments, built for returning vets are.  Everybody lives in Beech Hills because it’s on top of the largest hill in Queens, cut off from the rest of the borough, and has a lot of outdoor space for kids to play in.

There are 40 mothers in the court alone.  I’m vaguely aware that my mother’s older because I was adopted but I know this is something that can never ever be discussed.  Most parents and kids think she’s younger.  Everybody looks up to my parents.  My father’s a professional who always has time to talk to the other parents and answer any questions.  He began the first credit union for coop apartments.  I know that’s a big deal only because parents stop me and tell me how great my father is.

I don’t try to memorize summers in the court.  The TV’s, the rock & roll I love that the older kids play; the games we kids play.  It’s boys against girls, run to the trees.  One two three ring a leveo.  I’m not very good at the games but it doesn’t matter and I laugh so hard when I get to the trees.  I’m tantalized by the garden apartments.  The court is a perfect place to live.

Years later Ava and I will find our memories haunting.  No childhood could possibly live up to it.  We tantalize kids with our stories.

Then I never stop to think how good life is.  Why should I?  It’s all I know.  But I will always remember how beautiful the fireflies were when they lit up the sky like fireworks.  Then I opened the bottle and let them fly away into the night.  The other kids didn’t like that.  They liked the fireflies living for a few days in the glass jars with air holes on the jar cap.  But I liked to think of them flying to their true love.

Hope you enjoy this. I wanted to try something different.  Something that shows how great my life has been.

I know it seems contradictory to the posts I have written before about NLD on PT But as I said “NLD plays by no rules.”

If I was never called disabled or treated as if I were disabled does that mean I am?

I thank the readers who have stuck with me as I lost many when I became immersed in this world.  No it doesn’t feel great but…..I know I’m a decent or better writer.  Writing has been a major focus of my life forever.  It’s funny but a lot of my facebook friends don’t realize this. I find that cute for some reason.

This is  a post I originally wrote for Studio 30 Plus Magazine

Hi Daddy,

Do you remember when you asked me if you should shave half your moustache?  And I looked at you as if you were crazy because frankly….and asked you why?

“So that the people who knew me before will recognize me when I get up there and so would the people who knew me after.”

My genius father who went to NYU on two scholarships–one math and one basketball; who was born in a tenement without a bathroom and made it all on his own–was very capable of asking questions such as the above and meaning them.  I told you only if you wanted to look like an idiot while on this earth and you accepted that.

Unlike the time you told me Blechman was doing a series of MTV ad’s about real people and had asked you to be in one.

OMG, that’s frigging incredible.  Can I come watch?

Uh Pia what’s MTV?  This was in the mid-80′s.

It’s a TV station that only plays rock videos.

No, Pia, that’s impossible.  Maybe it plays rock an hour a day.

It is possible and true.  Look at rock radio.  Why am I having this conversation?

You refused to believe me.  Though being in the commercial was one of the high points of your professional career as a CPA!   And who knew he would turn out to be right about MTV.

You loved it when The New York Times called you an incredible example of a middle aged professional.  As you were 70+ the words “middle aged” rang like music through your ears.  I did have to point out that you brought us up never to trust anything we read in a newspaper, especially The Times.

Your birthday was 20 years ago today.  We went to an Italian restaurant in The Village you had gone to, as a student,  so many years earlier.  That weekend we went to Long Beach to see your Aunt Ann.  “Where’s the girls?”  “They’re right here.  “Where are the girls?”  “Next to us.  Say hello to Aunt Ann.”  We must have said hello 25 times.  It was hilarious in an only a family way.  Afterwards we went to an upscale Southwestern restaurant in Island Park where a man asked permission to draw you.  He didn’t even know you were an MTV late night staple!

The Academy Awards were on March 25th.  I was working for Social Security and had to get up at five AM.  You called and couldn’t understand why I said I was going to sleep early.  Screw the Academy Awards for once.  You didn’t like TV but had this weird thing for “historic events” and the Academy Awards was history in your mind.

The next morning was your wedding anniversary.  Mommy said you did what you did best and bitched about Kevin Costner winning too many awards for Dancing With Wolves at breakfast.  Then she got ready to go out and you went down to your desk.  She called your name to say good bye and you didn’t answer.  She found you slumped over your desk.  Five days later you died.

Thanks for those five days.  If there really is an up there and you and mommy have reunited you know that ten years later she went suddenly, and I never had any last words.  No arguing over stupid Academy Awards.  No seeing her lying peacefully in her hospital bed.  Actually when you were in yours, mommy said “he’s lying like a lox,” an expression Elka and I found much funnier than it should have been.

I miss you daddy.  I miss you more now than I did then.  I didn’t have time to mourn.  Life was too busy.  Mommy was getting older, and well I guess we mourn on our own timetables.  Though yes if I had taken the course you wanted me to take with you when I was 25–Elizabeth Kubler Ross on Death and Dying at The New School I would have known more.  But what 25 year old girl takes a class with her father?  This one, much older now, regrets not doing it in a lackadaisical it would have been nice manner.  But I took classes to meet boys and you would have been in the way.  We had dinner before school. Afterward you went to your poker game, and never asked where I, your almost divorced daughter was going.  A father knows he doesn’t want to know details.  And I thank you and love you even more for letting me be me.

You were my friend daddy.  Before it was common for parents and children to be friends I had the incredible honor and privilege of having two wonderful parents who lived to drive me crazy but also lived to find “nachas” (joy in Yiddish) in me. I thank you for always being there.  For never giving up.  For knowing that I was more than the sum of my parts.  And if I didn’t always do everything perfectly well daddy, who did?

I never thought “Princess Perfect” was a term of endearment!!!!!!  I will have a new post here sometime this week.  Kind of having a panic attack from writing this one!