So This is How to Look at the World...

Lately, there's been a lot of public outrage about perceptions.
We humans like to categorize ourselves into groups. Our shapes, colors, and apparel speak volumes to observers, who make assumptions about us based on preconceived perceptions we express in the current lingo as ‘prejudice’.
In my youth, these perceptions drove me crazy and made me as angry as those currently marching our streets. As a short, olive-skinned, curly dark haired, slightly plump female who prefers clogs to heels, I've always resented having to constantly prove my intellectual and social status both in business and in society. I know in view of what others suffer because of what they look like, my suffering was slight, but nevertheless, I suffered. 
Somehow, I thought once you reached midlife people stopped judging your outsides. That the wrinkles on ones’ skin overrode any preconceived perception of category based on looks. 
In any case, I had not felt that suffering in years, so, for lack of a better word, I thought in aging we acquired the wisdom to see beyond our skin. I thought midlife made people more careful about trusting their perceptions and more willing to have their assumptions shattered. 
I was wrong.
As a perk to being on the board of a public media company that will remain nameless, I was invited to a star-studded meet-and-greet last week. Arriving late, I took my glass of Merlot to an empty seat at a table with a middle-aged couple. After the stars' presentation, there was that quiet moment when strangers know they must either make acquaintance or awkwardness will ensue.
"Hello," I said.
"Hi," said the blue-eyed grey-haired suit-and-tie wearing male of the couple. "Are you with the restaurant they took us to for lunch?"
Stunned, I immediately scanned my outfit for any misguided signs that shouted "waitress":  wool slacks, velvet shell, textured office jacket, Chanel purse, demure gold necklace, big gold earrings, diamond wedding band – nothing that would have alluded to “service help”.
OK, I was wearing booties (it was snowing after all)... Maybe it was the booties? 
No, wait, I suddenly remembered my youth...
"Did they take you to an Italian restaurant?" I asked.
"Yes - great place - you know - so much food!"
That's when the angry young me had a small eruption:
"Oh. Well, I'm not with the restaurant, I'm a board member of (the organization) that took you to that lunch. But I am Italian -- We all look alike."
The blue-eyed man seemed visibly taken aback, unwilling to let go of his assumptions, but he knew how to do a social quickstep and immediately introduced his blue-eyed wife. 
We chatted aimlessly about northern versus southern Italian food (I'm the latter, which they claim to prefer). About the event, and how great public media is (because it's such an equalizer). About their retirement to a warm climate after his wife's back ailments led her to take pain killers (she hates how they make her feel, according to him). And, finally about his ridiculous post-retirement writing and consulting ventures (he handed me two cards, one for each venture - one is an inconsistent blog...).
In return, I purposefully told them nothing about me -- in my unthinking mind this was a way to punish their impudence. 
The truly sad thing about this small encounter was that they were innocuous people. They were not bad people, and, in sincere humbleness, far less superior to me. 
But that single comment betrayed their preconceived superiority based on what my body looked like.
And that made me angry.
That comment reminded me that we retain our presumptuous perceptions well into the "wisdom" of our later years, and that they continue to sting, even when we think we are finally immune. 
Even worse, I recognized in myself a sick willingness to categorize the blue-eyed-couple into something they perhaps are not -- merely because of my own preconceived perceptions of their shape, and color, and attire...
In an utterly benign way, this week I felt a gentile slap of prejudice, and my reaction was blinding, unjustified, hate.
At this point, I suppose I should say something uplifting, like therefore this proves that we should all abandon all our prejudices -- religious, race, gender, nationalism, you name it, just get rid of it all! But then we all know how insincere that sounded and how badly that went for poor Nick in "Gatsby".
What I am now willing to say is that I can no longer write off the anger on our streets, (as I did to my youngest daughter), as mere youthful outrage.

The current marches against the folly and tragedy of preconceived perceptions may just be misspent energy, (a desperate search for a simple answer to a complicated situation), but they sadly point to a visceral unalterable truth.

So This is How to Pick Yourself Up Off the Floor...

I'm luckier than most...when I lag behind, there's usually a friend around to kick my ass.
In this case it was a family member who claims he's missed my blog. Well, he didn't exactly say he missed (or even liked) this blog, he just complained I could not keep a commitment.
So, partially in response to Chris, mainly in response to life, I'm picking myself up off the floor and resuming the human march, and this blog.
Falling on the floor is what we do when things don't go our way. In my case it happened in response to the funnel cloud swirling around my father since his dementia got the better of him, and then he died.
Just the act of typing the words "he died" pushed me again into that whirling tunnel, spinning my thoughts towards the emptiness we are witness to when a loved one is no longer there. I chose the image of the funnel cloud with reason - death is a force of nature, that, though understood, is impossible to comprehend or manage. The closer you are to that cloud, the more you are sucked into its vortex, the less you comprehend, the harder you fall.
It's natural to focus on death once a parent dies, or you yourself have lived past that mid-century mark. Given all the thought I've expended on death lately, I confess to not understanding its consequence.
A few years ago, when my husband's dear uncle suddenly died, I read Buddhist tracts because I could not (still can't) wrap my mind around the idea that a person ceases "being". Buddhists (or at least the one I read) explained that it's like a radio in the room: the signal is always there, it just gets turned "on" and "off" occasionally. Okay...I'm Christian, but the idea that the "signal" is still around seemed so much more comforting than the idea that the person left us completely to go somewhere much nicer than where we are.
So it was natural then that when my father died, I saw him everywhere - even in the personality of stranger's dogs who, I reasoned, were nudging me to pet them because somehow my father's being was in them, and he wanted me to know he loved me. I've been told it's common.
When I was around seven, I finally mastered the art of skipping and was showing it off to my father ("Look at me! Look at me!) when I tripped and fell breaking my arm.
Fifty years later, I can still feel his strong carpenter's arms picking me up off that floor, and that wave of comfort that I forever associated with my father -- that I was going to be okay, that he would take care of me, that there was nothing that could hurt me as long as he was around.
I think that's what a good parent is supposed to elicit, and he did.
Recently I took my widowed mother to Boston for a treat. We were walking arm in arm down Back Bay's charmingly wobbly sidewalks to a favorite restaurant when, in a rare moment of blitheness for both of us as we are too similar in spirit, I tripped and fell.
No broken arm this time, just a bloodied lip.
I picked myself up.
Life goes on.