Mrs. Putnam

by Laura Culberg

My mom, still of the newspaper age, just sent me a clipping from the Hyde Park Herald, the weekly from the neighborhood where I grew up in Chicago. The clipping was an obituary for Maryann Putnam, my high school geometry teacher.  Mrs. Putnam had a thick New York accent. She wore denim every day--- denim vest and skirt set, denim jumper, denim slacks and jacket. Mrs. Putnam had dyed black hair, wore large framed classes and was always covered in chalk. Even though my friends and I teased her, she thought we were funny and I knew she loved us.

During our senior year when my girlfriends and I needed to create a service project to graduate, we formed a group called the Pink Ladies. It was 1986 and we were playing off the girl gang from the movie Grease. Mrs. Putnam readily agreed to be our club sponsor and we'd meet with her regularly to talk about what we were up to. In reality, we didn't do anything except talk about what we might do if we actually could get our act together-- tutoring, food bank collection, school clean up. Our biggest accomplishment that year was singing back up for a Rockabilly band that played in the school cafeteria during dances.

Mrs. Putnam's obituary said that she was 95 when she died. That means that she was in her early sixties when she was my teacher, just ten years older than I am now. It's been so long since I've thought about Mrs. Putnam but as I read her obituary, the image of her in her denim skirt and vest, standing outside her classroom door came into my mind as clear as if it was yesterday. I can see her face--- pale next to her dyed black hair, partially hidden behind her big glasses--- smiling out at me with a hint of irritation as I walk by her, gabbing with my friends to get to our desks in class.

We were so annoying in high school-- especially to Mrs. Putnam. We made fun of her chalk covered clothes and her white roots growing under her black hair, of her big glasses and sensible shoes. But we loved her too because we knew that she loved us. Despite the Pink Ladies' profound lack of organization and productivity, she believed in us. She accepted the fact that, as seniors, not kids but not yet adults, we were doing the best we could to get our shit together. When I look back at it now I think she felt like our envisioning was enough for that moment in our lives. The process of thinking about what we were going to do, of talking about it, dreaming about it, was important, even if we didn't bring our ideas to fruition.

Those times with Mrs. Putnam, sitting in her chalk covered classroom during lunch, were incubator moments. Mrs. Putnam listened to us. She humored us and gave us her time and attention. As the mother of a teenage girl myself, I know how scatterbrained that species can be. I know how disorganized and chaotic their lives are. Being a teenager is wholly about transitioning- from child to adult.  I was surprised how affected I was to hear of Mrs. Putnam's death and I was so glad to know that she lived many happy years beyond her tenure as my math teacher. She deserved it. What Mrs. Putnam gave us, gave me those thirty-three years ago, was a quiet place to land for a moment or two during the maelstrom of my senior year in high school. Thank you Mrs. Putnam. I hope you knew that, despite my attitude and the fact that I was too self-absorbed during those years to tell you, I was (and am) grateful for your presence in my life.

Along Came a Spider and Sat Down Beside Her

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By Kate Poux

Laura’s Turtle Blog made me wonder about my spirit animal these days. A couple months ago, a spider made a web inside our kitchen nook window. At the time we were suffering a fruit fly invasion, so my daughter got really good at wafting the fruit flies into Tom Holland’s web and then we would all watch with delight as Tom spindled across his web, grabbed the fruit fly and returned to center point all in about 3 seconds. Tom shed several exoskeletons, his web got way more sophisticated and drops of fruit fly blood began to collect on the window sill, and now we are all very attached and unable to release him into the wild where I know he belongs. 

So, obviously, spider spirit animal. According to Trusted Psychic Mediums, spiders represent feminine energy, creativity and patience awaiting their prey. They also reference your “shadow self”, the darker aspects of your personality that you often try to repress or deny. I decide to practice opening myself to the ugly thoughts, jealousy, anger flashes, and try to weave myself a web with them, use them to attract my prey. But what is my prey? Along came a spider and sat down beside her and said, “What do you want?” 

I proprioceptive write about it. I feel like I don’t belong, all the time.  I list and describe all the ways and all the people who belong better than me. What do I mean by belong? Long for something you don’t have. An absence. Follow the longing. Where does it go? Be the longing. You are what you long for. You belong. Be what you long for. What do you hope will come into this web made of your most ugly dark thoughts?

And in this writing meditation, I realize that I long for this right now, the feeling that I’m having as I write, the feeling of “Holy shit, look what just came out of my brain.” I long for this moment of awareness, gratitude for a spider, company of a dog, understanding from a man who pulls me out of the damp cracks I crawl into, smiling awareness from my daughter as she catches my drift, warm floors, golden sparkling tree. Kale growing out of my back bones, shoulder blades reaching into the back yard with dark leafy wings. Shriveled fuchsia blossom, more beautiful in it’s withering, like my long dead neighbor Machi who grew them, still watching. Still smiling and approving, affirming me as a mother and wife. Dead people keeping watch over me. 

My recent embrace of 50 and midlife has opened up a willingness to trust myself that I didn’t used to feel. I can sometimes follow the darkness, sit down beside myself, and come out in a beautiful place. It takes quiet and space.  It’s patient, spinning a web out of whatever is inside or around me, sometimes catching joy. 

Be Scary for Halloween by Kate Poux

You know the Mayor of Halloween Town in Nightmare Before Christmas, how he has 2 sides of his head and when he freaks out his super freaked out anxious face turns to the front and his voice gets really high like “What the fuck are we gonna do now?!?” That’s sometimes how I feel about me and Laura’s Claws in Your Pause partnership. She’s the calm visionary Mayor, I’m the scary one losing my shit. I’m actually fine with that arrangement, because I think it’s important to model good melting down, and I think that by being the angry bitch I make the other angry people in the room feel like they belong. So that’s who’s blogging today. 

For starters, I’m super socially awkward lately. I showed up at a party the other night and I brought my own dinner in tupperware, to eat at the table alongside the other guests. It was a misunderstanding, but still extreme stress-induced behavior. And I made my kid so uncomfortable she ate the tupperware dinner with me. My husband invited me to a potluck with his aikido school last weekend and I sat in a chair smiling a fake smile all night, reminding myself of conversations with my grandmother in the nursing home when she couldn’t hear anymore. I’m hostile to my friends, alienating myself on purpose. To what purpose? Did the *spider tell me to do this ?(*see Spider Spirit Animal blog)

If I am alone there will be less deceit. There will be less faking it. There are important things to figure out, birth, evolve into. There are scales to tip, educational justice, safe children to raise, screen addictions to manage, marriage to keep alive, a terrorist president, civil war, a garden to foster, old age to grow into, teeth that are dying, hair that is falling out. There is so much work to be done, there isn’t time be fake. There is only time to notice the beauty, mark some joy. I find it often in my journal these days, where I can show my fat rolls, my mad face, and no one is scared away. 

I practice a new mantra. How are you doing? Mad, sad, afraid. How are you doing? Mad, sad, afraid. How are you doing? Mad, sad, afraid, selfish, ugly, incompetent, an embarrassment to my children. I tell myself to just be it. Inhabit the upside down. It’s so exhausting trying to hold it all together. Just be it, you won’t scare everyone away. It feels good. Way better than stuffing it down and pretending. BOO. Be scary. Tis the season. 

Seeking Stress.

By Laura Culberg
I recently sold my business, a yoga studio in Capitol Hill, Seattle’s busiest neighborhood. I’ve had that business for eighteen years. It  went from three employees to twenty. From one location to two locations. And back down to one location with two spaces. 

It took me a couple of years to finally decide that selling the business was what I actually wanted to do. With the influence during the last few years of things like social media, yoga for dogs, goats, babies, thousands of new teachers flooding the market every year, I decided that I didn’t want to play the game anymore. I’d lost my competitive mojo. 

I loved running that business, but during those eighteen years, I was on all the time! Even when I went on vacation I brought my laptop. I checked my emails, stayed in contact. I was always the one who got called at 5:45am when the 6am teacher forgot their keys or overslept or had a migraine. When the studio had a break in, I was the one called. When a student complained about a teacher or a teacher complained about a student, I was the mediator. I worried every month about the bottom line-- rent, payroll, taxes, inventory, supplies. I had a method to managing the madness and I had support from my staff, but I was stressed and busy all the time. I didn’t realize how utterly hijacked by stress I was until I sold the business and surrendered all of that responsibility. 

It’s been two weeks since I officially stepped down from being the owner of my business--- now someone else’s business and here’s what I notice:

• I keep waiting for something to happen.
• I’m still worried I’m forgetting to do something.
• I feel like I have somewhere I need to be.
• I still set my alarm for 6am every morning.

Here’s the thing-- I don’t have another job. I’m taking a sabbatical to write and explore and figure out what I want to do next. What I realized this morning when I was writing was that, though I've let go of the responsibilities associated with stress, my body still seems to be seeking it out. My body is searching for it, like my phone searches for wifi service at the airport, roaming around until there is a connection.

The reality is that I don’t have somewhere to be. I’m not forgetting to do something. I’m doing what I want to be doing and no one is waiting for me to do something else. But my body is still programmed for stress. It’s still searching for that connection to the familiar buzz that I get when I’m stressed. It’s weird. I notice it clearly every time it happens. I feel a little surge of adrenaline and I start to worry or check my phone. And then, almost as quickly, I realize that I’m okay. I don’t need to make that stress connection because there is no stress. It’s intense and a little disorienting. I wonder how long it will take to reprogram my body and mind, to feel fully that I have let go of that stress, that those patterned brain surges are just old habits.

Whenever I do get the call to stress and I recognize that it is not real, I feel free, elated, like I’ve won Powerball. I have a moment of celebration that I don’t have to follow that stress. Instead I can walk the dog or bake a cake or clean my desk. I didn’t realize how truly stressed I was until I became not stressed. I don’t know how long this detox will take, but I’m not worried because every time I get that after-feeling it’s like a gift, a moment to truly appreciate how grateful I am to be here now.