Graduation Flashback: Then and Now

As I watched the college students march proudly in procession into the stadium, I nostalgically remembered the excitement of that day in my life years ago at my undergrad college graduation from the University of Illinois in Urbana.

I never imagined that one day I would be watching my students' graduation. I sat in the front row ceremoniously attired in my cap, gown and hood to support the commencement ritual for the new grads.

Scanning their faces, I could see the pride and the relief that they had made it to the prize. I watched them accept their diplomas while their families and friends whistled and applauded as their names were called.

As they came down the stairs, some shouted out; one did a cartwheel, and another did a victory dance.

As I reminisced, I remembered that sunny day when I stood beaming in my cap and gown, clutching that hard earned diploma in front of the University's Assembly Hall. I was on top of the world.

I remembered the look on my face preserved in the photo my parents kept on display for years. I was glowing, filled with hopes, dreams and goals for a bright future.

A college degree was my ticket to a new life, better than my parents had, to live the American dream...the first college grad in our family, let alone the only female.

My four years of study prepared me to be an English teacher K-12. I believed that was the life ahead of me.

Graduating from college is what my mother had encouraged me to do after her own education was cut short by a depression that required her to quit school as an 8th grade honors student and work in the local factory to help her family put food on the table. My father managed to graduate high school which was typical for his generation.

I could relate to the students who pursued a degree while working fulltime, raising families and going to school at night. I appreciated their struggles and determination.

It had not been easy for me either. If it hadn't been for three scholarships and working three jobs, I could not afford to pay for my education. There were no other funds available at the time.

Looking back at that day when the world was my oyster, I thought I knew where the journey would take me: marriage, children, a teaching career and a comfortable life in a small town in the Midwest.

I had a master plan and a script to follow. I was all set.

Little did I know, how differently my life would go. I had college credits and a degree but little life experience for what was to come.

Years later after my divorce, I moved East to pursue a corporate communications and marketing career and even became a vice president of a high-tech start-up as my career advanced.

I raised my children as a single parent, then married and divorced again, and ultimately returned to teaching after many years in the business world. Along the way I earned my MA from the University of Richmond.

That was not the plan the day I stood proudly clenching my diploma ready to take on the world, or so I thought.

Where will the journey take the new grads? The one thing I can tell them is that it will be an adventure they cannot imagine and wouldn't want to miss.


Copyright © Erana Leiken, 2010-2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

mortar board 1 photo by renata jun

What I Learned from a Cockroach

Like most people, I find cockroaches disgusting and repulsive, but one cockroach taught me a lesson just at the time I needed it.

I'm afraid of bugs...always have been. I remember them knocking and buzzing at the screen as I tried to sleep on a hot "unairconditioned" night in Chicago when I was a young girl. 

It was the mid '90s on a sultry afternoon in New Orleans. I just left our company's partner conference. I was in turmoil about whether to leave the company that was faltering; it was just a matter of time before it would go belly up. Layoffs were underway, and the high-tech giant was floundering.

I was burned out; and as the workers left, the rest of us shouldered more of the load. I had reached a fork in the road--stay or go before the end. I was offered a corporate position, but it was really too late for a turnaround. If I left, I had no idea what I would do next. I felt "stuck" by my responsibilities and could not see a way out.

On the way back to the hotel, I discovered an art glass studio where students were shaping lava-like, molten glass into beautiful, decorative vases and bowls.

I love art glass, so I couldn't pass up the chance to watch the amazing process of golden, liquid glass being fired. It was an old warehouse with a tall, arched glass skylight, a dramatic rooftop for the fiery ovens below where the glass was given its final form.

Suddenly a storm blew in, the sky blackened, and lightening streaked above the skylight putting nature's fireworks on display, a theatrical production of fire and rain clashing as the glass was creatively brought to life by the glassblowers.  It was a dramatic moment of blazing fire, pounding water and lashing wind.

A deluge struck the building and we were caught on foot in a flash flood. The street quickly filled up with rushing water. We took off our shoes, rolled up our slacks, and waded into thigh-high murky water, feeling the pavement under our feet, but unable to see what was beneath the quickening current.

We sought higher ground and saw an historic townhome nearby with a dozen steps up to its landing.  We climbed as quickly as we could to safety as the water continued to rise.

We were not the only ones seeking dry ground. Below us, we watched a giant roach instinctivelyly inch its way up each concrete step to avoid being swept away.

Once again I felt that familiar revulsion, but I was stuck in place.

As I observed the roach work its way to safety, I became fascinated by its behavior. It knew what to do and how to survive.

I realized in the storm that the roach moved forward to live. That was the sign I needed.

I, too, had to move on and flee the corporate storm that was destroying my spirit and future.

I still am squeamish when I see a cockroach but am grateful for the lesson it taught me that day when I needed to escape the murky turmoil around me and regain my footing on solid ground.

Sometimes life lessons come from the last place we would look for them.

Copyright © Erana Leiken, 2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

power of nature by nespresso
steps1 by vasantdave

Doing "Nothing" is "Something"

Don't feel like “doing” today…want to relax this morning after teaching my college class for four hours last night.

Slept in…looked at the clock…and rolled over. Permission to self to take the day off.

List of things to do can wait till tomorrow. Instead, sip coffee in my pjs on the front porch and write while the birds sing and the soft breeze and checkered sunlight caress my neck ever so gently. Enjoying a sunny day in Phoenix.

Ah, the luxury of musing, reflecting without deadlines, appointments and obligations for the day.

Simple and delightful and so different from my former self, the Type A, overly responsible, overachieving Super Woman who tried and at times did do it all…single mother, professional career woman, wife, hostess, etc. Exhausting.

No more. I have officially retired my Super Woman cape, and I don’t feel the least bit guilty about it.

My “self” has earned and deserves time without the requirements of work and responsibilities that compete for my time with me.

Putting me first is a relatively new experience after years of doing just the opposite for bosses, family and friends. It’s very liberating and peaceful to not have “to do” anything. I never had that choice or so I believed.

How lovely to finally know what it’s like to be free and not have to answer to anyone but me, a heady thought indeed. Just floating for now…see where the current takes me. During my life, the raft has taken me over the “falls” (divorces, moves, layoffs), and I’m still here.

The fears and worries of those times no longer have power over me. I realize now I did learn survival skills on my life journey, but the angst isn’t worth it.

Is my glass full or empty?

Both, I think: Full from my life’s experiences with some wisdom from my life's challenges and Empty of the cares and struggles of the past with space available now for what comes next.

Doing nothing for a day is good for something:)

 Copyright © Erana Leiken, 2010-11 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED


Alarm clock photo by Zvone Lavric

A Memorial Day Reunion

Dad led me there. I know that now. I had gone back to Illinois for a couple days, back to my roots, to the remnants of family still there.

On a wet, early Memorial Day morning, Dad requested that we visit my mother’s grave. I complied, feeling  a sense of obligation to them both.

Dad seemed determined to reunite us at the grave site. I never really knew my father except through my mother’s perceptions and judgments.

There was a family tradition of an annual pilgrimage every Memorial Day to our relatives’ graves. We always packed a spade, bucket, and scrub brush and stopped by the open market for flowers for the gravesite.

I watched the annual ritual of my parents filling the bucket from the nearest pump and scrubbing the flat headstones until the inscriptions could be seen.

As the years passed, the graves seemed harder to find, overgrown under unkempt grass with weeds sunken below the mowing level.

Dead people I had never known were conjured from memories. I was linked to these family ghosts by my mother’s stories and recollections. Over the years, I felt as if I came to know them, and they were no longer strangers.

Today my father and I stopped at a small flower stand near the cemetery. The plant selection was limited to a few shelves of drooping flowers.

Drizzle spattered mud on the leaves. I pruned off the dying petals and soggy leaves to make them more presentable. As always for these occasions, Dad brought a bucket, brush and spade along.

It was eight years since my mother’s funeral, the last time we were all together. At that time I was unable to cry. She had died when my life was coming apart; and I was experiencing another death, my divorce.

But today was different. I couldn’t seem to stop my tears. I couldn’t even speak as I watched my father clear away the debris and clean the gravesite the way I remembered it from so long ago.

As I planted, he spoke of coming to my mother’s grave often to talk to her. He told me that no one would ever stand up for him like my mother did.

He never said he loved her. In fact, he said he was happier with his new wife.

I couldn’t reply. Once again I was in the middle between them.

And then he told me something I never knew… he was always lonely with my mother.

In the quiet rain, I heard his pain and regrets as he apologized, saying there were things he shouldn’t have done and was sorry for.

Could my mother hear him? Did it take this long for there to be peace? He told my mother and me as we completed the gravesite ritual together for the last time.

It was a moment of truth at my mother’s grave and the beginning of forgiveness. It was the day I got to know my father a little better.

Copyright © Erana Leiken, 2010-2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Crying Rose photo by Joanna Kopik

Planting photo by Rodrigo Roveri

Homes: The Way They Were

There’s a scene in the movie, The Way We Were, where two men are sharing “best of” memories.

Inspired by that scene, I am remembering the many homes of my life and their “best of” moments.

Though I have lived in many places, not all of them felt like home. The ones that I think of as home were those where I felt connected to my surroundings. These are my “best of” home memories, “the way they were.”

First home, early childhood in a multi-ethnic Chicago apartment complex where our playgrounds were asphalt and concrete, alleyways sandwiched between brick buildings, underground storage basements and a large empty, weed prairie.

I always dreamed of having a real backyard with flowerbeds like my aunt’s old Chicago house in South Shore.

Best memory: climbing the advertising billboard's wooden scaffolds on the State Street side of the prairie to get a great view of sparks flying when the boys threw cans on the streetcar tracks, a game for city kids.

Second home, teen years in the south suburbs of Chicago, in working class Dolton, where we finally had a yard where my mother hung the wash to dry on a clothesline that doubled as our theatre curtain, a blanket attached with clothespins, for our backyard plays.

Best memory: the fir tree my mother planted that grew taller than our house and became a giant Xmas tree every winter that we lit for all to see.

In my married home 20’s to mid 30’s in Eureka, a central Illinois bedroom community of churchgoing gentlemen farmers, home was a rambling farmhouse that we modernized on our semi-timbered five acres adjacent to neighbors who rode their horses past the cornfields up the road.

Best memory: my young children playing in a tree, one in the big tire swing and the other in the crook of the tree.

Second best memory: growing a vegetable garden for the first time and preparing the homegrown produce for my family and putting fresh cut flowers on the table from my own backyard.

My home on a cul-de-sac in Falls Church, VA, where some nights the sky was a planetarium with constellations that shone brightly as crickets serenaded us on a summer evening.

Best memory: watching our beloved cat, Frisky, roll around in the ivy while I rested lazily with a book in the hammock slung between two giant White Oak trees.

Last home in an apartment townhome in Marina del Rey overlooking the channel, watching the moon play on the water with the shimmering lights of boats and distant planes looking like UFOs blocking the stars as they descended into LAX.

Best memory: walking the boardwalk piers between the slips of the anchored sailboats and yachts during a crimson sunset, almost as much pleasure as strolling the beach a few blocks away.

Home today in a condo overlooking a former golf course in Phoenix.

Best memory: drinking my morning coffee while I watch a hummingbird pause for a sweet drink at the feeder just above the orange tree.

All of the home bookmarks are where I felt centered. They are the places that are always with me and are the “best of” memories.


Copyright © Erana Leiken, 2010 -2011 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Welcome banner by Billy Alexander

Tree photo by Sue Byford

Hummingbird photo by Tiffany Clark

Hearts & Teardrops: A Geography Lesson

Years ago, sitting in my English professor's office, I found a curious wall map of the U.S.

It was a canvas divided only with states' borders; instead of cities, the painting was dotted with partial and broken hearts and teardrops like pushpins marking an emotional geography.

I asked my professor what the hearts and teardrops represented on the non-topographical map. He told me they were placemarks for locations where hearts still lingered and tears still stained the people and relationships of the artist's life.

It got me thinking as to where I would place my hearts and tears around the country. I have lived in the Midwest, East Coast, and now the West and Southwest.

How many hearts and tears would there be for my sixty some years of living as my relationships changed: marriage, divorce, separation, and friendships that touched me, a mix of love and hurt, joy and sadness?

Some relationships, no matter where they happened, stay with me; others are gone and not stood the test of time.

My personal geography, like the painting, has its share of both symbols marking my emotional terrain throughout the years.

They represent some of the happiest and some of the most painful experiences of my life.

Nevertheless, my emotional geography is not a map I would change. My map is filled with geography lessons that are part of the journey I have known and have shaped me into who I am.

Did I take the roads less travelled? Did I end up in places I never thought I would? Looking back, does it really matter? The detours were often the best parts of the trip.

I'm still traveling and expect I will add more hearts and tears along the way. What's important are the experiences they represent of a life fully lived.

Copyright © Erana Leiken, 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Broken Heart by Billy Alexander

Rooms R Us

My own room for the first time ever. I could hardly wait!

I didn't have to sleep with other people in the room anymore...a place where I could close the door and escape into daydreams, fantasies, and PRIVACY.

My parents even found a used vanity table with a mirror and chair for my room. The cosmetics on the vanity crowded my stuffed animals. I knew sooner or later there would not be room for both.

I felt so feminine and grown-up in the vanity's mirror seeing the reflection of a future acclaimed actress or best-selling author.

The closet held only "my" things, no one else's.

My storybook dolls, timeless princesses adorned in beautiful gowns and tiaras, slept undisturbed in their plastic, see-through boxes, unspoiled and forever perfect. Like Sleeping Beauty, they awaited the kiss of the handsome prince to awaken them.

I would transform my room into a sanctuary, dreamscape, and bigger-than-life movie starring me. Sometimes the room became a time machine transporting me to a wonderful future filled with love, romance and riches.

On my fantasy stage, I would confront my parents and win; accept the Oscar graciously; be crowned Miss America; and passionately kiss the senior class president.

It was here where I rehearsed for life; and, all my stories had happy, victorious endings written, produced and directed from the theatre of my mind.

Years later, I shared my room, this time with my husband. How strange to be lying there beside him with my parents in the next room. I felt self conscious about the squeaky bedsprings and refused to make love, for somehow that would be sacrilege.

In this place, nothing in reality could compare to the exquisite romances of my girlhood fantasies.

After my divorce, I stayed in my room for the last time. The house was empty. My parents had divorced long ago and my mother had passed. I went there with a man I cared for but had no plans to marry.

As I lay beside him, memories and ghosts swept over me. I wept as I realized my lovely, girlhood dreams had shattered in the outside world.

Now I possessed wisdom and experience, but the innocent girl imagining her first kiss was gone forever.


Copyright © Erana Leiken, 2009-10 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Missing Person

I think most of us at some point experience feeling lost or invisible, drifting without direction.

Looking back at that time in my life, I remember the discomfort of not knowing who I was any more, because my old life of marriage, corporate career, and family, shifted off its foundation officially when I moved from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles.

 I became a missing person.

I had followed the scripts of the American dream for women of my generation: married my college sweetheart, a successful attorney; raised two children; lived the good life on a house on five acres along with indistinguishable years of beach and ski vacations.

Somewhere along the way, I vanished.

Divorce extricated me from a stifling marriage only to find myself wedded to the corporation that took over my life instead. Bottom lines, deadlines, meetings and management consumed my life along with single motherhood.

And then after my children moved away and another marriage ended, I walked away from it all, quit my stressful job, sold my home of 20 years and moved to LA to be near my children and start over.

I was at a loss without the trappings, structure and patterns that glued my life together before.

I was beginning my life again in my 50's and not sure where I was headed, but I had to discover if the girl who once dreamed of doing something creative still existed. I'd come so far to find me again.

Once the familiar props were gone, I was adrift. I wondered if it was possible to rediscover myself and pursue my dream to write and teach, to be free, true to myself, and be of service.

I decided to pursue my passion without giving in to the fears and insecurities that sabotaged my dreams in the past. I had to know.

I looked for my new identity with other singles, at churches, in classes and retreats.

I had no idea where the search would take me. Dipping into myself for affirmation, I found doubts and misgivings.

Surely, the idealistic, creative young woman I was once was still alive. How could I find her? I refused to believe she was gone forever. I searched on long walks on the beach, in mediatation, reflection and time with loved ones.

Slowly, signs of her began to appear: laughter, joy in writing and teaching, delight in small things. I caught glimpses of her from time to time.

Major life changes required shedding my former life's skin for a new one. Renewal felt unsettling and scary, but I knew there was no going back.

I learned it would take time to reconnect with my former self, return to my internal roots, and get my life back.

I didn't want to be afraid to go it alone, if need be. This part of the journey required being solo to be open to life's possibilities without the distractions of someone else's needs.

It was part of my reunion with myself and all that had gone missing  for a long time.

homem invisivel..photo by Jonathan Phillip

Puzzle Missing photo by Michał Trochimiak

Also see: DC to LA: A Monumental Change
http://justdoingmythingcom.blogspot.com/2009/09/dc-to-la-monumental-change.html


Copyright © Erana Leiken, 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Never Too Late

He led me there. I know that now. I had gone back to Illinois, back to my roots, to the remnants of family still there.

I never really knew my father except through my mother’s perceptions.

On this wet, early morning, Dad suggested we visit my mother’s grave.

There was a family tradition of an annual pilgrimage every Memorial Day to our relatives’ graves. We always packed a spade, bucket, and scrub brush and stopped by the open market for flowers for the gravesite.

I watched the annual ritual of my parents filling the bucket from the nearest pump and scrubbing the flat headstones until the inscriptions could be seen.

As the years passed, the graves seemed harder to find, overgrown under unkempt grass with weeds sunken below the mowing level.

Dead people I had never known were conjured from memories. I was linked to these family ghosts by my mother’s stories and recollections. Over the years, I felt as if I came to know them, and they were no longer strangers.

Today my father and I stopped at a small flower stand near the cemetery. Their plant selection was limited to a few shelves of drooping flowers.

Drizzle spattered mud on the leaves. I pruned off the dying petals and soggy leaves to make them more presentable. As always for these occasions, Dad brought a bucket, brush and spade along.

It was eight years since my mother’s funeral, the last time we were all together. At that time I was unable to cry. She had died when my life was coming apart and I was experiencing another death, my divorce.

But today was different. I couldn’t seem to stop my tears. I couldn’t even speak as I watched my father clear away the debris and clean the gravesite the way I remembered it from so long ago.

As I planted, he spoke of coming to my mother’s grave often to talk to her. He told me that no one would ever stand up for him like my mother did.

He never said he loved her. In fact, he said he was happier with his new wife.

I couldn’t reply. Once again I was in the middle between them.

And then he told me something I never knew… he was always lonely with my mother.

In the quiet rain, I heard his pain and regrets. He said there were things he shouldn’t have done and was sorry for.

Could my mother hear him? Did it take this long for there to be peace? He told my mother and me as we completed the gravesite ritual together for the last time.

It was a moment of truth at my mother’s grave and the beginning of forgiveness. It was the day I got to know my father a little better.

Copyright © Erana Leiken, 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED


Crying Rose photo by Joanna Kopik
Planting photo by Rodrigo Roveri

My Guardian Angel

I didn’t know where to turn. At 33, my world was falling apart. My marriage was ending and I had two small children to raise and support.

Feeling weary from lawyers and therapists’ advice, for the first time, I turned to a psychic, a spiritual reader, who a friend recommended. And that is how I met Gina 34 years ago.

The rooms of Gina's simple home were filled with angels and Native American symbols and figures. They had a calming effect but were strange to me.

I was leery and skeptical of talking to a psychic, but hoping I would be told by this gentle, humble woman, who possessed gifts I did not understand, that my marriage would survive.

But that’s not what she said. I was amazed and surprised by what I heard. The details were quite specific about my life, and I only half believed her predictions at best; but over time, I came to realize, that this generous and wise person was indeed gifted; and it was the beginning of a long, lifetime friendship.

Though I eventually left the Midwest and started a new life in Virginia with my children, I remained in phone contact with Gina over the years. More and more she became like a surrogate mother to me, someone who always listened and soothed me. There was no one else like her in my life.

Over time, our conversations were no longer “readings.” We became friends with a special bond and understanding. Talking to her was comforting, no matter what was going on in my love life or career.

She was always there for me, someone I could count on, a lifeline and a cherished, nurturing confidante, a connection that went beyond a blood relative.

As the older women in my family passed, I could always call Gina, like a favorite aunt, and talk about anything, uncensored and safe.

Never judged, I always felt understood. She filled an empty space in my life as a crone, a tribal elder whose kind wisdom helped me weather life’s storms, and never refused my cries for help when no one else was there.

Even though my life took me to new places, there was always Gina, just a phone call away. She shared her family and history with me as well. We became family to each other and developed a connection that surpassed friendship. Over the years, we would just call each other to talk and be together in our comfortable way. It always made me feel better.

In the last few years, Gina in her 80’s, was faltering and her health deteriorating. She never complained and always had a smile in her voice for me. I had not heard from her recently, and somehow I couldn’t make the call to confirm what I sensed.

I returned one evening to find my answering machine blinking for my attention. The message was from Gina’s daughter, Lonnie, who called me from Chicago to say that Gina, “our” mom, had passed in February.

I leaned over the sink and sobbed. All I could do was cry. As I wipe away my tears even now as I write this, I miss her from the deepest part of myself. The loss is indescribable.

On Mother’s Day, I received another call from Gina’s daughter, Lonnie, who is learning to walk again. Her mother’s house in central Illinois is being readied for new owners. She had kept some of her mother’s ashes. The rest were sprinkled over the loveliest spot above the river in Gina’s hometown. That pleased me.

Lonnie, as if being prompted by her mother, my dearest friend, Gina, said she had relocated her mother’s phonebook. Lonnie wanted to stay in touch and offered to talk anytime.

Thank you, Gina, for “contacting” me on Mother’s Day. You will always be my guardian angel. I love you and I miss you.

Copyright © Erana Leiken, 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Guardian Angel photo by Robert Aichinger
Life Preserver photo by Paul Smith

Doing "Nothing" is "Something"

Don't feel like “doing” today…want to relax this morning after teaching my college class for four hours last night. Slept in…looked at the clock…and rolled over. Permission to self to take the day off.


List of things to do can wait till tomorrow. Instead, sip coffee in my pjs on the front porch and write while the birds sing and the soft breeze and checkered sunlight caress my neck ever so gently. Enjoying springtime in Phoenix.

Ah, the luxury of musing, reflecting without deadlines, appointments and obligations for the day. Simple and delightful and so different from my former self, the Type A, overly responsible, overachieving Super Woman who tried and at times did do it all…single mother, professional career woman, wife, hostess, etc. Exhausting.

No more. I have officially retired my Super Woman cape, and I don’t feel the least bit guilty about it. My “self” has earned and deserves time without the requirements of work and responsibilities that compete for my time with me.

Putting me first is a relatively new experience after years of doing just the opposite for bosses, family and friends. It’s very liberating and peaceful to not have “to do” anything. I never had that choice or so I believed.

How lovely to finally know what it’s like to be free and not have to answer to anyone but me, a heady thought indeed. Just floating for now…see where the current takes me. During my life, the raft has taken me over the “falls” (divorces, moves, layoffs), and I’m still here.

The fears and worries of those times no longer have power over me. I realize now I did learn survival skills on my life journey, but the angst isn’t worth it.

Is my glass full or empty? Both, I think: Full from my life’s experiences with some wisdom as I near my next birthday and Empty of the cares and struggles of the past with space available now for what comes next.

Doing nothing for a day is good for something.

Copyright © Erana Leiken, 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED


Alarm clock photo by Zvone Lavric

Why the Olympics Make Me Cry

Why do the Olympic stories and competitions make me tearful? Are the young, beautiful athletes striving to do their personal best to win a medal more than an athletic competition?

Their struggles and courage move me. I’ve never lost the desire to be my best even though I’m not young anymore.

The stirrings are always there…when I attempt something that’s new…when I set a goal and work to achieve it. I relate to the athletes striving, no matter what it takes, pushing their boundaries and limitations.

There is a victory in the attempt regardless of the outcome. There may be disappointment but ultimately it’s not how the world views us… it’s what we learn about ourselves in the quest.

The competition with yourself to become more, to be better is a lifelong challenge that can bring out the best in us. So the Olympians, the amateur athletes who compete their hearts out, while the world watches, touch my heart and evoke my tears.

I love them for their trying with everything they’ve got and overcoming pain, personal setbacks and losses. The game goes on as does the human spirit to achieve, to break records, to discover what is possible if you put in the effort and dream big. They remind me of what commitment and a sense of purpose can bring.

Life is a series of trials and runs…it’s part of the journey of self-discovery and being alive. Don’t quit…try again…take risks…go where your passion leads you. See what’s possible for you.

For me the Olympics represent more than the “thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.” It’s about living life to the fullest wherever we cross the finish line.


Copyright © Erana Leiken, 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED


Metal photo by Alessandro Paiva
Victory sign photo by Kriss Szkurlatowsk

First 100 Days of Blogging

For almost two years I told everyone (and myself) I would start a blog. I saved articles and bought books about blogging, but it seemed too big a commitment to take on. 

So last fall, I took the plunge and signed up for an intensive online class that pushed me into learning new technology, dusting off old stories and creating new ones to have at least 10 posts ready to go within two weeks. The weekly requirements were time consuming and tiring with a steep learning curve, but I prevailed.

I had much to learn to reach a comfort level with basic blogging tools. I’m still learning. Though the technology was a hurdle to overcome for a non-techie, I had no idea where the blog journey would lead me.

Initially, another new blogger from the class and I encouraged and supported each other. I tested the waters by adding my blog to directories and introducing it to online writers’ groups. I emailed friends and family asking them to take a look and come by regularly if they liked what they saw.

It’s been an amazing ride so far. I have shared stories from my youth with my children they never knew. People I will never meet have commented on my blog from Greece, Australia, NYC, Indiana, Canada and elsewhere. At local functions others tell me they have shared my blog with their friends and relatives, and of course I am thrilled.

I took more steps to reach more readers by sharing my blog on Facebook and LinkedIn with a network of friends, relatives and colleagues whom I’ve rediscovered from college and former jobs as well as new friends and friends of friends.

Though I teach Internet marketing at a college nearby, I am now experiencing the new personal connections that can come from anywhere. As a professional marketer, for years I helped companies find and keep new customers via the Net, but my personal circle consisted of known friends whom I shared emails with to stay in touch and pass along jokes.

Blogging expanded my world to so many more people. I’m surprised and delighted that the writing speaks to such a diverse group of men and women, ages and beliefs. I always wanted to write a memoir to share my life experiences and the wisdom I’ve earned through them, but the book seemed so daunting.

After my first 100 days of blogging, a new world has opened up to me. My blog is ranked on three top lists on Facebook’s Networked Blogs. http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/searchpage.php?tag=personal+stories

One of my posts, Following My Bliss http://justdoingmythingcom.blogspot.com/2009/10/following-my-bliss.html was recently included in the Independent Writers of SoCAL’s newsletter.

But the most important discovery of blogging is the joy I feel every time I write. The creative process from ideas that emerge, that can show up in the car, the bathtub, anywhere, to finding images to enhance and complete the story, and finally to publish it is an ongoing act of discovery every time. I can tell and publish my stories in real time and have them ready for browsers and followers anytime, anywhere.

For me, blogging is the ultimate way to connect and share with those I know and many I will never meet. It is an act of love every time.

Copyright © Erana Leiken, 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Photo by Zanetta Hardy

Homes: The Way They Were

There’s a scene in the movie, The Way We Were, where two men are sharing “best of” memories. Inspired by that scene, I am remembering the many homes of my life and their “best of” moments.

Though I have lived in many places, not all of them felt like home. The ones that I think of as home were those where I felt connected to my surroundings. These are my “best of” home memories, “the way they were.”

First home, early childhood in a multi-ethnic Chicago apartment complex where our playgrounds were asphalt and concrete, alleyways sandwiched between brick buildings, underground storage basements and a large empty, weed prairie. I always dreamed of having a real backyard with flowerbeds like my aunt’s old Chicago house in South Shore.

Best memory: climbing the advertising billboard's wooden scaffolds on the State Street side of the prairie to get a great view of sparks flying when the boys threw cans on the streetcar tracks, a game for city kids.

Second home, teen years in the south suburbs of Chicago, in working class Dolton, where we finally had a yard where my mother hung the wash to dry on a clothesline that doubled as our theatre curtain, a blanket attached with clothespins, for our backyard plays.

Best memory: the fir tree my mother planted that grew taller than our house and became a giant Xmas tree every winter that we lit for all to see.

In my married home 20’s to mid 30’s in Eureka, a central Illinois bedroom community of churchgoing gentlemen farmers, home was a rambling farmhouse that we modernized on our semi-timbered five acres adjacent to neighbors who rode their horses past the cornfields up the road.

Best memory: my young children playing in a tree, one in the big tire swing and the other in the crook of the tree.

Second best memory: growing a vegetable garden for the first time and preparing the homegrown produce for my family and putting fresh cut flowers on the table from my own backyard.

My home on a cul-de-sac in Falls Church, VA, where some nights the sky was a planetarium with constellations that shone brightly as crickets serenaded us on a summer evening.

Best memory: watching our beloved cat, Frisky, roll around in the ivy while I rested lazily with a book in the hammock slung between two giant White Oak trees.

Last home in an apartment townhome in Marina del Rey overlooking the channel, watching the moon play on the water with the shimmering lights of boats and distant planes looking like UFOs blocking the stars as they descended into LAX.

Best memory: walking the boardwalk piers between the slips of the anchored sailboats and yachts during a crimson sunset, almost as much pleasure as strolling the beach a few blocks away.

Home today in a condo overlooking a former golf course in Phoenix.

Best memory: drinking my morning coffee while I watch a hummingbird pause for a sweet drink at the feeder just above the orange tree.

All of the home bookmarks are where I felt centered. They are the places that are always with me and are the “best of” memories.

Copyright © Erana Leiken, 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED


 
Tree photo by Sue Byford
Hummingbird photo by Tiffany Clark

Rooms R Us

I could hardly wait!


My own room for the first time ever. I didn't have to sleep with other people in the room anymore...a place where I could close the door and escape into daydreams, fantasies, and PRIVACY.
My parents even found a used vanity table with a mirror and chair for my room. The cosmetics on the vanity crowded my stuffed animals. I knew sooner or later there would not be room for both. I felt so feminine and grown-up in the vanity's mirror seeing the reflection of a future acclaimed actress or best-selling author.

The closet held only "my" things, no one else's. My storybook dolls, timeless princesses adorned in beautiful gowns and tiaras, slept undisturbed in their plastic, see-through boxes, unspoiled and forever perfect. Like Sleeping Beauty, they awaited the kiss of the handsome prince to awaken them.

I would transform my room into a sanctuary, dreamscape, and bigger-than-life movie starring me. Sometimes the room became a time machine transporting me to a wonderful future filled with love, romance and riches.

On my fantasy stage, I would confront my parents and win; accept the Oscar graciously; be crowned Miss America; and passionately kiss the senior class president. It was here where I rehearsed for life; and, all my stories had happy, victorious endings written, produced and directed from the theatre of my mind.

Years later, I shared my room, this time with my husband. How strange to be lying there beside him with my parents in the next room. I felt self conscious about the squeaky bedsprings and refused to make love, for somehow that was sacrilege. In this place, nothing in reality could compare to the exquisite romances of my girlhood fantasies.

After my divorce, I stayed in my room for the last time. The house was empty. My parents had divorced long ago and my mother had passed. I went there with a man I cared for but had no plans to marry.

As I lay beside him, memories and ghosts swept over me. I wept as I realized my lovely, girlhood dreams had shattered in the outside world. Now I possessed wisdom and experience, but the innocent girl imagining her first kiss was gone forever.

Copyright © Erana Leiken, 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

D.C. to LA: A Monumental Change

Whenever I lost my way in DC, I looked for the Washington Monument, the tallest building in the District of Columbia, an obelisk sentry overlooking the city. I remember relaxing as I navigated my way home on Constitution Avenue flanked by its powerful Federal buildings.

Today I look to the Santa Monica Ferris wheel as my compass with the sea on one side and the canyons and hillsides on the other. Wide-open space accompanies me home now, nine months after the move from East to West. Along with the change of geography came a cultural change.

Even though I'm in the same country, speak the same language, I feel like a foreigner. Here are some of my observations as a newcomer to LA. One of the oddities of LA is that people who live here give each other directions constantly and never go anywhere without their traffic Bible, The Thomas Guide.

Perhaps the unwieldy sprawl of the place and the sardine freeways necessitate that Angelenos tell each other how to get around. It's part of their way of life. In a town where image is everything, billboards, "big screens," are everywhere, touting causes, movies, and designer fashions throughout the city. The images are built into LA's geography for maximum visibility. Sides of buildings display giant TV and film stars who gaze upon their fans like mythical gods and goddesses imbued with the power to dictate fashion and cultural trends.

Youth and beauty reign in LA. Younger women glide evocatively like island women in their city village. Aware of their physical power, they exude a sensual beauty and confidence. They have attitude; they are liberated, reminiscent of 1920s women, seductive in their natural bodies in clothing that provocatively reveals their charms.

Older women can't compete with the "bodies" of starlets and models in LA, but they haven't stopped trying. Regardless of age, there are almost no flat-chested women in LA; bodies are rebuilt here, "youthinized" to attain perfection and admiration. It is not unusual to see elders who look more like Zsa Zsa than grandma.

I discovered that I'm at an awkward age again, midlife adolescence, not comfortable with the seniors or the hip, caught between the too old and the too young. I studied other women to see how I could fit in better. I grew my hair longer, put in blond highlights, started working out at a gym, wore tighter clothes and more makeup, in hopes that my new exterior would help me blend into the LA "look" and wondered if I was headed toward Botox and collagen next.

I tried to meet people by attending singles events, singles everything: sailing, skiing, Christian, Jewish, cultural happenings. One gathering, under the guise of being a "spiritual" workshop, was actually a front to coax women to proposition men. Another singles function, a dating service's Valentines Party, initiated courtship by having singles find the people who matched the numbers on their admission ticket.

Contacts are what count in LA. The established protocol is an introduction. As laid back as LA is, the custom of an introduction is quite formal. Behaving like the hierarchy of a royal court, insiders grant favors to outsiders with an introduction. Soliciting without one is not readily accepted by LA's contact rules. To become acknowledged in the right circles, an introduction is required from someone who knows the "prized" contact. Such favors are chits, IOU's that are banked and exchanged like currency in the contact system.

Life outside of LA seems not to matter to the natives. Local TV news coverage ranges from 30-second reports on world events to detailed stories about cosmetic surgery procedures and, of course, a car chase, the LA news staple. I now understand why Jay Leno's jaywalking interviews feature people who don't know what's going on outside of LA. The external world seems to be of no consequence, so there's really to need to pay attention to it.

In this new place, at least I speak the language, movie speak. It is the common dialect of a sprawling cityscape and multicultural geography. Everyone is a film critic whether it's at the supermarket checkout line or the local video store. I also participate in one of the local sports...star spotting. Off screen in their life-size bodies, actors appear surprisingly small in contrast to their celluloid images.

LA's most famous celebrity is its weather. Angelenos delight in being weather blessed as if the sun favors the city with divine weather fortune. No matter what else is happening in LA, the weather seems to be a constant source of pride to the locals. It is a privilege that sets them apart from other cities, and it makes them smile whenever they talk about it.

For all of LA's eccentricities, as a writer, I find its creative energy exhilarating. The culture values artists. It's as if self-expression is an inalienable right in LA's creative democracy. I know I will not have this perspective of LA indefinitely. It's my ninth-month view. I'm still exploring its glitter, glamour, and illusion as well as its creative life. In the meantime, I look for the Santa Monica Ferris wheel, a lighthouse on the pier, to guide me home.

Copyright © Erana Leiken, 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Womenpause

OK. I'm 60 something. The American dream of getting married and living happily or at least securely thereafter didn't happen. It wasn't supposed to be like this. I followed the script at 22: married my college sweetheart, became a lawyer's wife with two kids and a house in the country in a small, safe town in the Midwest.

At 47, I had another chance for the American dream: a professional career and a second marriage to a charming therapist, ten years my junior.

Now I'm pursing a different reality as a single woman in her 60's. I'm moving to Phoenix after almost four years in Marina del Rey, LA's sailing area known for singles. At this point I thought I'd be approaching a comfortable retirement and enjoying wonderful trips to exotic places along with free time to write, do pottery, and volunteer for worthy causes.

Instead, I'm relocating to a more affordable city to start again. According to the original script, at this age I was looking forward to relaxing in my paid for home, enjoying leisure time and grandchildren.

So it's time for me to take the advice of my philosopher son, "Blaze a trail, Mom. You have before." And, I'm not alone. The majority of the women I know my age are still in search of the dream through Internet dating, singles events, and speed dating...seeking that happy ending.

We are educated, attractive women with no defined role for this unexpected passage. We exercise, play tennis, and pursue hobbies; but mostly we are solitary figures who previously defined ourselves as wives, mothers, and career women. We live longer, look better, and lead active lives only to return to our single lives in apartments and condos.

There's not a prescribed identity or path for single, mature women. We don't fit in the conventional roles of matron or grandmother. Our social life is primarily with other women like ourselves. What is our place now in the tribe?

Sure we've thought about the bag-lady syndrome and worry about getting sick. The stats for remarrying at this stage of life are not promising. There seem to be too few available knights in our age group. Some of us prefer to remain single and free, but most of us still want to relate and be connected.

What are our options? We talk about living together and creating new family units in group houses and modern communes.

As for me, I'm not giving up. It's an adventure far different than what I expected. Today's script is being written by those of us living it. So I'm on the road again with Phoenix as my next destination. Will I find community there? My place? I remain hopeful.

There needs to be a name for this phase of mature women's lives. Post something: postmarriage, postchildren, postcareer. I think we could call it womenpause. I can say I'm going through womenpause.

I have no roadmap and few role models. With the others, I will blaze a trail so the women that follow us will know how to navigate womenpause.

Copyright © Erana Leiken, 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Flight from Phoenix

Back in L.A. driving my daughter’s Land Rover she’s named Lola. Passing through my near past in southern CA where I lived until seven months ago. Familiar but no longer home…remembering and lingering only for the moment. The vehicle carries me through the changing scenery and the memories with it.

I’m here for a UCLA writing class back on the campus where I taught a year ago. Still feeling a bond…still a part of me…wondering if at some point, I’ll return.

Last night for a split second, I considered going back to the marina, parking in the dark, and walking back to my former home. Just before the light changed, I moved the car back into the left lane to return to Manhattan Beach where my daughter lived and not back to the Marina where I had lived for almost four years.

Not sure why I couldn’t go back…would it make me feel bad? Am I emotionally letting go of the past and that chapter of my life? Is that symbolic of my move from LA to Phoenix, especially now since I’m moving my possessions from storage and signing a year’s lease? Is it the final parting and commitment to a new place and new life? It’s as if with my name on a contract, I now have to stay and start over though I’m not sure I want to.

Other than a piece of paper, internally I have not signed myself to a life in Phoenix. It’s the desert where I will stay inside for the summer and age when I’m not ready to do either. Did I choose a place I’m not ready for and perhaps will never be ready for?

If not Phoenix, where?

Copyright © Erana Leiken, 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED