My File Cabinet/Myself

In recent days I have learned a lot about identity.   Mine.

As we unpack our belongings: furniture, clothes, files, books, knick knacks, family photos, art,  in our new home,  many months and miles from our old home, I have experienced both the joy of reunion with  my “stuff” and the profound grief over “stuff”  gone forever.

Some of our “stuff” I haven’t seen for 3 or 4 months, some, almost a year.  As we put our house up for sale we were required by various “stagers,” consultants to the real estate industry,  to pack up beloved books,  family pictures,  and even art pieces that told too much about who we were (“too ethnic”).  Though I thought this was highly unscientific advice and was incensed by the implied criticism,  I acquiesced.

My house started to feel like an alien space.  It looked more like a “model home” than my

slightly cluttered, but very personal and, I thought, warm and homey abode. 

Due to a sluggish housing market and some bad luck,  it took many more months to sell our house and move into our new digs here in Maryland. 

The worst was the books,  followed closely by family pictures.  Both tell the story of our lives. I don’t see collecting books as a vanity project but rather a chronicle of where we have been with our intellectual passions our not so intellectual passions and indulgences, our journeys both geographic and spiritual.  Some books go back to college and graduate school.  The pictures and photo albums… well we all understand about the pictures.

What really threw me was my reaction to not having a place to unpack my files,  old patient files,  courses constructed and taught over the years, material from particularly treasured courses I took as a student,  research for academic articles long since published,  ideas for books not read,  projects never launched.

I had already wrenched myself away from boxes and boxes of this stuff.  This was the distillation  of all that torturous weeding process.

My crummy metal filing cabinets were sacrificed on the altar of expediency and the knowledge that new housing would be substantially smaller.   After all we were downsizing. 

I was really bushwhacked by how horribly upset I was when there was no cabinet to hold this aspect of my identity.   Where were my ideas, my life’s work,  going to live if not in those battered, garage-sale-quality file cabinets?  What would happen to them?   What would I do?   Who will I be?

This may all sound crazy.  I guess it is a bit,  but  I really think this aspect of my work life

was and is much more central to my identity than I realized.  My file cabinet and its contents  contribute to what makes me feel whole, integrated, and worthy.  Even if I never look at another piece of paper in those files their presence affirms me in a way that I really need.  Still.

I think its worth thinking about what there is in our lives that fulfills this role.  Sure there are our core people that play this role, spouse, children, grandchildren, extended family, good friends. And then there is art in all of its expressions that fulfills this function.  Even pets. 

What is it for you?

COMMUNITY

We are all part of many communities. I am part of many communities. I am about to leave one of my most sustaining communities: my synagogue. I will be moving away and I will be leaving my synagogue. The synagogue for me has been all about community, very little about religious practice. I have been a member since I was pregnant with my now 31 year old daughter. That’s a long time.

In the Jewish tradition separating yourself from community is seen as a major problem. The community is the very expression of G-D. Prayer is done in community, holiday celebrations are done in community, mourning and addressing one’s soul, all done in community.

I am just beginning to assess what this separation will mean to me. I have gotten a few posts from my unconscious. Thought I would share.

Post #1. I was looking at the facial profile of an acquaintance, a woman I have known for most of 30 years. I do not know her well, but I know that face. I was noticing that it is now the face of an older woman—a woman probably nearing 70. She looks all of those years, but I don’t really see that. I see a montage: a woman of 40, 45, 50. I see a very bright woman, a somewhat argumentative woman, an annoying woman. I see all those qualities accompanied by visual images superimposed on one another. I see her as she really is I think, a collection of all her younger selves. I don’t have an emotional history with her so there is really no affective content—but the visual alone is quite complex.

In this moment, sitting around a table with people who have no history with her, I had a flash as to how she looks to these new friends and acquaintances. I’m sure they look at her and see an older woman. All that that phrase means “older woman” is all that they see. Her current audience doesn’t see the kaleidoscope. They see her as she is now. There is no dynamic picture, the one that carries meaning, the one that has a past as well as a present. That face, that montage: I think of it as the “real” face.

Post #2. Recently I sat at a Purim party in the synagogue watching a smart and funny Purim play. I knew many of the participants. As I watched the “shpiel” I thought: I have known these people forever, and then surprisingly I heard a quiet voice in my head: “and I forgive them.” I wasn’t even sure what that thought meant, but it felt right. In that moment I had enough distance to feel my love for them, and their flaws, their errors, the injuries we have inflicted on one another, small and large. For a moment my ego, my involvement was suspended. For the moment none of that mattered. What mattered was history, shared affection, and forgiveness.

These are people with whom I have an affective history—the photo montage is not just visual, it is emotional, it is real. Over 30 year there has change, growth, maturity,and a lot of loss. All of it. To have something to forgive is meaningful and it comes only with the gift of time.

So in my new community I can only hope to be able to know people well enough to approximate their “real” faces, and have mine be known (approximately) by them. It is, however, unlikely that I will experience enough intimacy enough intensity to become truly, meaningfully forgiving and forgiven.

MOVING

In my twenties I moved a lot. A lot.


The college I attended had a “co-op” program which meant that every 3 or 6 months I moved off campus (and sometimes across the country) for a co-op job or I moved back from a job to campus. After 5 years of this it was on to grad school for two years (where I moved three times). And after that to New York City for a serious career job. I was in N.Y. for 5 years. I moved 3 times.

I married and we moved to New Jersey shortly after our first child was born. 
All of this made me crazy. I swore I would stay put from that point on. I longed to stay put. And that pretty much came to pass. We have moved only twice since settling across the Hudson. We are in our present house for thirty years.

Now I am moving again. Children grown, grandchildren born, retirement beckons and we have decided its time for a big change: more compact digs, new city, new life.

The process has barely begun and again… I am crazy.

During one of my moves from one Upper Westside apartment to another, a psychologist friend who did a lot of psychological testing and analysis told met that there was one Rorschach (inkblot) card that was a surefire diagnostic indicator for schizophrenia. Truly psychotic individuals had a characteristic response that reliably distinguished them from sane folk.

The Rorschach tests consists of a series of images that resemble inkblots—symmetrical blobby pictures that the tester invites the testee to interpret: what do you see here? People’s responses, at least the pattern of responses, are believed to indicate something important and enduring about the individual’s personality and their inner world. Interestingly, though, and she said this to reassure me, when moving, ordinary folk reliably respond like schizophrenics. Indeed I was probably only temporarily crazy.

Not only was I reassured, I regularly pass this information on to others, patients, family, friends who are undergoing a move.

This post is about my musings on this phenomena. Probably it is just the beginning of several posts on this subject, for this process will take many months and probably my craziness will take many forms

When I listen to the dreams of patients I have found that houses (and more women seem to dream about houses then men) a house represents the self in dreams. I have had many dreams in which I discover a secret unexplored room, or a room that I have forgotten was in my house. I remember a dream one of my children had when young about large, scary, snarly animals in the basement. The first dream seems optimistic—more facets of the self to explore, the second demonstrates the ubiquity of scary and probably angry feelings that children have to cope with as they grow into themselves.

My guess is that moving upsets the balance, that it requires a re-organization of the self and for awhile there is chaos inside. Many of the familiar props, those that assert who I am will change: the street on which I live, the stairs that ascend to my bedroom, even the smell of my home as I let myself in the front door.  These props help me to feel safe,  cohesive:  I know who I am.  Without them,  all of that is up from grabs.

My hope is that all of this challenge and change will lead to growth and expansion within myself rather than a term of institutionalization.   Stay tuned.