Your Life's Work

In this iteration of the blog, three vignettes illustrating three different kinds of life work. 

Life of Georges 

My uncle Georges, my father's brother, just passed at 92. 

After an excruciating taxi journey through dusk and Paris traffic, and having to stop the cab several times to get some air, my father made it to the funeral and watched his brother being lowered into the ground at the Pantin cemetery. He saw old friends, hugged my nephew Patrick, and wept over his departed brother. "Georges," he said, "never stopped being a protective older brother. He looked out for me always." 

Their relationship was more complicated than that.  

[Georges and Claudie with Lisa and I, 10 years ago or so] 

Uncle Georges was tall and handsome, a well-known dandy and popular sight in the streets of Tunis. He took his sweet time settling down despite his eminent eligibility. He eventually married Claudie Baron, who besides being an archetypal, stunning, Jewish-Tunisian, black-haired, delicate-featured beauty, was from a good bourgeois family. With some help from his father-in-law Max, Georges became an insurance broker. And that's what he did for the remainder of his days. 

But that was not his life's work. His work began in 1942, as the Allies were dropping bombs to dislodge the Nazis from Tunisia. My grampa Maurice (after whom I'm named: Laurent Maurice Liscia) was taken hostage at the Kommandantur a couple of times, and it was Georges who tagged along with my grandma Cecile to get him freed. Twice. How they pulled that off I have no clue. Jews were already being executed in public, and the Nazis were working on mass deportation plans. 

The hostage situations and the bombings, bad as they were, paled in comparison to the terrible thing that happened to my father's side of the family in 1942. My aunt Simone, the eldest, whom my father describes as someone sweet, refined and sensitive, and who was equally adored by her two little brothers, took a hot bath and died of monoxide poisoning from a faulty furnace. After first-aid failed, Georges ran to every pharmacy in Tunis to try and find a remedy. Needless to say that didn't work. Simone was gone, leaving a gaping hole in the heart of the family.  

My dad was so heartbroken he couldn't even cry. He was shamed for it. Georges didn't understand. Their mother Cecile, who had always thought of my dad as the runt of the family, and "less than", took out her grief on him. My gramps is an absentee figure in this dark origin story. He was probably too busy thinking about how to sell the crockery at his store; and keeping it together, because that's what men did. 

I think I was in college before I knew I'd ever had an aunt who had died well before I was born. 

Georges and my dad were polar opposites, and they went their separate ways, even though they both ended up in Paris. They were too different to be close: my dad was a clone of Albert Camus, a naive stranger in a cynical land who conquered his chosen profession (journalism) through sheer talent. My uncle was not a talented man, not in the traditional sense, and he didn't have one intellectual bone in his body. His favorite pastime was playing cards for money with a group of party friends. 

And so Georges and Claudie rebuilt their Tunis social life in Paris, living "la vida loca." Except now they had a kid. Patrick was in the way of their partying. They solved the problem by dropping him off at my grandma Cecile's - where he practically ended up living. My cousin told me once that his real mother was Cecile. She certainly loved him like a son. And I loved him like a brother. I was as protective of Patrick as my dad claims Georges was of him. And that made me view Georges and Claudie in a dim light, because kids are judgy that way. 

George's life work resumed when Patrick grew up and started his own restaurant business. He asked his parents for financial aid and nearly bankrupted them. He felt he was entitled after being abandoned as a kid, and he made that known. Georges had no leg to stand on. He grew into the father he'd never been: steadfast, loving, patient, forgiving, no matter how whiplashed he got. This went on for decades. He was forged in the fires of his son's revenge. 

In his eulogy, Patrick said: "My dad and I had our differences. But I loved him." 

The loop is closed. R.I.P. Georges. I'll never have the chance to talk to you again. 

Life of Kent 

For some lucky people, their life's work is what they do for a living. That was not the case for me, but it certainly was for our friend Kent. After charmed beginnings in Sweden, and a hyper-experiential youth full of high adventure, much sex, lots of drugs and plenty of rock'n'roll, Kent settled in California. By then he had already acquired his unflappable, bon-vivant equanimity, and launched into business without any qualms. He did a few odd jobs, married a gorgeous Mexican woman, had a beautiful son, and found his clever way into the furniture business. 

Kent makes light of his knack for interior decor and likes to describe his business success as "bullshitting his way through life," but you shouldn't believe him for one second. He is dead serious about aesthetics, and his excellent taste, whether for decor, clothing or fine wines, is unerring. That's the fiber of his being. And it's also his path in life. I'm really moved by that, and when I think of him, which is often, I experience what the Buddhists call "Muditta", joy for others. I think he's considering passing his furniture store on to someone else, and I wanted to pay tribute to his artistry before that happens with a few pictures. 

The pix are mine and they hardly do his life's work justice, but you'll get a vague sense of what he's been up to. 

The mask is actually a super-fun and very comfy chair! 

Had to sneak this one in of a pretty woman who happens to be my wife. 

 

And the above is said Kent with fabulous Carmen, his partner of many years, who insists I introduced them at the Y, a long time ago. Maybe I did, but they had to do all the clicking. Carmen is more proof that Kent has impeccable taste.  

Life of Bret and Sheila 

Lisa and I are fortunate enough to know a few power couples, couples who have great marriages, or have made a real difference in the community, or both. You know who you are. 

Bret and Sheila are highly trained, highly experienced therapists who have never shied from breaking new therapeutic ground - as may be appropriate in California ;-). We knew Bret before Sheila serendipitously came into his life. 

Bret was a pioneer in Reichian modalities and was teaching patients and therapists to precisely track breathing and physical manifestations of emotion as ways  to unearth and deal with trauma. He trained Lisa in somatic therapy, and she was about to embark on her journey as a practitioner when MS derailed that plan - and many other plans. 

Bret referred me to Marc Shuler, who showed me that my back pain and migraines were connected to old patterns, taught me mindfulness, and shared the powerful insight that everything we feel is a state, no more, no less. It passes. That's how I got into Buddhism, conquered my awful headaches, and deepened my understanding and acceptance of what had been difficult about my childhood. I returned to therapy with Bret a few years back to get support around caregiving and work stress. 

By then Bret had married Sheila, and they were becoming nationally known experts in shame work. I got a taste of that they were working on, and investigated some of my own shame around sex, power and relationship. It was an uncomfortable but liberating process. What I learned was that shame can be embraced to very good use. In Bret and Sheila's words: “While toxic shame can keep us stuck in a self-defeating vortex, there is a healthy expression of shame designed to protect us, help us change, and actually build our self-esteem.”

Intriguing, right? 

To find out more, you can check out the book they just finished writing, "Embracing Shame," on Amazon. 

My favorite comment on the book is from Bret himself: "It has been a very intense year and a half.  I rose to a level of writing for many hours every day that I didn’t know I was still capable of.  It was exhausting and exciting and having the book out, which will reach many more people than I could reach even by teaching others, will serve as my legacy.  I just turned 80 and I am feeling pretty good."

May we all have that level of healing legacy and that kind of energy at 80. And no, Bret, you don't look it. In fact, you don't look a day over 65. 

Life of Danica

I met Danica in the shadow of the Cotopaxi volcano, one of our planet's last glaciers, and steadily melting away as we both knew. She was working on a ranch, among gruff, rough men who spoke little, handled bucking broncos and enraged bulls, knew when the weather would turn, and could spot any animal from a mile away. She looked like a waif, or a wispy angel, but she was every bit as tough as the men around her. For whatever reason she was assigned to me for the duration of my brief visit, probably because, having just survived a near-drowning on the river Tena, in the heart of the Amazonian jungle, I was a babbling brook, spouting mucho nonsense about the meaning of life which the gauchos wanted none of. She was put off by my temporary insanity, but also patient with it. As it turns out she was a very accomplished artist and we stayed in light touch over the years. Remarkably she managed to combine her talent for the graphic arts and her love of the land by moving to the Kentucky countryside, where she married an excellent man, bought a farm, is raising her two wonderful daughters ... and ... making art that is getting an audience. 

Her latest book for kids is a marvelous illustrated life of Alexander Von Humboldt meant to teach little ones about science and how nature is under assault. 

This followed her madcap "Undertaking of Lily Chen", an at times hilarious, at times somber, and always picaresque quest for a ... corpse bride. The Undertaking demonstrates that Danica is not just a magical illustrator, she's a writer with a poignant, humorous voice. 

[Took me a while to realize the clouds and mountains form a skull]. 

Now she's back on the shelves, and has returned to her roots as a graphic designer, with an oh so  practical recipe book: "The Simple Art of Rice." 

Chef Johnson leads us through an international exploration of rice dishes. Danica designed the book. If you love rice as much as I do, be sure to check it out ... 

We don't know what our life's work is ... until we do. There's a sense of peace that comes with it. And as we keep living longer and longer, it's very possible that the work morphs, that meaning materializes in a new shape. I have my regrets, we all do, but I mostly feel grateful: for my family life, and for y'all. Finding and cultivating love in community and relationship ... that's my life's work. 

Hugs, L