fomo

FOMO stands for fear of missing out.  

When does one get it? 

Generally, one gets it looking at photos of old girlfriends/boyfriends with their new people, or photos of friends traveling, or photos of everyone hanging out and you couldn’t be there.  

I feel it when I walk into the bookstore and see all these titles in print from grand authors and people younger than me. I feel it when I see pics of babes surfing in the sun while I’m sitting at work. 

FOMO. 

The questions are: 

1. Can I live someone else’s life? Successfully? 

2. Can I go back in time and change things? 

The answers to these questions: 

1. Yes. No.  

2. No. 

Can I live MY life? Authentically, truly, flawed, beautiful?  

Ya. Ya I can. 

I can change my life but, I will always be inside this body—I have lived what I have lived. And my life has been so beautiful. My life IS so beautiful: 

Today, I had a picnic in the park with my sister and my niece and nephew. There were only a few roses left in the garden by where we sat. A wasp flung itself at us and caused momentary hysteria.  After we ate, we curled up inside a cleft of the jungle gym together, all tangled and clammy and happy, hidden from the afternoon sun.

I was presented with cards, the most beautiful birthday cards to match the beautiful, shy, proud smiles, the beautiful bed head, and sun freckles.

This joy amidst the sea of meetings and spreadsheets. The joy amidst the sea of life. My heart bursts with joy at the thought of it. 

FOMO?  Hardly. Where else could I want to be?

Be someone else?  Who else is as blessed as I?

Is Email Life? And Other Things I'll Tell my Kids

When my kids are old enough, and definitely after they exist, I'm going to tell them: "Life is email. Life is email, and making new passwords because you've forgotten your old ones. Life is also wailing about all the things you have to do and not doing any of them until it's almost too late. So ya, where was I? Life is email, making passwords and kvetching balanced with procrastination." Then I'll remember after a couple seconds to add, "And contesting parking tickets. And meetings. Lots and lots of meetings. Meetings where people are told to do stuff and then at the next meeting, no one's done it. Meetings where everyone's late and if someone goes to look for someone whose late, the late person arrives and now the seeker is late. Meetings where you'll rush to fill the silence or else you'll think you might drown in it."

I'll tell them "If you're not doing any of these things, you've nailed it. You've made it." I hope it means they've become a traveling mime or a professional surfer. I hope it means they pay an assistant very well to take care of all their emails and forgotten passwords, to do lists and dishes, so they can wax their boards and practice miming what it's like to tight-rope walk over Niagara. Maybe my kids will bring back the megaphone and just blast all their messages through the streets over the air. They'll say, "Forget email. I'm just going to blast this message across a one mile radius and call it good." 

I won't really tell them that life is meetings and email, but I will warn them that it can easily become that if they're not careful. I'll also repeat what E. B. White told us is important in his mouse tale Stuart Little: A shaft of sunlight at the end of a dark afternoon, a note in music, and the way the back of a baby's neck smells if its mother keeps it tidy.

Following Head, not Headlines: To the Big Island

The volcano was erupting 50 or so miles away, as the crow flew.
People said we were crazy.
You’re going to Hawaii?
Ya.
Not the one with the volcano?
Ya--that one. 
We did our research—we looked at the web sites—NASA, Civil Defense and others—we used our heads, ignored the headlines. 
We decided to go.
And I’m so glad we did. 
Dad, my husband Dan and I flew to the Big Island on May 26, what would have been Mums 63rd birthday. The flight's typically brutal—6 hours to LA?, another 5 or so to Kona on the Big Island?—and was that day too. 
“At least we’ve got the Admirals Club,” Dad says, something he likes to say often. In the 70s, while married to “a stew” as he likes to say (the stew was not my mother), she convinced him to buy what they no longer offer: a lifetime membership to the Admirals Club. Dad postures this was the best thing that happened in their relationship and I don’t wonder it was. Thanks to the stew's advice, my husband Dan and I get to nibble at their banquet of food and drink the free wine and beers in the more than 50 Admirals Clubs worldwide. The clubs are sectioned off from the airport, equipped with a kitchen, a bar, TVs, sitting areas, showers, bathrooms with C.O. Bigelow soap and lotion (for some reason, that last detail never ceases to impress me). Dad's favorite perk is how we “avoid the cattle” who have to sit at the gate.
I'll just pause there--the Admirals Club could divert us to an entirely different essay but for now, we’ll just say it comes in handy on long flights to have a sit and a brew. 
After Black Panther, Shape of Water, Sy Montgomery's The Great White Shark Scientist, two AC visits, and seventeen Biscoffs between the three of us, we landed in Kona. I could’ve sworn I smelled sulfur on exiting the craft, but it was the only time the whole week I did and let’s face it, someone could’ve dropped a cart of eggs or let one rip. 
Outside of the Civil Defense messages we heard on the radio every day, announcing meetings and advisories to people in the neighborhoods on the eastern side of the island near the volcano, and the donation cans and collections for people impacted, there was nary a word about the situation. Triathletes were pedaling and running, as always, on the brutal stretch of pavement surrounded by shadeless lava rock that is Highway 19. We surfed, we drank, we ran, we ate, we gaped at laconic honus in the lagoon and wondered at the bottle nosed dolphins. We stood in line for a half hour for a scoop of ice cream which Dad promptly dropped and watched, shaking our heads, as it skidded like a luge down the hot stretch of sidewalk. In other words, 50 miles away, as lava engulfed the Leilani Estates, threatened to cut off escape routes and caused mandatory evacuations, life seemed almost normal along the Kohala Coast. The half Ironman took place the day we left, June 2. Only occasionally would we look up at the vog and furrow our brows, uttering silent prayers for those in Pele's path.
Writer Peter Matthiessen once said “To know you have to go.” Or something like that. And what I take it to mean is this: You've got to see for yourself. More, you have to make up your own mind, weigh the risks and measures your own self, but my advice is this: DO that. Don’t rely on spoon fed headlines and click bait. Don't let other people make your decision about whether or not you should go somewhere. Read the information painstakingly pulled and made available to you by trustworthy institutions. Tourism is a critical piece of Hawaii's economy; when potential tourists start cancelling plans or deferring trips based on incomplete information, it directly hits the island and the people who live there. 
My husband, dad and I were scared--we weren't sure if we were making the right decision but we at least knew we had arrived at the decision to keep our travel plans through rational thought and reason. The weather changes; what we deemed safe two weeks ago may not be the case now, but below you'll find two resources to help you make informed decisions.
Aloha to all those impacted by the Kilauea volcano.

Hawaii Civil Defense
USGS Volcano Hazards Program