At first glance, I thought she was drinking out of a wine glass.
I was in the elevator at work at the end of the day, sharing a ride down to the lobby with a woman who looked to be about my age, maybe a few years older. Turns out she was drinking water our of a clear water bottle, but for whatever reason - the way the light hit the water, who knows? - my eyes had played tricks on me at first.
Making conversation, I told her about my initial confusion. She laughed uproariously, and we had good chuckle as we walked out into the lobby together.
"Now, if it were Friday, you might be on to something!" she exclaimed.
"I hear you," I said. "Keep a flask in your bag to start the weekend early."
"Exactly. If it were Friday I'd be getting drunk."
I am not one to either "start the weekend early" in such a manner, nor do I generally drink on Friday nights, but again, I was making conversation.
"You know who has a great happy hour around here?" she continued. "That Lime place."
"Oh, you mean that Mexican place up by the movie theater? Yeah, I've been there. They have good margaritas," I recalled.
We headed out of the building and down the escalator to the street.
"Their drinks are strong!" she said.
"You know, I've only been there once, but I remember thinking that. You definitely get some bang for your buck."
"Yeah, that's not something I'm going to complain about, but I definitely noticed it."
I nodded in agreement.
She went on, "I was there last weekend with some folks after work. I got totally fucked up. Fell down and hurt my hip."
Why do complete strangers tell me things like this?
"Oh, that's terrible! Sounds paintful!" I responded.
"Yeah, I threw up. Pissed on myself and everything."
At this point I didn't have anything to say but "oooooh..."
"Yeah, but the guy still wanted to go home with me. Well, bye! Have a good night!"
I was reading a book in which the protagonist found self-awareness (and self-forgiveness and really, his ultimate self) through, among other things, focusing every day on six core needs: physical, social, intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and sexual.
And while the demons he needed to slay are much more intense than mine - he had a seriously fucked up childhood and spent chunks of his life engaging in incredibly soul-crushing, destructive behaviors - his path resonated with me. Do I attend to these needs?
For me, some of them are interconnected.
I get plenty of exercise, plus many of my hobbies and favorite pursuits are physical - skiing, hiking, running around outside with the kids, surfing when I'm at the beach.
And except for my solo workouts at 5:30 in the morning, those physical pursuits are social. Sometimes I ski alone, but my best ski days are often with friends or family. I do big hikes with my friend Christin. Plus I have a solid group of friends that I love and make an effort to spend time with.
My job is fairly intellectual, plus I'm always in the middle of a book, so I think I'm OK there.
Emotionally, I'm always working on letting myself feel what I'm feeling without letting it overwhelm me, and lately I feel like I've gotten better at it. There have been some things in my life that have been major stressors lately, but attending to other core needs (doing a hard workout when I'm feeling overly anxious, hanging with friends who make me happy, that sort of thing) have helped me work through them. This one will always be a work in progress, but I feel like I'm making a solid effort.
Sexually... well. We'll see.
The one that really got me thinking was the spiritual need. Though there are definitely lessons and principles in Judaism that I appreciate and internalize, I'm not really religious at all. And I sometimes wonder what it even means to be "spiritual" - according to dictionary.com, it relates to or affects the human spirit or soul, rather than the physical or material. Which can still be confusing and amorphous. But I've also seen other explanations that emphasize a search for inner peace with yourself and your place in the world, and achieving love and respect for yourself and really, love and respect for everybody.
Those are certainly not things that I have understood or even worked towards during many parts of my life. But being in an unhappy, unfulfilling relationship for years, going through a divorce, experiencing the death of a beloved child, figuring out how to function in the face of all that - it's forced me to approach life in a more focused way, and to do everything I can to shed old baggage and seek peace and beauty and love in the here and now.
And walking has been a huge part of that.
It's been a year since I started walking to work, as a part of healing after Emma died, and really, as a part of a daily meditation of sorts. As a daily act of spirituality, I guess.
At first, there were so many different routes - different streets on which to head north, different streets to head west, that it was all new and exciting. I could take 12th Avenue, through Cheesman Park and through a largely residential area, with lots of interesting old houses and funky apartment buildings with charming names like the Rob Roy or the BluEtte or the Malden Arms. I can admire people's flower gardens and look at pretty trees.
I could take 13th or 14th Avenues, both of which are slightly more commercial than 12th, with cool coffee shops and urban schools and mechanic's garages. I can cut north past St. John's Cathedral, which is beautiful.
But after doing it for a year, I find myself gravitating to Colfax Avenue more and more. Colfax is a little bit rough and dirty and gritty. It's got liquor stores and marijuana dispensaries and bakeries and homeless shelters and bodegas and art galleries and dive bars and not-so-dive bars and pubs. Thrift stores and head shops. Tattoo parlors and natural grocery stores and a cathedral. The state capitol building with its magnificent gold dome and used book stores and music venues. People going to work and people who are a little bit out there.
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Given the choice between hanging out on Colfax and hanging out in a place like Cherry Creek, with it's chi-chi boutiques and plastic people, I'll take Colfax every time. Maybe it's the same reason I love big, noisy, chaotic cities like New Delhi or Bangkok - to me, it represents life and humanity, in all of its forms. It's interesting and real.
And walking it every day, it gives me a sense of connection to the world, a sense of calmness and peace - ironically, for all of its craziness, it fills me with love.
For a few years, at least, it seems like it's been one trauma or stressor after another, whether it was my marriage ending or financial woes or bouts of depression or custody drama. And, of course, Emma's death overshadowing all of it. It's been relentless and awful.
But the craziness of the summer is resolved. I'm feeling great physically. The kids are beautiful and healthy and loving life.
While I won't ever get over Emma's death, surviving the "year of firsts," as crushing as it was, means that I know can survive going forward.
The worst that could happen did happen, and we're all still alive, and perhaps distilled down to our purer essences. Cleansed by the fire, which, at least for me, burned away any capacity for bullshit or any desire to carry around the baggage of pettiness or silly power struggles or superficial judgment. I want to love and enjoy my children and love and enjoy my friends and love and enjoy my life. I have no patience for meanness or rudeness or snobbery.
I was talking with a friend about this, and he said, "but what about when life creeps in? How do you sustain that when the mundane irritations and frustrations of life get in the way?"
My brother asked a similar question the other day - even when things are going well, he's always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Optimism as a weltanschauungis not something that comes naturally to him. As he said, "I can't help it. I'm a Jew."
I obviously don't profess to have all the answers. I only know what I can tolerate and what I can't, and how I want to feel at the end of each day. But in the face of these questions, my response was that all you can do is try, every day, to be deliberately and conspicuously kind to people. To seek out and appreciate beauty in the ordinary.
You just have to work the muscle every day, and then hope for the best.
It can be spending time outside, looking at the sky and documenting something beautiful or unusual or interesting.
It can be making the decision to be polite to telemarketers or customer service reps, even when they piss you off.
It can be walking late at night down a dark street, holding hands and stealing kisses, a little drunk on bourbon and the heady prospect of something new and exciting, and stopping to admire a gorgeous tree with twinkly stars visible through its branches.
You hold on to the happiness of the moment, appreciating the wonder of the world around you.
And you keep holding on to those moments, every day.
One of the things that kind of cracks me up about Colorado is that there is no gradual change of seasons. It changes in a day, and that's it. Last year, the weather was lovely and temperate and then one Monday in early November, all of a sudden it was 10 degrees out and it was winter. Done and done.
Same this past weekend. It's been warm and sunny and beautiful, and then on Friday Mother Nature decided it was fall, and so it was. Chilly and windy and foggy.
I love fog. There's something protective and ethereal and mysterious about it. Wide open blue skies are beautiful, but they don't provide for any hiding places. But in the fog, your little secrets feel safe.
Sometimes I feel like I live in a weird parallel universe in which I'm the only sane one, while craziness swirls around me.
I was walking to work and I passed a cake shop that specializes in wedding cakes. I've walked by it a hundred times but for some reason, only yesterday did I really notice the side window display.
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I kind of love it. Total incongruity. Nothing about it makes sense.
Further up the street, in a sketchier part of the block, I passed a 7-Eleven. There was a woman walking out the door, obviously irate, yelling and swearing at some dude inside. It seemed like par for the course, and she wasn't yelling at me, so I kept walking, listening over my headphones to Alec Baldwin talk to Edie Falco about her life and career.
On the next corner was a woman with a ripped backpack at her feet. She was wearing dirty tube socks but no shoes. As I walked toward her, she made the "talking on the phone" sign, holding her hand to her ear with thumb and pinky finger outstretched, and mouthed to me, "call the police."
At first I wasn't sure she was talking to me, so I ignored it. She continued to gesture towards me and mouthed "call 911" while punching imaginary telephone buttons with her finger in the air.
I took my headphones off.
"Call the police. Call 911," she said,
"Why?" I asked.
"There's a crazy crackhead lady in the 7-Eleven, attacking people, ripping doors off cars, she's going nuts and abusing people."
I didn't want to ask how the lady was ripping the doors off cars while inside the 7-Eleven. It seemed beside the point.
"Call the police," she said again.
"Ok, listen," I said. "I'll dial 911 and place the call, and you can talk to the dispatcher. I don't have any information to give them."
I dialed 911 on my phone, activated the call, and handed her the phone.
After a second, she says, "Yeah, hey hon. It's me. Mmm-hmm. Yeah, I'm here on Colfax, near the intersection with Pennsylvania. There's some crazy lady in the 7-Eleven attacking people."
At this point, I'm utterly confused. I know that the call was placed to 911, and the woman did not hang up or redial or anything like that. Does she know the 911 lady? Are they buddies?
"Yeah, you know it," she continued, still talking to the 911 operator. "Always somethin' around here. Alright, baby. Bye."
This is the greatest thing ever, I thought to myself. It was kind of exhilarating. How amazing would it be to be able to call 911 and be all, "yeah, boo, how're mom'n'ems, maybe I'll see you later..."
She handed me back my phone.
I started to walk away, and said, "OK, well, good luck."
"I don't need luck," she responded. "Luck is the devil's work."
I've been walking to work, off and on, for about 10 months. There are only so many variables in the route, so at this point I'm familiar with the landmarks and each street's little quirks. It makes it more challenging (but also fun) when I'm taking my #dailydenver pictures, because it forces me to try to find interesting angles or to see things in a new or different way.
But still, every once in a while, I do get the surprise of seeing something that I have not seen before.
A photo posted by Wendy Jacobs (@wendyalisonjacobs) on
It reminded me of my brother Joshua, who used to love playing with army toys. When we were living in India, I opened the freezer one day to discover an elaborate winter battle scene, complete with fallen soldiers who had made the ultimate sacrifice and spilled their blood (i.e., ketchup) in the freezer frost snow.
Looking at that toy tank, standing guard in front of its owner's house, made me smile with the thought of little boys' imaginations, and the intensity of their vision of the world as it was, or might be someday in the future.
Yesterday morning the kids and I were riding the number 10 bus into town, on the way to camp and work. Zeke was sitting in the back row playing on his Kindle and Josie and I were sitting next to each other on one of the sideways-facing seats. I had my arm resting over the back of the seat, and she was snuggled up next to me, so her face was basically in my armpit.
She thinks armpits are hilarious, especially mine. God forbid I have a day's worth of stubble under there - she'll tickle it with her fingers and announce to the whole bus that my pits are fuzzy.
Today there was no fuzz, just deodorant. She still stuck her finger in it.
"Mama, why do you have salt in your pits?" she giggled.
"It's not salt, goofball, it's deodorant." I gave her a squeeze and kissed the top of her head.
"What's deodorant?"
"It's stuff to keep my pits from getting stinky."
She cackled. "I hope I don't have stinky pits. I don't want to have salt in my pits."
We laughed and laughed.
As I sat there having fun with her, I realized it was the last day we would be doing this. Their dad would be picking them up that afternoon, and they're with him for the weekend, and there's no camp next week. The week after that, school starts.
We've had a lovely little routine for the summer - I get up and exercise, then I get them up and dressed, and we have some breakfast. I make their lunches and fill their water bottles, get their backpacks ready, and then we walk across the street to catch the bus.
They're always cheerful and saying hello, so the people on the bus are charmed and smiling at them. During the ride, we chat and laugh and look out the window. After the penultimate stop, Josie pulls the cord, and we pile off the bus at the stop in front of my office building. The buses have an automated announcement system for each stop, and when you get off a female robotic voice says, "watch your step - thank you."
And the kids always say, "YOU'RE WELCOME!" and then laugh hysterically.
We walk the two blocks to the YMCA, I give them hugs and kisses goodbye, they run off to play with their friends, and then I walk across the street to go to work.
With all of the turmoil in my life this summer, those mornings have been a respite. Even though it seems mundane, I will miss that routine. We're all morning people, so it's been a time of morning snuggles and kisses and excitement over whatever that day's field trip would be and fart jokes. (The fart jokes are a constant.)
With the start of school, I'll be able to resume my walks to work in the morning. And I started this morning, in fact. I took a route that I don't usually take, heading west up 16th street rather than on Colfax. This route takes me past an elementary school that has a great playground.
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It made me think of the kids and how big they're getting. Zeke is going into second grade, Josie into first. I find myself looking at old pictures and videos of them when they were babies and toddlers, and going over old blog posts from those times. It makes me wistful, even though they are unquestionably so much more fun and interesting the older they get.
As a last hurrah before school starts, the three of us are going camping in Steamboat (the real one) next weekend. It's a place we love, and it will cap off a summer that has been difficult but also beautiful, largely because of them.
When I am inside, whether at work or at home or elsewhere, I feel caged in and agitated. I remember when I was first diagnosed with depression, the description provided by the psychologist or whoever was of a general, "free floating" anxiety. Like I have this aura of grayness that hovers over me, full of malignant atoms whose electrons aren't arranged correctly, or something like that.
I have no motivation to exercise, to cook, to eat anything healthy. I need to lose at least 10 pounds, but I can't seem to stick with an exercise program, and despite my resolute declarations of "today will be the day I'm good," I give in to temptation because it fills an emotional void.
I am irked by the holiday season, not because I begrudge anyone their time celebrating whatever they want to celebrate, but because it means I have to find coverage for the kids on days that they don't have school because of vacation, and buy gifts when I already feel like my kids have so much fucking *stuff* in their lives that the idea of adding to the stuff in my house makes me want to tear my hair out.
My walk to work is the best part of my day. On the days that I can't do it, because of early meetings or whatever, I'm out of sorts and jumpy.
But even on the days that I can do it, it's too short. I'm bummed out when I get to work, because instead of walking 2 1/2 miles, I want to keep going. 10 miles might feel like enough. Or even more.
One of my routes to work takes me through this park. Sometimes the urge to turn south and keep walking until I reach the top of Pikes Peak is overwhelming.
My letter to the University president and other members of the administration can be found over at my friend Theresa Pileggi-Proud's site, You Are Here. One of the things I talk about is the prospect of sending my own daughter to UVa. when she decides to go to college. If she were going today, I wouldn't send her there.
But knowing what a problem campus rape is at many schools around the country, I don't know where I would want to send her.
And it's not just the issue of sexual assault. I look back on my time at college, and while I loved it, socially, the mores were so fucked up and antiquated, particularly within the Greek system. My best friends from UVa. are my sorority sisters - I am still in contact and very close friends with a significant number of them. I love them and they are incredibly important to me. But when I look back on the Rush process - with its snap judgments and all night voting sessions that were breeding grounds for cattiness, tears, and fractured friendships - not to mention bronchitis, which I got every single year during Rush - it turns my stomach. It is exactly the opposite of how I would encourage Josie to approach her friendships and interactions with other human beings.
Then once you're in, there's so much focus on landing a cute guy and being accepted by the right group and having a date to the football game and getting invitations from the "good" fraternities to have mixers.
Ugh. It's fucking nauseating to think about. And from what I can tell, not much there has changed.
And who knows. More and more, I wonder about the value of college at all. The world is changing so much. In 13 years, when Josie is 18, the model for preparing yourself for the working world and beyond might have evolved to the point that apprenticeships or similar work/study arrangements are the key to success and upward mobility. An expensive four-year college education, as the experience currently exists, might be obsolete.
It blows my mind that Zeke will be in high school in eight years, and Josie in nine. If we stay in the same house, they might attend East High School, which is about 4 blocks from where we live. I pass it on my way to work sometimes (depending on my route). It's a beautiful, majestic building.
I just hope by the time they get there, I've imparted enough wisdom on how to be self-confident and tough, yet also kind and empathetic, that they can navigate the social hell that is high school (and beyond) with aplomb.
In the meantime, I'm signing Josie up for martial arts lessons.
The problem with this ridiculous cold snap, featuring temperatures that we don't generally see until January or February - and even then for no more than a week or so - is that it caught me totally unprepared from a sartorial perspective.
Usually, Colfax Avenue is bustling in the morning. Today it felt like a ghost town, with almost no one else sharing the sidewalk with me.
I have a bag or box or something that contains all of our ski pants and super-warm hats and all of that, but I have no fucking idea where it is. This weekend I will have to excavate our cupboard under the stairs where I suspect it is all buried under a pile of other stuff I haven't looked at or thought about in dog years, but for now, I'm scrambling.
So I'm spending my lunch break shopping for mittens and hats and scarves.
But another issue is that the kids don't get to spend much time outside - they keep them inside at school when it's like this, and it's really too cold to go to the playground or anything like that.
They need an outlet to burn off their considerable energy. So last night, I put in a workout DVD to get some exercise, and they both joined me. I turned off the sound on the disc and put in some fun music and we all danced and jumped around with Shaun T.
We are in a good place right now. The kids are both happy and healthy and behaving (for the most part). We had an amazing weekend, going to the zoo and the park and the pool. Having movie night with popcorn. On the nights that they are with me, they draw me pictures and we play and read books and watch the Neil DeGrasse Tyson series "Cosmos" (their latest obsession).
They chose animals next to each other so they could hold hands while they rode.
On Monday morning, it was about 60 degrees and sunny. But because of the altitude, when it's sunny in Denver it usually feels about 10 degrees warmer than it actually is.
By the time I went home from work, it was 24 degrees and snowing. It hasn't stopped since. When I took the kids to school this morning, it was dumping snow and 0 degrees (Fahrenheit, so about -18C).
At this point, we are generally unfazed by this weather, except to admire it for its beauty. We've got parkas and scarves and gaiters and mittens and snow boots. When the kids look outside in the morning and see snow on the ground, they get all excited. Their only lament this morning is that with the temperature so low, it will likely be an "inside day" at school (anything over 20F and they get to play outside).
I walked most of the way to work, until my thighs were so cold and numb that I caught the bus for the last half mile or so (strangely, the rest of me was comfortable - given that my parka goes down to my knees, I'm confused by this).
I love the way the snow makes the city look. The snow makes everything glow, and insulates the sound a bit so it feels quiet and peaceful.
Plus I'm totally geeking out about how the ski resorts must look right now. Josie has decided that this is the year she wants to learn to ski, so in a couple of weeks we'll go get the kids' season ski rentals, and hit the slopes after we get back from Thanksgiving. Josie is a bit of a daredevil, so I'm curious to see how she does.
On my walk today, I listened to Spotify radio based on the Yonder Mountain String Band, a Colorado-based bluegrass group. A bunch of Grateful Dead songs came on, and it took me back to being in college and going to Dead shows with my sorority sisters.
I wasn't one to follow the Dead around or camp out for tickets or anything like that. You would never catch me twirling around during Drums and Space in a dingy prairie dress and moccasins and employing leather string as jewelry. But I enjoyed the music and the experience of going to a show. I remember dancing in a warm summer rain at RFK Stadium as the band played Box of Rain, and feeling totally blissed out.
I thought about that night as I walked this morning past a group of people camping out for tickets in front of the Fillmore Auditorium. I don't go to listen to live music much anymore (thought I would really like to, especially after the amazing time I had in Charlottesville two weeks ago), and certainly am beyond the point in my life when I would consider camping out on the sidewalk for tickets (or anything, really). But I smiled as I passed them, admiring their dedication, particularly in the 10 degree weather, and feeling slightly envious of their youth.
I was taking the kids to school when I remembered there isn't any school today, and that they were supposed to be going to day camp (for which, thankfully, I had remembered to sign them up). So I drove them up to the school where camp is being held, and discovered once I got there that I was supposed to have packed them lunch. My money was still at home, so I had to drive back home, get all of my stuff together, drive to the grocery store, pick up some lame prepared kids' deli lunches (enjoy your Doritos, kids!), drop the lunches at camp, and then drive to work, for which I was already late.
Meaning I missed my daily walk to work. The best I could do was to park in a lot that's about six blocks from my office, and get some walking in that way.
I love the dark blue sky (no filter on this baby), and the juxtaposition of the red in the parking signs against the grays and blacks of the buildings in the background. And I needed to capture the beauty and relative warmth of the morning, because we're getting a wicked cold front this afternoon that is going to push the temperatures below freezing by tonight.
Vintage gas pumps as urban art, displayed at the side of an apartment building's parking area. They reminded me of young soldiers, standing at attention.
Even thought we ended up here kind of by accident, as the result of a crashing economy and a desperate need to get out of Hawaii before we ended up homeless, I have come to love living in Denver beyond anything I could have anticipated.
I have lived in a lot of places in my life, and I have cherished many of them - India, Israel, Atlanta, Charlottesville. In my mind, each is imbued with its memories of friends, romances, trips, heartbreaks, song fragments -- it is impossible for me to separate the place from the overall sense of what my life was when I was there. I would love to go back to India, for example, but India to me is totally wrapped up with the experiences I had while I lived there - being a senior in high school and having the amazing friends that I did, the nights out at the Gunghroo, the trips to Rishikesh and Goa and Bhubaneswar, being an extra in a BBC miniseries with my friends in Allahabad, shopping on Jan Path and Saroji Nagar. Going back now would feel so different.
But I think as a place unto itself - the combination of location and lifestyle and culture - Denver is my favorite place I've ever lived. I love my neighborhood, right in the city. I love how there is so much focus here on getting outside and playing in nature - hiking, biking, skiing, climbing, camping. The mountains are so extraordinary. They inspire action and achievement and greatness and happiness -the kind of happiness that comes from effort and exertion. I love how friendly people tend to be. I love that it's an amazing place to raise kids.
I've written about how the big hike I did the weekend before Emma died was sort of transformative, and awoke in me this intense desire to be outside and walk. I've been walking as much as I can, to and from work (though with the end of daylight savings, I probably won't be walking home in the dark very much, though I might occasionally), during lunch, around the neighborhood with the kids, in the various state and federal parks that are an easy drive away.
I read an article recently about the benefits of walking, and the author talked about how walking is one of the most fundamental, essential, and defining activities of human existence. It's good exercise, it allows for clearer thinking and problem solving, it improves mood, it's a mode of transportation - when you are walking, you are experiencing life as a human being on so many levels. That idea really struck me, and I'm realizing how true it is.
I firmly believe that it has been an essential part of my grieving process, both relating to Emma's death and to the end of my marriage. Particularly during my morning walk to work, it's solitary time to think and reflect, which is so important. But it's solitary time to think and reflect while I am also out in the world, seeing people, looking up at the sky, noticing beautiful buildings or interesting signs. I get to be alone in the sense that I can put in my headphones and listen to music and not talk to people if I don't want to, but I'm still out in the world, experiencing it. I get to process my grief while my muscles are working and my blood is pumping and the crisp air puts roses in my cheeks. It gives me a sense that life goes on, and is worth living, and that the world is an amazing, beautiful place, and that there is still plenty of joy and love and adventure to be experienced.
When I walk to work, I walk west, toward the mountains. I start out walking through urban neighborhoods, and then more commercial areas. So my view is this incredible combination of city life and funky architecture and the hustle and bustle of a weekday morning and the dramatic view of the Rocky Mountains suddenly rising up from the flat of the plains. Mt. Evans directly ahead, Longs Peak to the north, and on a clear day, Pike's Peak to the south.
Like many of the old intown mansions, this grand dame is getting some much needed TLC. I liked the way the bare trees formed a veil in front of the house, as if modesty prevents her from showing herself until she feels she's presentable again.
We could use more "thoughtful management" in the world, don't you think?
I love the way the dome on the State Capitol Building looms up over the grit of upper Colfax Avenue.
That white snowy peak in the background is Mt. Evans (one of Colorado's 53 "fourteeners'), which I climbed last summer.
I started taking pictures, and have decided to post them dailywith the hashtags #walktowork and #dailydenver (follow me on Instagram or Facebook, plus I'll post them here). I'm hoping that they will inspire people to get out and walk, think, look around, be in the world, and live.
