Lynn Ruth Miller Blog

Everyone’s life is his work of art. The way you dress, the conversation you create, the space you live in…all are visible evidence of your unique take on life. I think of creativity as a continuum and we are all at different places on that scale at different stages of our lives. And at each period, we use our ingenuity to take control of our lives without creating chaos in those who rule us. As babies, we need to get our mother’s attention to get fed and as adults we need to figure out how to navigate the establishment to accomplish our own goals and get swallowed up by their rules and restrictions if we are to move ahead in life toward our own goals. That is what it is all about.

I am one of those people who is always at the high end of that continuum. This can cause immense problems because I cannot seem to keep myself inside the box…any box for that matter and I must admit those around me would love to just take me down to a packing store and get me contained as fast as possible.

I like to think these imaginative solutions I create are the result of being a repressed fifties woman. When I was a child, little girls never spoke unless spoken to. You had to be really original to get your needs expressed or you were simply forgotten sitting down at the end of the dinner table sucking your thumb because there was nothing left on the platter when it got to you or watching your skin get all wrinkled because your mother forgot you in the bath tub.

And I always was very clever. I think one of my most ingenious solutions was breaking out in hives. If I sat at the dinner table and felt smothered by all the lively conversation drowning out my own observations about butterflies of nipping puppies, I would start to wiggle and scratch and jump around as if possessed.

This always re-focused all the adult attention on me and I usually got a second helping of chocolate pie to calm my nerves after my mother smeared me with calamine lotion.

As I got older, I refined my creative solutions but always they were original and very unsettling. I am not very belligerent. As a child I preferred reading Betsy-Tacey books to getting out there and playing tag. In the first place you sweat when you play tag and that would have made my mother furious. My mother would dress me to go outside in a starched pinafore, a white ruffled blouse, long white socks and Mary Jane shoes. “You cannot sit in the house reading books all day,” she would scream (She was usually very frustrated by all the things women had to do in those days before THEY could get out of the house like scrub floors on their hands and knees and wring out the laundry by hand, cook dinner on a conventional stove with no food processor and wash windows.)

SO she would always scream at me instead of society because society wouldn’t listen to her. I always did. “GO OUTSIDE AND PLAY” she would shout. “YOU LOOK PALE. ”

She would shove me out the door, grab my book and hide it in her apron pocket and say,” NOW HAVE FUN…BUT DON’T GET DIRTY.”

So there I was looking like a cut-out from a child’s fashion magazine staring into space while all the grubby conventional children did what grubby conventional children did to keep themselves amused. They tossed each other around, threw things at one another, chased each other and kicked things.

I stood on the front porch and watched carefully brushing the detritus from their romping exuberance off my Mary Jane shoes.

One little bully whose IQ was obviously three points below that of a demented snail couldn’t seem to understand why I stood on our back porch observing him and scratching my mosquito bites. Instead of inviting me to join the group, he marched up the steps of the porch and smacked me in my tummy. “You wrinkled my dress,” I said and I backed away.

He looked at me with all the rage that little boys need to learn to carry them into successful manhood when they are confronted with the women who scorn them and he spit in my face.

My neighbor was watching this little interplay from her window and she could stand no more of this blatant chauvinistic behavior. ‘Spit back, Lynn Ruth!” she screamed.

Now my tears were so copious I could barely talk, my dress was ruined, and my shoes were spattered. My mother would be furious and I was defeated. I looked at that woman and I said the words that would be my excuse for every failure I ever had from that day forward. “I can’t spit straight!” I said.

This is not a very creative solution, you are thinking and you are wrong. I immediately became the center of attention. All the neighbors who saw the scene were scandalized. The little girls who witnessed my humiliation immediately rushed up to me and dried my tears and smoothed my ruffled pinafore. They looked at that nasty bully with hate and rejection. “Go away,” they said. “We never want to play with you again.”

Which, in the forties, was rejection worse than being denied your x box or trashing your skate board in the twenty-first century.

And then the loveliest, best- looking, kindest sweetest boy on the block took my hand and said, “ Come with me Lynnie Ruth. I will teach you to spit straight. “

I looked up at his sweet, caring face and realized that I had won the game. “I love you,” I said.

Which is another way we used to control men….in those days of course…and win the game.

As a child, I was taught to give to others and to share what I have with those less fortunate. That philosophy has faded in our “Me first” world and that is not totally a bad thing. My determination to be selfless results in a lot of passive-aggressive behavior that sends double messages to people and creates anger and stress in me. I find myself furious at friends who are only taking me up on what I offered to them. For instance, I live very near the San Francisco Airport. I have told innumerable people to let me know if they need me to pick them up at the airport. I tell them I would be happy to take them home. My assumption is that considerate people who care about me would never ask me to drive them farther than a few miles from where I live. They would respect my hours and my commitments. This is a wrong assumption. The first violation of this concept happened when a dear, dear friend asked me to pick him up at 10 pm and drive him in to San Francisco. I hated to say no so I got in the car, arrived on time and waited a half hour for him to get to the pick-up area, another 15 minutes while he gabbed on his cell phone, and then drove him home. I got back to my house well after midnight. He never offered to pay for gasoline and he didn’t even say thank you. All he said was good night.

His was the model of considerate behavior compared to the next woman who not only insisted I pick her up when she returned from Italy ( a trip I could never afford) after I had once refused. She wanted me to drive her to Half Moon Bay However, her plane was delayed and she arrived at ten pm. I encouraged her to take the shuttle to MY house because I never dreamed she would really do it. She did. She waited until I returned from a comedy gig and expected me to drive her home through the fog …an hour’s drive now that Devil’s Slide is closed. I could hardly believe she would ask anyone, much less a woman of my age to do this for her. It occurred to me than that it is I who made these people believe I have nothing better to do with my time than chauffeur them from one place to another. I berated myself for inability to say, “No. You have money. I do not. I can afford neither the gasoline nor the time nor the energy to take people twenty years my junior all over the peninsula. How can you ask me to do this?” even though the trip is now a very long one clogged with traffic.

The answer is because I offered to help them out.

My neighbor down the street heard that I have extra room in my freezer. I had told her she was welcome to store food there assuming that she would put in a chicken, or a few boxes of frozen veggies, no more. I believed she would respect the fact that my own food had priority over hers. How wrong I was! This morning I awoke to find my freezer completely re-organized to make room for a large box of shrimp, several chickens and God only knows what else in what was now a packed freezer running on overtime to keep its contents cold. I could find nothing I wanted to use for supper; I could not even move the box and bags she had packed in there because they were so heavy.

All three of these people are kind, giving, lovely human beings . The miscommunication has to do with my basic philosophy being totally out of date. I have always believed my first obligation is to others in society…this means that I neglect the very pressing needs I have to write, paint and create on a variety of levels. These three people believe that their first obligation is to themselves as human beings to take care of their own needs no matter how shallow and irrelevant they may seem to others. My first buddy believed that his saving shuttle fare was more important than my getting a story done for my magazine or writing a blog like this. My Italian traveler thought that saving $98.00 she could easily afford was well worth making me forget my fatigue at the end of a very long day of performing, writing and doing my own chores. The fact that I was tired, had not eaten and could not afford the gasoline she wanted me to use to drive her to Half Moon Bay did not even occur to her. She is kind and giving in a multitude of ways but never when it inconveniences her. The freezer lady has done innumerable lovely things for me. Yet, she is always very quick to tell me when she is too busy to help. I owe her freezer room if she uses discretion in how much she takes, but she will not. I owe that young man endless favors for kindnesses he has done for me but I cannot assume he will respect MY time as I respect his. The Italian traveler is as loving and kind a friend as I could ever want. All three are living the Me First philosophy to their advantage. I am very tempted to do as they do…not try to help someone in need…not try to sacrifice myself for someone else in small, comfortable ways …not care that a person is stranded at an airport, wants to take advantage of a sale, needs my help delivering for her. But I DO care because of who I am. When I deal with people IN MY GENERATION I never feel abused. Gwen O’Neill asked me to deliver magazines for her when she could not because of her replaced knee. BUT as soon as she was able, she took over the job. She let me choose my own time and my own pace because she is in MY generation and knows when something is too much to ask. My darling friend Kerry has asked my help her out but she more than repays me for every favor I do for her WITHOUT MY EVEN ASKING. She is not in my generation but still she cares and is sensitive to others in a beautiful, delightful and refreshing way.

What is my conclusion here? I think it is this: Once I get the measure of the person, it is I who must set the limits of how much time or effort I can give away without sacrificing myself. It is obvious that not one of the three people I described would give one minute to me if it were not easy for them Since I cannot ignore a need when I see it, I must learn to force myself to prioritize my own time. When I make an offer, I must not expect people to be sensitive to my needs or who I am. It is I who must announce the parameters of my favors because I live in this world now and it is a selfish one. It is a place where people are determined first and foremost to make their own dreams come true. I certainly cannot say that is a bad thing. It is my job to adapt my priorities to the attitudes that prevail now, not those that I learned them when I was a child.

FROM INEZ
Though life ails just a day faster than art allays
Though age rots out before it can learn to sing true
Sing anyhow. Continue.

I cannot seem to erase my fury at Rene Villanueva and Richard Romanski for the evil they have done to me and that is a terrible flaw in my own character.  I look at people like that who are very proud of how they got something from an old lady even though she had the contract that proved she had a right to her money or her car.  They feel victorious and very clever.  Rene is delighted that by perjuring her daughter and fabricating an agreement that never happened, she managed to save herself 1600 dollars.  Richard Romanski on the other hand doesn’t see what the fuss was about.  He had an opportunity to look good in the eyes of a big blond bombshell and so what if the old lady didn’t get her money?  She was Jewish and those kind always take advantage of the rest of us anyway.

I think about the rewards they won for themselves: a car that was worth three times what she paid for it;  a sense of showing that little, old Jew she couldn’t have what she wanted in HIS court…and I think, “Would I do what either of these people (I use that noun loosely) did for the rewards they reaped?”  The answer is no.  I couldn’t live with myself knowing I had cheated someone that way.  And then I probe deeper.  Let us say I complained to the district attorney and proved that Richard Romanski prevented the Bar Association from returning my papers so I could continue my complaints against him.  Let us say I registered my fury with the presiding judge because he allowed a mistrial to go unnoticed.  What would I get in return?  I MIGHT get a car that woman has been driving for a year and a half.  I would not get the money since once you appeal in Small Claims Court, the case is virtually closed.  I wouldn’t get much satisfaction even if the judge were reprimanded for ignoring my rights because the injustice itself is what hurt me and there is no remedy in the world that can erase my shock at hearing false testimony actually encouraged by a man who thought I was not important enough to protect under the laws of the state and my country.

AND what would I have lost:

I would have lost hours of my time, time that I can spend writing my stories, creating my shows, polishing my humor and building the life I have begun for myself so that I can love living the life I have left. I have already lost my impulse to be kind to others .  I am wary now and suspicious.  They might be Rene all over again They might accuse me of stealing gifts they gave me. I won’t accept anything from anyone anymore and perhaps that is a good thing.  They say we need one another to survive but I am afraid of others now.  I am alone.  I know neither the police nor the justice system will protect me or my property.  That is the scar I cannot heal.

Rewards. Have I gotten anything positive from this experience?  My enemies have.  She has a car and both can bask in the sense of their own power to over-ride the law.  I like to think that my rewards will come in the new people who come into my life.  Perhaps mine will come in the  acts of kindness others are doing for me every day.  Perhaps mine will come in knowing that there is no one on this earth that can say I didn’t reach out to them when they were in need.

Perhaps.

I like to think that this line of reasoning will finally dull the pain of being classed as no one because I didn’t have the money, the impact, the influence or the connections to fight for rights the state and country assure me are mine.

I met a woman whose mother is dying of cancer.  She devotes every afternoon to care for her mom and often her evenings as well, because they do not live together.  She has given up most of her normal activities to do this and she is thrilled for the opportunity give back love and concern to a woman who has given her so much.

I cannot imagine feeling this way and that is a terrible loss both for me and for my mother when she was alive.  My mother was my enemy and what I am today is in spite of her not because of her.

My mother was not a cruel woman although many who have read Starving Hearts might think she was.  She was the product of being so adored by HER mother, so over-indulged that she thought the world would always bow down to her demands.  When she married my father she was shocked to realize that a marriage involved HER giving something back to someone else. She had expected only to receive his love and financial support.  She felt betrayed.  Fortunately for her, my father so adored her and was so elated to have captured this adorable blue-eyed red-head he knew didn’t love him that he took the abuse my mother dealt to him and considered it small payment for having her to show off on his arm when he went out on the town.

When I was born, my being was more than my mother could handle.  Pregnancy was uncomfortable and giving birth hurt;  Once I arrived, her time wasn’t her own.  When she was tired, I dared to cry. I was hungry when she had other things to do.   I became the reason she was not happy with her life.  It never occurred to her that she was the source of her malaise.  So it was that when my mother lost her place in the spotlight, she punished me.

As I grew up and saw other mothers who loved their children, I thought it was my fault that my mother didn’t like me and so I tried very hard to please her, but I could not.  When I gave her a gift and I did so every time I saw a pretty flower, or something I thought would charm her into a smile, she got angry.  When I complimented her, she told me not to butter her up. I obeyed her.  I did not complain.  I escaped into books and school where I was the star she wanted to be. And soon I began to hate her…hate her because she had the power to hurt me and used it without any logic I could understand.  If she had a bad day, I was punished.  It didn’t make sense.  Yet when I appealed to my father, he said, “As long as you live in your mother’s house, you obey her rules.”

I did what he said.  Each time I managed to escape, fate or bad luck or economics sent me back to her home until finally I managed to cross the country.  She couldn’t touch me any more. No daily phone calls telling me how inferior I was.  No insistent commands to drive over 40 miles to her suburban home to weed her garden, wash her dishes, drive her to the store.  That part of my life was over.

And I became me.

When she died, I was sad for my father and sad for the pain she felt but I was not sad for me.  Jewish people light candles on the anniversary of their parents’ deaths.  I light no candle.  When I think of my mother, I only think how glad I am that I moved away and never had to take care of her during those six years she was dying.

Sometimes, I cry at my lack of feeling for the woman who bore me, but most times I know that my mother’s method of demeaning and manipulating me, created the strong, resilient woman I am today.

Someone asked me once what gifts my mother gave me and I said none.  I was wrong.  My mother toughened me for life’s blows and those blows are more severe and more unpredictable as one grows older.  There is a Latin saying “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”

I never do.

Thanks Mom.

So I met a woman who loves giving her mother back the support and love she received.  She made me realize that some might think I was a deprived kid, but because of my relationship with my mother, I got guts.

And so I say again with no bitterness and no regret for the hugs, the kisses, the emotional support I never received: Thanks Mom.

Pacifica has several graveside memorials. The most horrifying is the memorial by our golf course for the death & injury of several teenagers in a truck driven by a drunken over 16 teen. Two of the children were killed, the others injured and the young man is being tried for murder. This in itself is horrifying and morally wrong to me although it is not legally incorrect.The young man was giving a ride to his friends and trying to do what he thought was a favor to them because he loved them. However, the night was dark, his alcohol level high and he rammed into a tree. The memory of that horrifying night and its aftermath will never leave this child. What good can come from putting him in prison? What will it teach him but that the world is a cruel, hard, unforgiving place where youngsters who don’t have friends in high places are punished for good deeds that backfire just to make the parents of those dead children feel better. His conviction certainly will not bring back those who died. The young man is destroyed now and society in its zeal to do what the law says, is zealously crushing him even further. Who gains from this?

Today as I walked my dogs, I saw a young lady standing at the memorial for those who lost their lives in this needless, heartbreaking accident. She crossed herself and returned to her car, her face streaked with tears. My own eyes are filled with tears as I write this. It is not that young man who needs to pay even more for something he never meant to happen. It is our society who defines fun as getting drunk and then when the inevitable happens, punishes our best learners, the ones who paid attention to what the media and their peers told them is cool.

Seeing this memorial and that grief-stricken young woman was a singular Christmas gift to me. I have been forced to realize that our justice system serves only the rich, the powerful and the “in” group at the expense of every kind of minority, racial, physical and social. I am 72 and have enough perspective to handle this scathing revelation. I have survived thus far and I know it will take more than a Richard Romanski playing out his bigotry in the courtroom or a policeman who tells me to ignore the 6-foot bully who is attacking me to destroy ME. This young man, now labeled a murderer, does not have the benefit the living I have done. HE is not the killer. WE are; and it makes us feel good to make him our scapegoat.

I am incredibly sad this Christmas. I know now that the country I thought protected its weak violates every moral imperative I believe in.

Let us hope the New Year will bring compassion to the hardened hearts that control us. Let us hope those who are sensitive to human concerns finally triumph.

I agree and disagree with you Inez. I do not give to organized charities because I am paying public relations people to put intellectually insulting ads on radio and television and sending barely one penny of my dollar to the needy. I think charities are as obnoxious and grasping as merchants during this season. I have a friend who goes with her children to a soup kitchen to help serve every Christmas. My own feeling is connected to my observations about Tikkum Olam in my previous post. I need to learn to give of myself freely for the joy it gives me and for nothing else all year round. That is my debt to the world that I must pay because I am human. Perhaps because I am Jewish, Christmas does not compel me to give any more than a week from next Tuesday.

However, we live in a fractured, imperfect world and life moves so fast we often forget to tell those we care about how dear they are to us. It is good to have a time of year to do that. The atmosphere at Christmas, the beauty of the lights, the magnificence of the music fills me with a remarkable, ever-fresh surge of happiness at being alive and among others celebrating our connection with one another. I have no advice on what to teach your children. I have been spending time with a young lady who has made a career of taking from others and I think that is so very sad because she has lost herself. I think perhaps the answer is to teach our children that participating in human experiences is the real gift we share with one another.All that pressure to buy, buy, buy and take, take, take and all the emphasis an what you deserve because you are young, old, infirm, green, black or blue is all part of the brainwashing this country fosters. So think small; think kindness; think connection…… and have a happy holiday .

My friend Tamryn and I have been discussing the ramifications of Munchausen’s disease and carrying it a step beyond a mother creating symptoms that convince her child and others that he is sick. I expand it to include the Oh My God illnesses everyone has and does not realize is their “out” for avoiding an uncomfortable situation. I have certainly done this altogether too many times and I will never forget when I was in Redwood City and had re-developed my anorexic symptoms (fixating on the food I ate, weighing myself continually, skipping meals and pretending I wasn’t hungry) I told this to the receptionist in my dentist’s office and she said, “Well you must be getting your cookies from it somewhere.”

It pulled me up short and I thought, “No more. If I cannot face a situation, I will admit to it ..no head ache, no stomach ache, no focusing on food (or drink or my dogs or the weather) to divert me from the problem at hand.”

This vow has freed me in many ways because I know now that if I do NOT say the no’s I need to say, my body will say them for me. It takes a great deal of playing the part to convince your body that it never wins the war but once you do, you feel so much more honest about the life you have chosen to live.

I just saw a movie that explored our need to be spiritually centered and talked about the Jewish mandate Tikkum Olam that means to make the world a better place. Each time we do a good thing: water a flower, help a struggling child, send a thoughtful wish…. all these things make the world lovelier for us all EVEN IF YOU AS THE DOER RECEIVE NO RETURN.

During the holiday season we often give gifts because we feel we need to and receive gifts without giving thought to the care (or lack of it) of the giver. Instead, we must give for the simple joy of giving. I return as an example to the incident with Renee and the car. I gave to her in many more ways than these blogs tell. I offered my home to her to increase sales at her dress shop, I gave her the things I created to stock the shop and she not only did not value them, she destroyed them. I gave her a car to drive before she had paid for it and never, even in the court case when she refused to pay me, asked for interest on that money. Until I saw that movie, I felt a total fool; but now I realize I was not. My mistake was to expect this woman to even notice what I did for her. According to my religion, I was doing nothing for her alone. I was attempting to make the world sweeter.

After I lost the appeal because of prejudice on the part of the judge I was and still am horrified that a bigot like that man (Richard Romanski) should be in a position of power. Now that I understand the concept of Tikkum Olam, perhaps MY reaction was the wrong one. I did what every human being who inhabits the planet must do. I improved the world. If Renee polluted it and Richard Romanski soured it, no matter. Their blasphemies must not stop my own obligation to do Tikkum Olam. I have to believe my deeds balanced and hopefully superceded theirs. My gifts were not to them alone. The outcome of my actions is immaterial to the need to spread goodness. I hope that makes sense. It does to me and I feel much better about this horrible experience of coming to terms with a justice system that isn’t just. I am less determined to keep my guard up against others and more disposed to continue throwing out my sugar …the kind that contains no calories, only smiles. Happy holidays.

My dear friend John Ambrose has a granddaughter Emily who is fat. My sister is fat. …300 pounds fat. I just saw a play where one of the characters was very fat…and I reacted with superiority and disapproval. (I am, by the way, thin.)

I saw this darling little child, Emily eating with great gusto and IN MY HEAD I thought, “Someone ought to make that kid stop eating so much junk food or she will be big as a horse.”

I look at my sister whom I hate because of her consistent sociopathic behavior toward me and I think IN MY HEAD (an sometimes out loud) “That fat pig! She wants everything for herself and gobbles up people just like she does food. She cannot get enough.”

I looked at the fat lady dancing on the stage and I thought IN MY NOW OVERSTUFFED HEAD: “Boy she sure moves fast for such a fat horse.”

Our society has programmed us to think that fat people over-indulge and over-stuff themselves with an excess of everything when in reality, each of us has a natural weight that our bodies will reach and stay if WE DON’T FUSS WITH THEM. If we were able to listen to our bodies and know when they are hungry and feed them only what they need, we would all be healthy and a lot of different, comfortable shapes. When we diet, when we intellectualize what we eat and what size our hips should be, we have robbed our physical selves of the right to find a comfortable state of being. When we project a personality trait on someone because they are skinny (over achiever, anorexic, hyper active, too intense, we have lost the delightful variety of a heterogeneous society: one that features all kinds of people and many definitions of beauty.We SAY that externals are superficial but until we stop judging others by their size, we are perpetuating the myth that size and shape ARE personality.

Hooray for Emily!!! Let her love her hot fudge sundaes and enjoy every bite. She is totally adorable and one more inch on her will only give us more of her to love.

I can no longer blame my sister’s size for her disgusting personality. Our family let that happen. In reality she eats far less than I do. She is just genetically fat.

And rah, rah, rah for the lady on stage. Shake it Honey!!! You were great.

I wonder where we need to draw the line between standing up for ourselves and letting go of the abuse all of us must endure as we plod through life. To catch my readers up on the status of the appeal I lost, I applied for a re-hearing because of a miscarriage of justice and the presiding judge George Miram sent my request back to the pro-tem judge Richard Romanski who had ignored my documentation of the car sale and decided against me. And so Miriam’s injustice is added to the original affront. The lawyer who promised to help me if my appeal for a re-hearing backed out and I find myself consumed with hatred. Fury at Renee for lying and winning, driving my car without paying, lying in court and succeeding, fury at Richard Romanski who ignored written documentation proving our agreement, anger at George Miram for being so insensitive he sent my appeal to the very man who “did me in” to decide if there was basis for a re-hearing, fury at a system that says it will protect the elderly and does not respond unless the senior is dead and anger at lawyers who won’t touch a case unless it means hundreds of thousands in fees to them.

This judgment goes far beyond the 1600 dollars this woman owes me in court. It proves that anyone who screams loud and long can take anything they want away from another who is weaker and more vulnerable. It proves that a man who is prejudiced against the elderly (or could it be Jews…I hate to think THAT is still an issue) has the power to act on his bias in a court that is supposed to protect its citizens.

My conclusion is this: Renee and everyone like her has won in this society. She is free to abuse others, steal from them and lie at will and no one will try to stop her because she has no scruples about manipulating truth. What have I learned? It is a sad lesson: I need to try to live my life as carefully as I can because anyone and everyone can cheat, steal and abuse me and I have no protection whatsoever. It is a very frightening assessment of our society but it is sadly a true one. Now when someone is kind to me I recoil and refuse because I fear they will turn the favor they have offered against me. It has happened too many times before.

They say that a government is judged by how they treat the elderly and the poor. I am both.
And I will always lose.