Charity Begins in the Garment District

As I was preparing to leave the shop yesterday -- anxious to return at least one of the seventeen phone calls I had received from my attorneys, if only to ask why we were still talking to each other -- one of my coworkers grabbed me. She needed my help.

Working for peanuts is one thing, but working for nothing is, well, come to think of it, pretty much the same thing, so I agreed to stay for a bit. A customer, Sally (not her real name), was standing in a fitting room looking a bit bewildered. The hanging bar was overflowing with stuff for her to try on, and her own body hung limply beneath an outfit that seemed vaguely familiar. "I've been trying to recreate what you wore the other day, the day you looked so good," my coworker said. As much as she had narrowed the options -- there aren't all that many days when I look good -- I was still confused. "You know," she prodded. "When you wore this sweater and people stopped you to ask where you got it."

Ahh. The sweater. The crazy sweater that seems three sizes too big, no matter who tries it on, but is so soft and cuddly it becomes irresistible, as long as you don't focus too much on the excess material. Sally was wearing our last one, and though Sally is a bit larger than I am, her frame seemed to disappear within the nubby folds of what appeared to be a ratty old blanket with sleeves. The corners of her mouth dipped down in synch with the drooping cloth.

Like an emergency worker in fitting room triage, I sprung into action. I grabbed a colorful and sparkly scarf and a pair of boots from the floor, and put Sally in a choke hold as I draped the scarf around her neck. She stood, motionless, a patient in shock. I demanded that she remove the jeans she was wearing and allow me to bring her a pair of miracle skinnies that we could tuck into the boots. Finally, she showed the first signs I had seen of life. "No way. My legs are way too fat."

Well, if I had a dime for every time I've heard that, I'd have a handful of dimes. I chose not to dignify her statement, giving her a dismissive wave as I marched out to find the miracle jeans. My coworker grabbed me again, steering me around the other side of the wall for some privacy. She told me what she knew about Sally, which was not much, but I suppose all we needed to know at the moment. "Her husband just packed up and left her last week."

Ahh. The cad. No wonder Sally looked as if she was about to disappear. I went and grabbed the jeans, and tossed them over the fitting room door. We waited outside, our little triage team of two, holding our breath. The door opened slowly. The jeans were on, the boots were on. Suddenly the sweater looked very recognizable, just like the one I had fallen in love with weeks earlier.

Sally looked tentative, still surprised, I think, that the jeans fit and the boots fit over them and that, objectively speaking, her legs did not appear to be fat. Our collective gasp gave her the courage to come out and look at herself in the three way mirror. She broke into a huge grin; her face out-sparkled the scarf. I noticed, for the first time, how pretty she was. I am certain it had been a long time since she had noticed that.

I left Sally in the very capable hands of my coworker, and I am willing to bet Sally left a while later with armloads of shopping bags filled with outfits that made her smile. The road ahead will be tough for Sally, no matter what she is wearing. And, if my experience is any indication, there will be many days when she barely has the energy to put on anything more than a frown. I called my attorneys back, telling them for the umpteenth time that though I love them dearly, I want them out of my life. As usual, they didn't take me seriously, and I did the iPhone equivalent of slamming the phone down (very unsatisfying).

I hope, for Sally's sake, that her relationship with matrimonial lawyers will come to an end as swiftly and abruptly as her marriage did. And I hope she remembers, as time goes on, that just because her husband walked out on her she is not invisible, and she should not disappear. And that her legs are not fat, and even if they were, who cares? We all know -- or should know -- it's not about the clothes, it's not about the size of our thighs. It's about the smile. And if it takes an occasional trip to the mall to draw that out, what's so bad about that?

Manly (Manny?) Pursuits

It’s taken me long enough, but I have actually started to wonder why I bother to shower and wear anything other than sweats.

The Jewish holidays – the “high” ones, at any rate – are over, and my fate for the coming year has been sealed. I avoided going to temple, choosing instead to spend the holidays by myself and make them a lonely and anti-social referendum on my life. For ten days I have pondered all that has gone wrong, all that I have the power to fix, all the ways in which I have failed to do so. Next year at this time, assuming I have eked into the Book of Life, I hope my assessment of my situation will be a bit more optimistic. Hope springs eternal. Or at least annual.

Like a marathon runner, I’m pacing myself, starting out slow. The other night I found myself solo at a holiday dinner, paired up – by default – with a gay man. A decorator no less. I suppose I could cultivate the relationship, use him to pretty up my double wide. I’ve always tried to avoid men who are thinner and prettier than I, but if he can transform my life with a little interior design, I’ll make allowances. The good news is he has no desire to see me naked.

My gay date and I parted with a chaste handshake, and I headed home to Manny, the one man who waits for me always, who never goes upstairs for the evening until he knows I am safely tucked in beside him. Again, pacing is key; I’ve got an entire lunar year of work to do, and I certainly don’t want to peak too soon. Pacing, of course, is one thing; moving backwards is quite another. A good argument can certainly be made that parting ways with a human man who happens to have impeccable taste and hygiene to go sleep with a fat, blind dog is the opposite of progress, but I took the gay man’s incessant chatter about his “partner” as a not so subtle hint that we would not be leaving together. And he seemed less than enthralled when I struck what I intended to be a seductive pose as I reached into my car to retrieve my phone. Nauseated actually.

So when I woke this morning to the sight, mere inches from my face, of a tail protruding from under the covers, and the dulcet tones of what sounded like a fog horn emanating from a big lump in my comforter, I questioned my capacity to ever move forward. But then I was listening to the radio and a woman had called in to say that she thought it might be time to kick her husband out of the house because this morning he looked at her and told her he just didn’t want to wake up next to her anymore. Hmm, what’s her hurry? Anyway, I bet she’d give anything to have a man of any species wake up next to her tomorrow and gaze at her lovingly, no matter how bad he smells.  

Who knows? By next Yom Kippur, I could be happily settled in to the best decorated trailer in the state,  and maybe, in the process, I'll have acquired a new male friend who loves to shop and gossip. As for my sleeping companion, there is something to be said for loyalty, and no matter how many new wrinkles I acquire, Manny will still "gaze" lovingly at me every morning, which is not the worst feeling in the world. Unlike the woman on the radio this morning, I will never have reason to throw Manny's belongings out onto the lawn. Or the asphalt, as the case may be.

And even though neither Manny nor the new gay man in my life could give less of a shit, I'm going to continue to shower and avoid the sweats. Some days.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (and Breakfast and Lunch)

Yesterday I saw a teaser on the news for a segment about a guy who reveals the identity of his favorite child in a blog. (Shit I've revealed all sorts of quirky sexual fantasies in my blog; how come I've never been on the Today Show?) Anyway, I figured the story wasn't worth waiting for so I tuned out and went back to pondering more important issues, like whether I am my childrens' favorite parent.

Today, though, I revisited the favorite child idea after watching a piece about the "new normal" in family dynamics, which increasingly involves grandparents moving in. Yipes. Three generations under the same roof! I'm not quite certain which of my kids will one day be desperate or masochistic enough to invite me in (its not like they'll ever get a home cooked meal out of it) but I've decided I might as well hedge my bets. (It's a work in progress, but feel free to alert the media.)




Dear (Becca, Matt, Nicki -- choose one):

You are and always have been my favorite child for many reasons, not the least of which are (your sisters, your brother and sister -- choose one). Their (bitchiness, sullenness, uncommunicativeness, slovenliness, expensive tastes -- choose two or three) wear me out.

I have dreamt for years about living under one roof with you and your (beautiful wife, handsome husband -- choose one) and your (well behaved, well dressed, highly intelligent, Jewish, multi-racial -- pick up to three) children. I cannot imagine spending so much as one night under the same roof with (your sister's good-for-nothing husband, your other sister's good-for-nothing husband, your brother's gold-digging wife -- pick two) or their unruly broods. Don't tell anybody, but I will always give your children a little something extra for their birthdays. Those other nasty mutts can go to their other grandmas.

If you let me move in with you I promise I will (spend endless hours shopping with you for designer clothes, never waste time on crass materialism, supply you with enough pot so you can spend hours in a drug induced haze staring at the ceiling, learn how to drink until my toenails slosh around in their nailbeds, never vote Republican, never vote at all, experiment with all sorts of exotic food, become a vegetarian, never go on beach vacations, only go on the beach vacations, never talk about people or make faces behind their back, only talk about people or make faces behind their back -- choose up to six). I will (read David Foster Wallace stories and pretend to understand them, read Cosmo -- pick one) and I will (only go see indie films, never suggest a movie with subtitles -- pick one).  I will never, under any circumstances, make you go with me to a Broadway musical. 

I can't wait to start the next chapter of our life together!

Love you (the most), 

Mom

Comfortably Numb

12 year olds, circa 1971

It was not Halloween. There had not been a blackout, forcing us to get dressed in the dark. We were not in the midst of a cast party for a low budget performance of Little House on the Prairie. It was a day in June, 1971, a day when my best girlhood friends and I were celebrating our graduation from the sixth grade.

The hideous white shoes were perfectly legal as it was after Memorial Day; no excuse springs to mind, however, for the rest of the outfits. We thought we were hip in our peasant skirts and hot pants, free and stylish spirits living in a world of banned bras, flower children, free love, and drugs. Sure, there were anti-war protests, but the war itself was so removed from my daily life I barely gave it any though; as far as I knew, Jews sent their sons to medical school, not war.

The seventies were an ugly time. In the concrete school yards of middle class Brooklyn, we strutted our impaired sense of fashion as proudly as we ignored the ironies of white flight and desegregation. In our minds we mocked the cowardly departure of our neighbors for the picket fences of suburbia, embracing the rainbow of colors within the chain link confines of our school. We withstood the uncomfortable mixing of "us" and "them," watching with awe (and from a safe distance, of course) at lunchtime while the black girls showcased their loose limbed genetics in endless rounds of "double dutch." My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I think we at least shared common ground on the "bad fashion front" issue. Our hair hung in knotted unruly frizz from our scalps while theirs protruded in multiple odd angles from their heads in greased twists bound by colorful hair ties with balls. Different variations on the same hideous theme.

Shag carpet, olive green appliances, living room furniture covered in plastic. The carefree and socially conscious days of the sixties had waned, giving way to a culture obsessed with its own things, no matter how unattractive. A healthy dose of apathy had replaced any heady concern with a war that just seemed to drag on and an international community exploding with military coups and decidedly uncivil outlooks on civil rights. My father's Cadillac (which we affectionately referred to as the "jew canoe") sat in line with all the other outsized cars of the time, determined to fill up on their share of an increasingly limited supply of gas. Whatever was going on out there, we learned how to not let it affect our days. And we wore our stringy hair and our hot pants and our hideous peasant skirts, oblivious to what eyesores we were. The twin towers of the World Trade Center rose up, a testament to our superiority and our rose colored outlook on life.

Those of us who came of age in the seventies have at least learned from some of out mistakes. We are slightly less self-absorbed, many of us at least making an effort to give back and acknowledge the suffering of others. We're a bit more tuned in, having watched the twin towers fall and having felt the sting of vulnerability. At the very least, many of us look a hell of a lot better than we did during our formative years. We have access to charitable offerings such as shows called "What Not to Wear" and stores called "Hot Mama" (yes, I work there part time and yes, I am a true believer in its power to transform) where women who look and feel as if they have been repeatedly kissed by toads emerge with big smiles and shopping bags laden with garments that will no doubt make our world -- our immediate world at least -- a prettier place. We are women like Princess Diana and Michelle Obama, a generation of geeks turned fashion icons as we entered middle age. Okay, perhaps I exaggerate for the rest of us, but let's face it, Kate Middleton and her ilk have nowhere to go but down.

12 year olds, circa 2002

This weekend, my older daughter sent me a picture of herself and her five closest girlhood friends, all of them out of college and living some version of "the dream" in Chicago. Not surprisingly, they all looked spectacular. Heck, they looked spectacular when they were twelve. I dug up a picture. It was taken at the beginning of seventh grade, at the turn of the new millennium, only weeks after outside forces crashed into our world and showed us in one horrifying moment how quickly things could crumble. The girls were already fashionistas, sophisticated and put together; it's impossible to believe they are the same age as the girls in the picture up above. No stringy hair, no hot pants yanked over protruding, prepubescent bellies, no hideous peasant dresses. Looking at them, you would never know our world had begun to unravel.

As beautiful as they looked then, and still look now, they have inherited a scary world. What will they do when they hit middle age, having long ago mastered the art of sartorial splendor? Will there be a return to middle aged dowdiness, to growing old, perhaps, without obsessing about maintaining youthful beauty? With no room left for improvement, will they just let it go? Maybe they will become less self absorbed, look outward instead of worrying so much about perfect hair and what to wear. Maybe they will take it upon themselves to make the world a less scary place, even if they start to look like shit.


We'll have to wait and see, I suppose. As we watched the news this morning, listening to discussions about possible troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, my youngest daughter asked me why this war was still going on. Not so much apathy as exasperation, but I marvel sometimes at how different our reality here in deep dark suburbia can be from the harsh realities elsewhere. It's difficult for me to reconcile our detachment from the war with the all too real fears of the young man and his young family I met recently as he readies himself for deployment.

Our kids may have known how to look good long before my generation figured it out, but still, there's always room for improvement.

Grabbed by the Throat

I helped a woman choose necklaces yesterday, one for her mother, one for her. 

It occurred to me, as we examined pendants and ropes and gaudy strands of brightly colored faux jewels, how powerful something as simple as a necklace could be. How a seemingly innocuous ornament hanging limply on a display hook, when fastened around a human neck, can speak so loudly -- about age, about values, about how we want to seem, no matter how little it might resemble how we are. 

Earlier that morning, as I sat at the kitchen counter with my daughter and we engaged in our usual spotty and distracted conversation about everything and nothing, she met Hester Prynne. She had known the basics of Hawthorne's story long before opening the book -- that a woman in Puritanical, colonial Massachusetts had committed adultery and been condemned to wear a scarlet "A" around her neck -- and, having anticipated a juicy tale that might even stand up to "Fifty Shades of Gray," she was initially disappointed by the bland descriptions and indecipherable Middle English language of the first few pages. She complained that it was taking a bit too long for the heroine to appear.

I fiddled aimlessly with the pendant hanging at my throat, the gold and silver Star of David I had spotted once in Mexico, a misfit standing out in a sea of crosses. My daughters had watched me watch it, my husband had bought it when I wasn't looking. He gave it to my youngest so she could give it to me once we had gotten home. This was during the first of our separations, at a time when we somehow knew we needed to be apart, for reasons as yet unarticulated, for judgments as yet not made. It was a gift given and accepted out of mixed emotions and confused assumptions, a gift that spoke mixed messages each time I put it on.

By the time my daughter reached the bottom of her cereal bowl, just as she scooped out the last grains stubbornly floating in the shallow pool of milk, her spirits lifted. Hester, condemned, quiet, and dignified, had arrived, decked out in her scarlet "A." So, too, had the other women of the colony appeared, condemning and vocal, their dignity as elusive as their vengefulness was all consuming. Portrayed as physically ugly, the townswomen mused among themselves about more severe punishments for the young and beautiful woman on the scaffold, about better alternatives than the embroidered "A" necklace. Jewelry shopping fraught with hasty judgments, mixed emotions, confused assumptions.

Fast forward from the seventeenth century to modern day anywhere, pick a community, pick a religion, pick a class. There is always someone sinning, always someone breaking a law, and, often if not always, there is somebody getting caught. As my daughter shared with me a passage about the townswomen, as we waded through the thick language together, we acknowledged (somewhat telepathically) the Hesters and the evil townswomen of our world. The sinners, the condemned, the condemners, the folks who go through life pointing fingers as they struggle every day, whether consciously or not, to avoid getting caught for their own most base human instincts. The lines are fuzzy, with lots of overlap. We are all guilty, creating images for ourselves with the jewelry we choose and the masks we wear, painting pictures in our minds of others when we have little more to go on than, say, a necklace.

With my help, the woman finally chose two necklaces yesterday. Something ornate to dress up her mother's outfit, something simple to dress her own outfit down. Mixed messages projected by both women, the truth -- if there is one -- buried somewhere within the confusion.

Caught in the Middle

In the life of a child, fourteen years is a big deal. It is the transition from toddlerhood to the brink of young adulthood, the morphing of a tiny, unruly, babbling thing into a person often beyond recognition, a person capable of intelligent conversation, a person who can share a knowing laugh at an off color joke. 

We revel in the process, the miraculous maturation of our children. When friends and relatives who have not seen them for long periods marvel at the changes, we are reminded that the days and years that can seem to move along at an evolutionary (and sometimes excruciating) pace are speeding by on fast forward. As the emptying of our nests draws closer, we anticipate it with an odd mix of eagerness and dread, and there is nothing like an annual holiday gathering to stir up the confusing brew. 

For about fourteen years, I have been in the middle generation, seated at the table with the other "neither here nor there" folks for what have become traditional holiday dinners at a friend's home. From the beginning, tsk tsks trickled down from our elders to us, and from us to our own children. Searches for guidance, at least at the beginning, trickled up the other way -- from our children to us, from us to our own parents. In our minds, I think, at the "neither here nor there" table, we remained unchanged as our children grew and our parents grew old. It was a comfortable place to be.

It is getting to be far less comfortable. In the life of a grandparent, as it turns out, fourteen years is a big deal as well. It is the transition from the palpable excitement and joy of a special time to the brink of old age. It is the morphing of an energetic and proud band of adults reveling in the lives and accomplishments of their children's children into people somewhat beyond recognition, tired, frail, a bit nutty, gradually incapacitated by the infirmities that go hand in hand with living long. People once capable of intelligent conversation seem suddenly on the verge of becoming unruly and babbling. The odd circle of mortality plays out before our very eyes. 

I exaggerate a bit, of course. The elders are still capable of conversation which, at least by the standards set by the rest of us -- which can be pretty low -- is intelligent and funny. And, knock on wood, the ones that were there at the beginning of our fourteen year ritual are all still there, and will be for a long while. The children still revert to some babbling and unruliness -- as do we, come to think of it -- but their number has dwindled. College and careers have kept many of them from joining our annual celebrations, and the dent in our group seems to become deeper and more irreparable each year. As for us at the "neither here nor there" table, well, we're enduring loss on both ends as we hang on to our chairs in that middle place for dear life. 

This morning I woke feeling a bit distraught about all this, weighed down by the swift and unstoppable passage of time. Maybe it was just too much brisket. 

OMG, OWS, OY. . . Shanah Tovah!

I imagine it's a lot like having your birthday fall on Christmas. You kind of feel cheated.

Today is the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, but I will be too, well, preoccupied with my resolutions for the Jewish New Year to celebrate. Frankly, as much as I would love to get in on the action and express some solidarity with the protesters, I have never really understood the movement. I am way too apathetic to comprehend why anybody would spend so much as a minute sleeping outside in the rain, much less an entire night, just because of some perceived social and economic inequality and a little greed. I suppose I am as greedy and self involved as the next guy. Heck, my temple is warm and dry and the entire Book of Life thing is at stake and I can't even bring myself to sit there and listen to an insufferable sermon and ancient Hebrew chants sung in English.

Nevertheless, I am a Jew, and there's no way I am playing Russian Roulette with my chances for another year on Earth to make things right, so God trumps politics today, and I am going to do my darnedest to get her attention. I will be turning inward with the American Jewish two per cent; if it's sunny next year on September 17th, maybe I'll give the OWS one percent a whirl.

I certainly don't mean to sound unsympathetic to the woes of different minorities; just because I am one of the "chosen" does not mean I am not tuned in to the plight of others. Quite the contrary, actually. Born and raised to be a Jewish princess -- and still sitting precariously on my throne as I avoid exile in a double wide -- I feel a sense of noblesse oblige, a need to give back to those less fortunate than I. When the barista in Starbucks this morning was puzzled at my failure to order a chai latte for my daughter, I explained that she is sleeping in because there is no school today. She was still perplexed, so I further explained the whole Jewish holiday thing and how the entire public school system in our neck of the woods is closed, even though that might seem to be a violation of some separation of Church and State thing in the Constitution. "I'm moving here," she announced, thinking this extra day off for some pagan holiday was something she wanted a piece of. Poor downtrodden shiksa, I thought. If I could have handed her the keys and the title to my house, I would have.

But really, enough trying to solve everybody else's problems. Today is a day for me and my ilk to reflect and to compete fiercely for the limited slots left in the Book of Life. Sure, charity begins at home, but it's just going to have to begin tomorrow.

Morning Mojo

I told a friend yesterday I thought I had lost my mojo. He said he wasn't sure where I could find it, but he did know a place where we could get a good mojito, which seemed close enough. Even better, I decided, so we agreed to go get a couple this afternoon. I may not find my mojo, but I will no doubt forget about it, at least for a while.

When I got out of bed (I'd say woke, but that presumes there was some actual sleep) this morning, thoughts of prolonging summer with a few minty, sugary cocktails on an outdoor patio danced in my head. If my mojo is to be measured by confidence, self-esteem, and a smug feeling of sex appeal, it has most assuredly not yet been located. But if I take a broader view, see my mojo as a tiny hint of optimism and contentedness (in spite of the fat dog farting in my face all night and the fright I got when I looked in the mirror and saw my hair), I think maybe it will soon be back within my grasp. As I've said before, aim low.

And so it was, with this slightly renewed feeling that things aren't totally hopeless, I got dressed and limped downstairs (oy, my aching hip), explaining to Manny as he waddled next to me that he would just have to pee in the yard this morning. He ignored me, and headed directly for the door to the garage, planting his ample butt and blocking my way.

He stared at me with his unseeing eyes, defying me to step over him. "I cannot take you with me in the car because I am going to actually stay at Starbucks and try to think of something to write about." Not so much as a blink. Don't ever try to out-stare a blind dog. You will lose.

I am not above bribery. "How about a cookie?" As much as Manny loves a good car ride (it's his idea of exercise), nothing beats a cookie. Out in the yard he went, munching away, and I began to gather my laptop and reading glasses and scrounge up enough change for my coffee. My mojo seemed tantalizingly close.

As I went to let Manny in, he was frantically batting away at something, licking some perceived wound. Once a mom, always a mom, and nothing gets my mojo running in overdrive like the thought that my child (or dog) is in distress. So I let Manny in and went out myself to deal with the attacker, only to realize a wasp's nest seemed to have exploded onto my deck. I wonder if Manny noticed the irony in all of this. There he was, in the kitchen by the glass door, while I stood on the deck wanting to go in, but thinking it might be a bad idea to open the door since there were wasps swarming all over the place.

Thank goodness my mojo was back, and I was at least feeling resourceful, so I trudged through the minefield of poop that is my backyard so I could get in the house through the garage, hoping I had been negligent enough the night before to leave the inside door unlocked. Not surprisingly, I was. Phew, safe in my kitchen. Just me and Manny. Shit. Me, Manny, and at least four or five wasps that had snuck in when I had first opened the back door.

Now I have always thought the Swiffer to be an amazing invention, the way those clingy little pads suck up dust bunnies like nobody's business. I don't use mine that often, but thank goodness I remembered where it was, and let me tell you the Swiffer is just as amazing by itself, even without the clingy little pads. Poor Manny listened in horror as I swung that thing madly around the kitchen, beating down the wasps. They didn't even have a chance. Okay, I cheated with one pesky little guy, and gave him a Raid shower, but in the end, it was mom, five, wasps, zero. Hello mojo.

And later, with a little luck and a few mojitos, and frightening images of me swinging a swiffer around the kitchen while shouting out obscenities at bugs kept tucked away in my own private photo gallery, hello smug feeling of sex appeal.

Phantom Twins

9/11/2001

It's official and I suppose it's the natural way of things. The tenth anniversary of 9/11 came and went last year, and the greatest tragedy on American soil has now been relegated to the history books. On my Internet news page this morning, the date warranted no mention, appearing only in the upper right hand corner in small print, as all dates do.

Ancient history, maybe to some, but the books on 9/11 are by no means closed. The other day, my friend showed me a picture of thirty or so smiling military wives, dressed to the nines in whatever finery they could afford on an officer's salary, drunk on cheap wine (and giddy from the rare excuse to hire a baby sitter for the evening). Their husbands are on the brink of deployment to Afghanistan. My friend could not help but wonder out loud how many of those beautiful smiles would be forever wiped away by the time next year rolls around, how many young widows to be were in that picture.

Ready or not, it's a day that will simply live in infamy, albeit quietly. Scars remain but open wounds have long ago faded. On my first visit to lower Manhattan in the fall of 2001, in the post 9/11 world, the southern tip of the island was an uninhabitable hole. Except for the bold and bright memorials to firefighters and other Americans who had lost their lives, and a veritable sea of yellow hard hats, color had been all but wiped away from the area. It was all dust and mud, a landscape of ash where business and commerce had once thrived. The World Trade Center, the buildings that had risen up during my childhood and shifted the city's skyline -- not to mention its heart and soul -- southward, had been destroyed in an instant. It took a long time for me to be able to gaze over to where they had stood, across the river, and not imagine I could still see the outlines of the towering twins.

On my most recent visit to the area -- some time early this year -- I marveled at the transformation. Brand new towers glisten as they soar over the site. Memorial banners have long been torn down, replaced by sparkling store fronts and brightly lit marquis from new luxury hotels. Tours spill into the Memorial, long lines of people for whom 9/11 happened somewhere far away, for some before they were born. There are still plenty of hard hats milling around, but it's all about building, no longer about repair. I wonder if the Officers and their wives, the ones smiling at the ball, see it that way.

Today I happen to be having lunch with one of the first people I saw that day after tearing myself away from the television and the telephone. My brother had been describing the scene from his office window only blocks away from what would soon be known as Ground Zero, and we were still trying to figure out where my mother -- always in the thick of things -- had disappeared to. But life had to go on, at least here in suburban Chicago, so out I went. My friend and I barely knew each other, much less what to say. We were both, like everyone else, trying to grasp what had happened as we tried to preserve our idea of normalcy and get our daughters to their dance class.

My guess is my friend and I, all these years later, will reminisce today. About the shock that seemed to alter our world that morning. About our sense of disbelief and despair. About our daughters, who have long since hung up their tap shoes and had no idea that day of how much things had changed while they danced.

Chairwoman of the Board

Every evening, after she cleaned up the dinner dishes "her way," my mom would set up the ironing board in the living room. I don't remember -- never really thought about it -- but there must have been grooves in the carpet where she had set up her nightly shop. The position of the ironing board, like most of my mother's routines, was exact and unwavering.

It has always puzzled my mom, my aversion to ironing. She is well aware of my aversion to housework in general, but ironing, for her, was different. It was relaxing, therapeutic, predictable. Same time, same place, every evening. With her back to the mirror hanging on the wall above the upright piano, she would stand under the glow of our rather garish crystal chandelier, her skinny legs poking out from under her house dress, one bony arm holding on to the board as she leaned over it intently. Slap, slide, retract, slap slide retract. A pause so she could lift the garment and turn it, then slap, slide, retract again.

Though I would think I never paid much attention -- I was either chatting with my father or engrossed in some sitcom -- I can see her now so clearly, lifting up each finished item, examining it, folding it up, moving on. Then slap, slide, retract, slap, slight, retract. The background music to our family evenings: relaxing, therapeutic, predictable. For me.

Recently, I've dragged out my own ironing board more than a few times. Not for everything, mind you. Not even close. But I have discovered the miracle of ironing. Not just the immediate gratification of watching wrinkles disappear (ahh, if only face cream worked so well), and not just the startling economic windfall of being able to wear favorite clothing more than once. More than those things, it's the nostalgic assault on my senses. Slap. The rattle of the board's  flimsy legs is so familiar, a sound oddly comforting as it conjures up images of my mother doing her chores, chores that she never viewed as optional. And images of my father, sitting in his favorite chair at the other end of the living room, curls of smoke lifting from the tip of his cigar, his New York Times folded in quarters in front of him as he read it from cover to cover, leaving the crossword for last. Slap, slide retract. Puff, crackle as he shook out the paper to turn the page, fold, puff, flick. The sights and sounds of my childhood, barely noticeable, I thought, but so vivid.

Up until now, I've been doing it in the privacy of my bathroom. (Ironing, perverts.) It just happens to be where I found the long dormant appliance. I am thinking of moving it down to the kitchen, making myself the background noise while my daughter texts with one hand and does her homework with the other. Slap, slide, retract. Tap, tap, tap, the whisper of a page being flipped, the dull clang of her binder rings as they open and close.

Vacuuming? That's not happening. But there's no reason my daughter and I can't just start to iron things out, together.

Reeling 'Em In. Really?

There are many things I love about my "fun" part time job in retail. Most of them just happen to be hanging in my closet.

Granted, I generally like doing things as efficiently -- and with as little effort -- as possible, which is why I had thought my four hours in the shop yesterday had been quite successful. With very little forced conversation, I managed to sell the entire outfit I was wearing (boots and all) to two customers, and half of it to a third. All I had to do was get dressed in the morning -- something I try to do on a regular basis so my children don't have to fear the news reports of a middle aged woman wandering naked through the wilds of deep dark suburbia.

Don't get me wrong. It's not that I didn't have to talk to the women who ended up buying my outfit. We chatted and laughed plenty; I even joined them occasionally in the fitting room, allowing one of them to actually try on my own dress so she could decide on size. (It worked out well; she bought the other size and I ended up with the dress she didn't want which I just had to put on so my children wouldn't hear reports of the middle aged saleswoman wandering naked through the mall.) We bonded, these women and I. We shared stories of our kids, our own childhoods, our favorite restaurants. We commiserated about the flab in our stomachs and the size of our calves. We swore we would shop together one day (promising not to wear "the outfit") and we hugged.

I left work with a spring in one step and a drag in the other. My effortless successes were overshadowed by my continued refusal to engage in scripted "conversation starters" with folks who clearly have no interest in having a conversation with me. Don't get me wrong; I have three children and I taught for years. I am accustomed to being ignored, even being given the occasional "stink eye" by someone who holds me in complete disdain. But I am usually genetically related to those people, and have some plausible reason -- in my mind, at least -- for continuing to bug the shit out of them.

Here's how it went after I backed off of customer number one, who responded to my offer of assistance by turning her head away from me and muttering "I'm just looking around." Actually, she may have said "go fuck yourself;" it's tough to hear someone who's not facing you when the music is blaring.

Young, perky manager arrives by my side. "What's she looking for?" Hmm. Maybe she said she was looking for a round. A round of what? I was stumped. I admitted I did not know, since the woman had been quite clear about wanting me to disappear.

"Did you try a relationship conversation?" Seriously, I am not making this up.

"No." I was hoping my discount would still apply until the end of business on the day of my termination.

"Do you want me to try?"

I thought about that. As much as I felt horrible for doing this to the woman around my age who wanted me to disappear, I'm always up for some entertainment. "Sure. Go for it."

I watched and listened from afar. (That's how you learn.) If the woman could have turned her head more than one hundred eighty degrees, she would have. When the axis of her neck failed her, she just began the slow shuffle down the wall rack in a feeble effort to escape. She had to stop when she got to the front end of the store. She didn't seem like the type who would be willing to stand in the window and pretend to be a mannequin. She left, her head still turned at an odd angle. Actually I think it was spinning.

Young, perky manager arrives again by my side. "See how I got her talking?" Talking, walking. Practically the same word. I could see how she got confused.

That was my first of many lessons in "conversation starting" and "relationship conversations" for the day. I didn't have a pen, but I took a lot of mental notes. During one particularly difficult pop quiz on how I could have gotten an especially unfriendly browser to become my new best friend, I suggested a leash. She thought I was joking. "You just can't force the fish to bite," I said, feeling a bit maternal. "You need to wait for them to start to nibble a bit."

It was worse than trying to explain to a blind dog that if we took an umbrella we could go out in the rain and not get pelted. (Yes, Manny and I had that conversation at four o'clock this morning, and his puzzled head cock seemed vaguely familiar; now I remember where I had seen a similar look.)

Note to my children: if you hear about a middle aged woman running around naked downtown, it's because I looked so good on the unemployment line I sold the clothes off my back. Sorry.

If You Give a Dog a Green Bean...

I suppose it's par for the course that I spent a good part of the wee hours last night mopping up diarrhea from the family room floor. (Manny's, not mine, smart guys; I'm not that old or out of control. Yet.) Anyway, it seemed a fitting end to a day that had started with a bucket of shit (of a different variety) getting dumped on me.

Which got me to thinking deep thoughts. The stench still lingers in my nostrils, and though I keep wondering what I've done to deserve all this crap, I think I have learned at least one simple lesson from it all. When your dog is begging, just say "no." Do not feed him green beans. Especially after your sixteen year old daughter -- who is perfectly able to ignore the dog's whining, just as she was able to ignore my near death bout with the flu, except to the extent it inconvenienced her -- has warned you that dogs cannot digest green beans. Ahh, from the mouths of babes, even bitchy ones.

After mopping up the doggy mess and tossing the mop and the bucket and the rags and the actual mess itself outside so I could deal with it in the morning, or maybe never, I was reminded that I must really look like shit. I went upstairs and took a good long look in the mirror. As I scanned my tired face, my nose still slightly uplifted in a very attractive crinkle in my continued effort to ward off the smells, I searched for the signs of evil that might make me such an easy mark for dumping.

I'm not really sure what evil looks like, other than a man with a funny little mustache and a cold stare, but that's so limiting. My daughter told me the school tennis team is evil, which is why so many of her friends have either quit or wish they had. Maybe she's on to something. She did, after all, know about the green beans. I always thought "evil" became kind of manic looking when it became threatened, kind of like the Joker in Batman. The tired, beaten up face staring back at me in the mirror looked anything but manic. Ugly doesn't qualify.

So looking in the mirror made me think of a news story I saw the other day on the Today Show -- a real scoop, I might add -- about a woman (we'll just call her Alice) who went on a mirror fast for a month. She hung drapes over the mirrors in her house -- creepy, just like we Jews do when somebody dies -- and avoided looking at her reflection no matter where she went, no matter what the occasion. I assume she has really good friends who would tell her if she had spinach in her teeth. Anyway, I watched the entire segment trying to understand the point, other than some woman getting her fifteen minutes of fame on television (at fast's end, naturally, so her makeup was impeccable). She said something about worrying that the mirror had made her too self-obsessed, and finding that a month without the nasty little demon had made her self-centered -- in a good way, I'm guessing, as in yoga. I don't know. It was a lot easier for me to grasp the green bean lesson.

Frankly, I am not willing to give up my mirrors right now, because the last thing I want is someone else telling me what they see. We ourselves our best equipped to see beyond the surface reflection -- the wrinkles, the age spots, the sagging necks (thank you Nora) -- to our heart, our core, and if we ever start to forget what's really there, the bathroom mirror can be a useful tool. Even if we sometimes need to dim the lights. Maybe Alice (remember Alice) did figure that out; maybe now that she has her looking glass back, she uses it wisely. Maybe that's what she meant by self-centered. One can only hope.

Which makes me think of rabbit holes, and bunny carrots, and, yes, green beans. If your dog's begging gets to you, give him a cookie instead.