The Cheese Stands Alone

Last spring I wrote an essay for Telling Stories but wasn't able to be in Denver to read it myself. The theme for this particular Telling Stories show was "Table For One." When I was spring cleaning my hard drive this afternoon, I saw that it needed some cleaning up too and decided to post it here. 

The Cheese Stands Alone

Whoever coined the phrase “God works in mysterious ways” didn’t know the half of it. My own connection to God, or any deity, is flimsy at best sometimes, so there’s a pretty good chance that I’ve missed a lot of the hints that the universe has been trying to send my way. In fact, it’s possible that I’ve become so closed off and so oblivious that one day God finally got sick of it and decreed: “Mary, I couldn’t possibly be more obvious – if you miss the symbolism this time, I’m sending you back to high school English.”

Life changing revelations, I’ve learned, don’t present themselves all at once. Rather, they are small and cumulative, and if examined individually, don’t amount to much. But sometimes they come on so fast, and so quickly, you almost miss them.

**

In October of 2005 I was 25 years old, living at home with my parents in my small, rural Illinois hometown. I had been there since I graduated from college -- with delays -- in 2002, and there were very few signs that this arrangement would be changing any time soon. Although living with one’s parents after college reeks of laziness in healthy people, for me it felt like anything but. When I lived by myself for my last year and a half in college, it took all the energy I had to make it to my classes on some days, so there was precious little leftover for basic cleaning and grocery shopping and multiple doctor’s office visits. Moving back in with my parents didn’t feel like defeat — it felt like a relief. A relief to not have to worry about getting everything done by myself. And it gave my parents some peace of mind too. Being a four-hour drive away took its toll on them, so they were more than happy to be able to keep tabs on me.

So by October of 2005, I had been trying for over a year to qualify for a very experimental surgery that offered some hope for helping the migraines that sidelined me. After a grueling screening process at the hands of a highly selective neurosurgeon, I had finally been given the green light from him, but then faced an even bigger monster: an insurance company that didn’t recognize pain management as “medically necessary.”

The months leading up to the insurance company’s refusal to comply had been so bleak that my parents thought it might perk me up to take me along on my dad’s business trip to San Diego. Even though migraines aren’t conducive to the unexpected hassles of air travel, or the invasions of privacy involved in sharing a small hotel room with one’s parents for five days, I relished the thought of a change of scenery. This would be my first trip to California, the west coast and the Pacific, and maybe a chance to experience the famously laidback culture in a way I could bring back with me.

Instead, what should have been a restorative, worry-free trip became just the opposite. I was too ill much of the time to enjoy or participate in any of the sightseeing, and when I wasn’t sick I moped, felt sorry for myself and burst into tears in restaurants, convention halls, gift shops, the San Diego Zoo, hotel lobbies. Two of my dad’s relatives from L.A. came down to meet us, and despite my protests that I would be a huge buzz kill for the rest of the afternoon, they convinced me to come along on a trip up the coast to La Jolla, a place I only associated with reruns of “My Super Sweet Sixteen.”

I did manage to take at least some joy in parts of the trip – the sun, sailors (it was San Diego’s Fleet Week after all), having mountains and foothills on one side of me and an ocean on the other; even the Santa Anna winds weren’t unbearable. But mostly, the trip just served as a reminder that I needed someone else’s help to get through something as easy and run of the mill as a vacation. My silly, self-pitying self wondered if I would’ve been able to navigate the airports, keep track of my boarding pass, negotiate transportation, make reservations — all the minutia that planning even something fun involves – on my own. How was I much different than those insufferable Sweet Sixteeners I scorned? But mostly, on that trip, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was a third wheel, and that what my parents really needed was a vacation from worrying about me. I had never been so anxious for a vacation to end, and I suspected my parents thought the same.

**

Flash forward about two and a half years.

It’s the second week of January 2008 and I was about to embark on a business trip. It’s been a year and a half since I finally procured the aforementioned experimental surgery.  I still have migraines but am outfitted with a tiny titanium battery implanted in my lower back, attached to wires that snake all the way up my neck and back, to my head, where electrodes are attached to a nerve under my skin and held in place by some trusty scar tissue. The system isn’t perfect, but it’s much better.

In December my boss asked if I would mind attending the Winter Fancy Foods Show, which is put on twice a year by the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade. The show takes place in a massive convention center packed with 1,100 or so exhibitors showing off only the finest specialty/gourmet foods that, quite literally, the world has to offer. The show is usually held in San Francisco, but this year it was moved to San Diego.

When I started to make my travel arrangements I had no intention to plan a trip that so closely paralleled the one with my parents, so it was mostly a coincidence that I picked the same Holiday Inn I’d stayed at with them. It helped that I subsequently knew the lay of the land, and which direction the convention center was from the hotel; of course the show was in the same convention center that my dad’s had been.

To some degree I was worried that all the leftover bad karma from the first trip would contaminate the second — that the whole déjà vu feeling would trigger some sort of meltdown. It didn’t. I even kept my cool when I had to endure the full body pat down by the TSA agents in the airport, as I can’t go through metal detectors with my device. Actually, I suspect the agents were more uncomfortable than I was whenever they assured me that they were using the backs of their hands when they reached a “sensitive” area.

The room was almost identical to the one I shared with my parents, but I was almost giddy with the contentment of having it all to myself. I loved the foghorns, the tacky paint job on the Holiday Inn’s exterior, the rude concierge and the irritated Chinese delivery guy. I didn’t even care that the takeout was crap since I knew the next three days would make up for it.

It wasn’t until the next morning when I stepped out onto the room’s patio in an attempt to soak up some much needed California sun and fresh air that I started to sense that I didn’t need to worry about the rest of the trip being a repeater of the first one — that it might be possible to replace the bad memories with the better ones.

The rest of the day is a blur of high-end chocolate, champagne, gelato, fair trade tea, specialty cheese, and gourmet popcorn. I got over my fear of talking to all the exhibitors about their products, and in some cases invented ridiculous reasons to stop by some booths for more samples, even though I had already been by once that day.

For dinner that night, my dad’s relatives came down again from L.A. to see me, and I picked a spot in Little Italy that my parents and I had been obsessed with. When we found each other in the hotel lobby, we all immediately remarked on how different the reunions were and marveled about it the rest of the night.

The next day, my second day of the show, was much like the first except that I was attending a press trip to La Jolla, sponsored by a dairy industry association. The restaurant we were going to even had a startlingly similar name and was only a few doors down from the restaurant my parents and I had been to with our relatives.  

When we got to the restaurant, I immediately gave away my newbie status when I tipsily wondered out loud if it would be tacky of me to pull out a notebook and write down everything I ate, and its price, so that I could remember later. Turns out, a month or two later, I still remember.

**

A few days ago at work I received two big hunks of suitably aged — and correspondingly smelly — Wisconsin cheese in the mail, courtesy of the association, who apologized by saying the cheese wasn’t at its prime when we sampled it in La Jolla. When I opened the Styrofoam cooler that held the cheese and ice packs, I got the feeling that the noxious fumes were another sign, or reminder from the universe — or whoever it is who’s in charge of dropping hints — that I’m more than capable of taking care of myself now. What’s even more absurd is that I ever doubted I could. On that trip, I was so content to fly solo that I almost regret that I never had the opportunity to ask for a table for one.

Why St. Teresa of Avila Is My Kind of Saint

Long story short, I’m finally getting confirmed this Easter -- I know, imagine that! -- which means it’s time for me to pick my saint name. When I found out St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) was the patron saint of headaches, it was a no-brainer — although she did face stiff competition from St. Elmo, the patron saint of women in labor; St. Clare, the patron saint of television; and St. Isidore of Seville, the patron saint of the Internet.

I haven’t had time to read an actual book about St. Teresa since deciding on her, so I’ve been cobbling together interesting tidbits about her courtesy of Wikipedia and similar sources. The more I read, the more I like her.

Typically, I don’t have much in common with mystic Carmelite nuns from Spain, but there’s an awful lot about St. Teresa that I can relate to, even though we live centuries apart. Here are a few examples:

1. When I was in second or third grade I went through a very pious phase and wanted to be a nun (likely inspired by the character Marie on “Just the Ten of Us”). Needless to say, that particular phase didn’t last long, but I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard myself or other frustrated daters say “I should just join a convent.” I was kind of comforted to read that St. Teresa had similar thoughts. She’s often described as a social butterfly and no stranger to love affairs. She first spent some time in a convent as a teenager in an attempt by her father to discipline her. That attempt was short-lived, and she returned to her home. Says one site:

Back at home, Teresa was once again faced with the choice: marriage to whoever could be found (and with each passing year her marriageability was lessening) or the convent. She finally decided on the convent, out of the certainty that otherwise she was bound to go to hell.” 

Word.

2. You also could say that it was Catholic guilt that drove her, as a very young child, to attempt to turn herself over to the Moors who were carrying out the Spanish Inquisition. Her grandfather had been a Jew that converted to Christianity as a result of the Inquisition, leading St. Teresa to feel that she should become a martyr for the cause. Luckily, a relative found her before she could walk out of town.

3. The first thing, of course, that drew me to St. Teresa was the headache connection. And it looks like she suffered from a number of chronic conditions. However, it was this paragraph or two on one site that I identified with the most:

“…Yet instead of helping her spiritually, her sickness became an excuse to stop her prayer completely: she couldn't be alone enough, she wasn't healthy enough, and so forth…When she was 41, a priest convinced her to go back to her prayer, but she still found it difficult. "I was more anxious for the hour of prayer to be over than I was to remain there. I don't know what heavy penance I would not have gladly undertaken rather than practice prayer." She was distracted often: "This intelect is so wild that it doesn't seem to be anything else than a frantic madman no one can tie down."

She eventually was credited with a technique called “mental prayer” and wrote extensively on the subject, but this little bit about her echoed the reasons I’ve used to claim that I’m “bad at religion.” I’ve always felt like religion and faith seem to come more easily to other people — like it’s a skill or something that I have to train for. Like wind sprints. For instance, when I go to church, after I walk in and find a seat, I can only kneel and pray for one or two minutes before succumbing to distraction and giving up. It’s probably more like 30 seconds, actually. It must look to others like I’m either a super efficient prayer or have church-specific ADD.

4. St. Teresa is famous for a lot of her writing (she’s also the patron saint of Spanish writers) and advice, but this quote is one of my favorites: “I do not fear Satan half so much as I fear those who fear him.” I like this because it was relevant during her lifetime — with the Spanish Inquisition and other major upheavals in the Church — and during ours. It’s a useful antidote to the likes of Fred Phelps and other hate mongers that use their beliefs to justify bigotry. I guess some things never change.