As the comma turns

From time to time, my husband sends me links to NY Times articles on punctuation. These, I click and read, almost immediately, savoring every sentence and laughing at the inside jokes crafted to appeal only to grammarians and nitpickers.

(He also sends op ed pieces on the demise of the two-party system and the flailing, uneducated public who believe only what they read on Facebook. These, I also read, but because I should. I swallow fish oil for the same reason.)

But the stories I relish are the comma dilemmas, the pecking order among parts of speech (here, the verb pulls rank), and the eyewitness accounts of a language changing shape over time. Here do I find familiar turf and conversation I can follow, more with delight than effort. I know the rules of the game and the names of the best players. I read the words they choose to see what’s in vogue in the way the style-conscious wait to see what’s in Vogue.

When I read about words and the act of choosing them or when I write words and shop for them myself, I am transformed from one who is created to one who creates. I am no longer only the object of the verb, the person the verb acts upon. Rather, I am the verb. I create.

The conjunctions — the buts, the ands, the sos — fall away. The adjectives and their cousins the adverbs — the really very terribly really really really dull descriptors — blur into static. The articles — the as, the ans, the thes, the thises, the thats — lose the ability to distinguish one noun from another, and I am left alone with the verb. I write. I read. I create. I connect. I live.

Two knits forward, one purl back

Somewhere near the bottom of an old flowered suitcase in the attic lies my first embroidery project: a Thai pagoda in brown and orange, stitched on burlap and framed with sticks in honor of World Scouting Day the year my Brownie troop learned to sew. We also learned to mold candles in sand, to skate backwards, and to bake a cake in a foil-lined pizza box. And although I’ve never been called upon to host a candle-lit skating party in the wilderness, I have spent many hours with a needle and thread since that day Mrs. McWhorter showed me how to trap the end of the yarn with a pinch and slip the needle over its head before it squirmed away.

After the pagoda came the Girl Scout sit-upon, then the still-life canvases of grapes and mushrooms (mushrooms were big in the 70s), then an era of blue girls in needlepoint — a Holly Hobbit, a Pilgrim girl, a trumpeting angel with a golden halo — and finally, a miniature tapestry meant for a Victorian dollhouse, which I started in 1998 and only just finished in January, fourteen years after the first continental tent stitch.

To celebrate, I signed up for knitting lessons.

It’s not been an easy transition. Partway into the first class, I began to miss my paint-by-number canvas and the simple repetition of the single, needlepoint stitch. I couldn’t figure out how to hold the yarn — let alone the extra needle — and I couldn’t see any recognizable shape emerging from the rows of knots I held in my fist. In place of a few rules, a repeatable routine, and a guaranteed outcome, I’d stumbled into a confusing array of purls and knits in infinite combinations, patterns in a knitting language I couldn’t parse, and a group of cheery knitters encouraging me to experiment until I found a rhythm that felt “right.” At the end of each knitting lesson, I asked my teacher the same question: do you think I’ll ever figure this out?

I went to my first 12-step meeting looking for rules and routines to get me through the most challenging project I’d ever undertaken: arresting my food obsession. I wanted clear directions, a repeatable diet, and a guaranteed outcome. I wanted a happy ending — a reassuring picture of how I’d turn out in the end. I was a needlepointer, shopping for a painted canvas and thread to match.

Instead, I encountered a confusing array of tools and slogans, 12 steps I didn’t know how to take, and a group of people encouraging me to keep coming back until I found recovery for myself. I listened to their stories and knew, almost at once, that I was one of them and that the addiction they described was my own. But I sensed in them a freedom I didn’t share — a release from the constant battle with food. I wanted what they had. What should I do? How do I get better? Will I ever figure this out?

No, you won’t, they told me. You can’t figure your way out of an addiction. But you can find a way to live without excess food. If you spend time with us, watch what we do, and listen to our stories, you will begin to catch on. You will find a rhythm that feels right to you. One day at at time, the obsession will be lifted. You will be free.

They were right. After 16 years of 12-step meetings, I haven’t figured out this disease any more than I’ve figured out how purls and knits add up to a sweater. But today I know how to knit and I know how to live free of the addiction. I have a scarf, a headband, one half of a purse, and a program — imperfect, yes, but perfectly wearable.

Help wanted: Mouser. Unlimited coffee benefits.

When an uninvited 4-, 6-, or 8-legged creature shows up in our house, we apply our his and hers rules that dictate who has to remove what. Lizards, snakes, and bats (if one were to show up) are his. Bugs, spiders, and mice (all of whom do drop by, from time to time) are hers. Mine, that is.

Bugs and spiders I don’t mind. Mice, however, give me the willies. When my services are called upon, I rely on a nearly failproof system involving peanut butter, a simple trap, and a plethora of plastic bags. I set the traps, I make the rounds, and about 3 or 4 few times a year, I deposit the spoils in the front yard to signal any mouse passersby: No Vacancy at this inn.

This week, however, I’m playing Cat and Mouse with a particularly bold specimen. The little gray interloper showed up Sunday night, just in time for strawberries and an episode of All Creatures Great and Small. While James Herriot treated an enormous Clydesdale for equine canker, the little mouse treated himself to my strawberries. I still don’t know if Herriot cured the canker — I left him and the mouse to finish the operation alone.

Over the next 48 hours, the mouse figured out how to nip the peanut butter from the trap, how to move the trap, and how to outwit the trappers. It took two days and three attempts, but at last, due to the heroic attempts of my support staff, the clever little mouse is setting up housekeeping underneath the crabapple tree in our sideyard. I wouldn’t be surprised if he rings us up on Sunday to order a strawberry and peanut butter carryout to go with his video.

That’s how it works with a recurring problem. You decide whose job it is to fix it, you apply the system that’s worked in the past, and you eliminate the problem. When it shows up again, you do the same thing. Except that no two mice are exactly the same. Who knows? The next mouse may choose Scotch and cards over strawberries and a video.

For 16 years I’ve worked a program of recovery that helps me manage my food obsession. During most of those years, I have struggled to address daily challenges and disappointments without turning to excess food. When confronted with an issue that prompted me to eat, I used the tools that had helped before: I went to a meeting, I called a friend, or a I wrote about what was underneath the desire to eat. The urge to eat passed.

Recently, however, I’ve been playing Cat and Mouse with a particularly tenacious variety of the same old problem: instead of craving food in the face of difficulty, I crave control. I restrict food and watch the weight drop from the scale. I don’t understand this new iteration of the problem any more than I understand why the nearly failproof peanut butter mousetrap failed. Twice.

I don’t have to understand why my obsession has turned this ugly corner. And I don’t have to invent a new system to address it. I don’t have to look past the simple set of tools and steps I’ve already been given. On close examination, I see the corners I’ve been cutting, the steps I’ve been avoiding. I ask myself again: Do you really believe that you are powerless over food? Have you admitted that you cannot manage this problem without help from a higher power? Are you willing to turn your will and your life over to the care of this higher power?

Missing pieces (updated)

On a very cold Saturday not too long ago, we built a fire, made two mugs of coffee, and upended a box of exquisite creatures, a jigsaw puzzle of Coleoptera (beetles) and Hemiptera (true bugs.) Surveying the anatomical piece parts for an entire dirt dwelling community, we began to sort.

Even novice entomologists can tell a thorax from an edge piece, and before long, we had the border nearly done. But one piece was missing. Sure we’d find it among the insect wings and beetle mandibles, we scanned the table for a single piece, white and straight. Not there.

Thinking we’d dropped it, we crawled the floor, lifted the rugs, moved the furniture, stripped the couch, peered under lamps, checked pockets, and swept corners. Not there.

Convinced that the puzzle makers left out the piece, we googled the company and combed the web for a forum or a help desk to log our complaint. Not there.

Sometimes the one thing I think I have to have is simply not there. My picture is missing a piece and I see only the gap it leaves.

I spent the first 10 years of my marriage looking for pieces my husband did not bring to the table. I expected him to do what my dad did: write me mushy cards on Valentine’s Day, compliment my culinary experiments (even the failures), adopt my friends and family as his own, surprise me with presents I didn’t know I wanted but couldn’t live without. For years, I turned our lives upside down, looking. Not there.

Not only did I not find what was not there, I did not find what was there: my car, washed and filled before a trip; my socks, replaced after he discovered my old, thin ones; my pantry, stocked with the dried fruit I loved but couldn’t justify paying for; my savings, funneled into reliable investments.

I made an interesting discovery. Once I quit looking for missing pieces, I found extra pieces — the gifts he brought that I’d never anticipated: the birthday cakes he sculpted into doll gowns and ninja turtles for our children, the dominoes he carved for me from the honey maple and black walnut he’d been saving, the love song he wrote and played for me when I turned 49, the weekend he’d just spent with me, making me laugh over a beetle puzzle… so many extra pieces I barely remember what I thought was missing.

By Sunday night, we were five pieces away from finishing the puzzle: five spots open and five pieces left. Four pieces fit perfectly and with great ceremony, we snapped them into place. The missing border piece? Still not there.

In its place, however, we found an extra piece, an indigo-speckled tangerine wing we hadn’t expected and hadn’t known to look for. In our search for the predictable, white and straight; we’d overlooked something far grander: the serendipitous, polka-dotted and soaring.

Recitals and rockslides

At my lesson the day before my 7th-grade piano recital, Mrs. Johnson discovered I didn’t know the music she’d picked for me to play. The lovely arpeggio that was to mimic a mountain brook trickling down to the lush valley below became an avalanche of rocks unloosed by fingers and thumbs, hurtling downhill in a deafening roar.

In the silence that followed the final botched chord, I heard Mrs. J’s pencil scratch a single word in my lesson book: “Fingering!”

That’s it? Fingering? The rhythm was off, the phrasing choppy, the dynamics imperceptible, the key unrecognizable, the tune camouflaged by accidental accidentals — surely such a long list of maladies demanded a more sophisticated treatment plan.

But for every piece I poisoned with neglect, Mrs. J’s antidote was the same: fingering. Before we could address the widespread structural problems, I had to get the right fingers on the right keys. Her philosophy was simple: a note assigned to a finger is as good as played. And so, the day before the recital, I gave each note a number, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5. The numbers relieved the indecision that paralyzed the performance. Instead of deliberating over digits, I could focus on the notes. I doubt the recital audience could hear the mountain brook in my arpeggio, but they made it down to the valley without protective gear.

The disease of compulsive overeating is complex and overwhelming. Any number of triggers can set it off: a missed meal or a stray snack can precipitate a rockslide. In a matter of hours, the food obsession returns. I can’t decide what to eat or when, I worry about things I can’t control, and I pull away from other people, preferring the company of my anxiety.

Once I’m buried in rubble, the path out isn’t obvious. Even if I find a foothold and take a tentative first step, the ground shifts beneath me, as if daring me to hike out of the mess my disease has made.

When the list of what’s not working is longer than what is, I’m inclined to look only for a diagnosis as complex as the disease. I want a solution that addresses every single complaint, from constant food thoughts to fear of what lurks in the future.

“Oh, Mrs. J, where is the melody in this cacophony of noise?”

“Fingering, dear. Start with the fingering.”

And so, I get out my pencil and write out my meals for today: 1, 2, and 3. A menu assigned to a meal removes the indecision that triggers my food obsession. Instead of deciding in the moment what to eat and how much, I can focus on the people around me and how I can be useful to them. My mind is free to participate in the day. When challenges confront me, I can face them with a mind cleared of the fog that clouds my judgement when I’m distracted by food.

I don’t play many arpeggios these days, but I do pencil in my numbers when navigating tricky passages. Fingering and food plans. Thank you, Mrs. J, for the simple pickaxes I use to hew my way out of recital days and rocky terrain.

Bunsen burners and periodic tables

After we met the bunsen burners, beakers, and pipettes, Ms. Bohannon introduced our high-school Chemistry class to the periodic table of elements. Next to the graduated cylinders and Erlenmeyer flasks, the laminated chart attracted little attention. Our eyes were on the vials of brightly colored chemicals — we could hardly wait to spoon them into doll-sized crucibles and get a reaction going. We were teenagers and we knew a few things about chemical reactions.

In class, the chart of elements got shoved aside in favor of flames and bubbling liquids. But in the quiet homework hours, I came to appreciate the orderliness of the periodic table. Aligned in grid formation, elements stand in rows according to atomic number and form columns based on shared chemical properties. From the alkali metals at the left to the noble gases on the right, each element knows its place — protons and isotopes are not to be quibbled with.

In the lab, it’s impossible to observe similarities between copper and helium, or to find a single trait shared by oxygen and manganese. And who knows if they’re related in any way to Ununquadium (oon-oon-KWOD-ee-əm)? On the lab bench, they are 118 separate mounds of distinct, individual elements with little in common. When seen through the lens of the periodic table, however, order emerges. The unwieldy piles become 7 periods of 18 groups — birds of a feather, flocked together.

The issues driving my food obsession seem as varied and unrelated as those vials of chemicals lining the shelves of my high-school Chemistry lab. I went to my first 12-step meeting seeking relief from the constant food thoughts, but I felt as if I were setting aside 117 other problems to focus on this one.

When seen through the lens of the 12 steps, however; disparate, individual issues naturally sort themselves into manageable categories. At first glance, it’s impossible to see any connection between the desire to please other people and my preoccupation with the supper menu. What does the decision to skip lunch have to do with the fear of failing in the roles I most want to master? Who would suspect that guilt and remorse over past wrongs have anything to do with my fixation on calories this morning?

But they are connected — these disjointed issues of mine — by similar threads:
Powerlessness: Trying to control something I can’t (my food obsession, what others think of me, the decisions other people make)
Guilt and remorse: Feeling bad for something I did or failed to do (relationships I allowed to languish, things I left unsaid)
Fear: Acting from a scarcity mentality (there’s not enough love/money/time, my family won’t have enough, I’m not good enough)

Once I identify its category, I know how to approach an issue. Problems of powerlessness become manageable when I focus only on the factors I can control and the actions I can take. When I’m busy sweeping my side of the street, I’m too occupied to fret over what lies across the road.

Guilt and remorse can paralyze me only so long as I refuse to make the amends that need to be made. Once I apologize and do my best to repair the damage, I’m set free from past mistakes and wrongdoings.

Situations prompted by fear comprise the largest category. Left unaddressed, the fear builds monsters out of ordinary concerns — monsters that haunt both my dreams and my daytimes. Two simple questions, however, unmask the scariest giants:

1. This thing you’re so afraid of — is it happening right now?
2. Are you willing to trust that God is bigger than the leviathan that threatens to swallow you?

My fears are of things far off. When I narrow my scope to just this day, I see that God is giving me what I need for today. God will be in the far off day, too.

In the quiet morning hours, I’ve come to appreciate the 12 steps, which transform my 118 unmanageable problems into 3 surmountable challenges — birds of a feather, flocked together.

Leap Frog, leap!

The pond in my front yard is just big enough — if all are courteous — for 7 goldfish, 3 dragon flies, 15 lily pads, and 1 frog. But in the late afternoons when the fish are tired of schooling, the pond closes in on them and they gang up on Frog. They nip and nibble at him, like siblings confined to the bench seat of a small car at the end of vacation. What’s a frog to do? Swim faster? Swim farther?

It takes Frog eight or nine laps around the pond before he remembers he’s an amphibian with options not open to fish. He decides to get out of dodge and one, well-placed frog kick later, he’s sunning himself on the rock ledge in peace. Harmony ripples across the pond once more.

Sometimes I forget that I’m a human being with options not open to the fish who peck at my toes. The bills, the chores, and the to-dos languishing at the bottom of my list grow fins and dart around my ankles and before long, I’ve joined Frog in the lap lane.

For Frog, the pestering is bothersome, but he’ll not likely seek escape in a mosquito binge. For me however, unaddressed issues trigger the food obsession. When I start thinking more about food — either how to get away with less or how to sneak in more — there’s nearly always an issue I’m refusing to face.

I used to think there were only two choices: resolve the issue completely or give in to the food compulsion. Recently, I discovered a third option: I only have to decide on the very first, small step required to resolve the issue. For the stickiest of problems, deciding what to do first may seem like insignificant progress. If I’m not careful, I’ll convince myself that a tiny decision won’t make a bit of difference; difficult issues require many, many steps. But I now know the power of a decision.

It’s the decision that will give me peace, not the outcome of the dilemma. Once a decision is made the relief is immediate. The food thoughts recede. The out of control feeling subsides. Perched next to Frog on the stone wall looking down at the fish, I can see the whole yard again and make a new decision about where I want to go next. I’m a human being, after all, with options not open to fish or frog.

QWERTY in solitude

My keyboard has adopted the irksome habit of taking short breaks throughout the day. The mouse, still nimble and responsive, scampers off at the click of a button to do my bidding, but from time to time, the keyboard refuses to speak to the computer.

I run through the list of possible causes: has the application stalled? Has the cable connection dropped? Did I type an errant key combination and set off a process I didn’t intend? Then it dawns on me. The keyboard is pouting again. I unplug it and replug it and we’re off and running again. Problem solved.

For now, that is. Some days, we make it to quitting time with only one replug. Other days, we’ve had 4 time-outs by lunchtime. After a summer of second-chances, I’m out of patience. Old Qwerty knows his replacement is on the way — he made it through the order form without a single break.

When my day disintegrates into disarray, the troubleshooting follows a similar path: Did my actions set in motion a consequence I didn’t intend? Has an important relationship stalled? Is my connection to a power greater than myself intact?

Then it dawns on me. I’ve isolated myself from the company of other compulsive overeaters. Thinking I don’t have time for a meeting or a phone call, I’ve chosen to put work and chores first. Believing that I should be able to do this on my own, I feign self-reliance and set out alone.

But when I’m not in touch with others who share this struggle, I forget who I am and what I need to do to stay afloat. Unchaperoned, my thoughts and worries amplify themselves. Left to find my own answers, I see only problems. To keep my emotions in check, I turn to food, a poor substitute for fellowship.

Fortunately, a simple replug is all that’s needed. Thanks to Old Qwerty, when things go haywire, I check my vital connections first.

Hurricane’s coming — evacuate the dolls

Growing up at the top of Florida’s hurricane alley, I got used to hearing hurricane warnings and watching tracking maps on the nightly news.
“Evacuate” was one of the first 4-syllable words I learned and although my parents spoke only in hushed tones, my sister and I were old enough to detect the fear when gale force winds headed our way.

While the grownups gathered batteries, milk, bread, and peanut butter, we played “evacuation.” As the sky darkened and the pine trees bowed to the earth, we piled our baby dolls into carriages, threw in blankets and rations, and strolled around the perimeter of the yard, seeking room at a shelter. We were evacuating, getting out of dodge with all the gear a weather refugee might need.

I liked the packing best. Planning for any eventuality, I collected things to read, things to do, things to eat, things to clean with, things to keep us warm, and things to remind us of home. The dolls struggled to breath as I piled more and more provisions into the stroller.

Contingencies. If we ran out of food, I had coins to buy more. If we got cold, I had extra blankets. If we were bored, I had books; dirty, I had soap; homesick, I had souvenirs. I had a backup plan for every need. Insurance against insurance against insurance against disaster.

Insurance sales and contingency plans thrive on the particular brand of fear known as what-ifing. What if something bad happens? What if someone wants something I can’t provide? What if the rainy day comes and floods my ark?

In my struggle to find the line between responsible planning and trusting the future to God, I ask myself what’s driving me. Do I think my plans can circumvent the fear? When fear is at the root of any action, fear becomes my higher power. I can’t hear God over the din of fear.

Fear keeps me from living one day at a time, trusting God to give me what I need, when I need it. No contingency plan or stroller-load of provisions can erase the fear, but once I’m entirely ready to let go of it, God can and will.

A wise friend compares trust to a muscle that must be exercised, first with light weights and then with heavier burdens. I start small, trusting God with the worries of this day alone. When I make it safely through a storm, I look back and see that something greater than my provisions and plans got me through. The antidote to fear is not a contingency plan. It’s trust.

Elementary, my dear Watson

During the long, lazy summers of my youth, Sherlock Holmes and I spent late nights sleuthing through the gas-lit streets of London and trudging over moors looking for evidence, but often finding only clues. A single clue in the hands of Sherlock Holmes however, can unlock a mystery or reconstruct an entire crime scene. Sometimes a whole case pivots on a ransom note cut out with nail scissors or the origin of a bit of mud left on the threshold. Applying what he knows about human behavior in general, Holmes surmises the likely motive of his suspect in particular. He’s mastered the brand of logic known as deductive reasoning, in which a general concept points to a specific conclusion that is guaranteed to follow, if the concept is based on true evidence.

Although I live a long way from 221b Baker Street, I sometimes fancy myself a detective of sorts, as I try to fathom why certain events precipitate such strange, food-related behaviors in me. The daily work to stay one step ahead of my food obsession requires a detective’s vigilance: why did that comment result in my choosing to skip lunch?

Yesterday I learned that something I had said the night before caused another person to lose sleep. I apologized, of course, but the apology didn’t take away the guilt I felt. I no longer wanted the coffee I usually crave at that hour and when it was time for lunch, I didn’t have the appetite for it. How are two seemingly unrelated events — my mistake and my appetite — connected?

In general, I believe that I’m powerless over food and over people, places, and things. But in practice, I act as if I can control others’ reaction to me by avoiding mistakes and remaining blameless in every interaction. When even my best attempts fail to please another person and I realize that something I’ve done or not done has caused hurt, an alarm goes off in my head. I turn into Henny Penny: “the sky is falling, the sky is falling!”

And who can eat when the sky is falling? Since every emotion finds its expression in food, it’s not surprising that I lose my appetite upon learning that my best intentions cannot guarantee another’s love and mercy. My best intentions to control the food obsession are futile as well. Best intentions are not a loophole through which I can escape the truth that I’m powerless over food and other people.

Deduced, the string of events points to this conclusion: when I accept that I’m powerless, I experience relief from the food obsession. When I forget, the obsession returns. As Holmes would say, the general concept of powerlessness points to a specific conclusion that is guaranteed to follow, if the concept is based on true evidence. Evidence? Oh, I’ve got evidence, Mr. Holmes. Just tell me where the lorry driver should deliver it.