Of Marigolds and Monkeys

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. It's a movie about dreamers. Dreamers in their twenties, and dreamers in their golden years. Noticeably, nobody in between. Well, except for one woman about my age -- too old to dream, too young to dream. Theoretically, anyway.

It's a movie about a hotel (more accurately, some land with a structure upon it) in India where chairs are covered with dust, faucets don't work, rooms are missing things, like doors, and where British guests arrive with all kinds of reservations -- not merely of the booking kind. Their reasons for being there are as uncertain as their departure dates, their vision for the days ahead as vague as whatever led them to their hastily planned arrivals. In various stages of elderliness, they are, each of them, far wiser than they realize, caught up by a life that has suddenly cast them off as stupid, incompetent, simply waiting to become ill and die.

At fifty-two, I saw myself in these reluctant adventurers, adrift, productive pasts irrelevant, futures dictated by the stranglehold of the hands of time. Yet, at fifty-two, I saw myself also in the young manager, the man entering adulthood without an acceptable plan, trying to go forward on a wing and a prayer and an impossible dream. Propelled by youthful energy and plagued by naysayers and other obstacles, both real and imagined, he stumbles along at the helm of the motley crew of elderly British expats, the last beam standing in an otherwise crumbling house of cards. My own youthful energy has been replaced by a middle aged version, one marked by sporadic bursts of motivation with long bouts of lethargy in between. Like the young entrepreneur, I am plagued by naysayers (mostly the ones in my head) and other obstacles (in my case mostly imagined, except for my constant need to nap), yet I have somehow managed to keep my own house of cards from crumbling.

By all rights, I should be in my prime, like the woman about my age in the film, the one who is both too young and too old to dream. Like her, I should be the dream crusher, the person, no matter what the culture, who has learned to be a realist, to protect her young from being, well, young, to ensure that nobody, herself included, does anything rash. The woman who, as a young girl, may have married against the will of parents, and now finds herself on the other side of the altar. Squashing dreams, romance, chemistry. The woman who is still able to turn a blind eye to the reality that, not too far down the road, she will become old like the British guests. She, too, will be relegated to the margins. If she allows it.

After I got past the sentimental weepiness the movie inspired in me (as you might recall, coffee commercials make me cry), it made me realize I need not be either a dreamer or a dream crusher. That, at a still youthful fifty-two, I need not simply "wish," that I can silence the voices in my head that tell me what I cannot or should not do. That, at a slowly aging fifty-two, I need not simply "wish," that I can silence the voices in my head that tell me what I cannot or should not do. That, at a time in my life when at least a few people might still look to me for guidance, I need not rule with a heavy hand (not that I ever did). I've done the math; if I waste too much energy trying to control what anyone else is doing, I won't have much waking time left between naps to do the things I am meant to do.

There are always setbacks. After spending three weeks without a teenager nearby to tell me everything that is wrong about me, I was told only five minutes after welcoming my daughter back to American soil that the bra I was wearing was unacceptable. (No, I had not forgotten to put a shirt on over it.) I was thankful she hadn't seen the dress I wore the day before, the little tube thing that squashed my boobs so tightly into my chest that they may have been poking through my back. My lower back, naturally. And, as much as I love having her home, I am looking forward to a little respite again in a few weeks, one in which I can dress inappropriately with wild abandon and have my nipples tickle my knees if I damn well feel like it. I have a renewed "can-do" spirit, and if anyone out there doesn't want to see my boobs resting where gravity has taken them or catch sight of my flabby ass looking less than stellar in a pair of shorts, stay inside between July 14 and July 29.

I was only half listening the other day when my husband took the floor to speak during the meeting with our attorneys. (I'd like to say at least it doesn't cost anything when he talks, but unfortunately both legal teams were present. Cha-ching, cha-ching.)Anyway, out of the corner of my ear, I heard him saying he just wants to get the damn monkey off his back. Well, the slightly profane adjective notwithstanding, I was touched. A monkey; that's one of the nicest things he ever called me. As it turns out, I wasn't the monkey he was talking about, wasn't even a monkey at all (though he would not tell me what animal sprung to mind, and I had the good sense not to ask).

The point is, though, no matter what the monkey is, I, for one, need to get rid of it. Or them. The things that are holding me back, no matter how adorable they might be. I want to write a book. I don't know if I can, or even will, but I want to stop dreaming about it. So, again, I did some math. And I did some complicated figuring, and I realized that with my limited "awake" time, I probably can't spend as much of it as I would like on my blog (get it? the adorable monkey?)  if I am going to write a book. The space will remain open, of course, and I will visit often, particularly if something interesting happens. But I am going to venture off, more frequently, into my own Marigold Hotel. I will dust off my brain, unclog the pipes, knock down some doors, spend time in a place that is unfamiliar and scary and filled with obstacles, both real and imagined.

I will keep you posted.

Laugh Lines

For years, I have wished I could be Nora Ephron, or at least somebody like her.

When I heard the news of her death yesterday, none of that changed. Well, except that I prefer to be breathing. She was only seventy-one, and news of her illness and death came at me simultaneously, causing me to gasp for a moment, as if someone I had known well was suddenly gone.

People die all the time, and, for better or worse, they leave legacies. Famous people die as regularly as the rest of us do, their deaths, like their lives, touching more folks than can fit into your average funeral home. But, just like the rest of us, they leave behind only a handful -- at best a room full -- of people whose daily lives will be affected, who will continue to mourn beyond the initial gasp and feel as if a piece of themselves has been taken away.

The thing about writers -- particularly writers like Nora Ephron, who reveal so much about themselves in their work, fictional or otherwise -- is that they spend so much time with us, one on one time, when nobody else is around. They sit with us in our family room chairs, they help us pass the time in airports, they come to bed with us. And their voices, often, are the ones that linger in our heads as we drift off to sleep. It's not just that we get to think we know them; it's the power of their words, words so daring and jolting and shocking in their honesty that we begin to think the writer actually knows us, can see our innermost thoughts, our dirtiest little secrets.

I'd like to think Nora's death will have an impact on me greater than just a momentary gasp. Certainly not, by any means, the gaping hole her children and husband and other loved ones and friends will feel, but a sense of loss one feels when someone whose thoughts and insights touched and influenced many lives has been silenced. There will be a void until somebody picks up where she left off, feeling bad about her neck, inadvertently giving herself finger facelifts at the lunch table, laughing at herself for the hours she spends getting her hair dyed. We readers and movie goers will need somebody who can remind us, every once in a while, about the deep dark secrets that aren't really secret at all, about the orgasms every woman has faked, about the tantalizing romance of long distance e-mail.

I looked at my neck in the mirror this morning. There are worse things to feel bad about, to be sure, but my neck is certainly getting up there. I took my hands and pulled my cheeks back toward my ears, admiring my fantasy, low risk face lift. I looked over my shoulder to take a peek at my sagging butt. Okay, that did it. Aging can be funny, I suppose, but not before my morning coffee, not on an empty stomach, and certainly not before a dash of mascara and blush and a bit of clothing.

Maybe later today I'll pick up some of Nora's wonderful essays, let her remind me that there's humor in the sagging flesh on my upper and lower cheeks, that aging, though complicated, is the best alternative. And I will wait, and hope that some other writer will emerge to help guide me, laughing, through the stages ahead.

Love, Unleashed

My kids are all bugging me to get a puppy. A puppy to keep Manny company. Yes, those kids; the one in Japan, the one who lives downtown when she's not out of town traveling four days a week, and the one who still lives at home, mostly behind her closed bedroom door. Yes, that one, the one that complains constantly that Manny smells.

Naturally, all three have promised at one time or another to help with the new puppy (yes, the one that somehow won't smell like a dog). Maybe I heard them wrong when they promised to take care of the other two. Or maybe this time they really mean it. Actually, I think they really meant it those other times too. Kind of like I meant to do all my laundry yesterday.

Anyway, the latest puppy breed being bandied about is a French bulldog. Le bouledogue franćais. In a book called The Intelligence of Dogs, Frenchie is ranked 58th in a list that doesn't seem to extend beyond sixty something. Un chien stupide. Mon dieu! Leo, my beloved lab, hardly a rocket scientist, would have been in the top ten, which, let's just say, doesn't bode well for number 58.

Manny, a puggle - not just any mutt, but a designer mutt -- does not make it to the list. Blind as a bat and fat as a whelk, he has a keen beagle nose that somehow cannot detect a piece of sausage held only inches away. Bottom third of the class material. But put a morsel of chocolate inside an airtight container and place it out of reach of your average obese dog with stubby legs and he is brilliant, ingenious, an athlete to boot. A canine Houdini, he can sniff out the most undetectable speck of any variety of chocolate in any form, leaping tall tables in some sort of single bound (not sure what it looks like; he's a sneak) and penetrating packaging like a professional safe cracker. As far as I can tell, in terms of intelligence, Manny is pretty much an off the charts idiot savant, and my guess is that some dopey French pure bred won't have a chance. Most likely, the poor unsuspecting pup would spend much of his young life as Manny's step stool, a small fish of a soldier in his older buddy's criminal enterprises.

Maybe it has nothing to do with intelligence. Maybe it's just his addiction to food, his willingness to do anything for a fix, even though the vet and I have explained to him many times it's not good for him. Maybe it's something far less negative or sinister; maybe Manny has perfected his cunning brand of thievery so he could one day reciprocate for all the shit he has put me through. (Literally, shit; on the family room floor, in the kitchen, by the foot of my bed.) Case in point: last weekend, when Manny somehow got into an un-get-into-able chocolate cake that our dog sitter, Sue, had purchased, he was performing a service for both her and me, the hands that feed him. Sue was so freaked out that she had somehow done something (i.e. putting a boxed chocolate cake high up on a table not surrounded by a single chair) to endanger him that she refused to take money for three days of care taking. We're still in negotiations, but, at least temporarily, I've got a few extra dollars in my pocket I hadn't counted on. Aw, Manny is concerned about my financial situation. And, Sue was so freaked out that she had somehow done something to endanger him that four days of painful constipation was suddenly cured. She told me she felt ten pounds lighter. Aw, Manny was tuned into her bloat. He wanted her to feel better.

I'm going with the unconditional love theory. Maybe, if I get a puppy, Manny will walk him and feed him and clean up after him, just to thank me for a new friend (and, no doubt, partner in crime), and all the other things I've done for him. Or maybe my kids will do it. Mon dieu, sometimes I just crack myself up!

私はパレード愛 (I Love a Parade)

My son, if nothing else a quick study, has discovered within mere months of graduating from college that work is highly overrated, no matter where you choose to do it. I, not so quick a study, am starting to realize that Japan is maybe not as culturally different from us as I had thought.

Struggling through a typically Japanese six day work week, my son emailed to tell me of a festival he had, for the most part, missed out on because of his long hours. He admitted that it may have been somewhat of a blessing; though from a tourist's perspective, the so-called Matsuri would be thrilling in its seemingly authentic "Japanese-ness," he felt a bit unsure, as a resident, of how he was supposed to participate. This from somebody who experienced Mardi Gras as a resident of New Orleans for two years; not much mystery there -- just get shit faced, toss on some beads, and act like an idiot. I suppose he thinks things are more complicated in Japan. Or maybe just more civilized.

Unsure as to what the whole festival was about much less what his role should be, and bitter for having felt excluded, he suggested I look it up myself if I wanted details. The reliably omniscient (and cocky about it) Wikipedia was a bit skittish about its report on Japanese festivals, announcing up front in bold letters that the article might require some fact checking and rewriting. Duh. I assume that is usually the case, but I am gullible and lazy enough to just accept whatever the Wiki's tell me as gospel and repeat it to others sufficiently gullible and lazy to think I know what I am talking about.

The Wiki-failure on Japanese festivals (understandable, since apparently matsuri means festival, and how do you explain something that's called the Festival Festival?) forced me into some deeper research (meaning I had to scroll down past the first few entries from my initial Google search, dammit!) and do some serious leg work. Okay, finger work. I was on the verge of giving up, prepared to settle on the image I had already formed in my head of a gaggle of white faced geishas holding brightly colored lanterns as they shuffled by in a distinctly Japanese looking parade, but I remembered how much my son hates my ignorant stereotyping (he can be such a killjoy). So I scrolled further, looking for some greater insight, hoping I wouldn't sprout a giant blister on the tip of my finger from all the painstaking research.

Apparently, the Matsuri Festival in Himeji, Japan this past weekend involved some sort of walk from a famous shrine to somewhere else (maybe another shrine; I lost focus). I suppose the distinctly Japanese spin on the whole thing would be the light weight summer kimonos everyone would be wearing. Come to think of it, not much of a culture clash at all. What's the difference. Kimonos, beads? I'd bet a few yen that several revelers were wearing both at Chicago's gay pride parade this weekend. I am guessing many local festivals in Japan have as little to do in peoples' minds with whatever they were intended to celebrate as do many local festivals here; they are just an excuse for a community to come together, to enjoy the weather. Wear what you want; ethnicity, Visa status, or sexual orientation notwithstanding, as long as you're ready to party, let the festivities begin!

Back fat or side boobs? In any language?

My upcoming trip to Japan is daunting in terms of the number of miles I will have to travel, but the more I learn, the more I realize it's not as if I am heading to another planet. Culturally, it's probably no more alien than Wisconsin. Come to think of it (having been to a Walmart or two up there), probably a lot less so.

Sole Searching...

Gone Fishin!

The Eaves of Destruction

Last week, I alerted my soon to be ex that we would have to replace the roof on the castle before we moved into our respective trailers. "Any chance you can take one for the team," he suggested, and "do a roofer?"

Frankly, I'd consider it -- anything to get this whole mess behind me -- if I didn't also need a plumber, a carpenter, a driveway guy, and an electrician. Just to name a few. I have to consider my future, after all, and who the hell is going to want to date a bow legged middle aged woman who walks like a drunken sailor? Not to mention all the diseases. (Can you get shingles from a roofer?)

As luck would have it, I just ran into a guy I used to know (no not that way, you pigs) who is in the business of getting folks' property taxes reduced. He is busying himself as I write this evaluating my situation (minus a few details, to say the least), and I'm thinking maybe this could be my lucky day. Get the fixer upper assessed as low as possible, reduce the taxes, and let some other poor schmucks worry about the repairs. Worst case scenario, I'll only have to fuck the property tax guy.

Shit. He's still talking. Suddenly a handy man gang bang isn't looking as exhausting as this whole property tax evasion scheme. I definitely get the feeling there'll be a better pay off. Though I haven't been listening all that attentively to the details, it sounds like any tax money I save will just be paid to someone else in fees and commission. And, my guess is I'll have to listen to a lot of talking. And, if he's anything like our attorneys, it'll cost us dearly every time he talks, or, for that matter, farts. And, I'll still have a crumbling roof, leaky toilets, fallen closet doors, and a rutted driveway. Come to think of it, if I can't snag a hunky fireman with an axe and a big hose -- let's face it, it's not for lack of trying -- why not set my sights on something more attainable and give a shot to some tool belts and shit kickers? Like mom always said, never pass up an opportunity. 

I could always look for a jack of all trades. Someone who can handle all the tasks by himself, maybe even be a master of some of the more, um, delicate ones. Talk about home improvement.

i Chat, he Hears

For the first time in a long time, I visited my dad's grave for Father's Day. He's been gone fourteen years, and I had myself convinced the sight of his tombstone would no longer turn me into a sniveling idiot. My brother visits more frequently, has developed a thicker skin. He waved his arm toward the horizon behind the rows upon rows of graves and pointed out the beautiful view. It did nothing for me. "I see dead people," I responded.

I was sure fourteen years would make it easier. On the way to our family plot, I moseyed through the narrow lanes of the cemetery as I used to when I was a kid, before I actually knew anyone buried there. Grandparents and great grandparents whom I had never met generally had little effect on me. Their lives had not been real to me, they had all died well before I was born. I was always far more interested in reading the other epitaphs on the way to our plot. Cemeteries are fascinating, filled with couples who seem to die within months of each other, folks who have been dead so long I wonder if there is anyone alive who ever knew them, children who died at inexplicably young ages.

There is the pair of stones for Morris and Gussie something or other, the ones my brother and I noticed soon after my father passed away. We still wonder whether it is the same Morris and Gussie who owned the candy store around the corner from us when we were growing up. (Even in Brooklyn, what are the odds of there being another "Morris and Gussie?") The tiny corner store was crowded and dark, and, though I never considered this at the time, probably filthy. Morris and Gussie were as unhappy looking a pair as I had ever known. Gussie always sat, her ample ass spreading over the sides of a short metal stool, her heavy eastern European accent dripping with disdain, and meticulously counted our pennies as if her life depended on it. Morris just stood by quietly, waiting for kids who had never once shown any inclination to steal to suddenly have the impulse to snatch a morsel. It amazed me that two people, surrounded as they were by sugary treats and smiling children, could be so dour.

I was surprised at how shaky I felt when I arrived at my father's grave. For a long time before he died, his physical presence was not a part of my daily life. We lived almost a thousand miles apart, there was no Skype, no Facebook. We spoke regularly -- as much as we could before my mother would take over -- but I had long become accustomed to not seeing him, to making do with just his voice. His deep soothing voice, a voice I long more than anything to hear sometimes. Visiting his grave, even after all this time, still gives me a jolt. He is only six feet away but invisible and silent. A lone weed sprung up from the neatly pruned bush marking his spot. I had the distinct feeling he had left it there for me, a sign that if I spoke, he would listen.

My mother strolled from relative to relative, weepy in part from their "gone-ness," but in part because the landscaping had not been maintained as it should have been, certainly not to the extent it had been paid for. My brother whispered to me that he was pretty sure Daddy and Nana and the rest of the crew could care less about the landscaping. Frankly, neither did we. God help those maintenance people if they don't do their jobs once my mom takes residence; there'll be daggers shooting up from the soil.

There's something about siblings. No matter how much you can be at each other's throats, you know each other. You have been molded, somehow, by the same sculptors, after all. Which is why, I think, my brother had the grace to suggest that he walk my mother back to the office so she could scream about the weeds while I spend a bit more time with my father, alone. A gift for me from my brother, on Father's Day.

We chatted, Seymour and I. I told him I knew he was, as always, looking out for me, and always would. I cried, because I miss him, because I wish he could be here sometimes to tell me what to do, to assure me that everything will be okay. I cried because I knew he must be crying too, a tear welling up in the outer corners of each of his sparkling green eyes. Because he wished I could hear him, know that he will watch over me to make sure that everything will be okay. I gave the weed a little tug, but left it where it was.

The walk back to the office was just long enough for me to regain my composure, to wipe the mascara from my face and resume my cynical bitch persona. I glanced over at Morris and Gussie on my way; for the first time, I noticed they were born in 1889 and 1891, and it occurred to me they were most likely Holocaust survivors. That they had probably lost everything -- worst of all, children. The pall in the corner candy store finally made sense. How awful it must have been to be surrounded by happy American children and sugary morsels. I wonder if there is anyone left to mourn them, to yell at the people in the office about their weeds.

"Fatherless Day," as I have called it for fourteen years, wasn't so bad. I was fortunate enough to have a dad who loved me, unconditionally, who will always, somehow, look out for me. And, though I can no longer see him or hear him, we had a nice chat.

A Chair Grows in Brooklyn

It's landscaping, Brooklyn style.

As I strolled along Ocean Parkway the other morning, I glanced across the street and noticed what I thought to be an odd species of greenery growing by the benches on the other side. Always curious about the flora and fauna of Brooklyn and other distant planets, I crossed over to take a closer look. Greenery, yes. Of the plant variety, no. It was a chair, tethered with a bike chain to a parkway bench.

Odd. Was someone really so presumptuous and highfalutin in one of those old apartment buildings, someone whose ass was way too sensitive for the splintery public benches? Someone who believed him or herself to be entitled to a private throne on a public way? On the mean streets of Brooklyn, no less, where deadbolt locks are a given and thieves set off car alarms at all hours of the day and night? I know it's just a chair, but no flimsy old bicycle chain was going to stop some thug with an overwhelming desire to unseat someone else, just for the heck of it.

This morning, I walked the same route again, my only motivation an irrepressible curiosity about the survival of the chair. Much to my surprise, there it was again, as green and motionless as the surrounding trees, still staking a permanent claim to the landscape. I wondered again who had put it there. This time, I was more forgiving; I thought not about the chutzpah behind planting a private piece of furniture in a public place, and more about the meaning of it all. Yes, sometimes a chair is just a chair, but I had the distinct feeling this was more than just about taking a load off.

I thought about my grandmother. When I was growing up, she lived in our building on Ocean Parkway, and, in later years, became a fixture by the front entrance, sitting in her folding aluminum beach chair, ostensibly working on her tan. My mother (her daughter) would cringe at the sight, hated the feeling that her comings and goings were being watched. I found it amusing and, somehow, convenient. It was a great way for me to say “hi” to my grandmother without having to exert myself with a visit – which, come to think of it, I rarely did.

If memory serves, Nana and her chair appeared each year as soon as the snow melted, and reappeared on every sunny day until the leaves began, again, to crack and turn brown. On cold days she wore her old fur coat; on warmer days you could see the tissue tucked into the short sleeve of her dress. Always, she had her reflector on her lap, although she was generally too busy greeting everybody to use it. Except for my mother (and probably, as I got older, me), nobody ever seemed to object to Nana and her chair. Some passed by silently, oblivious to the elderly woman half blocking their path. Others stopped to chat, no doubt about absolutely nothing, but Nana would smile her beautiful smile and welcome each visitor as if to her own home. A sun worshiper without a back yard, a lonely widow with nobody to talk to most of the day, the sidewalk in front of our building became her front porch, her link to the world. She carried her fold up chair with her, back and forth, but her spot was sacred; there was no need for a bicycle chain.

Sometimes a chair is just a chair, but for Nana, it was so much more. I am guessing the same is true for the owner of the green chair tethered to the bench on the parkway. With a quick snap of my cell phone camera, I committed the sight to memory. Then, with a wink and a nod, I kept walking.  

Shades of Gray

My old gray mère, she ain't what she used to be, but then again, who is?

I have learned a lot from mom over the years (some good, some not so much), but one thing she has shown me in recent years is that not everything -- even in her mind -- is black and white. Ironic, I suppose, since she is a woman who has often been unable to see the gray, to smudge the strict demarcations in her view of the world and get a glimpse of some middle ground. For her, it's been a lifelong refrain, a simple, bifurcated definition of good and evil, right and wrong: us and them (translation: Jews and everybody else, or, to be more specific, goyim); fat and thin (take a wild guess which one's right); expensive and cheap; New Yorkers and non-New Yorkers (almost as bad as the goyim, with a narrow exception carved out for New Jerseyites).

She's pretty strict on certain things. Like purses. With her delicately healed broken bones from last year's accident and her rapidly compressing spine, she tirelessly shops for a purse that will be light yet functional enough to carry all her, um, stuff -- including the threadbare piece of toilet paper on which she has written all the phone numbers of her loved ones and physicians, just in case. She is stymied, unable to find such an item. Well, at least not one made by an appropriate designer and ostentatiously emblazoned with that particular designer's initials. Pain and discomfort would have pushed a lesser woman into the bargain basement years ago, but not ma mère. She'd rather throw everything into a little shopping bag -- as long as it's from Saks -- than be caught dead carrying a purse that costs less than your average car. Don't even get me started on the shoes. 

Though still rather predictable, her behavior has become increasingly anomalous. Take her taste in restaurants, for example. In general, she only frequents overpriced joints that boast a regular clientele of either celebrities or just regular beautiful and thin people. There is but a handful of acceptable  establishments remaining in New York, none, as far as I know, anywhere else. (Okay, once, about eight years ago, she ate a pasta dish in Florence that she deemed the best ever, but that restaurant has since closed, so it doesn't count). But her absolute favorite dining spot is the greasy Chinese stand in the LaGuardia airport food court. Anticipating her greasy though bland lo mein calms her on the days she's flying home from a visit to Chicago. And she could not wait to pick me up at the airport last night, but I am fairly certain it was the egg roll, not my charm. Odd.

As we sat enjoying (or, in my case, choking down) our meal, I studied my mother. She is as vain as they come, about her hair, her make-up, her clothing. her physique. Though she has never exercised a day in her life, she has always monitored every morsel entering her mouth (our airport meal notwithstanding, although she had probably starved herself all day). She generally wears fitted suits to show off her painful thinness. But this time, she had left the St. John at home, and was wearing something loose fitting and not immediately recognizable as "designer." Her compressing spine, which has squeezed her midsection into kind of a box, has caused her to relent, just a bit. She will now be seen in public in old designer clothes. Her make-up was the same as it has been for the fifty-two years I have known her, but I am absolutely certain not a millimeter of botox or, god forbid, a scalpel, has touched that skin.

What strikes me most about her, though, is the gray hair. More of a white now. Her hair has never seen any kind of dye or highlight; it has aged as naturally as her still impeccable skin. With a small touch of color, she'd look far younger than her eighty-one years, but she has chosen not to go that route. I admire that about her, and have long hoped I would make the same choice, although I have already succumbed to highlights, and as the grays sprouting at the top of my own head continue to multiply, I might not make it. But I know I will pause if I ever get to the colorist's chair, and I will think about my mother's helmet of gray. It's sprayed, it's teased, it doesn't even look like hair, but it's touchingly humanizing. It stops me in my tracks every time.

My old gray mère is a study in contradictions, and her behavior continues to take me by surprise. She bought me a present, she told me, as we entered her apartment. I expected something designer, or at least overpriced. She handed me a white paper bag in the kitchen, with grease stains spreading across the bottom. I was puzzled. Food?

I guessed what it was before I even opened the bag. A black and white cookie. A New York concoction, one of my favorites, something that cannot be replicated anywhere no matter how hard those "non-New Yorkers" try. My mother, the woman who hid food from me for years, had bought me an oversized black and white cookie. Now that's what I call shades of gray.

Our Outer Beast

Animal prints are the new black. That's what the fashionistas are saying anyway.

Just as I have tried, in the past few years, to move beyond basic black from head to toe, I am trying to resist outfitting myself in trendy garments that make me look like some middle aged wild thing who has lost her way. Not that the look would be a misrepresentation; I'm just not ready to out myself like that to the world at large.

And so it was that some rare good sense and a lingering bit of worry over what everyone else thinks were the only things standing between me and some overpriced "premium denim" in a subdued but unmistakable leopard print. Even though they fit like a second animal skin. Even though they were, oddly, slimming -- possibly because the jungle spots detract attention from the occasional fat pocket. I even passed on the crinkly solid gray skirt paired with a muted pink tank. Too much like a bunny riding an elephant. (I did, for some reason, become so enamored of a leopard print ruffly top that it somehow made it home with me; it makes me look a bit like a big cat in a tutu, but I'll stick it the section of my closet earmarked for clothing that should only be worn on vacation or when everyone -- including me -- will be hopelessly shitfaced.)

Young women come into the store looking to be transformed. They are -- many of them -- relatively new mothers, women who cannot remember what it felt like, only a few years earlier, to have males other than a suckling baby eye their breasts with desire, males other than a frightened toddler grab their ass. Still barely out of their twenties, they wear sensible flip flops and granny pants and baggy clothes speckled with cheerio stains and stretched shapeless by impatient toddlers. They come into the store seeking to recapture a lost youth I would kill for these days, not realizing how much it is still within their grasp.

It's a mere animal print away for some; for others, it's a pair of short shorts. Denim shorts that cost more than a month's worth of babysitting, but totally worth it for the way it makes them feel. These women are still too young to have become accustomed to the gravity and puckering and varicose veins that come with bearing children, and have not yet learned to embrace their physical imperfections. I would tell them that they will, one day, but I suppose I would be lying. Accept, maybe. Embrace? I'm all for fantasies, but that's a bit far-fetched.

To say that the clothes make the woman would be shallow, not to mention expensive. But if a young mother who has lost sight of herself can put something on that makes her smile while she's pushing a cart through the diaper aisle at Babies R Us, why knock it. People will react to her in kind; smiles beget smiles, and there's nothing like a healthy -- albeit brief -- dose of humanity to brighten an otherwise tedious and isolated day.

We are, we humans, inherently social. It's the nature of the beast. And if it takes an animal print to bring it out, I say go for it.

Soaking Dry

I am unaccustomed to having absolutely nobody at home. Every summer, for as long as I can remember, at least one child has been in and out, even if it has just been to use the house for free and random room and board. Sure, a blind dog can be a handful, but he doesn't speak, is not at all picky about what he eats (it doesn't even have to be food), and he is much too wise to criticize the hand that feeds him.

As I approach the mid point of week one of the three I will have entirely to myself, I am learning to enjoy the freedom, starting to live life with abandon. Sort of. Yesterday, I went for a drink after work with a friend. This morning, I lazed in bed until almost seven o'clock. This afternoon, tired from four solid hours of pacing around a retail space, I am actually lying in bed, under my covers, without fear that one of my children might catch me, prove their long held theory that I am, indeed, a useless, lazy slug. Tomorrow I might go hog wild and lie down buck naked. Maybe even on the family room couch. With a glass of wine in one hand and the remote in the other. Maybe I should buy some curtains first.

To tell you the truth, though, all this personal space, all this "me" time, free from judging eyes and sporadic requests for immediate action, makes me feel like a fish out of water. I am disoriented, still tip toeing around the house when insomnia hits in the wee hours, trying not to disturb the slumber of some phantom being. I wake in the morning trying to figure out how to fit my schedule around someone else's, until I realize there is nothing to work around. I am suddenly confronted with all this air, and I cannot breathe. I need to learn to be amphibious, to move seamlessly between a chaotic sea filled with  little fishes and a strange universe in which I find myself standing alone. Not so easy after all these years.

Thankfully, my three children are in three different time zones, which means I am on call for texts and emails at all times, day or night. And as needy as the three of them tend not to be, they each manage to pitch in every now and then, just to make me feel comfortable, I suppose, in my new and unfamiliar habitat. A request, a complaint, an impromptu critique; I live to see that flashing light on my phone, even if it's to tell me everything is not okay. How sick is that?

My guess is I will become adept at adapting just in time for my three weeks of freedom to be up. Just as suddenly as I was launched out of the deep, I will be tossed back in, arms flailing, stuffed to the gills (sorry) with feelings of obligation (however overblown they might be) and an overwhelming fear of giving my child yet more reasons to spend years on a shrink's couch.

But I will keep swimming. I am about as ready to leave the ocean filled with little fishes as a guppy is to fly. Sure, I don't mind coming up for air for a few weeks at a time, but my time in the water is winding down, and I am not quite ready to dry off.

The Restive Nest

This morning, I woke up searching for offspring.

Manny, still under the weather with some mysterious ailment (I know this because his ordinarily upward curled tail has been ramrod straight and pointed toward the floor for three days and he did not wake me in the wee hours of the morning to try to con me into a little breakfast), seemed unconcerned about the emptiness filling the house. With everybody else gone, he took advantage of the morning's flurry of inactivity and slept in. I did not know what to do. I willed myself to relax and stay in bed, just as normal people -- and dogs -- do on Sunday mornings. Maybe even get rid of some of the dark circles  around my eyes that appear to be widening at an alarming rate.

I shot my youngest a quick text to make sure she had arrived safely in France. Okay, well I was fairly certain she had arrived safely as I had not heard otherwise, but I needed an excuse to connect with her. I was feeling overly nostalgic for our standard morning interaction, my delivery of a tall white mocha to her room before she slams the door in my face. If it is possible to glean anything from the tone of a text, she is safely across the pond and bitchy with sleeplessness. I pity the person in charge of delivering her cafe au lait. She seemed particularly annoyed that she and the girl with whose family she is staying for the next two weeks don't really understand each other. Damn foreigners. Somehow it was easier long distance, both of them tapping away on their iPhones, complete with apps for translation. I'm thinking maybe I should have purchased a more expansive international messaging plan.

Texting or calling my son in Japan is not an option, since he, for some reason, does not have a phone. I considered emailing or Skyping, or maybe even sending him a message on Facebook, but, if history is any indication, there would be no immediate -- or even imminent -- response, and I would eventually tire of watching my phone for a flashing red light that might indicate my son was trying to reach me. Odds are my hopes would be dashed, as usual; it would be Victoria's Secret getting a jump on Sunday, trying to lure me out of bed with news of a sale on lacy thongs. Ugh. Slash the price on some good, old-fashioned granny pants and they might capture my attention.

Plan A -- which I had early on rejected for fear of, well, rejection -- was to contact my eldest daughter, the one who is actually in the same metropolitan area as I, within driving distance, at least today. Her time in Chicago is limited, and much of it tends to be reserved for her friends. I get it, and I refuse to be one of those moms who tries to insert herself in her daughter's busy life, taking up valuable time that could be so much better spent with people her age. People who aren't moronic. People who don't irritate her with nagging comments and stupid questions. People who can stay up past eight in the evening. Fuck it. I decided it was a good day to call in a few chits, payback for the twenty-three hours of labor and the twenty-three years of worry tacked onto that. And I could catch her when she was down -- virtually immobilized from running a half marathon the day before.

As luck would have it, she is in dire pain, barely able to get out of bed, and, best of all, without plans. So off I will go this afternoon, to spend time with one of my little birds, to alleviate the emptiness that fills the nest.

Skirting the Issues

Pinch me please. My good friend and perennial purveyor of articles that might provoke a post from me during a particularly dry spell sent me a dilly last night. It was a piece about a piece advising young women starting out in legal careers to choose skirts and heels over pants and flats if they want to succeed.

Really! It didn't even have anything to do with showing a little leg. (Case in point: an elderly blind male judge routinely asked his clerk what women appearing before him were wearing; and no mention was made of his hands disappearing beneath his robe if the answer was "skirt.") The piece was all about women kowtowing to the prevailing view among older men that a woman wearing a "skirt suit" is powerful, competent, and grown up. Apparently, a young woman in pants and low heels, no matter how skilled she might be, is not to be respected. Even if she's really tall. Jeez, it's the twenty-first century and life beneath the glass ceiling is still in a state of chaos; it is, indeed, nasty, brutish, and short. Especially if you're a woman wearing flats.

My hideous experience the other night with premium denim that did not stretch as had been promised notwithstanding, I have proudly eschewed uncomfortable clothing for years. No Spanx, no control top pantyhose, no spiked heels except for black tie affairs. I still bare the scars of corns on my toes from foot squeezing pumps, can still recall the frustration of stuffing myself into a gait-restricting skirt suit and needing extra time to get where I was going. Don't even get me started on the delightful feeling of thighs rubbing together on a particularly hot day. Come to think of it though, the writer of the piece might be on to something. I may be comfy sitting here in Starbucks in my workout clothes, but I am not exactly being paid the big bucks for anything. No pain no gain, I suppose.

So what of short men? Why are they not expected to wear lifts to achieve credibility? And is there not a decent argument to be made for spending less time on frivolous pursuits like skirt shopping and more time on things that matter? Not that I really think most legal briefs matter, but, honestly, where's the substance in all of this? When the geezers who think women should be stuffed into strait jackets die off, there will be a whole new crop of unenlightened men running the show. If they decide bikinis are the way to go for credibility of young women in the work place, are we going to listen? Will there ever come a time when women become the sovereign voice on dress codes, when we can tell young men there is a direct correlation between success and wearing a Speedo to the office? (Lord, I hope not; just sayin'.")

I suppose we all need to follow some silly guidelines for making first impressions. But until somebody can prove to me that years of wearing skirt suits and foot destroying heels does anything to raise or retract the glass ceiling, I'm going to tell my daughters to work hard and play hard and love well, and to wear the proverbial pants -- both at work and at home -- as they see fit. If that means wearing a skirt and heels every once in a while, go for it. Ladies' choice.

Stretching the Imagination (If Nothing Else)

Nothing comes between me and my new premium denim. Even if it wanted to. Nothing.

I have always believed that one should practice what she preaches, and so if I am going to encourage customers to go down a size or two in their new overpriced premium denims, I am going to follow the sage advice of the premium denim mavens. They should feel tight, just short of painful. Kind of like yoga. How Zen.

The other day, as I immersed myself in sales training and tried on every kind of jean sold in the store, I settled on a pair of crops -- primarily because they contained the word "Twiggy" in the label. A yoga aficionado in my own right, I know what discomfort just short of pain is supposed to feel like; we refer to it as "going to your edge." I went down, and down again, in sizes, until I felt fairly certain any tighter a squeeze would result in a raging camel toe (not necessarily painful for me so much as anyone looking at me) and a complete cessation of breath (again, not necessarily painful for me, since I'd end up unconscious, but here I was considering the potential heartache of my children).

Gazing in the three-way mirror and stretching myself into my best imitation of a teenaged Brooke Shields (no wonder her head was so large and her eyebrows were so bushy; no room for excess fat or, um, anything in those Calvins -- it all had to go somewhere), I thought about how far we have come since the eighties. At least I didn't have to lie down to get the jeans on, and there was the sincere, scientifically proven promise that, within an hour, the Lycra infused denim would stretch. Ah, Brooke. If only we had been so progressive back then you might have stuck it out, not escaped to the wilds of Princeton just so you could wear sweats.

Anyway, off I went yesterday in my Twiggy crops, relying on time spent in traffic to provide me with enough give so I could actually eat something more than a sprig of parsley when I arrived at dinner. But, like the traffic, my new premium denims were at a stand still. No matter what I did -- stick one leg out the window, toss the other up on the dashboard, engage in a series of seated pelvic thrusts (much to the delight, or, more likely, revulsion, of the guy staring over at me from the car in the next lane), even stick my substantially stuffed wallet down my pants, the material clung to me for dear life. I could feel the muffin top rising. The pressure continued to mount. My phone shot out of my back pocket. My nose began to look fat, and I could swear my eyebrows were filling in. Note to self -- get a bikini wax.

I raced through dinner, praying the strain on the premium denim wouldn't cause it to explode off me. By the time I hit the road to head home, the traffic was moving and so were my new jeans, if only because I had unzipped them fully and allowed my aching belly to hang out and rest on my lap, the way it's supposed to.

Premium denim may, indeed, stretch, but at fifty-two, I don't have the time or patience to wait, and, let me tell you, stuck in traffic and my new pants, I was about as close to the edge as I'd ever want to be. This is probably a well kept secret, but sweat pants stretch as well, and a lot faster. All you need to do is loosen the drawstring.

Yep, we've come a long way, baby, since the eighties.

Shui Feng

It's become a habit, the good natured smile and schmooze. I automatically flashed a genuine, warm grin at the woman who appeared to live in the house two blocks away from mine as she brought a few more stray items to the recycling bin already awaiting the trucks by the curb. She smiled back, and struck up a conversation.

Within minutes, we were well past basic small talk, and I had already learned of her recent surgeries on her cervical and mid spine. Her gait, which had reminded me of my mother's -- halting in a way that hinted at a fairly recent blow to spryness -- and her face, which reminded me, at least in terms of wrinkle count, of my own, were incongruous. My guess was breast cancer, generally the go-to illness for women in their prime. She seemed like such a nice person with whom to share the planet; I was glad to know her infirmities were more chronic than deadly, although a minor form of cancer had, she told me, jumped in to round out the festivities. "Things happen in threes," I told her. She should be done, at least for a while. Maybe that's why she was smiling.

Her house is one I have passed many times, yet this was the first time I could put a face to a person living there. It is set back from the street, with what appears to be a free standing brick wall blocking any doors or windows. The front lawn is as inviting as the solid brick windowless blockade is not. It is landscaped in that way that seems casual but is anything but. Painstakingly organized chaos.

Everything about the woman, come to think of it, was anomalous. Her gait and her face, her garden and the facade of her home, her open and genuine sociability and the way she described her home. "You must come and visit one day, come in for some iced tea," she insisted, and I believed her. "We hide from everybody in there." I wondered, if she had built herself a hiding place, why she was inviting me inside.

She must have noticed my confusion. I stared at the formidable and decidedly uninviting brick wall, trying to figure out how I would manage to cross the threshold. Maybe the threshold was invisible, like some magical Harry Potter style train track that would appear just in time to whisk the chosen ones in, then disappear." It's not what you would think at all," she explained, "back there. It's all open, walls of glass, kind of a feng shui house." This woman who is hobbling around after three debilitating surgeries was telling me she lived in a feng shui  house, an auspicious house. (My understanding of feng shui is limited; all I know is that it somehow creates some sense of well being and good fortune.) Kind of up there with the tooth fairy.

I assured my new friend I would visit soon, without my dog. She looked down at Manny and agreed that would be a good idea. She claimed her cats would not like him. I explained that he would pee in her house. Whatever the reason, Manny and feng shui would not be a good fit. He is the opposite of feng shui. Shui feng. 

As for my house, the furniture just kind of faces this way and that, wherever it landed. The front door and the garage both face north, which may or may not be auspicious but at least they are not hidden behind a solid brick wall. Auspicious for guests and, yes, poor blind Manny, who would no doubt bump his weary snout into it every time. There are no wide open glass walls, although people seem to see in anyway. Or at least they think they do.

Well, to each her own, and as incongruous as this woman's house may seem, my curiosity has been piqued. She is as upbeat and kind and welcoming as anyone I have met, in spite of some catastrophic and untimely blows to her being. Heck, I despise any kind of tea, but I'm goin' in!

Mess for Success

Back in the day, during finals exams, the boys would grow unsightly beards and the girls would deck themselves out in baggy sweats and greasy hair. Looking and feeling unseemly somehow became an apt accompaniment to the misery of coming down the academic year's home stretch.

Like almost everything, finals time slovenliness has evolved into something ever bigger, ever more hideous. It's no longer just about personal hygiene. My house has become a veritable garbage receptacle for note cards, study guides, crumpled bits of paper, and, my personal favorite, plates speckled with petrified crumbs that seem to have been superglued on. I find them everywhere. Everywhere, that is, except for the sink (which would be lovely), or the dishwasher (which would be orgasmic).

My daughter is as diligent as anyone can be about creating a finals week dust cloud, which I know, from my own personal experience, correlates very little with the amount of effort she is actually putting into studying. At least I know she has the capacity to work hard on an impressive mess. And, as an extra bonus, her newly acquired driver's license has provided her with countless ways to make herself useful and contribute to household chores during the "breaks" from studying. Let's face it, nobody can spend an entire day just tossing school supplies and garbage about and gluing food particles to porcelain.

As a prime beneficiary of her new pastime (running errands), I must say I've become even more lenient than usual about her academic habits. "Do you need anything, mom?" she asks repeatedly, each time she conjures up a new urgent matter that requires her to grab her car keys. I've gotten over thinking it's a trick question, and I'm actually kind of enjoying the service. We no longer have to use scattered fast food napkins as paper towels, or toilet paper to blow our noses. We are well stocked. And I don't care how deeply I am sleeping; when my daughter -- who up until ten days ago would be hard pressed to venture downstairs to get something for me -- delivers frozen yogurt to me in bed, I can prop those eyelids open just long enough to suck it down. I have learned, the hard way sometimes, to not take anything for granted.

I am not even all that concerned about my new found obsolescence anymore.  Not as worried as my daughter is, apparently. Keep your retail job, she tells me. It's good for you to have something to do. Something to do? I have plenty to do. My youngest child may be driving, and finals week (with all its detritus) may be winding down, but I still have a blind dog who reminds me constantly that I do, indeed, serve a purpose. A dog who cannot remember where the walls are in the house he's lived in all his life, who cannot see (or even sniff out) an actual dog treat when I hold it under his nose, but a dog who can somehow detect a one pound box of chocolate Frango mints, still wrapped in cellophane, still inside a shopping bag, sitting up on a desk which should, by all rights, be out of his reach, and somehow get to it, open it up, and devour the entire thing.

Well thank goodness. For most dogs, such a chocolate binge could be life threatening, but Manny's girth allows him to withstand the poison. From the moment I saw the telltale dark green box top on the floor and the empty little candy papers neatly lined up on the couch, I knew it was going to be a long night of service. Let's just say you have not seen a chocolate mess until it has passed through to the other end of Manny and onto your wood floors. Sometimes, when God closes a door, he opens a window. My hours taking the retail world by storm may have been cancelled at the last minute yesterday afternoon, but, as always, my services were required somewhere, by someone. I have more than enough to do, thank you very much.

My daughter, the driver, played a major role in the whole Frango affair. She's the one who went out to buy them in the first place -- a "Chicago" gift for the French family with whom she will be staying for the next two weeks. Upon seeing the empty candy papers, she immediately -- without any prodding -- grabbed her car keys to venture out and replace the Frangos. After all, she was exhausted from studying, and this would be a well earned break.

Somehow, though, she was not around for the aftermath, the cleanups in aisle five. And six. And seven. She must have been greasing up her hair and tossing bits of paper around in her room. Lots of studying to be done.

More Weddings and a Funeral (and a Booty Call)

Things that can be depressing: funerals, weddings, Saturday nights.

The funeral thing may seem obvious, particularly if the deceased is someone who should, by all rights, have had many more years ahead of her. Often, though, whether the person lived a long full life or one that was unfairly cut short, it's the eulogy, not the demise, that depresses us. A well constructed eulogy can send even the most sane among us into a tail spin. Frankly, very few of us get to hear -- from outside the confines of a pine box -- someone describe in great detail, in front of hoards of people, how full and inordinately productive our lives have been, how well loved we have been, how little cause we have for regret. Except maybe for folks like Betty White, who earn the right to some pre-posthumous kudos by sheer virtue of longevity and a keen sense of humor.

Last week, a good friend of mine attended the funeral of a woman who had fought valiantly against the ravages of cancer for quite a while, a woman much too young to die. In her fifties, she still had children at home, an adoring husband, and a thriving business. I met her once; she was gorgeous -- a former model -- stunning and fit looking, except for maybe the disease and treatment related distended abdomen she tried so  desperately to hide under a dark tunic. She spoke frankly of her plight, upbeat in the throes of a short lived remission.

Like the rest of us humans, this woman no doubt engaged in her share of regrettable behavior. She was, no doubt, as imperfect as the rest of us, maybe unkind when she should not have been, maybe unfair to someone she loved, maybe even caught red handed a time or two, her panties around her ankles, guilty as sin for some, well, minor sin. But, like most folks who leave behind friends and loved ones, she was deified at her funeral, her life captured and reported through the rose colored remembrances of filtered glass, the good magnified, the bad sanitized. Before the funeral, my friend was devastated by the much too early loss of someone she had admired and enjoyed. After the funeral, my friend was devastated not only by the death but by feelings of inadequacy, for being nowhere near as accomplished or admired or just downright fucking fabulous as this woman had been. Envious, oddly enough, of the too young woman in the pine box.

Tis always the season, sadly, for funerals, but spring is more often the season to feign jolliness and eternal optimism at weddings. We sit in our party clothes and listen to officiants and toast masters extol the virtues of love everlasting, make us believe that this couple will enjoy a lifetime of enduring affection and, if not unadulterated happiness (let's be realistic after all) the loyal companionship of a partner who will never forsake, never intentionally cause any pain. We watch ordinary women who have endured months of dieting and at least a full day's worth of painstaking hair arranging and make-up application become transformed, briefly, into otherworldly beauties as they take their long awaited walk down the aisle. The newly anointed husband looks on with what appears to be love but is really the aftermath of an alcoholic stupor, nauseated from the pack of tic tacs he chugged to help dull the scent of the afternoon's drinking orgy. We sit, some of us with a spouse, some of us on the arm of a new loved one, some of us alone, dateless, pretending our tears have something remotely to do with joy, and we contemplate our own lives. Even the paired up ones can't help but wonder why they don't measure up.

I have to catch my cynicism sometimes, hide it beneath my taffeta skirt and hope for the best for the new couple, two people who, as most of us know, have a tough journey ahead, to say the least. I have to remind myself, sometimes, that though I might be lonely at the moment -- exaggeratedly so amidst the festivities -- I am in charge. I have to remember that life is ever changing, and that good things might happen tomorrow that might seem impossible today, and that I even have some say as to whether -- and when -- my dreams might come true.

Likewise, my friend, fresh from the funeral, had to catch her despair and bury it within the pocket of her dark suit. She, unlike the much celebrated -- and deservedly so -- young woman, I reminded her, is still very much alive. Like everybody, she'll have her share of disappointment and regrets, but odds are she still has a lot of years at her disposal, years during which she will be able to continue to grow, continue to accomplish, continue to love. Beats the shit out of being the one in the pine box.

No, these are not the boots I bought!

Then there's the issue of Saturday nights. The nights when, at least here in deep dark suburbia, all the "happy" couples go out, dates get underway, and everyone in the universe (albeit a small and claustrophobic one) showers, dresses, and celebrates companionship. This week, solo at the last minute, I opted for a booty call. Yes, off I went to Bloomies to purchase yet another pair of really cool boots that I hardly need. And I snuck them into the house while my daughter, aware (from me) that money is tight, was out of sight. Lord knows I didn't need to get caught, yet again, with my panties around my ankles. Lord knows my child will not be charitable (or dishonest) enough to omit shit like that from my eulogy.

If I die tomorrow, I will truly have no regrets, at least when it comes to boots. And if I get married tomorrow, I will wear them.

Project Runaway

My son is in Japan. My older daughter is in the Cayman Islands. My soon to be ex is in Arizona. And my youngest is heading to France in a week. It is time to dust off my passport.

This weekend, I am going to take a break from house-on-wheels hunting and spread out a map of the world on my kitchen table, start throwing darts. At the map, of course. And no, I will not be drawing voodoo doll type pictures on it, mostly because I can't draw. My bags will be packed, and I'll be ready to go at a moment's notice. My luck it'll be the South Pole in June, but no matter what, I'm outta here. Hey, I've always wanted to see the march of the penguins in 3D.

I used to love airports. Sitting in the gate area, gazing out the large windows and watching the planes take off at two minute intervals, noiseless but for the baritone vibration from the revving of the massive engines. You can see the air molecules churning as the giant birds take off, enveloping the tiny heads in the tiny windows in a surreal haze. Blurry and faceless people, all going places. Escaping.

Lately, when I go to the airport, it's generally to drop a kid off or pick one up -- a vicarious thrill versus a real one. Either way, I still enjoy the sight of the airplanes taxiing off to exotic destinations (even though I know full well Newark, New Jersey is likely to be one of them; not that there's anything wrong with Newark, New Jersey), and I still duck as I catch sight of the belly of a frighteningly close airplane coming in for an approach. Maybe it has nothing to do with escape or return or trips of a lifetime. Maybe it's just about being on the move, folks pulling up roots, if only for a moment.

The older I get, the more I realize how much things are not as they seem. The lines on our faces offer hints about our pasts -- the laughter, the sadness, the worry, the pride. But the layers run deep, and no amount of botox can help anyone escape the history, the years of good stuff and bad shit that has happened, the stuff we should either try harder to remember or the shit we try really hard, usually in vain, to forget. The botox may hide it, the exotic airplane rides may offer up a brief respite, but the histories are here to stay, for better or for worse.

Recently, I asked someone how it is possible to love again after suffering the worst kind of tragedy, the loss of a child. He explained that even though a chunk of your heart is gone, permanently gone, love is infinite. We humans have an amazing capacity -- to love after loss, to be happy after indescribable sadness, even to be sad despite years of incredible joy. We keep moving. We never escape, but we never remain quite in the same place either. Or at least we shouldn't. Wingless, we were born to fly.

Just ask the emperor penguins. The journey, year after year, is arduous, but the ones that survive keep going. By summer, their tuxedos look as fresh and pressed, and, well, ordinary (if there can be anything ordinary about a penguin to someone who lives in the northern hemisphere) as the day they were made. Like us, though, each penguin has its own history. You just have to know where to look.