A Stand Up Gal

A male acquaintance told me the other day he wishes he were a woman. I suppose I don't blame him. Except for an occasional wistful moment when I fantasize about what it would be like to not have to sit down to pee, I have never wished to be a man. I like being a woman, even if it sometimes means I can't stand up.

I was half listening the other day when a local news anchor announced that the number of households in which the mom out-earns the dad has reached a new high. I'm paraphrasing here, but the anchor -- a woman -- commented on how nice it is that women are finally starting to contribute to the family. I thought about going upstairs to clean out my ears. Did she really say that? Note to self: when you're only half listening, at least try not to hear the really stupid parts, because they tend to piss you off. The comment was particularly absurd given that the story also noted the new statistics were attributable, at least in part, to the increased number of single moms trying to do it all (not to be confused with having it all)  when dad is either absent or has, in some other way, dropped the ball.

While my kids were growing up, I was a poster child for failed attempts at having it all. Movie stars and the occasional female prodigy who ends up bursting through the glass ceiling at, say, Yahoo are the exception. Real women may have a lot going on (varicose veins, PMS, bunions spring to mind), but they generally don't have it all. For years, I had one of those plum mommy track jobs, the ones that allow you the flexibility to be around for your kids as much as possible while you still enjoy a little bit of intellectual challenge and even some prestige outside the home. I had the luxury of taking lots of the work home; I could get some of it done after the kids' activities were over and they were fed and in bed, get the rest of it done in the wee hours of the morning before making sure lunches were packed and permission slips were signed and something resembling breakfast was shoveled in. My paycheck was small, and I wasn't exactly getting any merit bonuses at home.  And I still had to sit down to pee. The quest to have it all was exhausting.

Maybe the anchorwoman is onto something. Maybe I should have "contributed" more to the family. Why didn't I think of that? When I look back, though, I never wish I had worked harder to earn more. What I wish is that I had spent more time with my children, not been so tired, not missed so much as a moment of the much too short period of time allotted to me with them. I wish I had sat on the floor with them more, built cabins with Lincoln Logs, messed up the house with art projects, baked more cookies, let them cheat through hours of Scrabble, taken more walks to the park. I wish I had listened better, known more about what was going on in their lives, in their heads. I wish I could have saved them from hurt feelings and playground traumas and I wish I could have reminded them even more often than I did about how much I loved them and always would. Whatever I may have failed to contribute, I have never measured it in dollars and cents.

In the mind of the guy who told me he wished he were a woman, a woman's life is a charmed life, one spent relaxing while somebody else earns all the money. A life of ladies' lunches and manicures and facials and just plain old lazy days spent waiting for kids to come home. A life filled with a lack of contribution and not a care in the world. A world where the greatest hardship involves sitting down to pee. As I have always said (since yesterday anyway), one person's teapot that resembles Hitler is another person's completely innocuous piece of cookware. It's all a matter of perspective.

As skeptical as I am about the whole "having it all" thing, I still hope my daughters -- and my son -- can figure out a way to do it. At the very least, I hope they will always know that the world is indeed their urinal, even when they're sitting down.

Teapot in a Tempest

Some people hear voices. Some folks see dead people. Some guy driving on a freeway in California saw Adolf Hitler in a billboard advertising a teapot. Seriously?

Frankly, I could stare at that sleek little kettle on the billboard until the cows come home and see nothing more than a teapot with a bell perched on the spout, but one woman's cookware is another person's tyrant I suppose, and it's all about perspective. It did not take much for me to begin to question myself, to wonder whether this little teapot was just a little teapot, short and and a bit stout,  or whether this little teapot was indeed something far more sinister. Could this billboard have been the ultimate example of subliminal advertising, a call to neo-Nazis everywhere to start cooking up their hateful brew?  

Like many drivers who, I am sure, drove by the advertisement without noticing the the horrific resemblance, I had failed to put the teapot in the proper context. I just wasn't thinking about Hitler. If I had been, I would have been appalled.  My goodness, the likeness is uncanny. That is, at least, if you pour with your right hand. Turn the pot around and I think Adolf would disappear, and we'd be more likely to see someone who parted his hair on the left, someone who might more likely be our collective cup of tea. Abe Lincoln springs to mind.  

The power of suggestion is a force to be reckoned with. After reading the news reports of the teapot-gate, I went downstairs and gazed at my own teapot, a splash of green in my otherwise bland kitchen. I don't even drink tea that often, but my teapot remains on the stove top at all times, just because I like looking at it. Talk about a buzz kill. I suddenly saw Kermit, a smiling but, let's face it, hideous green frog, the last image you want to conjure up every morning in your kitchen when you've spent more than three years out in the dating world and kissed way too many frogs. Sorry Kermit, I guess it's really not easy being green. The teapot's going in the cabinet. 

Yes, I know, sometimes a teapot is really just a teapot, and Hitler is dead and buried, and I've pretty much eliminated the amphibians from my dance card. And, frankly, I could do a lot worse than Kermit. Like any red blooded American, I grew up singing the silly ditty that had me pretending to be a teapot from time to time. It's a free country; anybody can be a teapot, and, I suppose, a teapot can be anybody. 

It's all a matter of perspective. 




                                                

Framing the Issues

I wasn't going to post the pictures of our oddly configured modern family celebrating my daughter's birthday, but with a tiny bit of prodding from the birthday girl (and I mean tiny -- why don't you post the pictures, mom?) I hung them for all to see on my Facebook wall.

In the last few days, I've been hanging lots of pictures, the old fashioned way -- with a hammer and nails, the occasional push pins, and, when I'm feeling really modern, some double-sided sticky foam. The ones I choose not to hang I slip into an odd assortment of frames, obsessing way too long about where to place them. Upstairs or downstairs? Hallway or bedroom? It doesn't matter, really, since the only people who will see any of them are real estate agents and their clients. I've been told that buyers don't want to see family pictures, or anything, for that matter, that might impede their ability to see a house as their own. Frankly, I don't give a damn. I got rid of the carpet full of dog pee. They're just going to have to use their imagination for the rest.

Funny that within a few weeks perfect strangers will be marching through my home and trying to avert their gazes as they come upon anything remotely personal, even though it might serve them well to know something about the kind of people who lived there. Yet hundreds of Facebook "friends," most of whom have little reason beyond simple voyeurism to get a glimpse of my personal world, will know within a few hours how and where and with whom we celebrated my daughter's birthday. I had hesitated to put it out there, but now that I've posted, I wait for the weighing in. The thumbs ups, the more detailed assessments, the curiosity. If a tree falls in a remote forest does it make a sound? If a celebration occurs and isn't posted on a Facebook wall, did it ever actually happen? If a seller removes all personal pictures from the walls of a house, does that mean nobody ever lived there?

The thing about the tree in the forest is that nobody ever really cared in the first place. The thing about the Facebook pictures is they disappear almost as quickly as they go up, pushed to the bottom of a never ending stream of "look at me, look at me" posts. As forgotten as that fallen tree. But the thing about the pictures hung the old fashioned way on the walls of a house is they don't disappear, and they are anything but silent. You can take them down all you want, put them in drawers, hide them deep inside cabinets, but they don't fade. They've been there for years without eliciting a single thumbs up from a stranger, but not even the most unimaginative buyer can pretend they're not there.

Caveat emptor. The pictures may be gone, but they still make a lot of noise.

Imperfect Attendance

Just when I thought I had heard every excuse in the book, my friend told me about the folks who declined the invitation to her mother-in-law's ninetieth birthday party. Well, not so much declined but ignored. They would be unable to attend, apparently, because they are dead.

Ninetieth birthday parties don't come around very often, and I suppose it's not all that surprising that an occasional A-list invitee might expire before the festivities begin. I am not much of a party goer under the best of circumstances, and I have often thought being dead would be preferable to attending, but to have gone underground without friends taking notice -- that just seems a bit antisocial, not to mention depressing. When my friend told us the story, we had a good time with it. Sorry we can't be there -- we're just buried. Can't dig ourselves out. Our situation is very grave. We see dead people? I'm guessing they might have to close the [coffin] lid on the death jokes at the party -- a little too close for comfort.

Time passes, sometimes so fast nobody even notices. Today is the first day my youngest child can take advantage of being a high school senior and park in the school lot. A milestone, for what it's worth. It's the first day I am not on call to drive her to school. Yet I sit here watching her eat her breakfast, my car keys by my side, just in case she changes her mind. She is nonchalant about her new status, about her new driving privileges. I am trying to be; after all, isn't this what I've waited for? Freedom to come and go as I please in the morning? I have an urge to mark the occasion of this final bit of cord cutting, back out of the garage at the same time she does, then take off in the opposite direction. I won't, mostly because I don't have any particular place to go. I just wasn't ready for this.

She will graduate in a year, which means the coming twelve months will be filled not so much with "firsts" but with "lasts." I have driven her to school for the last time. I have waited for her in that infuriating end of the day pick-up line for the last time. Before I know it, I will attend my last high school open house, watch her last high school sporting event, wait in the kitchen for the last time to see which outfit she has chosen for the first day of school. For one more year, I will be there in the morning to say goodbye to her, to tell her to have a nice day, to feel the relief each afternoon -- no matter how nasty her mood -- when she returns home again.

Life moves quickly, too quickly sometimes. Forced to sift through piles of collected memories over the past few days as I cleared out my older children's bedrooms for the carpet installers, I tried to recall some of the moments, conjure up clear pictures of a not so distant past. I immersed myself in haphazard piles of photographs, trophies, and certificates, clothing that had somehow eluded the periodic giveaway piles. One baby shoe appeared in the rubble; I didn't know which child had worn it, or where its mate had disappeared to, yet I felt an almost irrepressible urge to hang onto it. With my youngest child still at home for a good chunk of time after her siblings left the nest, I seem to have not noticed the "firsts" and the "lasts" as much. I had taken comfort in knowing I still had another shot. Now I feel as if I am hanging on for dear life.

I pitched the baby shoe. I tucked the good stuff and plenty of not-so-good stuff into boxes. I may not look at these things again for a long time -- or ever -- but I need to keep them with me. I have promised myself to pay better attention. To notice all the comings and goings, the "firsts" and the "lasts," to keep showing up at the party no matter how "buried" I feel.

There's no good excuse not to.

A Dose of Reality

How does it know if you're a child?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Across the Town

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Road Most Travelled

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Advice Well Given

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Would I?

 

Cutting a Rug

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stolen Moments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Taking the Plunger

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

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

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

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

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

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

A New Leash on Life

I'm feelin' lucky.

The other day, it only cost me a thousand dollars to confirm what I had already assumed to be the case  (if only because I had no reason to assume otherwise) -- that Manny, my obese, blind, and ridiculously lovable Puggle, did not have a malignant tumor behind his eye. Sometimes crusty ooze and green discharge indicates nothing more than a bad cold. (I'm not a doctor, but the sneezing was my first clue.) A thousand dollars seemed a rather steep price to pay to confirm the obvious, but I convinced myself that it was money well spent, if only to allow myself the luxury of devoting my worn out tear ducts to more important things, like, say, the outrageous sums matrimonial attorneys charge to get you to a place where you can finally make the deal you should have a long time ago, only with a much smaller pot.

Note to self: next time I feel like getting divorced, hire my veterinarian. Though he stopped short of admitting the diagnosis of a brain tumor was unfounded, based solely as it was on a similar presentation several weeks earlier of a goopy, bulging eye by a cat (different species from Manny), presumably not even a blind one, he admitted that maybe he should have discussed options and outcomes and price with me in advance and refunded what I thought to be an exorbitant charge.

The weird thing was I felt guilty. Not for allowing thoughts of a future filled with fewer pee stains on the carpet to interrupt my tears, certainly not for fantasizing about life without being tied down by a disabled and gluttonous dog. My relief and, then, euphoria upon hearing the news that Manny would live to torment me and soil my house for a few more years was as good an indication as any that I was not placing a secret curse on him.

My daughter, who heard the good news and the bad news about Manny in a single sentence and therefore never even had time to grieve, took the confirmation that Manny did not have a malignant tumor -- not that we ever thought he did -- as a sign that things are lookin' up. We have both been struggling to recover from various ailments for over a week now, feeling like complete crap and resenting each other for not being healthy enough to be doting. I had started to wonder whether I would ever again know how it feels to not wish somebody would simply remove my aching, throbbing head from my body and put me out of my misery. She, I think, had begun to wonder whether she would ever again know how it feels to not wish her mother would get hit by a truck and stop all her damn whining. My friend suggested that maybe this was the new normal for us. Yipes. Where's the potassium cyanide when you need it?

Could this be the onset of chapter four. All these months of blogging I had thought chapter three was to be a long and final one. Chapter three: life after raising kids and slogging through a broken marriage behind a deceptive picket fence. Could it be that chapter three was only a way station, the penultimate piece of the puzzle? Could it be that the often promised but strangely elusive light at the end of the tunnel would not arrive until I closed it out, moved onto a new phase that was not just post-picket fence but post-official divorce decree? Gosh, could there be even more chapters in my future, new normals and paranormals and abnormals around every corner? For better or for worse or for worse still?

What the heck; I'm always up for a new adventure. Last week, a rakish young Italian sent me a message on Google Plus, one of those networking things that I signed on for a while ago, not really knowing what it was. I'm still not sure what it is, but I'm a blogging whore, and anything that offers me the promise of broader dissemination in exchange for a little check mark from me (as opposed to a check) gets my attention. As I understand it, now that Francesco from Milano (yes, I am talking real Italian, not the Saturday Night Fever variety I grew up with) has discovered my musings, he'll tell two friends, and they'll tell two friends, and so on, and so on, until every model on every Milano catwalk will be wearing a copy on her sleeve, and every haute couture design house will be advertising its collections in my cyber margins.

Truth be told, Francesco was quite honest about his reaction to my writing, noting that when he has happened upon an entry from time to time it has offered him a good ten minutes of pleasant distraction. Faint praise, to be sure, but, when I happened upon Francesco’s profile picture, I considered offering him a read aloud and way more than ten minutes of pleasant distraction.

Whatever the future holds, one thing is certain: it has arrived. Maybe Francesco and I will ride off into the sunset in his Ferrari. Maybe I'll get around to writing that book. Maybe my divorce attorney will hear me out and give me a break on fees that defy logic and common decency. (I'll have to tweak the letter I wrote to the vet, edit out the first line that says something like "I'm an attorney, not a veterinarian." Hey, I never said I'm above playing dirty.)

All right, I'm feelin' lucky, but I'm still a realist. Chapter four may not see any rakish Italians in Ferraris or fantastic book deals or a sudden outbreak of charity and righteousness in the matrimonial bar. But it will definitely be filled with more of Manny's pee stains on the carpet and an occasional stroke of good luck and good cheer just when things appear to be hitting rock bottom. And lots of new and unfamiliar normals.

Settling the Table

I rolled over in bed late yesterday afternoon to stare into my daughters puffy and cloudy and pink (though less puffy and cloudy and pink than the day before) eyes. She stared back as we mirrored each others' thoughts: you are pathetic. The mutual accusation passed silently between us, neither of us seeing any reason to argue.

Even Manny the obese and blind puggle, sick in his own right with crusty gunk seeping out of his left eye, was losing patience. He uncoiled himself from the foot of the bed and marched up to our pathetic heads, whimpering.  Time to make the donuts. I think that's what he was trying to say. We buried our  faces in the pillows. It sucks being sick, especially when everyone around you is sick too. Even under the best of circumstances, I doubt either my daughter or my dog would be running to make me chicken soup or refill my tea or plump up the germ infested bedding as it starts to have a life of its own around me. My daughter I can understand; it was only a few days ago that I put on my well worn Nurse Ratched cap and told her to buck up and stop whining. The dog, on the other hand, gets my undivided attention and unconditional love and an extra helping of cookies at the first sign of a hunger pang, much less a sniffle. He owes me.

It's May, for goodness sake. Dreary April showers should be behind us, and it's almost time, according to even the most antiquated rules of fashion, to wear white. The unofficial start of summer is mere weeks away, the season of gazpacho not chicken soup, yet the weather outside is frightful and my house has become a petri dish. They say you can't fight Mother Nature, but that doesn't mean you can't try, which is why I guzzled some meds and grabbed a jumbo box of tissues this morning and headed down to the basement to do some spring cleaning. This is the season of new beginnings, and I am determined to toss the old shit away, no matter how lousy I feel and no matter how much it appears as if it's about to snow.

Ugh. It's amazing how much stuff a family can accumulate in nineteen years. Odd that most of the family members have left the building but all their crap is still here. I promised myself I'd be ruthless, and I got a pretty good head of steam going. My housecleaning triage was acquiring a nice rhythm as I gathered together the keepers in one pile and beat away oppressive sentimentality as best I could with our MLB miniature bat collection (definite keepers) and tossed almost everything else into opaque Hefty bags. I dragged heavier items into the crawlspace, things I could not fit into the bags and would tend to later. The basement began to look like the room we had turned it into years ago, when the kids were small. A wide open indoor space. A place to relax and play games and watch television. As happy as a place can be when the only natural light comes from partially underground grated windows.

The ping pong table stopped me dead in my tracks. In all the trips I've made downstairs in recent months, I hadn't even noticed the ping pong table. By the time I saw it this morning, Cal the handyman had arrived to rehang some closet doors and replace some ceiling tiles. He marveled at the progress I had made, particularly in light of the hacking cough he had been forced to listen to for a good part of the previous day. He was telling me about how I should sell some of the bigger items on eBay. I was nodding and mumbling in agreement, knowing full well I'd never get around to that. "Like the ping pong table," he was saying. Yes, like the ping pong table. My head bobbed in absent minded affirmation of his logic.

"LIKE THE PING PONG TABLE?" I looked at him as if he had suggested I involve my first born child in some sleazy interstate sex trade, which, as those of you who have kept up with my antics in the past few months know, I have already done, and frankly, as you also know, it was no big deal. But the ping pong table, the thing that, up until an hour earlier, had been buried under piles of rubble for as long as I can remember, now that is a big deal. When my father was dying, he insisted on ordering us that ping pong table, because kids should have one. Kids who have a basement anyway. I don't think he ever made it out here to see it, but I have always thought that table to be sacred. Well, except for the years when it was buried under piles of rubble and I didn't think of it at all. But in sight, in mind, and it is indeed sacred. I would never involve it in some sleazy interstate sex trade, or, worse still, sell it on eBay.

I told Cal I couldn't possibly do it, and he gave me that look folks give people who are insane. "You have to," he told me. "There's no other option." I gave him my best of course you're right and I'm just kidding look, and dabbed at my eyes with a tissue. Hopefully he assumed it was mucous, not tears. He must have, because he went on a bit, pointing out all the other items I could add to my eBay list. As usual, I nodded and mumbled in agreement, bobbing my head in absent minded affirmation of his logic.

But, truth be told, my mind was racing. Already uncertain as to how I will even fit the MLB miniature bat collection in my new digs, I am in a complete quandary about the ping pong table. I sure hope the double wide has a nice sized breakfast nook.

Mother Nature has always been a little tricky with me in May, and I've had a handful of rough ones, particularly fifteen years ago when my father died. But in all that time, he's been with me, a sacred presence while I sort through things, even when thoughts of him get buried by all sorts of other crap. The table stays.

Lookin' For the Old Ball and Chain

It's May. The lusty month of May. Temperatures have climbed near eighty, ushering in the season of bare shoulders, picnics in the park, summer romance. Oy, the pressure.

Peak season for on line dating sites, I would imagine, which is not necessarily a good thing for folks who have been looking for love all year round. Sure, the pool of eligible singles might expand a little, but so too will the pool of lunatics. And, naturally, the competition could get a bit stiff, and I don't mean that in a good way. To have a fighting chance, everyone needs to touch up photos and revamp profiles, put their best dating face forward.

Women of all ages, whether they're searching for a good time with a strapping young sex god or a serious relationship with some Viagra chugging geezer, will have to compete with all sorts of well heeled dowagers who look really good in their portfolios. My assets, which include long boobs and cozy evenings in a double wide, are decidedly unsexy. Dating during peak mating season seems daunting and discouraging enough in the abstract, but news yesterday about the latest woman of a certain age venturing into the world of cyber love broke my spirit and made me think long and hard about subscribing any time soon. Brace yourself, dating hopefuls: Martha Stewart is going on line!

As distraught as I am about my certain descent to the bottom of the pile of fresh meat, I am kind of curious about how Martha will craft her profile. Nobody uses a real name, but pictures are essential, and unless she wants to go with something that has her sporting an orange jumpsuit beneath a head full of lifeless poorly coiffed hair she needs to stay current. Which means there's pretty much no way she can conceal her identity; there's hardly a red blooded American man or woman out there who wouldn't recognize that perfectly styled blond hair, the aging but clearly once very pretty face, the rolled up sleeves of a designer work shirt tailor made for decorating, gardening, cooking, and pretty much doing all things that make a man feel horny without even having to muster up an erection. Who cares if she demands a prenup? Get a foot in the door of that mansion and even the most old fashioned male suitor will happily agree to be called Mr. Stewart if it means nightly home made meals and birthday cards made from scratch.

Luckily for Martha, dating sites generally seek less information than Facebook, so she need not even worry about listing her most recent places of residence. Knowing her speckled history is one thing; seeing in black and white print the Federal Bureau of Prisons at Aldersen, West Virginia could be a turn off. Mountain mama, take me home, but please not to the Big House. Even if you're offering up the best appointed cell in the correctional system. And even if the place is filled with women who have a history of being naughty. Wait, never mind. That would actually be a big draw.

Love seekers of all ages need to tread carefully through the spring and summer mating season. An acquaintance recently told me about the advice he gave to his eleven year old son, who already appears to be caught in a love triangle and can't decide which way to go. Dad seized upon the teachable moment, telling his son the two most important things to look for in a woman. The first is money. The second is that she not speak English, or, better still, not speak at all. Wise advice. I hope the kid listens to his dad, at least takes his suggestions under advisement.

I am doomed. My finances are not pretty, and I speak often and, except when hosting a French exchange student, in English. No man with half a brain would choose someone like me when he could have a shot at someone who not only has a hot bank account but who can also offer up a lifetime filled with freshly baked cupcakes, frilly lace curtains, and eye witness accounts of girl on girl action in cell block A.