Standing on the Tip of an Iceberg

There is no good way to tell you this. 

I was trying to vacation the old fashioned way, burying my phone deep within my beach bag, even leaving it in the room for long stretches. Service was spotty anyway, and since I still cannot grasp the difference between roaming data and cellular data and wifi data (is there such a thing?) I had pretty much disabled everything to avoid being charged for all the junk that continues to pile up, no matter how hard I try to unsubscribe.

There is no good way to tell you this.

Really, I had only retrieved my phone to check the time. 3:03 p.m. The sun seemed too high in the sky for it to be that late, but Mexico is funny that way, keeping itself in one arbitrary time zone. And placing a gleaming new Starbucks outlet only inches before the airport security checkpoint, neglecting to mention there is an identical one just past the metal detectors, where nobody will confiscate your expensive brew.

There is no good way to tell you this. I pressed pause, needed a final moment before I could let her tell me. The last text I had received from her, one of my dearest friends, less than twenty-four hours earlier, was a series of pictures from her trip to South America. Standing on the tip of an iceberg, was the first caption. I didn't look down, she assured me. 

We don't look down. If we did, we would never have the nerve to make the climb. And no, there was no good way for her to tell me what she was about to tell me, that her son, Adam, had died that morning. Her twenty-seven year old son, a child I have known since he was two, when his tongue would catch on something every time he took a stab at a hard "c." Milk and "tookies." A child whose only shortcoming, as far as I can recall, was an inability to pronounce "cookies." At twenty-seven, he still referred to me, sometimes, as mom.

Back in those early days, we were kind of a blended family, passing the long afternoons together in each others' basements, dining on pizza or macaroni and cheese with our children while our husbands worked late. The kids attended day camp together in the summer. Adam had a friend, a boy, with long hair. One afternoon, when I picked them up, my daughter couldn't wait to tell me about the girl with a penis. Those were the days, when they were young enough to change together for swimming, when they were young enough to volunteer information about their day. They were often inaccurate, but they didn't lie.

We migrated to the same suburb within six months of each other. Different elementary schools, different middle schools, but we were still family. We picked up others along the way. We were snowballs rolling uphill, growing families gathering strength as we gathered each other, looking out for each other always, but never looking down.

We teeter together, now, on the tip of that iceberg, all of us who have rolled up that hill together, raising kids and raising each other and, sometimes, raising hell. Pushing each other up and picking each other up on the way. We have lost one, one of our children. That is not the way it's supposed to play out.

Looking down won't help.  It never does. All we can do is hold on to each other.

More than a Woman (from Brooklyn)

It's unmistakeable, the sound of Brooklyn.

What captured my attention, initially, was the large pineapple, festooned with flowers and grotesque facial features that appeared to be smiling at me as she sipped from the half inch of straw poking out at the top.

"I'll have what she's having," I told the waiter who materialized almost immediately as we planted our winter white behinds on some nearby chairs. The lady with the pineapple looked happy and relaxed. Kind of the look I was going for, other than bronze beach goddess, which seemed less attainable.

"Please, have the rest. I can't finish it." She was offering up the half-filled and apparently as yet untouched glass of spillover from her pineapple. Pink, not pale yellow as I would have expected. I changed my order to a garden variety pina colada but I was still mesmerized, not so much by the smiling pineapple but by her voice. I walked over.

She told me she was from Connecticut. She must have misunderstood my question. Where are you from? You can move a gal into Connecticut, but you can never remove the loud clatter of the elevated tracks on 86th Street, the ethnic mosaic of people on the move, the blaring horns, the ever-changing landscape of a single Brooklyn intersection. It wasn't just the accent that gave her away. It was the offer. People who are from Connecticut do not offer strangers the rest of their drinks, and if they do they don't really mean it.

Bensonhurst. The rest of the world only knows Bensonhurst and its surrounding neighborhoods as the gritty home of small pizza joints and mom and pop hardware stores and gangs of listless teenagers who hang out on street corners by day and dance in tight white disco suits by night. The anti-Connecticut, a place where you would think folks are more likely to steal drinks from you than offer them up.

Brooklyn is about as diverse as a place can be, and if I said that my upbringing on a largely Jewish segment of Ocean Parkway in the sixties and seventies was no different from that of an Italian girl in Bensonhurst I would be lying. But that accent, as intoxicating to me as it is offensive -- or at least comical -- to almost everyone else, brings me home.

We reminisced, my new friend and I, with heavy accents and light hearts, about the Famous, the sprawling cafeteria on 86th Street where my nana worked as a bookkeeper. I don't remember the food, but I remember sitting at the cash register with my nana, marveling at the speed with which she added numbers on that faded green spread sheet, not even needing a pencil to carry digits over a column. I loved the way all the customers knew her name, and she knew theirs. I love that I was able to remember my nana this way, before she declined and became somebody I barely knew and who barely knew me. She was smart and strong and independent, ahead of her time, really. And she could add a string of sevens like nobody's business.

My new friend didn't remember my nana but she sure remembered the Famous. The food, yes, but mostly the feeling of being there, probably a lot like the feeling I had when I would sit by the register with nana. The feeling of belonging to something important, and wanting to go back.

She joined us for dinner last night -- her friends were all detained by a bit of a blizzard -- and the sounds of her voice and the distant steady splash of waves brought me home, to the clatter of elevated train tracks and the blaring of horns and the comfort of an ever-changing but welcoming landscape.

Life's a Beach

The TSA pre-check line seemed as long as the line for the regular old folks this morning. Damn. I think that's what they call a white girl's problem. I reminded myself to suck it up. 

An official sounding TSA agent came by, told those of us containing our anger and outrage as we waited at the tail end of the line that was supposed to be for the chosen ones that there were two much shorter pre-check lines down at the other end of the terminal. En masse, we took off, the less bright ones (like me) sprinting through the mob scene on the outer flank, the more savvy ones cutting through the otherwise wasted wide open space that would lead them directly to the poorly marked pre-check sign down at security checkpoint B. Naturally, I overshot it. 

Another white girl's problem. I am, after all, on my way to the beach. Wiping away the perspiration from my brow and wondering whether I'd have time for coffee and a bagel, I meandered my way back to the end of the alternative pre-check line, which was now just as long as the other one. I berated myself silently. Looking up, I noticed two gentlemen waving at me, the two gentlemen I had been standing between earlier. I assumed they were mocking me. Boy did I feel dumb. 

"We lost you," one of them shouted. "Where did you go?" My faith in humanity has always remained intact, sometimes against all odds, but now my love for my fellow man has reached a fever pitch. I hesitated, but they waved me on. "She's with us, they assured everyone as I squeezed past, ducking in between them as they lifted the blue strap and actually seemed relieved to see me. 

Life really is a journey, and I suppose we're all in this together. I'll admit, my travel companion looked a bit peeved when he found me, already a good twenty-five minutes into my coffee. I didn't think it was a good time to tell him to suck it up and stop acting like a white girl. 

Loving the journey, although I have to admit I'm all about the destination right now.  

Ironing Things Out

Short term memory problems are becoming a given. I remain unfazed when I arrive in my bedroom only to discover I have no idea what dire emergency propelled me up the stairs only a minute earlier. I know it will come to me. Eventually. 

Long term memories are a different animal entirely. They are not necessarily a problem -- sometimes they're actually quite pleasant. But they tend to take me by surprise, unexpected visitors from distant lifetimes that seem close enough to touch. Retrieval is less a relief than a jarring reminder of the passage of time. I keep wishing for do-overs, to enjoy what I was too naive to enjoy, to re-enjoy what I was lucky enough to appreciate the first time around, to fix whatever I broke. 

I know there must be plenty of folks over the age of thirty living downtown, but in the twenty-four hours I spent there this weekend I didn't notice any. Not in the trendy Italian restaurant in the West Loop where the manager who stopped by our table to check on us and self-promote, not necessarily in that order, seemed barely out of high school. I wondered if the smart looking couple snuggling in the booth across from me were old enough to drink that bottle of wine they ordered. I wondered if the two young girls in the booth next to me were just wearing their moms' wedding rings for fun. I tried to take the effusive manager seriously while I fixated on the peach fuzz on his chin. 

At breakfast the next morning, a stone's throw from where I first lived when I moved to Chicago almost thirty years ago, the aromas and the packed in tables were strangely familiar, as familiar as the young faces surrounding me, deep in concentration as young hands with elastic skin spread gobs of Nutella on thick, fluffy pancakes. None of them seemed unhappy, but still, I wanted to shake them, explain to them how ecstatic they should be. Remind them how foolish they are to think that this would last. 

As I walked the streets of the city yesterday, reminders of several lifetimes gone by drifted past me. Young twenty-somethings, being grown-ups for the first time. Older twenty-somethings, with babies in tow, really being grown-ups for the first time. Even the forty-somethings, wide-eyed as they strolled on college tours with their first-borns. I wanted to shake them too, tell them that before long, they would be like me. 

My friend and I talked about it. We felt certain there must be at least a handful of people alive who are older than we are; we just couldn't find them. We looked in the mirror and gave ourselves makeshift facelifts with the heels of our hands. The difference was noticeable, in a good way, as long as you don't care about things like smiles or other genuine facial expressions. 

With the heels of my hands stretching my skin behind my ears, I had the odd sensation of seeing the younger me and the "now" me at the same time. The younger me seemed vaguely familiar, like the aromas in the little breakfast joint. But no matter how intently I stared, I could not erase the lines and the wrinkles, the twists and turns of the roadmap that has gotten me from there to here. 

I may feel invisible, sometimes, like all the folks over thirty (and forty, and fifty) who must exist but I just can't see them when I'm out and about, surrounded by twenty-somethings. And the memories of distant lifetimes that seem close enough to touch will continue their assault -- for better or for worse. I might wish to erase the wrinkles and the years, but the "now" me is the one I see, the one I'm stuck with, at least until the next lifetime takes over. 

If I Had a Billion Dollars (and change)

Talk about lazy.

I couldn't bear the thought of braving the cold last night just one more time to pick up a Power Ball ticket. Small consolation that the big winning tickets were sold in faraway states. Had I bundled up just one more time to make the three minute trek in a heated car to a gas station convenience store, the minor blip in my behavior would have altered everything in the Power Ball universe and I could have been sitting on a big fat check. At least I saved a few bucks and a whole bunch of calories when I resisted the enticement of a swing through the drive thru on the way home for an oreo McFlurry.

The sudden heat wave this morning -- twenty-nine degrees, after days of temperatures struggling to hover above zero -- boosted my mood, which made me wonder what kind of effect over a billion dollars might have had. As much as I like to tell myself money can't buy happiness, I'd be willing to test out the theory. Even a small victory at work the other day, a victory that didn't earn me a dime, except, I suppose, as a notch on the bedpost of keeping my job, lifted my spirits as I braced myself against the icy wind in the parking lot. I'm thinking euphoria might have set in if I won a cool billion and could suddenly afford that Canada Goose jacket and matching hat.

When I woke this morning, tangled up in the sheets with my dog, I gazed at the evidence of our January stir craziness. The coarse white fluffy innards of his latest favorite toy made my comforter look like a vandalized holiday window scene. Random electronics dotted the scene -- my chewed up remote, with its exposed batteries precariously half-nestled in their slots, barely functioning and no longer appealing to Eli. My lap top, tell tale cookie crumbs stuck in the keyboard. My iPhone, out of juice, no doubt, as it tends to be since an unfortunate plunge into the toilet. I tiptoed through the shredded remnants of a half-used roll of toilet paper I had neglected to secure on that little toilet paper bar (what's that called, anyway?), wondering how much more Midwestern winter I could take.

It could be worse. At least I get to pee indoors. I wonder if Eli was trying to tell me something when he went at the toilet paper.

So what difference would a billion dollars make? A few vacation homes? Assured safety from a terrorist attack when I pop into a Starbucks for a coffee? Freedom from occasional funks? Guaranteed feelings of accomplishment and a job well done on a daily basis? Freedom from worry about my children? At the very least, the Canada Goose jacket and the matching hat.

I know it sounds naive, but there's something to be said for simple pleasures. Why else would I be contemplating forking over $39 for access to some introductory videos on a new website that unlocks the secret to female orgasms. Talk about lazy, like I said. But the videos are interactive and touchable, from what I hear. Do they touch back? Thirty-nine dollars -- that's a lot cheaper than a big ass diamond, so what the heck.

At the very least, it could tide me over until the jackpot swells again.

Big Feet, Big Worries

December was a month of pitter pattering feet, some far larger than my own (which are nothing to sneeze at, size-wise). You know what they say -- big feet, big bunions. Tight shoes. Not braggin, just sayin.

My little post-divorce townhouse has returned to deafening quiet. The kids have all appeared and disappeared; their friends who, in my mind, are still not old enough to drive, have stopped trickling in and out. The imaginary noises in the middle of the night are louder now, especially after a few hours spent binge-dozing on creepy crime shows. The dog and I wake, startled, and stare at each other, wondering who will protect whom. The odds aren't good for either of us.

My children took me seriously when I encouraged them to leave the nest, which is kind of ironic since they rarely take anything I say seriously. They must have known I was joking.

I am relieved, sometimes, to think that two of them have gotten to the age at which the brain is fully developed, according to most "experts." The youngest has a few years to go, but gender is on her side, which helps a little but still keeps me from exhaling completely when she's home on break until I hear her footsteps on the stairs in the wee hours of the morning.

On one dicey night during that particularly dicey summer between high school and college, I read my son the riot act about never making me one of those moms who gets one of those phone calls that turns her life into something I cannot even wrap my head around. He promised me he wouldn't, but of course his brain wasn't fully formed yet, so I held my breath a lot that summer, and every summer after that, when he would come home. And for the three days last month when he was visiting.

Four moms and four dads got that phone call earlier this week, just a few suburbs away from where I lay in my own bed waiting for the pitter patter of feet so I could exhale. Eight parents who never expected when they waved goodbye to their sons and recited by rote the "have fun and be careful" script that has poured out of all of us thousands of times that their sons would only heed the first part. If our brains are really fully formed at 25, would any of us, at any age, ever be reckless enough to let our kids leave the house, much less the state, or the country?

As a parent of adult children who tend to think I'm a blithering idiot, even more so than I used to be, I smile when I think about how fragile and incompetent they think I am. No matter how big my feet are, they are certain that my brain is no longer fully formed, skeptical that it ever was. They have a point; if I had any sense at all, I would have handcuffed them to the house, just so I could breathe.
And breathing is important.

But it's back to pitter-patterless nights, except for the things, imaginary or real, that go bump and startle me and the dog awake, only to look at each other and wonder who will protect whom. And wonder, while we're at it, what the kids are doing, when their footsteps are too far away for us to hear.