“Take yourself, for instance,” he went on saying. “Right now you don’t know whether you are coming or going. And that is so, because I have erased my personal history. I have, little by little, created a fog around me and my life. And now nobody knows for sure who I am or what I do.”

Reading Castaneda last night, I realized that this is what I’d done. It feels so good to know that no one can pin you down! You can do whatever you want, if you have the guts (and the stamina) to make it work. I was making it work. I was equal parts intensely proud of myself… and running myself into the ground. I didn’t want to give it up—I still don’t. But geeze, there will be more challenges. This isn’t the only hard thing I can do in my life. This isn’t the only place where I can persevere and prove myself.

Ooh-hoo, not a chance.

Navigating the Trenches

I’m visiting my parents in Youngstown this week, and I’ve been almost constantly conscious of the weird impulses I get just because I’m in an old, familiar place with old, familiar smells and the associated familial people behaving in familiar, familial ways. It’s reminding me of how far I’ve come in a relatively short period of time. Obviously I’m not this person anymore. But who am I?

Damn good question.

Driving around town to go to lunch and pick my mother up from the airport I noticed that I vividly recalled every single spot where a car I was piloting had broken down. Here is where the drive shaft fell out of my Volvo on the highway. Here is where the copper-colored Ford LTD (that BOAT!) puttered out, thick white gouts of smoke streaming out behind. Here is where I hit the deer in the middle of the night, here is where I spun across the ice into a ditch. Here is where I bumped the curb and blew out a tire.

Such small memories, almost completely inconsequential to my life, and I remember them in perfect clarity. Almost certainly because my amygdala categorizes them as Dangerous and Worthy of Note, but still—interesting, isn’t it? And it reminds me how valuable it is to make a point of remembering good things. To stick them in our heads and repeat them like a mantra. To paste them on the walls, loop them in our iPods, write them in lipstick on mirrors. The good parts, what are the good parts? Otherwise, what do we remember about a place? The awful hammering we woke up to. The dust of construction. The friendships that fell out. The dog bites. The busted fingers. The bad sushi. Oh, the bad sushi. I’ve got some clarity on that one, I’ll tell you.

All those times the car broke down, that’s not my LIFE.

But that fact is still something I need to consciously remember.

Realizing That I’m Real

The real kicker, I’ve noticed, is to realize that there is a real core of me that isn’t affected by external pain. Although my body remembers the bad stuff, the bad stuff isn’t me. It’s a bizarre trap we all get sucked into, and, a la The Power of Now (which I’ve just started listening to and is probably going to be one of my Favorite Books Ever), I am currently all about reminding myself that there is a part of me that isn’t touched by any of it. Not even just a part—my whole real self. How’s that for metaphysical!

And along those lines, it’s my whole real self that is still me even if I can suddenly describe myself to someone who doesn’t know me. My whole real self is still me even if I decide to continue building a fog, obscuring or removing personal history in order to stay “safe”. Safety doesn’t make a difference to that core Megan, anyway. Safety is overrated.

I’d rather live a brilliant, meaningful life than just be safe.

And so I took the fog away.

It’s getting clearer all the time!

If you’d like, you can read parts one, two, and three, before reading on.

I always knew that my Grampa Mac was an amazing guy, but I don’t think I realized that he did the very things I have come to respect most: He didn’t settle for jobs that weren’t right for him, and when he had an idea, he ran with it and made it happen.

He was exactly the kind of person I’ve come to admire greatly, and do you think that’s a coincidence? An incredible turn of fate? Or could it be that, growing up hearing stories about him, I simply followed the most natural progression of ideas to hold a philosophy that makes the most sense to me?

My Dad continued his story.

Mac’s manufacturer’s representative idea became real, his furniture showroom flourished, and he was in business as a salesman. And it was around that time when he came upon the book that would be his bible as he progressed through his career: How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie.

He stumbled upon it, Dad said, or someone recommended it to him—Dad said he doesn’t know. But however it came into his life, he truly took it to heart. It was one of the things that really helped him; whereas all the salesmen of the day were fast-talking and pushy, Mac was a quiet man, a wonderful listener, and he really, really liked people.

He liked listening to them and hearing their stories. He had a good memory, so he’d always remember who they were. He was never heavy-handed with them, and very shortly after the war was over, Mac was making $60,000 a year.

“And remember,” my Dad said, “that a good salesman then would be doing very well at $5,000 a year.”

“WHOA,” I said.

In fact, Mac was so rolling in money in those years that when it came to buying the house on Long Island that my father grew up in, he didn’t get a mortgage. Mac gave them cash for that house on the spot.

“How did he get to be making $60,000 a year?” I asked.

Here’s what my Dad told me—what he’s been telling me since I was very small: Mac did so well selling furniture that it was not too hard at all to pay back the original 500 he’d gotten from Flo (and her gangster). “We’re talking about the post-war boom,” Dad said, “where America and America’s products and people were really pretty prosperous.” And Mac was great at selling furniture. The moment he started selling to stores, they started buying. The major factories used to complain, my Dad said, because Mac gave them so many orders, they couldn’t make the furniture fast enough to fill them!

Mac became friends with every single small furniture store owner in New York City. “They all knew my father,” Dad said. “People who came from all over—Frenchmen and Jews and Italians and I think I told you this, but he said that very frequently he got so caught up in who they were and liking to talk with them and liking to find out what was going on in their lives, that he’d forget to sell them furniture. He’d say goodbye and he’d walk right out of their store—and they had to pull him back to give him an order! ‘Hey!’ they’d say. ‘Hey, don’t you want me to order some furniture?’”

That was my Grampa Mac.

The beginning of this story, told to me by my Dad, can be found here. The next part is right here.

Mac had already married Mina by the time he hit his thirties, but they hadn’t had my father or my Aunt Joan yet. They were waiting for the Depression to end before having children.

“What was their life like?” I asked. “Were they poor? How hard was it when he’d quit a job?”

My Dad told me: “He would quit a job, come home, tell my Ma, and he’d say, ‘Mina, I just couldn’t do that.’ And she’d say, ‘How much money do you have in your pocket?’ And Dad would say, ‘I think we’re down to the last ten dollars!’ and my Mom would say ‘Good, let’s go to Radio City Music Hall and afterwards we’ll buy a steak!’ And that’s what they did.”

Something would always come up, he explained. Mina had gone to secretarial school, and if one of them wasn’t working the other managed to find something. For a long time, Mina was the secretary for the president of a large medics company in New York—Zodos. She was the secretary for old man Zodos. There was always a little bit of money coming in one way or another, during World War II.

Old man Zodos was not a very nice person, Dad explained. “Except for some reason,” he said, “like the women in that family, my mother was little but fearless.” They were just not afraid of anyone, Dad said. “I don’t know exactly why. They just didn’t have that gene.” So somebody like old man Zodos—very wealthy and intimidating—just did not intimidate Mina at all. “You know how little she was,” Dad recounted.

My grandmother was very little!

One day there was going to be a parade, and Mina told old man Zodos that she was going to take two hours for lunch. She wanted to see Winston Churchill in the parade. Old man Zodos said, “Eh, if you take two hours for lunch, don’t you dare come back here!”

So Mina went out for the parade.

She was standing on the corner, and right as Winston Churchill was going to pass by, the parade stopped. Right at the corner where she was standing!

She looked wide-eyed into the car, and right there was Winston Churchill.

Then the parade started up again.

As you can imagine, Mina felt quite vindicated in terms of her choice to take two hours for lunch and go see the parade. When he was younger, my Dad asked her, “Well Mom, did you lose your job?” And my grandmother said, “Oh now, I didn’t lose my job. I just went back there like nothing happened and when I came in, he just gave me some more work to do.”

The beginning of this story, told to me by my Dad, can be found here.

After his resignation from the New York City Department of Welfare, Mac looked for a whole lot of different jobs. One job he took for awhile was building those ski-ball machines—working in a ski-ball machine factory. Another time, he got on a long employment line at the Brooklyn Navy Yard with his brother-in-law, Aaron. (Aaron was the husband of Esther, Mac’s sister.) Aaron was a very talented and good machinist, but when the interviewer interviewed both of them, Mac got the job.

Mac promptly found out that the job involved working on scaffolds—200 feet up in the air! He took one look at that, and he walked right off the job. It was very hard to get a job then! People were yelling at him, Come back! Come back! And Mac said, “I’m not going up there!”

“How did Grandma Mina feel about Grampa Mac always quitting jobs?” I asked.

“Your Grandma was a very very very sweet woman,” my Dad said, “who simply backed him in anything that he wanted to do. He was just the nicest person, and there was nobody who ever spoke badly about him—ever.”

During World War II, things finally got better; Mac got a job at Republic Aircraft as an inspector. It was his job to inspect the Thunderbolts, check them out and put his seal of approval on them before they were shipped off to the army in the war. He was quite good at it!

When my Dad was younger, he asked Grampa Mac, why didn’t he stay doing that? And Grampa Mac said that at Republic Aircraft there was a big blackboard where they would list statistics, and whenever a plane was shot down it would be listed on that board. Mac just felt too bad, seeing the planes that he’d inspected being shot down by the Germans. He was the inspector, after all. He took that really personally.

Mac’s brother Teddy did very well in the garment business. (Teddy eventually became a millionaire.) So for awhile in his mid-thirties, Mac worked for Teddy and sold clothing. “Do you know who he worked with, who was also selling clothing?” my Dad asked me. “Zeppo Marx,” he answered himself. “One of the Marx Brothers. He’s the one who wasn’t goofy looking,” my Dad explained. “He was always one of the leads in the movies—he was the fourth Marx brother.”

I hadn’t known that.

The real problem, my Dad explained to me, was that the garment industry was controlled by the mafia. Mac didn’t like the unsavory characters, so he quit working for Teddy. So then, once more, he was without a job! But this time he got an idea. He would become a manufacturer’s representative! His idea was to set up a really nice furniture showroom where he could sell lines of furniture to the furniture stores in New York.

There were already manufacturer’s representatives, my Dad explained, but they just took samples of wood and pictures of furniture to their customers. Mac was one of the only representatives who put together a spiffy showroom where store owners could come and actually see the furniture.

Well, Mac wanted to set this up—but he needed 500 dollars to do it! Of course, he didn’t have 500 dollars. But it just so happened that his sister Flo was this really beautiful redhead—just really really striking—and she and Mac were pretty close in age. She was so beautiful that a New York gangster had gotten really stuck on her, fell in love even, and treated her like a princess. For many years they lived on a fancy yacht in the New York Harbor, because this gangster was very rich. (Poor Aunt Flo didn’t live very long, Dad told me, because she had a bad heart from rheumatic fever. She eventually died very young—maybe in her late thirties or early forties.)

In any case, Flo heard that Mac needed 500 dollars, and she said, “No problem! I’ll get it for you.” And she did.

Of course, it was only later that she told him that the gangster had given the money to her to give to him. So Mac got very worried about this particular deal, and he worked very very hard in those early years chiefly so that he could pay off the gangster!

“Did he?” I asked.

“Yeah, he paid off the gangster,” my Dad said. “But what he told me was that, where the gangster was an actual gangster, and had killed people and things like that—when it came to Flo and the family, you would never meet a more polite, generous, warm-hearted, good-natured, compassionate man.”

My Dad told me this story.

What you need to understand about Grampa Mac is that he was always pretty shy, but the man had principles. Growing up in New York City, he always felt compelled to rescue the underdog; he’d frequently jump into fights to rescue smaller kids being picked on, and whathaveyou. (For that reason, he repeatedly got himself punched in the nose. In those days there wasn’t any such thing as a plastic surgeon—so if your nose was broken, you rearranged it on your face so it looked sort of right, and you let it heal. That’s what Mac did.)

Mac’s father was Jewish and had come from Poland. Mac’s father’s name was Sam, and Sam was rather short, but incredibly strong—one might say, preternaturally strong.

Great-Grampa Sam was so strong that he bet somebody 200 dollars that he could lift a horse over his head. “You gotta understand how much 200 dollars was in those days,” my Dad said; “This was 1900 or so, and it was a considerable amount of money!” Sure enough, Sam got under the horse and lifted the horse over his head!

“An adult horse?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Dad said. “Sam came to the United States when he was 12 years old, and he got a job delivering ice and coal to the brownstones in Brooklyn. But the houses had really steep steps going up to them, so he had to climb the steps with the ice and coal—and that combined with the fact that he was Polish got him very, very strong.”

One time someone was beating up Sam’s brother, and Sam went over to a small tree, literally uprooted it with his hands, and started hitting the bully with it. “Not a big oak or anything,” my Dad told me, “but it was a tree.”

It was rather lucky to have a strong dude like Sam in the family, since Sam’s bullied-upon brother later delivered Mac when he was born. You can see how Mac might grow up feeling the protector!

“So anyway,” my Dad said.

Mac was nearly six feet tall. People on the block called him the skinny hero. Mac hardly said anything, but was by all accounts a very, very good listener. That he could do very, very well. And because he was a basically good person, people really trusted him.

Much of Mac’s adult life was spent going through the Depression. (I hear that the Depression is not so much something one “found oneself in” so much as something one “went through”.) In his mid-twenties, Mac needed a job and couldn’t find one—like everyone else!—so he got himself a forged transcript saying that he had a graduate degree in social work from New York University. On the basis of that transcript (and because he was very very decent) he landed a job as a supervisor in the New York City Department of Welfare. He became very good at what he did.

One day an FBI agent showed up looking for him and asking for Mac Morris. The secretary called him and said, “There’s an FBI agent outside who’d like to see you.” Immediately Mac thought, of course, that he’d been busted. They’d found out he’d gotten the job under false pretenses and since the job involved recommendations for the disbursement of large amounts of money, and this was the Depression, Mac assumed (reasonably so!) that if he got caught, he’d go to prison.

“So then what!?” I asked.

“Well,” Dad continued.

Mac immediately retreated to the bathroom. He spent several minutes trying to make up a story that he could tell the FBI agent, something that would keep him from getting thrown in jail! But finally he left the bathroom, and was just about to throw himself on the mercy of the guy—tell him that he was newly married, that he just really, really needed a job, that he was desperate…

But before he could say a thing, the FBI agent put his hand up. “Before you speak,” the FBI agent said, “I want to tell you why I’m here.”

And so the FBI agent proceeded to tell him that they were doing a whole reorganization of the FBI. It was this FBI agent’s job to scrutinize the public agencies to find men who were both honest and exemplary, and offer them jobs as FBI agents.

He then told Mac that he had looked at his record as a supervisor at the New York City Department of Welfare, and found that his work was simply outstanding. And would he like to join the FBI?

Well.

Mac told the FBI agent that he was quite patriotic, and this was certainly an honor. But, he said, he knew an FBI agent had to be in the field… and he was newly married, so… that just wouldn’t be acceptable. Of course.

So the guy thanked him, and Mac said, “If I can ever be of any help to you, please come back.” And the FBI agent left.

That week, Mac resigned from the New York City Department of Welfare. “Never went back,” my Dad said.

My parents may have purchased me a wonderful floppy sun hat for my birthday, and I may be utterly delighted, and that might possibly have resulted in my using it for nefarious purposes!

Best present ever.

PS. Maybe it’s all the raw food, but I’m a wacko today! :P

Daydream on Autopilot—the band that my little sister heads up—won their category in the Hollywood Music Awards last night. I don’t know much, but I know there were 30,000 entries and Em says red carpet photos are coming soon. Dude! How about that!?

They were nominated for “Better Off Alone”, which is an amazing song—here’s my favorite old video of the acoustic version (I go running to the album version and it’s freaking awesome):

Their website is here (careful, it’s autoplay): Daydream on Autopilot. I can’t point you to the Hollywood Music Awards, because apparently they exceeded their bandwidth…

I’ll post more when I know more. Very pleased!

I was walking down the stairs at my parents’ house in Youngstown when I realized something monumental—something that perhaps I never realized before:

There’s no need for me to base my standard of success on my parents.

There’s no need for me to use their criteria to judge whether I’ve done well. It’s only my standards that matter.

The only person who counts, in judging my success, is me.

My parents have always been incredibly insightful and supportive, but (like any other kid on the planet) I’ve often felt like they kind of… don’t get it. Even now, at 27 (and maybe more than ever), they sometimes respond in perplexing ways. They’re just different people. More and more, I seem to want them to understand what I’m doing, why it’s wonderful.

But… I guess they don’t need to.

My parents are a little like the soil I grew in. The soil doesn’t have to be like the fruit. The soil serves a different purpose. If my parents were the fruit, I couldn’t have grown in them in the first place!

So it’s incredibly good that they are who and what they are. They have given me amazing things to learn from and work with, even if I get frustrated when they’re not just like me.

It’s the lot of every child in the universe, to be different.

Our parents don’t have to be like us.

It’s enough that they grew us, and that we are awesome.

Okay. I get it.

So far this morning I have made delicious fry-like baked potatoes, perused four high school notebooks, and half-assed a kickboxing video. What have you accomplished since midnight? ;}

One of the things I found was a list buried in the back of the last notebook I picked up. Here is the list:

Monday June 15 1998

Very big, not too marked:
Archibald, Oldest, 12:00 PM (big, almost no spot)
Otto (VERY LOUD!), Third, 3:00 PM (big, bigger marking)

Slightly smaller:
Fergus, Seventh, 5:40 PM (middle marking)

Big girls:
Cassandra, Sixth, 5:30 PM (3 spots – little ones)
Elektra, Fourth, 4:30 PM (“7” marking)

Itty bitty girls:
Mina, Fifth, 5:00 PM (bigger marking)
Isabel, Second, 1:30 PM (littler marking)

Big:
Gregory, EIGHTH, 7:10 PM (big, marking to right of chest, very small)
Zeno, NINTH!, 9:00 PM (bowtie sorta mark)

Liesl’s puppies were born on a pile of blankets in the corner of the master bedroom on Warner Road. I was all alone in the house when it started, and it was incredibly scary and awesome.

Archie, Elektra and Gregory sold when they were small. Cassandra was sick, and Mina was too very tiny; though we tried to get them to eat from a bottle, they died soon after they were born. Dad buried them in the back yard, and played Amazing Grace on his bagpipe chanter. Fergus survived for longer but he was weak; he stayed very little and, as it turned out, had a congenital heart problem. We gave him a big, strong name to disguise his size. He stayed and got loved for awhile, but eventually moved on.

Zeno and Isabel were fluffy throwbacks, and we dispensed with all delusions of selling them—we like throwbacks. We always have.

Otto stayed with us, too. He was always a big scaredy. His list designation of “VERY LOUD!” refers to the constant yowling and whining of his puppyhood. He (mostly) grew out of it, into a great-looking dog. All dogs should be as brilliantly handsome as Otto, and as eager to please.

Isabel stayed with us for many years, Zeno’s bestest pal and partner in crime. We think she got something out of the garbage that made her sick. We were so sad to have her leave. It’s easy to remember the moments when she was the sweetest possible dog—but her mischief and sheer ability to vex others are also a credit to her memory.

Now Zeno and Otto live with my parents in Ohio. Zeno’s the youngest and maybe the best of them—but the biggest left at home and definitely the one in charge. He’s full of clever and awesome. He asks politely before climbing up on a couch to snuggle the people there. He’s a great dog. Otto’s constant companion is a stray Emily brought home in high school, Hopey. And a few years ago, Marty’s little sister picked up an adorable little dog we later named Goliath, and Emily took him home to New York with her. It wasn’t too long after that she went on tour, though, so Goliath came back to Ohio and became Zeno’s new buddy. Far more vocal, I’d say, and more obnoxious than Isabel… but it’s nice for Zeno to have a bud. You know?

Even if they do make a racket!

Hey. I miss my dogs.

In November I’ll be visiting Youngstown for a long weekend for business (and birthdays!), with no clear idea of what net access will be available. My flights there and home are on Thursday Nov. 1st and Monday Nov. 5th, respectively, so if I go incommunicado you can expect me back the 6th (Tuesday) or thereabouts.

With Youngstown business so much on my mind these days, I would have liked to extend my visit—which I think I’ll do when I go in February. There’s a lot to see and do in Youngstown these days, and I don’t know the half of it. (Don’t worry, I promise to find out, and report back…)

If you need anything in the meantime, you know where to find me. ;}