Vlad’s 1st birthday is coming upand I’ve been making lots of plans.
I have NOT always, however, been a particularly passionate birthday party fan.
I remember right after college saying something snarky to my friend Brian about how it’s pretty silly to commemorate the random day on which someone was born.
He deflated my cynicism rather quickly by simply stating:
“Sure…but you realize the birthday is just an excuse to celebrate the person, right?”
Point taken.
And, in this case, more importantly, to celebrate a puppy.
Speaking of birthdays…
Sometimes my writing break distraction of “I wonder whatever happened to…?” googling yields unexpectedly joyful results.
Such was the case when I looked up my very first yoga teacher, someone who happened to be a nun.
Sister Marie Alice was a fascinating character, decades ahead of her time.
She taught at my Catholic Junior High School for only one year but that changed so much for me.
She’d had a rich past.
She was older than all the other nuns at my school.
In fact, I learned that at 52 she’d left her contemplative order because she felt a calling to work with leprosy patients in Africa.
Then she taught science and math in Ghana and Cameroon.
She’d only returned to Connecticut to care for her mother.
Somehow along the way, she’d also become a yoga teacher.
(Note: back then she needed to brand what she was sharing as “Christian Yoga,” no doubt to appease a more conservative parish climate.)
Frankly, Sister Marie Alice’s exuberant energy was always her own best advertisement about yoga and health.
In fact, the first thing I found in my online search was that national news media had picked up a local story about her celebrating her 100th birthday party two years ago.
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The Celebration Angel Card is pretty much a comic reference to Saturday Night Fever.
I do, however, very much like the definition on the card:
“Take time to recognize and savor
what is important to you and honor it with festivities.
Rejoice, have fun, and enjoy the party.”
Disco flavor aside, I think it’s important the card’s advice starts with a reminder that we must begin by recognizing what’s important.
Clear priorities are always the essential first step.
The festivities thereafter simply follow naturally.
Indeed, Rumi reminds us of the same thing:
“There is one thing in this world you must never forget to do.
If you forget everything else and not this, there’s nothing to worry about, but if you remember everything else and forget this, then you will have done nothing in your life.”
Recognizing what’s most important is EVERYTHING.
We’ve all had the experience of going out for a loaf of bread and coming back with a full grocery bag, only then realizing we forget the one thing we actually needed to buy.
Unfortunately, you can also do that with decades of your life.
My training with Vlad has been a little impromptu.
As I’ve written, I’d like to think I first taught him how to take a great photo.
Yet that, like Fetch, required only his instinctual genius.
Crate training and house-breaking came next and mostly rather easily, combined with the basic commands of Sit, Down, and Stay.
In our apartment, he performs these at an Olympian level.
In the dog park amidst distractions…well, we’re getting there.
And when it comes to his spiky ball toys, frankly he’s a disaster with “Drop It” mostly because he’s incredibly delighted by tug-of-war.
These last two weeks, however, we’ve made incremental yet huge strides with him understanding my work rhythms.
He’s fine being uncrated and unattended while Papa sits at his desk, clattering away on his laptop.
I have, however, decided now that he’s turning one, it’s time to step up and begin to formalize his training.
(And no, I’m not shipping him off to a military board school.)
Instead, we’re going to start with short but steady practice sessions and some targeted goals.
My top goal: I want to whistle for him like people did for cabs in 1930s black and white movies––and like Audrey Hepburn did in Breakfast at Tiffany’s––and no matter where he is in the dog park, he runs toward me.
I like the clarity of the whistle cutting through the puppy chaos and that I don’t have to keep yelling his name to get his attention.
The catch is…I don’t yet know how to do that taxi-cab whistle.
YouTube videos assure me I can do it with an hour or two of dedicated practice over a week or so.
Frankly, it feels quite egalitarian that Vlad and I will simultaneously need to master new skills to achieve this.
It’s infinitely less condescending than simply training him to “obey his master.”
In other words, we’ve both got skills we need to get down.
In fact, it’s quite humbling when I try to whistle that way now and only a drizzly, pathetic sound emerges, reminding me that there’s a lot I’ve got to learn.
Note: The scene works so well in Breakfast at Tiffany’s because Audrey is impossibly chic and glamorous in Givenchy couture yet has this streetwise trick up her sleeve.
In the end, they actually had to dub the whistle in. She couldn’t do it.
Nonetheless, I think if I’m patient enough with both me and Vlad, we’ll master this together.
I’ll keep you posted.
When I write I try to turn my phone and email off so I can focus, yet right now I’ve left a window open to get comments from my web designer.
We’re relaunching my website this week (or next) and I don’t want him waiting on me for comments.
A few days ago he pointed out that there were 219 pages archived on my site (only about 7 are current public pages) and asked if I wanted them all migrated to the new platform.
That seemed unnecessary cluttered and so I went through them one by one, trying to cull what was truly important for my digital identity.
I ended up deleting 200 of them.
Some were drafts or alternative versions of current pages.
Most were for events that had long passed––book signings and workshops I’ve taught; retreats that happened and some that didn’t; courses I taught long ago.
A few pages were endorsements and acknowledgments of past projects I’m no longer promoting or student “proof” I no longer need.
I saved those in Evernote just so I have them.
In a much less dramatic way, the experience was akin to waking up in the middle of the night by a fire alarm, realizing you have only a few moments to take with you what’s important, what cannot be replaced.
In a digital world, things are simpler, of course.
Yet as my Mac Utility programs remind me, deleting what’s not important significantly optimizes your experience.
In the end, like grabbing a family album from the flames, the only things worth transferring were those endorsements and testimonials, those moments and memories of authentic connection.
I do have a pet peeve to share around birthday parties.
People––wonderful, kind, responsible, generous, tax-paying people––are notoriously bad at RSVPing.
This has been true for decades and according to a restauranteur friend in the West Village re: his diners’ relationships with reservations, has only gotten worse year by year.
Is everyone refusing to commit in case something better comes along?
Mostly, I think it’s because of the speed of messaging in our culture.
E.G. –– That text you sincerely meant to reply to but suddenly two weeks pass.
That doesn’t qualify as an impeachable offense…yet still.
I’d like it not to be that we disagree on what’s important, what’s worth celebrating.
I’d like to think that there we’re united.
In the end, my parties have mostly worked out spectacularly well (even if reminders are required).
Speaking of which…
Sister Marie Alice enjoyed two more birthdays after that 100th media splash.
She passed away last year at an apparently still vital 102.
(Again, the best advertisement for yoga, ever.)
For her 100th birthday, the news media covered her daily ritual of 25 years:
Every morning after mass, she went to the same Denny’s and had the exact same breakfast:
A poached egg, toast, coffee, and jelly, which she ate from a spoon instead of on the toast.
(I’m not sure why that last detail made the national news coverage butif you want to copy her health regime exactly, there it is.)
And, in a ceremony with the local mayor, Denny’s dedicated her favorite booth to her––the one she’d gone to every morning for 25 years after mass––with a plaque.
Vlad’s only turning one (not 102) and I don’t know if I can compete with something that glorious…but I’m certainly going to do my best to try.
Namaste for Now
