My Friend Kasia and the Art of Reframing

It was one of those travel days, dragging out of bed early on Bainbridge Island just west of Seattle, trying not to forget anything, racing to catch a ferry to catch a taxi to catch a plane. We landed in Boston in the afternoon, dragging and stiff. We took the shuttle to our car, and I packed up everything into the back. At least, I thought I had. Once we were buckled and I’d selected a good playlist to enjoy as we drove up to Maine, I put the car in reverse. And then I felt the right wheel rise high, a bump. We’d hit something.

As a sickness rose out of my core, I knew exactly what it was…

But we have to back up some, to my friend Kasia who we’d visited. And back before that, to one of my most profound lessons in finding perspective, a COVID-19 experience I wrote about here in my blog.

We can change our mindset in the blink of an eye, just as I described in the post. By looking at something from a different perspective, we can instantly wake ourselves up like a bucket of ice water dumped on our souls.

An extreme example: Imagine you’re having the worst day ever. No sleep, your child is cranky too. He missed the bus after breaking your favorite piece of pottery. You just tripped on the stairs, bloodied your knee, and dropped your cup of coffee, spilling it all over your newly painted walls. Whatever. The point is that nothing is going your way. Then you find out you won the lottery. In a flash, your entire mood changes.

What I’ve come to learn, at least in my case, is that I can change my mood without winning the lottery. Just by reframing, by changing my perspective.

My wife’s best friend, Kasia, is a master at it, and I was so impacted by simply being around her during our vacation in Washington State that I found myself wanting to write this post and share her wisdom with you.

Kasia and her husband, Michael, are very dear to us, and both live such a very easy-going and outgoing existence. Like my wife, Kasia is a psychotherapist, which always makes for super conversation when we’re all together. As you probably know by now, I delight in analyzing human emotions, so to listen to these two carry on their friendship is entertaining and educational.

Being around Kasia and Michael and their lovely energy is incredibly infectious. They went out of their way to travel all the way from Bainbridge to pick us up at the airport, not discouraged by the ferry lines or the bad traffic. In fact, the ferry line to Seattle had been so bad that they drove all the way around to Tacoma to come get us, a selfless act that didn’t seem to bother them at all. They are not only givers but are perfectly happy wherever they are—even in bumper-to-bumper traffic. There’s just no rush, because the destination is where you are in that moment.

Once they’d picked us up, we drove to the Seattle terminal to catch a ferry to Bainbridge. The lines were even worse, and we had to wait for a couple of hours. We both have adopted children who are the same age and from the same area of the country, and they absolutely love each other and hadn’t seen each other in a long time. They were going nuts, which made the car ride that much more interesting. (By interesting, I mean intense.)

Amidst the chaos, Kasia said in her wise, calming, Polish accent, “I always like to reframe moments like these.” My own definition of reframing is looking at a particular situation, especially a difficult one, from a different viewpoint. Though she said it much more eloquently than I can recall here, she said, “When I was growing up in Poland in the eighties, we constantly waited in lines, and I’ve came to enjoy them. Aren’t they such a beautiful break from the hustle of life? We don’t have to work; we don’t have to worry about chores. We can just be.”

Dammit, Kasia, why do you always make life sound so easy? It was by no means the first time I’d heard her reframe in such a way over the years, and I enjoyed watching her in action throughout the entire week, reminding me how a change in perspective can wake you up, and quite frankly, change the world.

I texted her to ask if she was okay with me mentioning her in this blog, and we chatted a bit. She sent me this message: With all the uncertainty and pain going on around us, I think the art of reframing is the new survival skill. It is different than denying reality and more about purposefully choosing what to focus on. There is always more than one truth out there.

Kasia, I’ll never forget the first time we hung out, when you found out your best friend had agreed to marry this crazy novelist banjo player from South Carolina after only knowing him a few weeks. We came to visit you, and you made sitting out on your back deck and drinking coffee the most beautiful experience in the world. Your presence makes me still inside.

There’s one more thing about Kasia. At least, the name. During the trip, I happened to be reading a wonderful novel called Lilac Girls that features a young polish woman named Kasia (coincidence?) and it details her experience in a camp in Nazi Germany after she was captured. Talk about perspective. Why in the world do I stress about anything with the knowledge of what the victims of World War II experienced? For that matter, what about the people of Ukraine? So many people are struggling more than I could ever fathom.

Let’s see if I can circle back to our return to Boston and that bump under the tire. I’ve been looking for a single-coil pickup guitar for a while now, having just sold one that wasn’t doing it for me. Having majored in music and played professionally, I have a little bit of an obsession with collecting banjos and guitars. As those of you who are musicians know, there is so much joy to be found in holding different instruments, the different tones, the change in feel and even attitude. In particular with fretted instruments, the way the neck fits and feels in your hands. Though I no longer play professionally, the joy that I experience playing my different instruments, choosing based on the mood I’m in, sparks insurmountable joy.

You can imagine the feeling I got when I happened into Emerald City Guitars in Seattle, one of the premier shops in the world, and found the guitar I’d been seeking. Every great musician in the Pacific Northwest has spent time gawking at the store’s collection of mostly vintage instruments, some going back more than a century. Among that collection, I found the one, the guitar that I’d been missing. It wasn’t nearly as expensive as the others. It wasn’t flashy at all. And yet, it spoke to me. I’ll resist the urge to elaborate too much, but this guitar was hand-built by a brilliant luthier who does only a few a year out of his workshop in Idaho, and he’d created an instrument that brought out the best in me. It should be said that he also relics his guitars, meaning he artfully ages them, making them look like they came from the 1950s. In other words, he purposefully puts scratches and marks and prematurely ages the metal components. Not wanting to put her down, I needed this guitar in my life. (Her name is Tabitha, by the way, as the luthier had named her, and as he’d written on the headstock.)

On the plane, I started having second thoughts. I’d only gotten to play her for twenty minutes as the shop was closing. Was she really the one? There was another I’d been eyeing down in Connecticut. I had a week to decide, as the shop offered me a chance to return it if I decided she wasn’t right for me.

By now, you’ve figured it out. In case you’re wondering, it only came with a soft gig bag, not a hard shell case.

That gig bag was the same color black as the pavement where our car was parked, and when I loaded up everything, I didn’t notice that I’d left her lying there. Not until I felt the bump.

I wish I could say I had already let settle the lessons I’d learned from Kasia. I wish I could say that I’d instantly reframed my loss. But it took me a day. As I write this, my guitar just arrived at the luthier’s shop in Idaho to get a new neck, new knobs, and new who-knows-what-else. That ride home was difficult, maybe more so for my wife and son than for me. I can be a bit of a grouch sometimes. It’s okay. I will have plenty of opportunities to try reframing again. That’s what living is all about, right?

Though my wife had said this quickly, as she’s enlightened in a way that I’ll never be, I finally realized the next morning that this guitar was supposed to be in my possession. The new neck will be better than the one I cracked. She will always have the additional marks on her body of being run over, but those marks will be a beautiful reminder. How interesting that the guitar already had a few marks of her own.

What I learned was that she didn’t want to be returned. At least, that’s the way I’ve reframed my debacle. Ultimately, I need to get over the little things—perhaps quicker than I did after this heartbreaking mistake. I want to be more graceful in experiencing bumps in the road, and I’m quite sure I’ll get more practice at it. So what, she has this huge gash from where the tremolo bar was pressed down into the body. So what, it’s costing me a tremendous amount of money to have her fixed. Before I even got her home and plugged her in, for gracious sakes!

My life is good. I have my friends and family, who care about me even when I am not the best at reciprocating. They are there for me, even though I’m so (soooooooooooo) far from perfect. I get to write for a living. I wake to the smell of the sea. I have my health. I have a wife and son and two puppies filling my home with endless love and joy and laughter.

There you go, Boo. It’s all about perspective and reframing. Thank you, Kasia, for always teaching me.

Much love to all,

Boo

P.S. Is it a coincidence that I’m currently writing a novel with the theme of gaining perspective?