Sid & the Gummy Bears

I dreamed last night, for the first time in so long I can’t even remember the last time I could recall a dream. Some things have happened since the last post here, including the real world pulling me to itself with fearsome meat hooks. But for those who spend too much time in the virtual world, I have good news for you, returning to the real world is much like it is with riding a bicycle, you really don’t forget how…and because of the virtual world “exercises” some of your intuitions are heightened in ways you don’t expect (there must be SOME commercial gain from all those hours playing with this grown-up pinball machine!).

And in my dream last night as all things in dreams are it was a bit jumbled but part of it was very vivid. It was about Sid Abraham (who has gone to Glory many years ago). He was sitting in a booth in a diner that I used to frequent in my university days and it was a great surprise to see him there. He was, as always, surrounded by an assortment of food and a near mountain of papers on the seat and on the table before him. I was so surprised because I realised the minute that I saw him that I had been remiss in spending any time with him or even calling him or writing a little note to him for a long time.

He knew I felt embarrassed by this (we all know this don’t we when we bump into someone we have ignored with our friendship and they know we know too) and did what Sid always did, he made sure he sent me that almost undetectable message that it did not matter between REAL friends how often you saw them or wrote to them. He sort of got up from his seat, which was quite difficult with all the things surrounding him – he intended to give me one of his warm embracing hugs.

I could see he was older and shorter and more tired, as old age seems to do to many (is it most or all) people, so I rushed to him instead and paid little mind to the paper mounds and the left over plates of assorted food stuffs and hugged him first. So warm his hugs. Unlike anyone I have ever known, but closest to my Mom’s hugs that were so precious to me.

I pushed some of the papers aside on the bench seat opposite him and just looked at his jolly, round face and relaxed for the first time in ages. We caught up as they say. I went up to the cashier to pay for his meal as a surprise for him and when I turned around, he was gone.

His papers were gone but the dishes remained, including one sitting on the seat next to where he had been sitting. I sat down in his empty place and felt the warmth from his body so recently here, found several blank white intex cards and just tried to see things once more from his perspective and found a silver bowl there on the seat.

Creativity & Politics

I remember Sid so well. I remember how he introduced me to a new approach to creativity and invited me to attend my first of many CPSI (Creative Problem Solving Institute) Gatherings in Buffalo New York (the creativity studies centre of the world, it seems). There, I met some of the most wonderful people and challenged the limitations I had "sensibly" put on my own thinking.

And he helped me apply my natural intuition and creativity to the new dangers of the corporate environment I had so recently entered. I was severely unprepared for the posturing, positioning and politics that surrounded me and promised to end my very privileged career too soon. (and this actually resulted in a life time of study of corporate politics, although as some of you would know, it is still a struggle, because knowing all about it and being able to manoeuvre through the murky waters is never the same!)

Archetype

Sid also introduced me to Jungian psychology in an out-of-book (not to be confused with out-of-body, though close) experience. I ended up studying the topic of archetypes and eventually worked with financial institutions and other large corporates helping them identify and understand their archetype in their world and how it related to deeply embedded behaviour patterns in their customer relationships with them (and how improve and better leverage those relationships) -- well that was always the hope anyway.

It was wonderful; and I even got to work with one of the leaders of this specialty field, Gil Rapaille. I don’t even know if he is still around, but I sucked his brain till it hurt my lips -- just to learn everything he would share with me – which was mountains of understanding and insight.

Mom

Then there was what I learned from Sid about my Mom. My Mom was a troubled woman and she took those troubles out on me. But, by the grace of God alone, I grew up wildly optimistic and hopeful in my little dark world. And no one in my family could understand it and Mom could not squash it out of me either -- although she truly tried -- which used to anger her more than she usually was – which was a lot.

One very cold and dreary February morning, with the Buffalo snow drifted to waist-level over night, I awoke to my Saturday and took the last straw from my Mom and, like a child, bolted from the house running away from the heated words I feared I would say to her.

The next day I was back at work and went straight to Sid’s office and closed the door and like Yoda behind a desk, Sid listened as he always did to my frustration at not understanding yet ANOTHER thing about my life.

I poured out my heart to him, confessing as if this was side by side in one of those movie sets where you’re in a Roman Catholic Church in one of those little rooms with the peep hole door so you can confess to the priest in the other little room that shares the peep hole door, and get to share your deepest darkest sins of the week and then are awarded a "hale Mary".

Sid did what he did best, he listened quietly and purposefully, intently and with love.

Now that is the true value of a good friend to me. He listened. I spoke, then cried, shouted a little and cried some more with utter frustration at WHY my Mom hated me so much (the reason I ran away will remain masked for the time being, but it was her attempt with her trusty broad sword to break my ribs as she ground my heart to mince, for the umpteenth time).

Spent from the telling of my tale I stopped talking and dabbed my eyes with Kleenex, kindly convenient in Sid’s office and blew my noise (not so lady like but effective) and sat back in the uncomfortable chair and waited.

Sid, you see, never launched into his analysis until he had pondered it for a bit (if you ever have a ponderer in your life, keep them!!). He moved some things around on his desk and pulled a white index card from his breast pocket, and began to write on it. He would look up occasionally at me and reach over to the silver bowl on his desk and offer me a gummy bear and then take one himself.

It seemed to take forever for him to get to a point of sharing what he was thinking and I knew all my eagerness or agitation for a solution would not help his process…so I thought about how this man has stayed for over 30 years in this mammoth financial institution, rising from a lowly teller (which when he joined the bank would have been a lowly job indeed and one with no computers!!)

He looked jolly. He moved through the halls more like a snail (do not remind me of the salt please). He knew everyone. Everyone knew him and there was not one office anywhere where he was not welcomed with open and hopeful arms. His hair was thinning and he wore dark-rimmed glasses and was far too heavy for his height and reminded me (honestly) of a happy garden gnome). He was also the only man I ever met in a corporate setting who always wore short-sleeved shirts and rarely a jacket (required anytime you left your office, regardless of your gender).

But he epitomised wisdom! So I waited. No one quite understood how (me) the new “Turk” in the bank has such favour with someone in such demand, but we were friends from the first time he confronted me about avoiding him as trivial in the bank (a painful realisation and the first heavy lesson he taught me – that appearances ARE deceiving in a corporate setting too).

Sid's Wisdom

He looked up at me. Pushed a little away from his desk. Smoothed out the completely smooth index card on his desk and I could hear the dryness of his large hands on the paper. And he began to unlock yet another of my life’s mysteries.

“Your Mom does not hate you, she hates herself.” A paradigm shift of such magnitude, I barely knew where to fit it in my thinking. He continued to tell me of my four choices to deal better with her:

1. I could do as I always did, try not to argue with her and store my anger up until I exploded over and over from her teasing of my weak spots.
2. I could try to ignore her and keep running away.
3. I could argue with her and reason with her for all I was worth.
4. I could just love her with, what is known as, AGAPE love – the love that passes understanding and that is unconditional (the one you hear about at most weddings nowadays. You know the…love is patient, love is kind, is not puffed up stuff)

This was the parsing of a problem by the great Sid. Carefully organised and structured the clarity of his messages and his analysis Stirling.

It changed my life and relationship with my Mom for the rest of her life in regard to me. I chose number four. It escalated her anger toward me for a long time….but she also stopped trying to tease me to anger. (And before she died, I knew it was the right choice too.)

I moved from Buffalo to Australia and left Sid behind although we remained the closest of distant friends until one day his diabetes took him home to be with the Lord.

Silver Bowl

I closed my eyes for just a moment in that dreamed-up diner and imagined the scent of Old Spice (do they still make that?) and remembered how Sid always wore that after-shave cologne.

My hands moved out to rest on the seat on each side of my body and my left one ran into that silver bowl.

I slowly opened my eyes and gently gathered it to my lap and peered down into it. Gummy bears; red and yellow and green ones still resting there for Sid, who was not allowed to eat them ever -- but loved them so much. Sid was a man who taught me so much and gave me hope and love and left me with a love for gummy bears and creativity. I miss him.

Thank you Turner for your words of wisdom and hopefully you will see that I too can write you secret messages to let you know how much you mean to me….you are my new Sid, sans the Gummy bears, the glasses and gnome shape…the wisdom pours from you and inspires me. Thank you so much for “seeing” me.