A Dose of Reality

How does it know if you're a child?

As competitive as I am, I had to concede the other guy had the winner on this one, the cutest question ever asked by a child. His son, about six at the time, had needed help opening a child resistant medicine bottle. He had struggled for several minutes, only to watch dad remove the top with barely a flick of his wrist.

"How does it know if you're a child?" he had asked. How indeed.

A few weeks ago, my daughter rescued a lost dog. At least she thought she did, until she realized the dog she was coaxing into her car actually lived a few houses down. Not lost, not yet. The other day, I rescued a lost child. At least I thought I did, until I realized the child's mom was in the playground and had just stopped paying attention for a second. The boy, no more than two, was on the move, racing -- as only a toddler can -- down the bike path to check things out elsewhere in the park. I followed him at a safe distance, not wanting to scare him. A woman walking toward us smiled, and I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking the boy belonged to her. She remarked on his determination, was smiling about the I've got places to go, people to see look on his face.

"So he's not yours?" I asked. As it turns out, she thought he was mine. It was only then that a girl came running up behind me, breathless, to retrieve her brother. Like the dog, he was not lost at all. Not yet. He was just out for a stroll. I trembled to think about what might have happened had mom not noticed when she did that the boy had wandered a bit. About what might have happened had she not noticed and had there not been other folks in the park who did.

I told my daughter the story. She was horrified. A few days shy of her seventeenth birthday, she told me she cannot imagine ever taking her eyes off her children for a second. Already, she senses the enormity of the responsibility of motherhood, and I am glad she does. One day, this girl who congratulates herself on letting the dog out but sometimes can't remember to let him in will be as vigilant as anyone in looking after her babies. I smiled, reminding her how her siblings used to tease me all the time when I would lose sight of her for a second and panic. My head would whip around, my voice would become suddenly shrill. "Where's Nicki?" I would yell. She was usually right there, out of sight only because she was short and a bit on the quiet side.

She assured me, when I reminded her of this, that she never would have wandered off. She was way too cautious. I thought about the little boy, who probably had no intention of wandering too far off from mom. My daughter was obviously having similar thoughts. She acknowledged that she might have been a little spacey at times, maybe wandered off without even realizing it. Not spacey I thought. Just a child. Isn't she still?

How am I supposed to know? She's still spacey sometimes, always will be I imagine. So am I. But I cannot remember the last time I felt that sick feeling, that sudden panic that goes hand in hand with the occasional lapse in mommy radar that compels us to keep our kids where they should be, whatever that means. I'm not sure when the panic ended, when I somehow knew it was okay to let my guard down, if only for a few moments. It's like the age old thermos conundrum: how do it know?  How does it know whether it's supposed to be keeping the liquid hot or cold. I suppose, like the rest of us mortals, it just operates on instinct, keeping things where they should be. As long as it's able. I would imagine even a thermos has its limits.

She's almost seventeen, and I still feel compelled to protect her. To keep her warm, or cool, or just close. I wish I were as wise as that medicine bottle, that stubborn plastic container that somehow knows when to gather all its molecules together and grip onto the cap for dear life. The inanimate thing that somehow knows, better than the rest of us do, it seems, when to let go.

Across the Town

Okay maybe I lied. As did the weather app on my phone, which told me New York City would offer up sunny days in the seventies this past weekend. What it meant to say, apparently, was non-stop rain and lower sixties, tops.

So when I said I intended to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge this weekend, accompanied by my mother, what I really meant to say was my daughter and her friend were going to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge this weekend, accompanied by some of their friends. I can assure you the pedestrian foot path on the grand old suspension bridge is paved with my good intentions, but so, after all, is the road to Hell, and I will not attempt to offer up excuses for failing to make my long anticipated crossing. Next time is all I can say, though I know my promises have an empty ring.

I did, however, notwithstanding the endless drizzle, pound much of the city pavement this weekend, savoring in particular my time spent on the gritty sidewalks of the lower west side. It is a part of town I spent little time in when I was growing up; there were no upscale department stores or white linen tablecloth cafes or apartment buildings with doormen and fancy elevators, places where my mom should have lived had she ever felt any inclination to leave her Brooklyn neighborhood where, let’s face it, she was queen. Sensibly named streets acquire different names down in the West Village. Third Avenue, for reasons beyond my comprehension, becomes The Bowery as it plunges through the southwest quadrant of Manhattan. To this day The Bowery still conjures up images of drunken bums sleeping it off in doorways puddled with urine, even though I have been there dozens of times in recent years and have yet to see (or smell) a bum.

It was only when my son ended up in New York for two years that I ventured into the West Village, that I even acknowledged its existence, much less its charm. I quickly became addicted to its narrow streets, angled and meandering in a way that seems incongruous with the grid that is so much of the rest of Manhattan. Whatever else you say about it, Manhattan is, for the most part, simple to navigate. Fifth Avenue slices the island lengthwise down the middle; even numbered streets (not to be confused with avenues) go east, odds go west. North-south roads tend to run one way, and if you catch the traffic lights right, you can sail from Houston Street toward the upper reaches of Manhattan and back without anything more than an imperceptible pause at an occasional yellow light. If you drive like a maniac you can even avoid being slowed -- or maimed -- by the taxis.

But south of West 4th Street, all bets are off. The numbers disappear, as do the right angles. I couldn’t tell you which way Bleecker Street goes, or Carmine Street, or Waverly Place, no matter how many times I’ve been on them now. There's a street named Gay, and I have no idea which way that one runs. I couldn’t tell you whether West Broadway is actually west of Broadway or east or how far away from each other they are or why the city planners couldn’t just come up with another name for one of them to alleviate some confusion. I couldn’t tell you which stores sell what or which restaurants should be condemned or which gritty looking three story brick buildings open up, unseen by passersby, into grand palatial apartments with royal appointments and which ones are college dorms partitioned into cramped living quarters where a television set occupies a seat on the couch and a stove top doubles as a kitchen table. There’s just no telling.

I’d be lying, though, if I said the rest of the city is somehow as boring and predictable as its grid. On Sunday afternoon, as I made my way up The Bowery into Third Avenue, leaving the chaos of lower Manhattan behind for the familiar pastures of my youth (the flagship Bloomingdale’s store), I finally tired of the rain and hopped into a taxi. The stars were aligned. The driver had rejected the couple standing a few yards south of where I was – something about them going further than he needed to go at noon on a Saturday. Not my business; someone was about to be dry and that someone happened to me. We were hitting the lights just right, smooth sailing into the land of broader boulevards stately department stores and designer boutiques.

A few minutes into the journey, the driver glanced out the window and chuckled. “That’s a guy,” he told me, raising his chin toward the bleached blond in the pink high heeled pumps, flowing skirt, and straw hat pedaling away on a bicycle way too short for him. His luxurious long waves bounced wildly as he sped up the rutted pavement. I smiled. Good for him, the wavy haired bleached blond man in senseless shoes. Out for a bike ride in the rain. Without a helmet no less. I applauded his daring, his individuality, his willingness to take a chance on the grid, to add his brand of color inside the parallel lines. Bridging the gap -- if there is indeed a gap -- between north and south, upper and lower.

I may not have walked the Bridge this weekend, but I certainly ended up on it one time too many when I drove past the short cut to the tunnel late Saturday evening and looped around the southern tip of Manhattan to find myself speeding up the ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge. Not on foot, to be sure, but it was a serendipitous crossing all the same. As sleepy as I was, I couldn’t help but take in the view, the twinkling lights of Manhattan and Brooklyn blinking across the river at each other.

Winking, I think, at me, reminding me of my promise to myself, not about to let me off the hook.

A Road Most Travelled

It does not seem possible that I was born and raised in Brooklyn and never once crossed the Brooklyn Bridge on foot. It seems even less likely that I did, once, and don't remember.

These days, I often experience confused memories of what may or may not have happened. Usually, it's that I do remember doing something that I, in all likelihood, never did, and, upon self-imposed cross examination, I realize the recall stems from a particularly vivid dream. Vivid to a point that is, which is why careful scrutiny makes me certain I've conjured up the entire thing.  Or otherwise have a deplorably low capacity for attention to details.

With the Brooklyn Bridge though, I'm baffled. I have crossed that majestic expanse countless times in a car, know the views from all angles of the rutted and constantly-under-construction road, know all too well the instinct to shrug myself into a more compact being to fit comfortably within the ridiculously narrow lanes of traffic. I have gazed often at the walkers above, seemingly soddered together shoulder to shoulder as they don’t so much walk as get carried along, as if on a conveyor belt. Many of them, I know, are going nowhere in particular, just crossing the bridge on foot because they can. There is little of note or glamor to be found at either end, at least not without a bit of a trek; better to just enjoy the journey twice.

My son has already walked the bridge during his stay in lower Manhattan. My mom, a tried and true New Yorker and life long Brooklynite was seventy when she finally made the trek. It was 9/11, and she somehow managed to escape the burning rubble of Manhattan and make her way back to the only place on earth where things could make sense to her: home. Unlike the rest of us, glued to our television sets that day and for days to come, she would have no need to tune in. The stench would remain in her nostrils for days, even after the Brooklyn Bridge had carried her to safety. If there is such a thing.

On occasion, it carries people home, but for the most part, for pedestrians anyway, it carries them to nowhere in particular. Yet, so many of us want to join the ranks of those who have crossed on foot. For bragging rights, I think, but also for something more. For the journey to a place back in time, a chance to view, up close, the ornate neo-Gothic towers and the intricate crisscrossing cables that give the bridge such a distinctive appearance. It is a marvel of engineering, a suspension bridge connecting two great boroughs, built well before all the kinks of suspension bridge building had been worked out. It has withstood the test of time while so many other less massive or intricate bridges have either collapsed or been replaced. It cannot help but conjure up images of turn of twentieth century New York City, the ushering in of a period of inconceivable growth. A time when few people could possibly have imagined what the views would look like at the outset of the new millennium, and certainly could never have anticipated the catastrophe that rocked the city less than two years into that millenium, just blocks across the island of Manhattan. A catastrophe that changed not only the landscape of New York but forever altered the map of the world as we know it. As the Brooklyn Bridge did for many, in its own way and in its own time.

It's just difficult to take all this in when you're driving across in a car, desperately trying to avoid collisions in traffic lanes designed for another era. Sure, it's part of the charm, but it's distracting. This is how I know, for certain, that I have never actually walked across the bridge, that my memories of doing so are based simply on an idea of what should be, not what is. So it remains, not yet checked off, on my bucket list.

I am on my way there now, to the city where I was raised. There may be five boroughs, but I can count on one hand the time I have spent in three of them. I grew up shuttling between Brooklyn and Manhattan, carried time and again by the steadfast shoulders of the majestic Brooklyn Bridge. It’s about time I experience first hand how these two great boroughs were finally linked, physically, to endure together whatever triumphs and tragedies lay ahead.

This weekend I intend to make the memory of a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge a reality, and I would bet it is something I will not soon forget. I will invite my mother to be my guide, to walk the walk with me, as she always has.

Advice Well Given

Earlier this week, a friend shared an article containing twenty pieces of advice for us to give our daughters. All twenty lessons were solid, though a few struck a louder chord than the others.

I thought about forwarding the email to my daughters, but thought better of it. My older one has heard it all and, even if she hasn't, knows it all, or at least would claim to. My younger one has heard most of it (I've reserved the one about sex being fun for a later date) and probably knows enough of it to be true, but hearing it from me would be counterproductive. No matter how credible she may have found any of the advice, receiving it from me would give her great pause. She would have to rethink it all, knowing that with my stamp of approval the reasoning must be fatally flawed. Why risk it.

This morning in the car, we actually had a pleasant conversation. Well, we had a conversation, with two people actually uttering words, which already puts this morning's ride to school up there in the top five. But we actually agreed on something. She was reluctant to agree that she is scary, so we're still not seeing eye to eye on that, but she admitted (as an alternative position) that she is nowhere near as mean to her sister as she is to me. No contest, I'm thinking, but the admission was a small victory and I'll take it. The issue came up because she had been trying to convince a friend that a meal with our family was nothing to fear. Her argument? That her family is just like her. "Well, no wonder the kid is terrified. You're scary!" I blurted it out before I had time to calculate how much this would cost me in therapy for her, but, scoring much higher on self awareness than judgment, she barely flinched. On balance, I am feeling a renewed sense of optimism about her post-teen years -- if I make it.

Among the items on the list that I hope my daughter sees without ever deeming it guilty by association with me (aka incompetent boob and all around she devil) is the age old admonition to girls that superficial beauty is not important. It's what's inside that counts: character, brains, talent. Yeah, try telling that to a woman of any age, especially when she is trying to squeeze herself into a pair of jeans priced so high that the only justification for them is they will change her life for the better.

Case in point the other day: "You know that pretzel has about six hundred calories," my coworker told me as I stuffed in my beloved daily treat. Buzz kill. I kept eating. She persisted. "I thought you said you wanted to reduce your mid-section so the jeans would fit better."

Now I was pissed. I stopped chewing so I could clarify. "No, I said the pants were tight and my stomach was hanging grotesquely over the top. I never said I intended to do anything about it." She seemed shocked, but not as shocked as I was that I had actually said that. The truth is I can't afford the jeans anyway, and the pretzel tasted really good -- as it always does -- so there was precious little incentive to switch over to celery. But, again, the truth is I'd probably love myself far more if I could look good in those jeans.

As luck would have it, a customer came in soon after that, presenting me with a chance to redeem myself, prove that I am neither juvenile nor shallow. She needed something to wear to a gala the next evening. As "first chair violinist," she would be a V.I.P. at this event celebrating the orchestra of which she was such an essential and impressive part. On the outside, she was short, dowdy, and a bit unkempt, a tough customer under the best of circumstances. But she was also very critical of her appearance, and very rigid about what she thought would look good on her. Frankly, nothing did look particularly good on her, but I found her to be very beautiful. She was kind and intelligent, and had a beautiful smile, the kind that can only come from deep within. I found it hard to believe how much she cared.

"You are a gifted and talented woman, a woman who has accomplished much and deserves to be honored," I told her as I accompanied her, empty-handed, to the door. "Throw on a pair of black pants and a plain top and you'll look great," I told her, and I meant it. Well, what I really meant was you'll look fine, but what matters most is how fantastic you are on so many other levels. In my wildest dreams I would never even have enough talent to be "first chair kazoo" at a suburban block party; if I had even a fraction of this woman's talent, I wouldn't care a whit about those damn tight jeans.

Would I?

 

Cutting a Rug

Sand dune. Honey Wheat. Bamboo Bluff. The carpet samples all had pleasant color names, all conjuring up scenes of natural beauty. but I couldn't quite find the forces of nature I was looking for. Carpet needs to blend. I needed diluted urine. 

The carpeting expert at the Home Depot tried his best to explain to me why industrial grade pile was not going to help me sell my house. He was sure my house was nicely appointed (that made my friend chuckle) and the carpet should be at least as nice as my carefully selected decor. My favorite piece of furniture is a beat up old console table I found on a sidewalk in Mexico City years ago, and my upstairs carpeting is and promises to always be, as long as Manny the blind puggle is around, an abstract expanse of performance art, splashed with random patches of dog pee. If I could find enough square footage of filthy remnants from a kennel I would not be wasting time at Home Depot looking for a good price on their worst crap, but alas, the kennel thing didn't pan out. 

Needless to say my head was spinning once I got a ball park figure based on the lowest grade of carpet the Home Depot expert would agree to sell me. I grabbed a bunch of samples in different shades and told him I was going home to obsess; he suggested I just go home and crack open a bottle of wine. Maybe that would have the same effect on me as one of those distorted three way mirrors in clothing stores, the ones that make boobs sit higher and back fat disappear and asses look narrow and shapely. Maybe sand dune would start to have some appeal, even though there's not a beach in sight.

The carpet samples have been sitting on my kitchen counter for three days now. It's really the last thing I need to do before I put the house on the market, but I can't bring myself to pull the trigger. I've grown accustomed to the pee stains; when I'm bored in the middle of the night, I gaze at the splotches and give myself a Rorschach test, assess my psychological mettle. The amoeba like stain at the foot of my bed reminds me of a Latin lover begging me to tell him what else he can do to please me. Hmm. I wonder what that means.  I've even grown accustomed to the eighteen year old burn mark from the day I managed to knock a hot iron over, although the Rorschach test on that one is pretty pointless -- the stain just reminds me of the bottom of an iron. Crazy all the same though, the idea of me ironing!

For a change of pace yesterday, Manny decided to pee on the wood floor downstairs. At least he chose the spot where there is already water damage from the leaking skylight, so no harm, no foul. Psychological testing again seemed pointless; all I saw was a river of pee. But then I thought maybe there was a message in there somewhere, something like go ahead, it's all right if you replace the old carpet, I'll just pee down here when I need some attention. 

It's time. Not just because I need to close the door on the bad memories (heck, I only ironed that one time). But because it's as good a time as any to pour myself a glass of wine and pull the old rugs out from under myself, before somebody else does it.

Stolen Moments

I suck at big parties, so it's probably a good thing I never went to my high school prom. I'd like to think I would have been asked had there actually been a prom, but that's a moot point.

In Brooklyn, in the seventies at least, we did not do proms, or homecomings, or turnabout dances. We endured the perils of public high school, rewarded, if we scored well enough on tests, with a shorter stay and jettisoned out of the neurotic comfort of our overcrowded schools and cramped apartments way too early, certainly before we had sufficient time to contemplate the winding down of our adolescence. Too young to drink, too young to get our driver's licenses, unaware that most of the country didn't grow up as we did, we took our thick Brooklyn accents on the road and somehow ventured from Point A to Point B without jumping through all the requisite hoops off passage. Rites and rights. Like prom, for example.

Last night, at the very tender age of fifty-three and a half, I attended my first high school prom. Relegated with faculty and other "old folks" to discreet tables in the back corners, I was little more than the wall flower I assume I would have been back in the day. Less even. Not so much a wall flower as a fly on the wall. I watched, invisible in my plain black dress, as teens in a rainbow of chiffon dresses and polyester tuxedo vests clung to each other for dear life on the dance floor, that last square of solid ground beneath their feet before they fly off on their own. I could not help but wonder who among them would underachieve, or maybe overachieve, or maybe simply achieve what is expected of them. By somebody other than themselves.

In large numbers, they looked formidable, confident, secure. As terrified as they may be now of what awaits them in the fall, many of the girls will soon bask in the temporary glow of being -- and pardon me if this sounds crass -- fresh meat for bored college upperclassmen. The boys, many of them anyway, will no longer be big men on campus as they get shoved down, once again, to the bottom of the heap in life's game of Chutes and Ladders by guys with far more chest hair and the capacity to grow a full beard. As grown up as they seem now, they will once again look like little boys, at least for a time.

One girl stood out from the rest. Not the prettiest, though certainly pretty (to me at least) as they all are in that fresh faced youthful way. She was a little overweight, and moved within a small circle of other girls. When the music slowed, she stood off to the side, laughing with her friends while other girls  stood on tip toe and threw their arms around the necks of their lanky dates. Her dress was white, and it blinked on and off like a Christmas tree. I had to look a few times to make sure, but yes, her dress was actually flickering. I made my way over to her during one of the slow dances and asked her how she got her dress to light up that way. She had sewn the lights into the seams herself. Her smile was as bright as the glow sticks woven into her gown. My guess was she already knew what it felt like to not cling to the larger group, on the dance floor or anywhere. Her independence and ingenuity would serve her well. I told her she looked beautiful, and I meant it. I felt confident she would always remember that dress, that prom.

I left long before the lights flickered and the dance floor emptied. But I left realizing I had missed out on something all those years ago, the closest thing to a moment that would mark the passing from one phase of life into another. As I told my daughter the other day, arrivals and departures are important to me; they are the moments between phases, the identifiable points in time that make endings and new beginnings official. Once the bobby pins are pulled out of the hair and the tuxedo pants are stuffed back into plastic bags, these kids will remember the moment that was their senior prom.

As for me, I can't go back. The best I can do is to keep dancing, moment to moment.

Taking the Plunger

Today is my twenty-seventh wedding anniversary. It will be the first time in twenty-seven years that I will not actually be married on my wedding anniversary. Doesn't make it not my anniversary. My birthday will always be my birthday -- even after I'm dead.

And the day after my anniversary will always be the anniversary of the day my father died, even if he comes back -- which I am guessing he won't. Needless to say, this weekend marks some momentous occasions, for better or for worse, and it needs to be endured. My mother emailed me yesterday to remind me to do good things for myself in the next few days, to put the bad stuff out of mind and to celebrate myself for Mothers Day. "I will," I assured her, stuffing the little shopping bag full of clothes I just bought in the trunk while I tried not to chip my fresh purple manicure. All these good things I was doing for myself were making me feel too stressed to chat with her at length; I didn't want to be late for my facial.

I rarely get facials, and every time I do I think about one of my favorite old I Love Lucy episodes, when Ricky was in crisis because he thought he was going bald. Lucy sat him in a chair in the kitchen, put a smock on him, and poured everything she could think of on his head, except maybe the kitchen sink. She cracked eggs, pounded his scalp with pots and pans, massaged all sorts of mysterious ingredients into his hair as piles of viscous goop dripped down his shoulders like molten lava. Probably a blessing that the show was in black and white.

Yesterday, no longer able to tolerate the puffy purple bags under my eyes and the crevices in my distinctly nonelastic and dull lifeless cheeks, I allowed myself to splurge on whatever facial treatment my trusted esthetician recommended. She suppressed a laugh when I asked what a basic age-defying facial would cost, amused by the idea that I thought a basic anything would make a dent in fifty-three and a half year old face (yes, it's my half birthday today too). So several hundred dollars later I was lying on a table in a soft and fluffy towel robe under boiling hot blankets that seemed to weigh about three hundred pounds and must have just been pulled out of some mutant, evil mircrowave. I could vaguely hear the sound of a babbling brook being piped in through the ceiling, and I closed my eyes and tried to figure out how I would relax while I was literally shackled to a bed of hot coals and unable to scratch the suddenly uncontrollable itching on my face because my hands had been stuffed into hot and oily oven mitts. (You get a lot of bang for your buck when you spring for a facial.) Trapped, I settled in to get pampered and try not to wallow in the misery of the weekend's depressing commemorations.

My far from basic facial included all sorts of miracle ingredients and a variety of autumn vegetable extracts, a virtual cornucopia of bullshit. I felt a lot like Ricky Ricardo, particularly when the microdermabrasion portion of the torture began, which brought to mind the image of Lucy taking a toilet plunger to Ricky's head and turning him into a grotesque and screaming bobble head. I could feel the little battery operated device lifting my tired skin, lifting and inverting the wrinkles until I imagined I was starting to look like a chipmunk. Whatever Lucy did to Ricky, he never lost his hair. Maybe I would actually emerge from this torture chamber looking young. I couldn't see the little vibrating electronic plunger through the collagen mask, but I was thinking I could probably find a more pleasurable use for it.

Or maybe not. (The suction aspect is kind of scary.) But damn it I had pampered myself and resisted the urge to wallow in misery this weekend. So happy anniversary to me and happy mothers day and dad, I still miss you. If I had any money left I'd continue to pamper myself all weekend, maybe treat myself to a heart stopping Brazilian bikini wax. Thankfully, though, the well is as dry as my skin, so I'll just wallow. It's cheaper, and it'll pass.