Getting Back on the Horse

If you fall off your horse, you’re supposed to get back on as soon as you can. The longer you wait, the more firmly fear or plain old inertia sets in. The pandemic stopped my writing in its tracks. I launched this blog to reflect on the themes I explored in my memoir, The Mango Garden: leaving home, taking risks, embracing the unknown and being changed by it. Now, as if worrying about jet blasts, monster waves, and hard falls weren’t enough—(I love documenting warning signs when traveling)—we have to think about Covid-19 every time we walk out the door.

When I get stuck in my writing, unable to find the right word or unsure about what I’m trying to say, I get up and do something with my hands, usually cooking. My mind relaxes and nine times out of ten, the answer presents itself. But this time, all my ideas seemed irrelevant in light of the anxiety and suffering engendered not only by the pandemic, but by the killing of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Rayshard Brooks.

Still, I had to get back on the horse. As much as I enjoyed making yogurt from scratch and growing basil from seed, I was getting cranky. I hadn’t written anything in weeks, then months. Finally a workable idea started circling in my head—right around the time my husband went to the hospital for an angiogram. We thought he might get a stent or two, but the doctors said he needed surgery—immediately. His arteries were so blocked, they were afraid to send him home. Five bypasses and six days later, he left the hospital. 

Now that Tom is getting his energy back and walking up to an hour a day, I can focus. 

Everybody is spending a lot more time at home, so I thought I’d tell you a little bit about the Bowen approach to understanding how families work. The cool thing is that it teaches you how to observe interactions between family members, (including yourself), which helps to temper knee-jerk reactions with a more thoughtful response. It’s a very down-to-earth approach that has helped Tom and me a lot. 

Over decades of observation, Murray Bowen, M.D., identified seven ways that family members relate to each other when anxiety runs high: 

1. they bring in another person—a friend, rabbi, counselor, cop (triangling)

2. they fuse with each other, blurring their personal boundaries (fusion) 

3. they fight a lot (conflict)

4. they separate, either psychologically or geographically or both (distance)

5. they cease all communication (cut-off)

6. one spouse overfunctions, the other underfunctions (over-/underfunctioning reciprocity)

7. they focus their anxiety on a child (dysfunctional child)

Everybody’s been in a triangle. A simple example is when you’re mad at a friend. Instead of talking to the friend, you unload on someone else. Triangles arise between friends, between parents and children, and between spouses and a third party. 

When I left for Africa in 1979, I was caught in a triangle between my divorced parents, which is part of the reason I went away. When entrenched, a relationship triangle can put you in lockdown even more than a pandemic. More about this next time—until then, maybe you’d like to look at some of the relationship triangles in your own life. 

Instead of grounding yourself for life, book a window-seat.

The first time I realized that my plane—just possibly—could crash, I was twelve years old. My parents and my sister and I were flying to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where we would be living for the next six months. The Andes were 20,000 feet below, their arid heights dotted with lakes an impossible shade of green. As I marveled at the vivid color, it dawned on me that the safety of my parents’ protection had nothing to do with the safety of the aircraft. If the plane went down, my family would be wiped out.

We arrived in Buenos Aires in March 1966, my sister and I in white go-go boots.

I was an optimistic girl, so my realization floated away before it had a chance to harden into fear. Then, for reasons I still can’t fathom, I became afraid of flying when I hit my late forties. Strapped into my seat, I would pray that TSA had kept a sharp eye out, that the pilot wasn’t having suicidal thoughts, that the plane was shipshape even though it rattled like it was about to fly apart at the seams.

“I’d experienced the life-changing power of traveling and living overseas, and I wanted to do more of it. ”

This newfound dread distressed me. I’d experienced the life-changing power of traveling and living overseas, and I wanted to do more of it. I had to find a way to stop torturing myself with catastrophic fantasies. Several months later, I heard someone say that people become what they pay attention to. What I was paying attention to was my fear, not to all the places I wanted to see. I changed my focus, and my anxiety gradually melted away.

Since the recent crashes of two Boeing 737 Max 8 jets, I’ve been thinking about people who are curious about the world but are so afraid of flying, they won’t get on a plane. The Max 8 disasters, I imagine, have only reinforced their decision. Boeing’s squirrelly corporate behavior has done little to inspire confidence. The F.A.A.’s reluctance to ground the planes hasn’t helped, either.

Even so, the trend toward increasing automation (such as in the Max 8) has reduced the number of crashes over the past decade. Everybody knows it’s safer to travel by plane than car, but once anxiety grabs hold, the mind doesn’t care about statistics—it cares about maintaining the illusion of safety. Cars are routine, and routines are safe. Therefore, cars are safe.

When I get in my Subaru, I perceive myself as an irreplaceable human being in control of my destiny. Countless times I’ve swerved out of harm’s way before I was aware of a car veering into my lane. In traffic there are so many variables, I know I could become a grease spot on the asphalt in an instant, but to function behind the wheel, I have to stash that unpleasant thought away. In the air, I’m not behind the wheel, so my imagination will gladly take over if I let it, filling my head with visions of disaster when the air gets rough or lighting flashes across the sky.

Some people feel so overwhelmed by their dire fantasies, they never fly again, which is sad, at least for those who would otherwise love to see the world. If you’re like that, maybe all you have to do is change your focus. Dream about the places you’ve always wanted to see, no matter how far away they are. Galapagos? Dublin? Botswana? Rome? Instead of grounding yourself for life, book a window-seat and enjoy the ride. Feel the thrill as the aircraft gathers speed, as the wheels leave the earth, as this amazing human invention takes to the sky and bears you across the turbulent ocean in a matter of hours instead of weeks. Then look out the window as if you’re twelve years old again. Look at the towering cumulus clouds, at the patchwork fields six miles below, at the toy cars and red-roofed dollhouses, at the mountain tops dotted with lakes an impossible shade of green.

Fly!

After all, the world beckons.