A Malignant Narcissist's Tale: Small Spigots and Big Sticks

It occurred to me today that our new President does not have a dog. Consistent, I suppose, with the germophobia that keeps his spigot out of the golden shower game, but there's more to it than that, I think.

I had to dig back to the nineteenth century to find a gap in White House canine residency, before Teddy Roosevelt and his big stick. With no disrespect to non-dog owners -- I never had one until I was well into adulthood, though it wasn't for a lack of annual birthday begging -- I think dog ownership can sometimes tell us something about a person.

In just a few days, I have been brought to a gasp twice by heartbreaking dog news. One friend had to put a faithful companion down, another is now trying to figure out why his young pal has suddenly gone blank. It's the kind of news that shocks me out of my lingering despair over the state of our nation, at least for a moment, and conjures up memories of this most unique sort of grief. There are far more unimaginable tragedies, to be sure; indeed, those of us who choose to bring dogs into our lives do so with full awareness that they will probably leave before we do.

Our new President does not have a dog. In fact, he does not have any family members living with him in his new D.C. digs, human or otherwise, who might depend on him for love or expect him to turn a blind eye to their messes. It makes sense that a person who is so bent on creating messes would have neither the time nor the inclination to clean up somebody else's.

Back in the day, my fledgling divorce proceedings inspired me to blog. I called it "A Narcissist's Tale" -- a shout out to my ex-husband's attorney's marketing strategy of handing out books about narcissism to her male clients and highlighting portions that proved the diagnosis applied to their soon to be ex-wives. This was before I realized that garden variety narcissism could apply to everyone -- cockiness, manipulativeness, selfishness, the traits that help even some of the nicest people survive -- as opposed to narcissistic personality disorder, which is an official diagnosis with a number and everything and usually involves much darker traits.

So I took this attorney's sight-unseen diagnosis of me with a healthy combination of indignation and humor, given her inflated hourly rates and her habit of wearing short cocktail style dresses to court. And there are no professional ethical guidelines that prohibit attorneys from floating psychiatric diagnoses, even though psychiatrists themselves do so at risk of severe sanctions. But finally, a prominent psychiatrist gave the old Freudian slip to the so-called Goldwater Rule and diagnosed our new travesty-in-chief: malignant narcissist. Malignant. By itself, a word that inspires in all of us the worst fears, leads even the loudest among us to start whispering Cancer. 

A malignant narcissist who doesn't even have a dog. A spewer of all varieties of hate who nevertheless rises to the presidency while hapless folks in the entertainment business make a single unfortunate misstep and lose their jobs. This is our new normal, our new "business as usual."

Somebody get this man something or somebody to care about -- if there is such an animal -- before he makes even more of a mess.

52 Thursdays Later. . . .

525,600 minutes ago (give or take). . . .

I was getting ready for a nap. By the pool. After gorging myself on nachos and a midday pina colada. I had reached that point in the vacation where I was finally settling in, getting acclimated to the days filled with, well, not much more than food and alcohol. When boredom suddenly didn't seem like such a bad thing, and I began wishing I could stay longer.

525,600 minutes ago (more or less). . . .

The "before." When deliciously petty annoyances bothered me, like a passing cloud. Or having to dig under my beach chair to find my phone in my bag so I could check the time, for no reason other than to gauge how long I could nap before my next cocktail.

It's coming up on 525,600 minutes of "after." After the unimaginable. The "there's no good way to tell you this" text, from my friend. Only hours after the "here we are drinking Lemoncello's somewhere near the South Pole" text, from the same friend. There is no good way, though I suppose it was just as good a way as any for my friend to tell me her son, a child I had known for almost all of his twenty-seven years, was dead.

The "after." I called her and I begged her to tell me I had misread something. The pina colada. The heat. It must have gotten to me. But it hadn't. So why was I in such a fog?

The immediate "after," I circled. I tried to do what I needed to do: change flights, pack, drink water, breathe. Call my children, explain to them the inexplicable. "There's no good way to tell you this...." I remember walking around that evening, resenting everyone, wanting desperately to return to all that was "before."

It's been 525,600 minutes (almost). . . .

What a difference a year makes, or so I had always thought. The "firsts" have all been checked off, which means only that we brace ourselves for the "seconds." It's not as raw, I suppose, but still, I am stunned. There was no good way to tell me then, and there is no good way to tell me now.

Yesterday, I met my friend at the cemetery, for the second time in the 525,600 minutes or so since we buried Adam on the most ugly winter day when the sky opened up and sobbed freezing rain. She came with her usual supplies -- a cup of coffee for her, a cup of coffee for Adam. Nothing for me, but I gave her a pass. And, this time, she came with a laminated proof of what Adam's tombstone will look like when she gets around to ordering it and some massive bright green doohickeys so we could jerry rig it to the marker. We picked dried leaves off his grave. Dusted things off. We did what mothers do.

She wondered why she couldn't cry. Why cry when you still can't believe it's true, so many hundreds of thousands of minutes later. I yelled at him, the way I did the last time, for not being able to outsmart fate, even though he was so ridiculously smart. I caught him up on stuff, in my head, on all the crazy shit he's missed this year, in the year since I left "before" behind.

Four seasons down, four more until we brace ourselves for the "thirds." A half million minutes, give or take. My friend will bring the coffee. All I got is a shoulder, if she needs one.

Weekend Warriors and Sunny Showers

Yesterday, women (and plenty of good men) around the country marched. Feminist icons rallied the crowds, availing themselves, as stars often do, of the soapbox that comes with fame. The loudest message, though, was in the numbers, the sheer volume of humanity, filling up the empty spaces that had been so prominent only a day earlier, at the inauguration. Being present, being heard.

I didn't march yesterday, but I too was surrounded by good, strong women (and a few good men). Icons of a different sort, the ordinary folks who have accompanied me on my journey through motherhood, a community of extraordinary people who have helped shape my daughter's life. Sometimes loudly, sometimes not, but always, always, by being present -- even when they are not physically close.

Wedding season has arrived for our children who are in their late twenties, and we have begun to revel in our collective joy, proud villagers passing off the baton to a new generation of well-raised adults. For years, we have celebrated together, grieved together, and yes, we have even criticized and been downright nasty, but we have always kept our eyes on the prize. No matter what our careers, no matter what our hobbies, we all take pride in the decency and the love we have fostered, in the knowledge that we have done our most important job well, mistakes notwithstanding.

I didn't march, but I was, nevertheless, overwhelmed. On the most feminist of days, I was completely overwhelmed by the most girly of events, a wedding shower for my daughter, planned with abundant love and creativity and energy (and, no doubt, a good bit of coin). Women doing the things that might not seem all that significant in the grand scheme of things. Silly things. A menu tailored to my daughter's preferences. Vases made of tomato sauce cans, floral centerpieces surrounded by stalks of raw spaghetti. Everybody played a role, and together, with the guests, these women made my daughter (and me) feel as loved and hopeful and blessed as anyone could feel. Even Mother Nature was inspired, giving us a cloudless, warm day in January.

Women do great things every day, on scales large and small. And whether they're speaking loudly on a soapbox or silently filling up urban spaces or wearing "pussy hats" or dressed to the nines for a wedding shower for a friend in January, their impact is immeasurable.

Today, I salute women everywhere, but particularly the great women who made yesterday so special for me and my daughter, and all the other women who have been present, at one time or another, for this most incredible journey.

Sending In (and Out) the Clowns

Exotic Animals...

Exotic costumes...

Death defying acrobatics. 

Exotic animals and costumes, and death defying acrobatics. Just add this to the list of disappearing American norms as we usher in the new abnormal.

The latest casualty of modern merchandising and the Internet era, the circus, is folding up its tents after almost 150 years. Citing numerous reasons, the CEO attributed the demise of The Greatest Show on Earth primarily to time. It just doesn't make economic sense to keep taking the show on the road.

Exotic animals and costumes, and death defying acrobatics. Fear not, America, the circus is alive and well in Washington, with two of the three rings -- the White House and the Capitol -- already in full swing. TBD on the Supremes.

To quote a clown, Sad. Especially since we are now well aware that, with a little bit of cunning and ruthlessness, a whole lot of ego, and an astounding butchery of the English language and common decency, it's quite possible to take a circus on the road on a shoestring budget (relatively speaking) and still keep audiences enthralled. And the clown-in-chief and kiss-my-ringmaster-to-be and a supporting cast of shameless elephants can out-contort the most bendy Karamazov brother. The acrobatics may not quite be death defying, but they sure are scary (in a strangely entertaining sort of way).

The new circus was in rare form the other day, in what was called a "press conference" but was really more like a medieval bear-baiting. I wondered why, after the "to-be" repeatedly shut down and insulted a CNN reporter, the next bear didn't step up and band together with the wounded colleague and ask his question. I found out later that the next bear was a Breitbart bear. The difference between the out-going circus and the incoming circus is this: with the former, we always knew what was real and what was fake, and we knew how to distinguish between the exceptions and the rules. The lines are fast becoming irreparably blurred.

We are on the precipice, about to hand over the reins of our beloved country to a caricature of a man, a circus character who stands ready to reward those who kiss his ring and let the rest of us fly without a net. I am truly afraid; this is not your average elephant in the room.

Bursting Bubbles

It's not that I wasn't looking forward to spending fourteen straight hours with my daughter. It's just that I would have preferred it not be in a car. At least, I thought, as we make our way south, we will leave the frigid temperatures behind us.

Not so much. By the time we got to Mississippi, the temperature had only inched up to 24. We chuckled at the radio warnings about treacherous black ice. Go out only if you absolutely have to, they drawled. We stopped chuckling when we hit the first of many patches of slick, hardened mud, lurking beneath underpasses, where the sun don't shine. Emergency vehicles lined the road, tracing skid marks to cars littering the bluffs in varying degrees of about face. Mississippi was desolate, daunting, and cold. We decided to keep going. By the time we reached New Orleans, around midnight, we barely noticed that the temperature was still below freezing.

Civilization, at least I thought, as we crossed Lake Pontchartrain toward the finish line. I figured I would need some warmer clothes, so I asked my daughter which department store we should visit in the morning. There are no department stores in Louisiana, she told me.

She was clearly delirious, maybe forgot she was no longer abroad. I checked with Siri: Department stores in Louisiana. I smiled smugly as I waited for her to give me directions to the nearest Bloomingdales. She worked on it for a while.

Walmart. Walmart. Walmart. That's what she came up with, for the entire state.

In all my visits to New Orleans, I've always thought of it as a bit, well, different, but I suppose I had never realized the extent of the divide. There's a McDonald's on the Champs Elysees

, for goodness sake, but no Bloomingdales in the bayou? How did globalization go so awry, so close to home?

I had lots of time to think on that fourteen hour drive, fourteen hours in which the landscape changed about as little as the weather. But as we sped south, I was acutely aware that somewhere, tucked away at a safe distance from the highway, were small towns where people live lives quite different from mine. Not just because a rare cold snap wreaks havoc, not even just because there's no Bloomingdale's. Mostly because there's so much space, and so few people and buildings to fill it up.

I was reminded, on my drive south, about the bubble I live in, and all the other bubbles out there. We all tend to go out only if we absolutely have to.