Do You Know Bob?
also: sneaker waves are sneaky
Hi, it’s me. Good to see some new readers this week — feel free to say hi in the comments 👋! How’s your March Madness going? Get all your brackets in? Been eliminated yet? If it sounds like I don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s because I don’t. In the ZugHaus, March Madness is about birthdays, not basketball. It’s been a busy month, cancer aside. Our oldest turned 20 a couple weeks ago, and on Sunday our youngest, Thomas, turned 18. I am now technically the parent of adults.
As I write this on Monday evening I’ve been fighting the urge all day to crawl into bed. I feel lethargic and apathetic, like a wet blanket if wet blankets had opinions about laying around wet and/or dry. Do they care? Are they happy to be laying around? Or are they resigned to their circumstances while dreaming of a better life, say, as a sail on the sea or a pair of curtains?
While contemplating the inner lives of wet blankets and feeling like they might be living their best lives, I realized that maybe this (very familiar) heaviness I’m feeling might be a sneaker wave1 of depression creeping in.
My therapist reminded me I have a lot going on – not just the busyness, and not even just the cancer. I mean, the cancer is a Big Deal, but it’s accompanied by several Medium Sized Deals and after I spent almost the entire hour just sitting still and breathing deeply, I realized how starved I was to just be still.
She asked me what it looks like for me to rest, and I couldn’t think of a specific task or activity. I named several things. They were all frivolous things not attached to a task or project, like meandering around Swanson’s Nursery, or watching a movie in bed in the middle of the day, or picking flowers in my garden and making bouquets.
Not being needed, is what it feels like for me to rest. Doing something just because.
I’m reminded that this is a season in which I’m heavily needed by my family, and obviously I’m here for it, but I’ve been plowing through as if nothing’s changed. I need to figure out how to take care of myself so I don’t burn out.2
This is your friendly reminder to check your meds, don’t cancel therapy, and maybe put on pants and take a walk outside for your stupid mental health.
Do You Know Bob?
When the kids were younger, we hosted a small "community group" every Thursday night that was connected to our faith community.3 We ate dinner together, read the Bible, and hashed out the challenges of living a meaningful life.
Our friend Bob was a regular. He showed up later because of his work schedule at Costco, and he always brought dessert. The kids called him Bob the Dessert Guy, and Thomas actually believed that Bob’s home was lined with shelves of cakes and brownie bites. He begged me all the time to take him to Bob’s house.
One time we visited Bryan’s family in California, and his mom served up ice cream after dinner. The whole family was there, and we were talking about our favorite desserts.
Thomas said, “Do you guys know Bob?”
I dashed into the kitchen, laughing uncontrollably as Thomas talked about Bob and his desserts as if Bob the Dessert Guy was famous and everyone knew who he was. I mean, why wouldn’t you know Bob? He was the Dessert Guy!
As a kid, he did this kind of thing instinctively. He invited people into his experiences - to see what he’s seeing, to taste what he’s tasting, to know who he knows. He cheers’d you with his sippy cup when he was still young enough to eat in a highchair. While in the car, he pointed out the mountains or the clouds or the sunset to make sure you didn’t miss the beautiful thing he was seeing.
When Thomas was seven, he spotted the Olympic Mountains out the car window and said: "We should always stop to look at the mountains, because you never know when you'll die and this is your last day to look at the mountains." Seven years old. I mean, wow.
It occurs to me now as an adult that nicknames and inside jokes unite people and create community. Dax Shepard has The Armcherries, Terri Turner has her Crumbles, and Nora McInerny has The Terribles. The show 30 Rock had an episode where Tracy Jordan’s entourage developed an inside joke while he was away for a long time. When he returned, he refused to let them laugh about it together until they recreated the incident that sparked the inside joke. Once he experienced the thing, he felt part of the community.
And that’s the challenge – keeping in balance that feeling of Being In It Together, while not excluding others from joining. How far are we willing to open ourselves up to unexpected people and experiences? Back then it was a Thursday night community group and dinner - Bob the Dessert Guy and anyone else could join. These days it’s our open invitation fire night.4 In both examples we have our regular attenders and our inside jokes (not the dahlia garden!), and plenty of room for new faces.
This openness is not my natural state. I’m a hoarder of friends and want them all to myself, and I’m content in my house, alone with my family and my garden. I like deep, not wide. I talked about this notion of cannonballing into the deep end with our authentic selves in my inaugural Substack post:5
As I reflect on the meaningful connections I’ve made over the years, I can see now that I made them from the deep end, a place where I feel comfortable -- and perhaps even compelled -- to swim. I didn’t understand this when I was younger. My inability to Small Talk made me awkward at parties and useless as a small business owner whose livelihood depended on networking to bring in new clients. I know now that I’m wired for deep connections.
Land the plane, Jennifer. Where are you going with this?
Honestly, I’m not sure. I get excited about writing to you every week, and for those of you who also write, I love connecting with you in your spaces. I love your comments here and responding to them.
I was giddy a couple weeks ago when reader Marnie Rae commented on my chat thread: “Also maybe nothing to write about but how’s the top of the piano looking? 😉” It was an insider callback to an older post6 that felt like the start of my new Bob the Dessert Guy era.
We have inside jokes now!
So maybe this is where I’m landing the plane… I’ve settled on the name of my memoir, and I’m thinking about sharing it with you, and I’m thinking about renaming Jen Zug Writes to align with that name, and I’m thinking we (collectively, meaning you and me) need a nickname for each other — like the Crumbles or the Terribles that I mentioned above.
More to come.
Anyway, I covered a lot of ground today. Would love to hear from you on any of it in the comments. If this didn’t feel like a conversation (dare I say community), I don’t think I’d be that into it. So again, thanks for being here and for engaging.
Until next time,
Jen
A sneaker wave is an unassuming incoming shallow mass of water that sneaks up on the beach and gets real deep real quick. Here’s an example:
Oh my goodness I nearly choked with laughter on my tea when I read the paragraph about Thomas asking if they knew Bob. What a great way to describe his earnestness! I'm a deep dive person too, and like you struggled with the whole small business and networking thing. I had a whole strategy framework to gear myself up for any event, and gosh, what a relief when I gave it all up. I'm really enjoying your writing Jen; thanks for making a delightful place to hang out.
The piano... parking garage mayhem... the scaffolding of death; there’s a lot of room to move here. Lol.
As for the mountains, I’m not sure anyone outside of Seattle or Portland can really “get” how ingrained Rainer & Hood are in our lives.