Hopeful New Year!

My friend and his siblings chose to officially bury their mother's ashes on December 21, because it was her favorite day of the year. Well, and because the funeral home needed to clear the shelves, make way for some new urns. But mostly because it was her favorite day, although frankly I'd prefer to be doing anything but getting buried on my favorite day.

Shirley -- whom I admittedly got to know more from her children's and grandchildren's stories than I did from my few visits with her, toward the end -- was a lady who made an impression. Though she only died a little more than a month ago, an imperfect storm of illnesses had already curtailed her breathing and her thinking and her well-documented penchant for dishing out advice. Still, I am an unwitting beneficiary of her wisdom, as there seems to be no shortage of Shirley-isms for any occasion, or for any dilemma. "Here's what my mom would have done...." her son tells me, as I immediately search for a place to hide. The last thing I need is advice. The very last thing I need is advice from dead people.

At Shirley's funeral, the rabbi put aside his own notes and removed an envelope from his pocket. He had known Shirley for a long time, and was not surprised that she had written a letter, with instructions that it be read at her funeral service. To say that Shirley wrote her own eulogy would be inaccurate; that would be crass — more like something I would do, just in case my kids got it wrong. Shirley’s beautiful words said nothing about her, though they spoke volumes about who she was. It was a goodbye letter, to her friends, her family, and even the tangential folks like me who blew into her life for a brief cameo. It was a reminder, to those she left behind, of all that she loved — the people, the flowers, the rainbows. It was about a life well lived, by a woman who seemed to always know, no matter what happened, that life is a gift.

At the shiva, the Rabbi explained to us that though Shirley had just died, she was still not completely dead. Not as creepy as it sounds; he explained, quite logically, that we don't really die until there is nobody left who remembers us. For some, it will be the well-stocked bank of sayings that Shirley had at her fingertips for, well, everything. For others, it will be the ambivalent void left by the absence of her advice, suddenly wanted more than ever. For others still, it will be her generosity and her love of life and the people in it. For me, it will be my newfound love for December 21, the embodiment of the notion of a glass more than half full.

December 21 was not Shirley's birthday, or any of her kids' birthdays, or either of her wedding anniversaries. It was probably not, most of the time, a particularly sunny or warm day in the Midwest, where Shirley lived and died. Well, lived, and died for the first time. December 21 is the shortest day of the year, which, for Shirley, meant the best was yet to come. Wishing everybody a happy, healthy, and optimistic 2018!

Lessons from RFK

I was eight years old when Bobby Kennedy was killed. My mother came into my room and shook me awake with the news. Most mornings, she simply screamed my wake-up call from the kitchen. Somehow, that no longer seemed all that jarring.

Though I had not been around all that long, even I knew 1968 had been a particularly tumultuous year in a particularly tumultuous decade. To this day, I couldn't say whether I truly remember the day JFK was shot or whether it's that picture, of Jackie, dressed so much the way my own mother would dress, holding the hands of her young son and daughter, almost exact contemporaries of me and my brother. There was no such picture to go with the news of Bobby; just the rude awakening from an eight year old's dream.

In my young brain, that morning, I thought political assassinations to be the norm, and wondered why anybody in his (her?) right mind would ever risk a run. Martin Luther King had been shot only months earlier, and the nightly news was filled with images of violence and despair. In my Brooklyn Jewish enclave, Vietnam was little more than background noise;  middle class Jewish boys were safe -- they got deferments. It was the seemingly constant sacrifice of telegenic, articulate leaders that was so terrifying, struck so perilously close to home.

At eight, I was probably spared from the depths of despair, probably went off to school that day without giving Bobby Kennedy or politics or the state of the Union much thought at all. Years later, though, as the world would teeter on brinks and recover only to teeter again, I often wondered what would, or could, have been. Had Oswald missed. Had Bobby not chosen to run when he did.

Having just finished Chris Matthews' book -- Bobby Kennedy -- A Raging Spirit  -- I find myself wondering, yet again. As I turned the final pages, knowing things would not end well, I kept hoping I was wrong. In every Bobby quote, I could see a prescient warning of where we are today. In his favorite passages from favorite poets, I see ancient predictions of the sorry place we all seem so surprised to find ourselves in today. I re-read the last few chapters, looking for what we all must have missed, wishing we could wake Bobby, for just a moment, to ask him how we set ourselves back on a right -- or righteous -- path.

I despair as I realize there is no less ignorance today than there was back then, in the throes of the Civil Rights movement. We came far then, and we have certainly made strides since then, but evil is insidious. And, now, we have, at our helm, a person who knows nothing of public service and everything about self-service and self-aggrandizement and greed and abuses his power to stoke whatever hateful impulses lurk beneath the surface to catapult us back into the dark. And, ostensibly in the name of potentially swelling pocketbooks, scores of otherwise decent people are willing to look the other way. Exquisite.

I remember that wake-up call in 1968, though I am certain nobody could have imagined, on that day, what was in store. Chris Matthews ends his book with a favorite quote of Bobby's: Always do what you are afraid to do.  Touche.

Fa La La La La

This year, I finally got rid of my pink Christmas tree.

For years, I had been adamant about keeping our home treeless. We would have plenty of time for all that when we arrived at my in-laws' house in Michigan, where my father-in -law would hand me a martini and I would settle in and begin to put my stubborn (though somewhat ill-defined) Jewishness on the back burner for a few days. My participation in the rituals was nothing less than full-throated; I would hang ornaments (badly), repeatedly check my stocking for new additions, get swept up in the last minute Christmas Eve shopping spree, overwhelmed by the need to purchase all sorts of unnecessary crap.

Somebody asked me, the other day, why I get a little melancholy around Christmas. I have not been a part of the family celebration for years now -- just part of the collateral damage of divorce. At the beginning, my mail order pink tree helped me through it, allowed me to hang on to something that had never really been mine in the first place. I took comfort in the glow of the pink lights, even as the plastic branches began to list and fade. I told myself I was happy to return, after so many years, to the time-honored Jewish Christmas tradition of Chinese food and a movie. To stop celebrating a holiday that was, really, so meaningless to me.

My oldest daughter learned to crawl in a motel room in Kalamazoo one year, where we got snowed in on our way to Detroit. For a few years in a row, I seemed to acquire a new carved coyote from the Southwest store in town; I still have them. At the beginning, I would go with my in-laws to Midnight Mass, enjoy the music, choke on the incense, feel a little bit conspicuous while everyone else went up to collect a wafer and a sip of wine. In later years, I was the present-wrapper in chief, a self-appointed Mrs. Claus-stein, enjoying the satisfaction of growing the pile under the tree. Early on, my mother-in-law switched from that spiral cut honey baked ham thing to turkey and tenderloin, just for me, much to everyone else's dismay. I would drag myself out, every year, for a long run in the snow, before spending the rest of the day in sweats, stuffing my face and watching a "A Christmas Story" over and over again with my kids.

A holiday that had never been my holiday had become a part of me, and it's hard, frankly, to do without. The pink Christmas tree had served its purpose, though, and it was time to let it go. This year, I will decide, at some point, whether to participate in other celebrations or eat Chinese food or just stay home and reflect, enjoy the season quietly. The ghosts of my Christmas pasts do not haunt me; they are good ghosts, of family time well-spent.

New York Minutes

I can't even remember the last time I saw the Christmas tree in full lighted bloom at Rockefeller Center in person. Even when I used to stay on a few days after Thanksgiving, I would still be gone by the time of the ritual tree-lighting.

The ice sculptures are gone. My kids didn't believe me yesterday when I told them they had been there once, the ice sculptures. Maybe the lattice work angels and reindeer were what I had been thinking about. Maybe they just glistened more on colder days. It used to be much colder in December, if I remember correctly.

New York City is filled with a lifetime of memories for me, real or imagined. As I watched the Zamboni clear the ice in the Rockefeller Plaza rink yesterday, I recalled how my parents would take us there to go skating every year. Maybe it was only once or twice, but it's a part of my story -- the rented skates, the rubber floors, waving to my parents as they watched from above with all the tourists, under the flags. The skating part always seemed to go so fast. So fleeting.

We walked back out to the street, looked across Fifth Avenue at the holiday window display at Saks Fifth Avenue, the grand old store that bears no resemblance, in my mind, to all the glistening satellite stores that have popped up in malls over the years. I can still hear the clang of the metal elevator doors being pulled open, still see the almost invisible elevator operator sitting quietly at the controls, except to announce the arrival at a new floor. The lady with the jet black hair who knew my mother by name, and helped her outfit me in the finest designer dresses and matching socks. I remember worrying that my father was waiting for us in the car, long past the time my mother had promised we would be done. We had no cell phones, and shopping in Saks was serious business for my mother. My father could wait. He always shook his head at us when we finally appeared, but he seemed strangely content in his cloud of cigar smoke with his New York Times spread before him.

My daughter and I walked past my old elementary school in Brooklyn yesterday, on our way to the still gritty train station. I could still see myself on assembly days, in my blue pleated skirt, my crisp white blouse, still feel the thin, filmy softness of my green assembly tie. I could hear the din of my childhood companions, playing, with the black girls double-dutching off to the side, their braids flying in all directions. The ebbing and flowing of young friendships, all rose colored now since we have reconnected via social media from all corners of the globe. I remember the store where my mother had bought me a box of crayons on my first day of first grade. At least I think I do.

For a couple of days this December, I walked paths with my grown children where I had once walked, long ago. The memories are sometimes crisp, sometimes faded, and sometimes downright muddied, but always potent. Startling and predictable at the same time, like the tree at Rockefeller Center.

While We Were Sleeping

The nightmare continues.

Al Franken may have been collateral damage, but the rest of us just keep getting -- pardon the language -- fucked.  Not groped, or pinched, or distastefully riffed upon while we doze in the company of fellow USO entertainers, our most lucrative assets tucked demurely into a flak jacket  (has the photographer been fired by the way?). Fucked. 

Seriously, sorry for the language; as a woman, I should be more articulate, less offensive, downright more holy than the other 50 per cent. While I'm at it, I might as well be weaker, a perennial victim, and climb back up on that dusty old pedestal where, to quote the self-righteous general turned chief of sycophants John Kelly, women are "sacred." Lose the potty mouth, just shut up and look pretty. Too late for all of that, I'm afraid. 

I had reservations about the "Me Too" movement from the outset, worried that lines would get blurred, that true abominations would get confused with bad taste. I'm not condoning the unwanted gropes or the crass joking or the jerkiness, whether it's in the locker room or by the office Nespresso machine. I am concerned, though, that the plight of the truly abused is becoming diminished, and that, frankly, every good man (and lots of women, too) that I have ever known will now be ineligible for public office or have to live in constant fear of being fired and tarred and feathered by some ghost of past ickiness. 

When I first saw a "Women Only" train car pull up in front of me at a station somewhere in Japan, I was puzzled. My son explained to me it was public transit's answer to unwanted groping. I was amused by the concept, not to mention discouraged that my stereotype of the impossibly polite Japanese gentleman had been debunked. With the other brazen risk takers, I purposely avoided the "Women Only" car, trusting in my capacity to swat away a stray hand or stomp on an unwitting foot. Naive, maybe, but I was willing to take my chances. Frankly, I'd be fine if one of my daughters ended up on a train car with Al Franken. Not so much with Weinstein or Lauer or Moore. With 45, well that's just too offensive. 

While we willingly devour the prurient details of past indignities suddenly remembered by sometimes anonymous women, the threat of nuclear war looms, the Middle East has been further destabilized, and propaganda spewing media has fanned out, largely under the radar, to all sorts of local outlets to undermine our democracy. 

It took the travesty of last year's election to bring a lot of us out of our bubbles and face the reality of the shocking, lingering pervasiveness of racism and ethnic discrimination and misogyny and other sorts of vile hatred. It's taken the sacrifice of Al Franken to bring a lot of folks out of their knee-jerk progressive bubbles to step back and wonder what the "Me Too" end game is. 

How many wake up calls do we need? 

High Crimes and Misdemeanors

I remember thinking it was a bit odd when Billy Bush lost his reputation and career because, as I understood it, he didn't think to shove the words of a powerful and rich buffoon back into his mouth.

Collateral damage. He went quietly after he took that fateful step off the bus and literally got thrown under, while the buffoon got a pretty big promotion and continues to ride roughshod over everybody --  even the ones who have sold whatever souls they may once have had to curry his favor. Or avoid, for as long as possible, his reign of twitter terror.

In whispers, my forward thinking female friends and I share our ambivalence about the new wave of old revelations of sexual harassment. We are torn, as survivors of the pre-millennial workplace, knowing that the culture allowed certain improprieties and that, wittingly or not, some on both ends  of the gender spectrum played what sometimes appeared to be a harmless game. We are torn, as mothers now of grown women, hard working independent people who have been raised, we hope, to be unafraid. To speak truth to power, or at least to swat away a creep.

It is troubling to know just how many predators are out there, the ones who have made a career of abusing physical or financial power or some lethal combination of the two to assault bodies and destroy psyches; it is even more troubling to know just how many silent victims there are out there. It is most troubling, though, how quickly we call for heads to roll, no matter what the offense, no matter how complicit the culture might have been, while our nation's bus continues to be driven into the ground by the most shameless purveyor of high crimes and misdemeanors.

I have no idea where we need to draw lines on ancient offenses, though pedophilia and other "clear" abuses of any kind of power certainly warrant zero tolerance with no statute of limitations. I have no idea what "clear" is, but my bet is it's the kind of stuff that causes gut outrage across the board, regardless of party affiliation. If there is such a thing.

Billy Bush went quietly and has remained remarkably silent for more than a year, until he crafted a poignant op-ed piece yesterday. He was pointed without pointing fingers, and, without suggesting his own personal horror is equal to or greater than or even lesser than the plight so many women have endured in silence, his message was to look forward. He is so right.

Our collective past is filled with mistakes, not the least of which was allowing Trump to become our president. In the workplace, in the Capitol, in universities, and in every day life, we need to return to decency and figure out the rules -- for our sons and our daughters -- and not just make them up as we go along. But first, we need to fire the bus driver, before the damage is irreparable.

Down in the Weeds

I spent the better part of a balmy Sunday afternoon in December raking leaves.

Had I known, back in the day, how difficult and time consuming fall clean up could be, I might have thought twice about jumping into the perfectly formed leaf piles that occasionally dotted the curb in front of our apartment house. My belated apologies to the rakers and sweepers and blowers I unwittingly took for granted.

Raking, on an unseasonably warm and sunny December afternoon, was tiring but invigorating, mind-numbing but mystifying. Instructive, satisfying, filled with "eureka" moments about the meaning of life and the depth of my own inadequacies. (Not all about me, but significantly, at least.)

I started with the blower. It took me a few minutes to get the hang of it and avoid sending gusts of leaves onto the neighbors' lawn. I was buoyed by instant gratification, the growing mass of brown, dead, crunch on the driveway, ready to be swept and stuffed into awaiting bags. The high was short-lived though; despite vigorous blowing, I still could not see more than a few stalks of green grass poking up out of the weeds. I had barely scratched the surface; I took off my jacket and rolled up my sleeves.

The gratification was progressively less instantaneous, but far more rewarding. I dug deep with the blower, burrowing the narrow tip deep within the tangle and feeling downright gleeful as one large clump after another exploded into the air with a silent hallelujah. Free at last, free at last. The pile in the driveway grew, and the lawn began to burst with color. Neighbors on ladders stringing lights and miniature Santas notwithstanding, it was beginning to look a lot less like Christmas and a lot more like spring. The silver lining of climate change.

Having mastered the blower, I moved on with confidence to sweeping and raking and even getting down on my hands and knees to grab armfuls of muck to speed up the fruits of my labor. My need for instant -- or at least expedient -- gratification has been years in the making, and is not easily undone.

My friend laughed at me when I told her I was a bit delayed, would not be able to meet her for a little while because I was raking leaves. (She was equally appalled, once, when I confessed to shoveling my own driveway.) Weekends are for play, not work, and manual labor might be for somebody, but certainly not for a Jewish princess from Brooklyn. Maybe so, but when you like to do whatever it is you do well, there is nothing like being able to see the results right when you finish, instead of waiting and wondering (and doubting) whether you can be anything close to perfect.

Truth be told, it wasn't anything close to perfect. A start, but we ran out of lawn bags before we were even close to retrieving every dead leaf. I kept at it as long as I could -- just one more clump, one more inch of space to fill. Finally, though, I had to let it go, and, surprisingly, I was okay with that.

Our Thanksgiving Day Parade

Two turkeys -- one smoked, one deep fried, two stuffings -- one vegetarian, one not, two potatoes -- one sweet and one regular old. The Emeril's macaroni and cheese, the roasted vegetables, the salad, the cranberry mousse, the corn pudding. Butternut squash -- that was new this year. Thank goodness for the appetizers that tided us over, and the desserts to punctuate our annual gluttony.

It's been years since my cousin, Bruce, and I (and Lily, the beautiful golden retriever) met up for our Friday-morning-after-Thanksgiving run. At 71, he still looks as young, to me, as he did when he was the bearded, long-locked hippie on a motorcycle. My relatives, the men in particular,  are blessed with some odd youthful gene. Though I miss the crunch of the leaves on the hilly path, the icy cold November New England air, the weakening sun fully visible through the naked branches, my aching feet and rebellious stomach are thankful for the respite. I am happy to sit by the fire in the hotel eating a bagel and drinking coffee.

It's been years since I spent much of the day entertaining my own babies, hoping they would nap, worried they would interfere with everybody's feast or rub chocolate turkey remnants on my cousins' white couches. The crowd size has remained relatively constant, though with marriages and trips abroad and pregnancies and the occasional illness, attendance has fluctuated. I, for one, have never missed a Thanksgiving meal.

My cousins' home is filled with their grandchildren now, small humans with runny noses and leaky diapers and short attention spans and unfiltered emotions who somehow manage to steal my heart the moment we lock eyes. Each year, it seems, we add a new side dish, and a new person. There's always enough room on our plates for more.

It seems crazy, sometimes, the hoops we jump through to continue to convene somewhere in Connecticut every Thanksgiving, when most of us don't live anywhere near there. For eight hours (give or take, depending on unexpected cooking snafus), we flow from room to room reacquainting, catching up, looking for delicacies that may never have made it to the big table in the living room, cousins we may have ignored. From one year to the next, everyone looks pretty much the same. When I pause, though, and think back on the 24 year tradition, I can't quite reconcile the baby cousins I remember so vaguely with the doting parents they have become. Then there are my babies who are, quite suddenly, adults. My once chubby cheeked son who joins us these days via Facetime from Japan, his hair still matted with sleep and his eyes still bleary. If I close my eyes, I can still hear my father's voice, my aunt's, my uncle's. My mother is still young, still beautiful, can still hear.

We come for the turkeys and the potatoes and the apps and the pies.  Okay, no we don't. But it's nice to know the feast will always be there, to join us.

The New Math

An elderly gentleman walked by the table where I celebrated my birthday with friends, and handed me a two dollar bill. I felt uncomfortable, accepting money from anybody, but I thanked him profusely and tucked the bill in my wallet, right next to the torn half of a twenty dollar bill I've carried around for years.

A two dollar bill is, theoretically and actually, worth two dollars. No more, no less. But it is not the same. Combined into a single greenback, this two dollars will buy me nothing, but it will acquire and retain immeasurable value as it remains, crisp as the day I received it, in my wallet. It will trigger memories of a celebration with friends, of a carefree evening, of a random and unexpected act of generosity by a stranger. It will be, too, a small safety net, always there if I am penniless and desperate, say, for a diet Coke from the McDonald's drive-thru.

My half-twenty is decidedly less valuable, worth nothing unless, of course, it is reunited with its other half. Not bloody likely. Sure, it triggers memories of long ago celebrations with friends and random acts of, if not generosity, recklessness, but I would never presume to pass it off as something of value. It is worth less, certainly, than my new two dollar bill, less even than two -- or ten -- of the crumpled singles buried deep in the pocket of an old coat, or collecting crumbs in the bowels of my purse. It is equivalent to, at best, a lump of coal.

We are living in an age of false equivalencies, a world in which human beings might no longer be viewed as equal but bad behavior is, no matter how egregious or how often repeated, depending on your side of the aisle. Suffice it to say that I think 45's history of sexual assaults, though appalling, are not, by any stretch of the imagination, the reason he should not be president. It is, more broadly, his contempt for norms, his contempt for the law, his contempt for basic decency that make him uniquely unqualified. (Not to mention his ignorance and lack of experience.) This is not to say that I am in favor of forced kisses or uninvited touching in any situation -- be it a frat house or the halls of Congress or any place in between. Not by a long shot.

I hope that the result of the exploding "me too-ism" will be re-education -- of girls, and boys, and employers, and employees, and politicians, and constituents. I hope that the result will not be wasteful side shows and disproportionate punishments and the re-prosecution and re-litigation of past wrong doing. Some lines can never be crossed -- pedophilia and abuse of power spring to mind -- but with the floodgates now thrown open for all sorts of painful revelations, it is time to look forward, and to advocate policies that are color blind, gender blind, economic status blind, and, most importantly, politically blind.

I am about as likely to spend the crisp two dollar bill as I am to attempt to pass the half twenty off as a ten. But I take some comfort in knowing it's there, and that if I really need to, I can. That, to borrow a phrase from The Indigo Girls, is the power of two.

Chase all the ghosts from your head

I'm stronger than the monster beneath your bed

Smarter than the tricks played on your heart

We'll look at them together then we'll take them apart

Adding up the total of a love that's true

Multiply life by the power of two.

Indigo Girls, Power of Two

Global Repositioning Systems

It's not easy being judgmental -- and I omit, here, the handful of adjectives and expletives and other parts of speech that once embellished that description of me. Speaking from years of experience, those of us who tend toward the eye roll simply assume that everyone else is returning the favor -- or lack of favor, as the case may be. Could it be that nobody ever really knows what to do? That we judge just to reassure ourselves we are okay?

Yesterday, I ran into an acquaintance from my yoga days. (I still do yoga, but I have become less convinced that you can breathe your way through pain, physical or psychic; especially when one of the walls in your preferred studio is filled with mirrors.) He is preparing for "chapter two," he told me. I judged immediately -- slow reader or, as the case may be, slow writer. We're about the same age, and I'm already dipping my toe into chapter four.

The last time we spoke, he was in a low key yogic kind of panic because his only son, who had long struggled with social issues, was about to apply to college. I had told him not to worry, that everything would work out. He had looked at me as if I had two heads. That was two years ago.

Yesterday, he had just returned from visiting that same son. For the first time, his grades have slipped -- (so what?), but he is surrounded by friends, and remarkably at ease -- (Hallelujah!). I could almost touch the relief on the guy's face, the botox-y effect of a job well done and a deep breath well-earned. Years of hard work and sleepless nights had paid off, and he was ready to move out of hiatus, continue his own story.  Chapter two. He even has it pretty much mapped out. What a fool. Okay, I am envious.

I suppose I never considered my child rearing years to be a hiatus, as I am far too selfish to have ever taken a complete break from myself. So that was my chapter two, and my chapter three began, I think, as my marriage disintegrated and my youngest child and I were left to navigate our own versions of "tween-dom" together. We are each, now, on the brink, one semester away from a frightening new phase. Without a map.

For the first time in more than two dozen years  -- a little less for her -- life will cease to be measured by academic calendars. The comfort of artificial closures and resets will be gone, and life will no longer be sectioned into manageable pieces. She will have to accustom herself to an existence that is not all that carefree. I will have to accustom myself to an existence that, while not carefree, is certainly less likely to revolve around the needs of others. I wish I could erase her fears, but I know I can't. I know how much she has to look forward to (if all goes the way it should, in life), but I know she has to figure that out for herself. As I need to, on my end.

Only minutes into a stroll down what seemed to be a well-defined path in the woods, the other day,  my friend and I got lost. As the crow flies, we were not far from where we needed to be, and there were plenty hours of sunlight left for us to figure it out, but still, it was a bit disorienting. Felled trees blocked our way in all directions, and muddy streams appeared out of nowhere. We both had different ideas about which way to go. Without judgment, we rejected my idea, then his, and chose what we both assumed was an illogical option. As it turns out, we had both been wrong, which, in my nasty habit of being judge-y, would make us fools and earn us failing grades in the navigation department. Oh, well.

Somehow, with a little leap of faith, we made it out of the woods.

Puttin' On the Pants Suit

I'd love to say my offer to kick in the extra 72 cents for the woman's coffee was motivated solely by a generous spirit, but I'd be lying. It was six-thirty in the morning, and her poor preparation was the only thing that stood between me and my coffee. It could have gotten pretty ugly, and 72 cents was a small price to pay.

Everything worked out. The woman looked relieved, the barista wouldn't let me take on the added expense (she claimed I've done it before, which I don't remember), and within a few moments I was on my way, leash in one hand and a hot off the presses Christmasy cup of caffeine in the other. Better still, I ran into the woman a few minutes later, as we were both pulled toward each other by our dogs. She told me she has been going through a really difficult time, and my kindness had made her day. I gave myself a partial pat on the back, knowing I had at least appeared to be kind and generous. With any luck, the road to heaven is paved with partially good intentions.

A year ago today, I woke up cautiously optimistic, determined to purchase a white pants suit to wear as I watched the election returns later that evening with friends. I had no illusions about Hillary's imperfections, and I was reluctant to count any chickens before they hatched, but in my wildest dreams I could not have imagined that, hours later, she would lose to the most unworthy of opponents. I have comforted myself, all year, with hopes that the nightmare would be short-lived. I have taken comfort, also, in knowing that, had Hillary won, her tenure would have been made miserable. We would never have had such a unique opportunity to learn, as a country, how toxic our brew of arrogance and ignorance and complacency could be.

Despite all my good intentions, I have expended far more energy on hand-wringing than I have on doing something to effect change. I have preached to my own choir, and I have refused to listen to other voices. I have failed to recognize, all too often, that despite a shitload of bad intentions at the highest levels, our road to hell, this year, has been paved by a fair share of equally well-intentioned opposing viewpoints.

Virginia came out yesterday, in the rain, to vote. Bigly. We all need to do the same. With my apologies to Billy Joel, sooner or later it just comes down to a lot more than faith. Time to put our 72 cents in every chance we get, whether its motivated by generosity of spirit or a faint, selfish hope that something good will eventually come of it. Even a random act of impatience can make someones day.

Ghosts of Summer

When we arrived in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, a little before midnight, the streets were deserted. There is something incredibly warm and cozy-- romantic even -- about a summer town in the off season. The crowds are long gone, but you can still hear the lazy rumble of leisurely strolls, taste the sweet satisfaction of ice cream racing down the side of a sugar cone.

It wasn't exactly the quaint bed and breakfast we had planned on, but the Best Western was inviting enough in the dark. At least none of the letters in the lighted sign were missing. The lady behind the desk seemed bored and sleepy, a little surprised to see us. Sue. That's what her name tag said. She didn't look like a "Sue," though, and she didn't seem all that interested in chatting; after a couple of attempts, we gave up -- never even reached the point where it would seem appropriate to call her Sue. Or anything.

Sue seemed the perfect desk clerk for a Best Western, off season, off hours. Her kinky gray hair was pulled into a tight pony tail, her white shirt stained with shadows of a thousand fast food meals. I was able to squeeze in two trips to the bathroom and four to the water fountain while she processed our paperwork, and I returned just in time for the finale -- the programming of the key cards. Swipe. Beep. Click. Swipe. Beep. Click. Her face remained impassive, and she did the same with a second key card. Swipe. Beep. Click. Swipe. Beep. Click. Still expressionless, she put that one aside, and went through the routine again with a third, then a fourth.

"One is fine," I told her. "Don't worry about the second."

"I don't even have one yet," she snapped. Well, snapped is a strong word, but it was the first thing she had uttered with any sort of inflection. She kept going.

"Maybe unplug and replug the machine," one of us suggested.

"Nope." Not an option, apparently, although she did move it over a few inches, which seemed to have a bit of an unplugging effect because now when she swiped there was no beep. After a few tries, she moved it back. Swipe. Beep. Click. Swipe Beep. Click. Hmmm.

She went in back, came out with a large stack of brand new key cards, still wrapped in cellophane. We stood there, staring at our bellybuttons, afraid to look at each other. Swipe. Beep. Click. Swipe. Beep. Click. She tried three or four times.

"Maybe if you try to swipe faster?"

She obliged, looking a bit self-satisfied when nothing happened. I refrained from suggesting she start pulling cards from the middle, fearing she would.

Finally, she let us in with her master key, warning us that if we left we'd pretty much be shit out of luck. We collapsed into our prison, laughing. We half expected to find Sue in the lobby in the morning, buried under a sea of key cards. We did not.

The streets are not quite as deserted here in daylight, if only because it's the day of the big Halloween parade. Stores are open but empty, despite scores of straw-stuffed-pumpkin-headed people sitting like ghoulish welcoming committees on the cold benches outside. Not a lot of tourists, but clusters of local folks of all ages, all in costume. Cows, Disney princesses, a smattering of Harry Potterish wizards, a tiny family of loraxes. Nothing suggestive or in the slightest bit risque. A sleepy, summer town in Wisconsin, in the off season. Except for a few overtired toddlers, everybody seemed very content.

Who knows where we'll land tonight? The only thing we know for certain is it won't be the Best Western with no working keys. And it's a pretty sure bet that, in the off season up north, it will be warm and cozy and even a little bit romantic, no matter where we end up. Fall colors are past peak, and some of the trees are already bare. But the dim rumble and sweet taste of summer still lurks, behind the pumpkins.

Times Always A'Changin

Transformation. 

The regular yoga teacher was absent, and the woman gliding toward the front of the room looked to be the polar opposite of what I had grown accustomed to on Tuesday mornings. It's not that I was disappointed, but I had become a devoted fan of the yoga instructor with the decidedly un-yogic and somewhat voluptuous physique and her uncanny ability to push me toward my edge with her deceptive sweetness. She dresses more modestly than most yoginis, and my guess is she is less chiseled. She is strong and graceful, though, when she demonstrates a pose, and her flawlessly called complicated sequences (not once has she confused left and right) make me sweat like nobody's business.

Looking as if she had just stepped off the cover of Yoga Journal, the sub flashed us a broad smile and suggested we start on our backs. Look up yoga teacher in the dictionary and there she would be, rail thin but in a sinewy kind of way, muscular without bulk, tucked neatly into light-colored print tights without an ounce of love handle in sight. When she pulled back her wild mop of curly hair, her eyes gleamed, her teeth got even whiter. I would have despised her completely, had it not been for the starting on our backs part.

The list of detestable qualities grew as she told us she would be walking around with some sort of magic box, from which we should choose a card. An "intention" card for our practice, so we would not have to come up with one on our own. Seriously? I never have any trouble coming up with an intention. My intention is always survival, with a big lunch to follow. Had I not already rolled comfortably onto my back, I might have fled.

She tapped my toe and I reached into the magic box, drew a card. "Transformation." Transformation? Was this what my goal of the day would be, to change? Into what? A kinder person? Yoga Barbie moved on to the next mat too swiftly for me to grab her ankle and beg for a second chance. I am almost 58 years old, and the only transformation I can hope to experience is the gradual amplification of my most negative traits. I desperately wanted a realistic intention card -- wait until noon for lunch; don't drink before five (ish); do not turn on MSNBC. 

On my oldest daughter's first day of first grade, her teacher taught the class a new word: metamorphosis. I had thought it was an interesting opening vocabulary word for a six year old, but it made me feel good about our move to suburbia. With such an auspicious beginning, my daughter would certainly be elite-college-bound. Our decision to avoid twelve years of private school tuition in the city had been prudent, my fears of a bland suburban upbringing for my children unfounded.

In the years since that first day of first grade, my daughter -- and her younger siblings -- have indeed gone through a zillion metamorphoses, shedding the charms and problems of each childhood stage as they acquired new ones, for better or for worse. I miss their plump cheeks and their wishful eyes and unabashed dreams. I miss the chaos, as much as I miss my own youthfulness -- the absence of wear and tear that helped me deal with it all. As much as I cherish all the transformations, in all of us really, I wouldn't trade where we are now for where we were then. For the most part.

The yoga class was different, as it should have been, no matter what the instructor looks like. Her voice was not quite as clear, and she occasionally mixed up left and right, but still, I felt better at the end than I had before it started.  And not just because lunch was fast approaching. Dare I say, it was even a bit transformative, as every new experience tends to be. She told us we could keep our intention cards, but I unintentionally left mine on the floor. Maybe someone else will read it -- maybe someone less set in her ways.

Sunny with a Chance of Meatballs

If breakfast is the most important meal of the day and I love Italian food and meatballs are an essential part of any Italian meal (as far as I'm concerned, anyway), then the prospect of eating a baseball-sized meatball for breakfast is the obvious explanation for the extra spring in my step today.

There are a lot of reasons for my sunny disposition this morning; the meatball simply iced my cake. I was reminded, yesterday, of how lucky I am: thriving children, great friends who are in it for the long haul -- no matter how nuts I get, a return to town of someone whose brief absence had been surprisingly difficult, and, yes, I sleep with the most handsome dog. The clouds of stress have scattered, at least temporarily.

I even chuckled yesterday when someone told me he couldn't wait to get home and settle in to watch Fox News. All news is leaning toward the ridiculous lately, as pundits puzzle for hours on end over our president's basic incompetence as a human being (as if there was ever a reason to think otherwise) while his extraordinary incompetence as the leader of the free world could very well turn us into an ash heap. Maybe I'll switch over to Fox soon too.

Needless to say, I am not always this chipper. (Who is?) In a moment of uncharacteristic insecurity and neediness the other day, I had asked my good friend to tell me how great I am.  Worse still, I even tossed some adjectives her way, helped her with the script. She obliged, even made the shamelessly begged-for compliments seem heartfelt by adding some examples. It helped, but I'm smart enough to know when a friend is just doing her job.

She added something, though. Something that had not occurred to me to solicit as I desperately sought some stroking of my fragile ego. "Finally," she said, "I’m still upright. Thanks in no small part to you!" My friend, whose world was shattered when she lost her oldest son almost two years ago to some fluky genetic glitch. My friend, whose world remains shattered and always will, while the rest of us are able to tuck the catastrophe away -- in varying degrees -- as we move forward with our lives and our petty and not so petty crises. For me, Adam's death remains raw and unfathomable, but it is not the first thing that pops into my conscious brain when I wake up in the morning. Sometimes it is, but today it was meatballs.

As the months tick by, my friend's new normal becomes, in some ways, better, but in some ways far worse. So, she bakes. Challahs for my daughter's wedding, cookies because she's coming to visit me, cakes that don't look all that pretty but taste spectacular.  Give me a meatball over a cookie any day, but when it comes to my friend's baked goods, I make an exception. When she bakes, she creates order out of chaos, makes sense of a mess, and it moves her forward, keeps her upright more than I ever could.

Sunny with a chance of meatballs for breakfast, maybe some cookies later. Climate change is real, but sometimes it's a guilty pleasure.

Resettling the Ping Pong Table

Four years ago, I did my best to squeeze my five-bedroom-four-bathroom-cavernous-great-room life into a townhouse, one suburb over. As my nest had gradually emptied -- I was down to only one un-launched child and a blind dog -- I felt dwarfed by all the unoccupied space.

Dwarfed, and, at the same time, claustrophobic and crammed in, the way I used to feel when I was much younger and I would lie down on the bed to stuff myself into a pair of tight designer jeans, back in the dark ages of non-stretchy denim. It was hard to breathe; the walls seemed to close in around all the excess air.

I struggled to keep only what I needed, get rid of the rest. It was easiest to let go of furniture, the post-crib bedrooms that had made me realize how fast my children would grow, though it never occurred to me that they would actually leave. The boxes filled with art projects and report cards and the crudely illustrated manuscripts of youthful, unfettered imaginations were tougher; I spent hours traveling through time, trying to select only the best samples to keep for posterity. I gave away more "stuff" than most people acquire, and I took comfort in knowing that somebody whose life had been less bountiful -- at least materially -- than mine would enjoy and appreciate that which, to me, had often been superfluous.

My daughter and I eventually settled in to our new space, organizing what we had held onto to create a home, for us and the dog. It was far more difficult for her than it was for me. The large suburban house had been the only house she ever knew; her friends would have to drive what seemed to be a great distance (a few miles) to see her. Unlike me, she was nowhere near ready to shed the excess; she was too young to feel overwhelmed by clutter. For her, as they were for me, memories may have been a double edged sword, but her memories were more anchor than constraint

I had been determined to avoid the need for extra storage. I would take only what would fit. And I succeeded, except for the ping pong table. My father had bought it for my kids when we first moved to the suburbs. Whether they played or not, it made sense. The wide open spaces of suburban life cried out to be filled. And they enjoyed the ping pong table for a few years, before it became invisible under piles of stuff. By the time of the move, I had almost forgotten it was there.

Still, I couldn't part with the ping pong table, even though it had done nothing but gather dust -- and piles of crap --  for a long time. It captured so much for me: my growing family, the life we built, my father's love. He was either already or soon to be on borrowed time (I can't remember) when he bought that ping pong table, and it was an outsized, tangible version of his legacy. To get rid of the ping pong table would be like cutting myself off at the knees, again, the way I felt when he died. He didn't get to watch his grandchildren grow up, become the adults they are today, people who would make him so proud. But, in the relatively short time he had with them, he gave them so much more than the ping pong table, the stuff you can't really see but that I sense all the time -- in their goodness, their smiles, their generosity.

It's time to retrieve the ping pong table from my old neighbor's basement. He's moving on now too. It was easy enough to fold it up and wheel it around the corner to his house, four years ago. It's a little more complicated now, but I'll manage. My father's been gone for a long time, now, but, no matter where life takes me, he still occupies a fair share of space.

Up on the Roof

I'd had a permanent scowl on my face for days when my friend suggested I should live my blog. It would take a bit of soul searching to wipe off the bitchiness, but the idea certainly gave me pause.

Sometimes it's tough to put a positive spin on things. After almost 58 years of sinking my teeth into perceived petty offenses and foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog whenever I occasionally get the urge to share the joy of my bad mood with someone close, I often need to take a few extra blinks to see the glass as half full. Writing helps, I suppose. My fingers tap away, making sense of the nonsense. My jaw relaxes its death grip as I conjure up life as I think it should happen, or, at the very least, imagine an optimistic take-away.

I've always wanted to sit up on a rooftop on Waveland, enjoying a bird's eye view of a Cubs game from a perch well beyond left field, high above the clusters of fans on the street below hoping desperately to catch a hard hit foul ball. I've sat in perfectly good seats over the years, close enough to see the stitching on the ball -- and to appreciate the way uniforms can accentuate the contours of athletic physiques -- but still, I  have yearned to sit among the chosen few, the glorified bleacher bums getting wined and dined and generally keeping their shirts on. As far as I could tell, anyway, from my seat so far away.

After taking a break to warm up and dry off inside (and get yet another plateful of steak and Italian beef -- tasty, but not nearly as good as satisfying as a ballpark hot dog passed from a vendor through the outstretched hands of a dozen strangers -- we ventured back up onto the roof. It seemed wrong to sit inside after shlepping all the way downtown for a rooftop gathering when it would have been a lot easier to sit in a local sports bar. I pulled my sweatshirt hood up, and my rain jacket hood over that, tightened my scarf; we toweled off the seats, again, and prepared to focus more seriously on the game, to shout inaudible encouragements to the struggling Cubbies who, in eight innings, had managed to get only one real hit. I hunched my shoulders against the rain, watching it as it moved in waves of feather dust against the backdrop of the right field seats. I felt superior, out there in the damp cold, watching a blur of players in stark white home colors try to fight off the visitors in drab gray. I could barely even make out home plate, although I had a close-up view of more than a few stray paper plates blowing in the wind.

The Nationals had walked their way to loading the bases; our pitcher had finally been replaced. Only moments earlier, a different pitcher had somewhat gracelessly picked off a runner taking a provocative lead off first base. A small and ugly victory, but it had kept them at bay, at least for a bit longer.

I could barely even hear the crack of the ball, could not even tell whether the ball was going to sail over the wall. It took me a moment to realize I had just witnessed the thrill of a grand slam, for the wrong team. I could feel my scowl returning. We left. It's not that we saw the glass as half empty. At five to nothing in the eighth inning, in the cold and relentless rain, it was not a question of perception. The glass was broken.

But the walk/jog to the car, more than a few blocks away, was invigorating. We had sort of forgotten exactly where we parked, so we were relieved to find it, downright joyful when we fell into our seats and cranked up the heat. The glass is half full again. I decided to be happy that they got the grand slam out of the way today, when they didn't even need it. Their single run from earlier in the game, as it turned out, would have been enough for the win.

I am living my blog, and until I am proven wrong, I am hanging on to my faith in the Cubs. They will win tonight, as I watch from the warmth of my living room. Not like sitting up on the roof, but, even in blogland, life can't' be perfect.

Pulling Rabbits out of Hats and Other Illusions

Two Jewish moderate Democrats walked into a bar. . . .

It's bad for business in patches of north suburban Chicago when Yom Kippur falls on a weekend. My friend and I were surprised to even find a place open when we decided to unwind with a quick nightcap after stuffing ourselves at a "Break Fast." Soon, it was just us and the bartender, schmoozing away while the tabletops got wiped down and the chairs gradually went upside down around us.

It's a relatively new venue for me, this bar a few suburbs away from where I live, in my cozy bubble where most people seem to think the way I do and, if they don't, they try not to advertise it. My cozy bubble where I am not the only idiot who falls asleep to the soothing voices of MSNBC hosts who, like me, still struggle to understand how our country was hijacked last November. We are from both sides of the political spectrum here, with many of us overlapping somewhere toward the middle, but I believe with all my heart that my despair has little to do with political ideology.

My first time in this new place, I felt instantly at home. I liked my drink -- more because of the bartender's enthusiasm about it than the quality of the drink itself, although it was both tasty and potent. The bartender regaled me with magic tricks -- cards, coins, inexplicable sleights of hand. By the time I left, I was exchanging more than a few hugs with relative strangers. By my second visit, I felt like family. Hugs when I walked in, more magic tricks, another pleasing drink. More illusions of oneness, my bubble-borne delusions still intact.

The details aren't important, but suffice it to say I knew things were not going to go well when the bartender told me he was about to stop watching football. It all went south from there, as I listened, polite and mute. I heard about all the patriots who had died for the flag. I heard about how Obama did nothing for blacks (because, apparently, he was elected to be President of the Blacks -- POTB). I heard about the horror of open borders, the hardship of rising health care premiums. I remained polite and silent, assuming it would be pointless to launch into a discussion of all the gray areas: the complicated morass between "open" and "closed" borders, the daunting responsibility of representing everybody in a vast and diverse country, the difference between silent protest and disrespecting the flag, my willingness to absorb certain costs, if it means others will benefit from my country's wealth and freedoms as much as I do. The dangers of viewing the world as Muslims and the rest of us, or any brand of "us and them."

Yes, I support the right to protest. No, I don't think the best way to do it is to take advantage of the very public platform bestowed upon you by virtue of your employment, especially if your socks depict the dedicated people who protect you, personally, as pigs. Yes, I always stand for the flag and the national anthem in public, and my eyes always well up. No, I don't stand when I'm home on my couch, eating Doritos, but I still love America and everything she stands for. Yes, I think 45 has, once again, brilliantly reframed the issue so that even more folks than just the ones in his loyal base are missing the point, and I hope football teams continue to come up with intelligent compromises, the way they did in Baltimore yesterday, to help disentangle the issues and stand (or kneel) for unambiguous messages.

Two Jewish moderate Democrats in an empty bar on the heels of Yom Kippur. Close on the heels of much repenting and reflecting and resolving, on my part, to do better. The bartender was taken aback when I finally confessed that my centrality leaned a bit to the left. Was our new friendship just an illusion? I hope not. We hugged, awkwardly, but I am determined to go back, maybe find my voice and have a more measured conversation about all this muck. Maybe recapture the magic.

High Hanging Fruit

I still have the scabs on my knees to prove it, that I was perched precariously on the branches of an apple tree last week, reaching for a cluster of perfect ginger golds. Perfect in that they were out of easy reach and far enough away that my eyes couldn't make out any blemishes, if there were any. I was emboldened by a bloody Mary -- Wisconsin style, with a beer chaser -- risking life and limb (both mine and the tree's) to get the best life could offer. 

Growing up in an apartment in Brooklyn, I was a bit challenged about anything related to nature. I always assumed pumpkin seeds grew in cellophane bags. I never gave it much thought actually, but I certainly had no reason to connect them with the eerily carved out orange gourds that seemed to be everywhere in other neighborhoods -- neighborhoods with stoops.

As far as I knew, apples grew in large bins in the fruit store on Avenue J. The most perfect ones were always on top, much easier to reach than the bruised ones underneath. Life is tough enough in Brooklyn; finding a parking space within walking distance of the fruit store was a lot more challenging than climbing some little old tree. 

For Jews, the "Days of Awe" are winding down, and the moment of truth is upon us. I think about fasting, something I've never been able to do. I think of it though, sort of like a last ditch effort to cram for the big test. I will convince myself, as I always do after I've survived about an hour without coffee, that I should just roll the dice. If I haven't done the work all year, cramming isn't going to make a difference. 

And, anyway, being "good" is certainly no guarantee. Nor is praying, for that matter. But it couldn't hurt.

I got caught up in the emotional return of Steve Scalise to the "People's House" yesterday. I loved the bipartisan embrace, the reminder that, at the end of the day, they're all human. I loved the absence of sniping and back-biting. It gave me hope, but it gave me pause, the sad truth that it took violence and the near death of a colleague to get both sides of the aisle to stand and clap together.

When the applause died down, Mr. Scalise leaned on his braces and spoke. He began with God and prayer. The power of prayer. I get it, but I couldn't help wondering why prayer only works for some and not for others. Life isn't always fair. The good sometimes die young, and the bad sometimes hang on forever. If there's a plan, I'd like somebody to explain it to me.

I loved what the congressman said about humanity.  About how people who didn't always agree with him, and people who had never even met him, all reached out. About how people, as a rule, seem to care. I like to think his words and his return will have an impact that lasts more than five minutes. I like to think that the apple at the top of the tree is always worth the climb. 

Correcting the Propagation of Heresies

Here in secular America, the silver lining to our steady regression is our short history. Though there certainly is much to take away, there is, at least, an endpoint, a limit to just how far back we can go.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were early concepts, but we really didn't start putting our money where our quills were until we were a century into our great experiment. Progress has been slow but steady, and, at least in my warped bubble, I have always taken my freedoms for granted. How difficult can it possibly be to recapture only a century or two of progress?

It sometimes seems a bit more complicated in the Old World, with its long history of alternating darkness and renaissance (with both big and little "R's"), with a generous helping of persecution and murder in the name of religion and nationalist fervor. Things are confusing there these days, as here, as the tug of war continues.

Correctio filialis de haeresibus propagatis. A "filial correction against propagation of heresies" -- a tool that has not been used since the 14th century. Kind of like autos-de-fe and other clever ways of eliminating "otherness" and shielding the "faithful." It's refreshing to know that the backwards moving voice of the Catholic Church is alive and well, with a group of ultra conservative theologians issuing a medieval style rebuke of Pope Francis for his softening of Church policies on divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, not to mention clergy who choose marriage over other forms of human frolic.

Pope Francis' brand of heresy may indeed prove to be one of the things that save the Church, with its dwindling membership and the recent weeding out of child molesters from the priesthood, but that's certainly not my business. We Jews have enough trouble with assimilation, and the likes of Ivanka and Jared giving us a bad name. We Americans have enough trouble with the presidential seal of approval on white supremacy. Do we not all have bigger things to worry about, after weeks of news coverage of what looks to be Mother Nature's push toward the "end of days," than what other folks choose to do in their adult bedrooms?

I have not had many priests in my life, but I remember fondly my first one -- Father Ed. As decent and pious, to me, once he married a woman as he was when he was at the helm of my in-laws' church, and always welcome, even after his official defrocking, in my in-laws' home. I remember the kind priest who insisted I join him in the sacristy before my father-in-law's funeral mass, a Jewish woman in a sea of male Catholic clergy, preparing for our readings. My mother-in-law was always amused, years later, when he would ask after me, by name, and my husband (her son; old whathisname).

We've had our own stake burnings here, sadly much more recently than the middle ages. We might as well take a few more pages from those dark times, maybe take a stab at a correctio filialis -- to stop, once and for all, the propagation of heresies and other abominations from the Peoples' House.

Bitterness and Sweetness on this New Year

My local Starbucks is going to be closed next Monday. As if things haven't gone haywire enough.

Claudette, the brassy and buxom blond barista with the thick Colombian accent who refers to me as "grande blonde" (I am neither) on days when she's slower to remember my name than my order, delivered the bad news along with my coffee yesterday. Still in an un-caffeinated stupor, I could muster up little more than shock and a smidge of panic. 

Rosh Hashanah has arrived, and almost everyone I know -- religious affiliation notwithstanding -- seems to be banking on this day for a shift in collective perspective. I posted my official Facebook wishes for health and happiness to everyone I've ever met early yesterday, thinking I'd get a jump on a little positivity. Lots of folks seemed to share my impatience; virtual hugs and kisses exploded like fireworks on my newsfeed. 

Was it enough to soften the edges of the catastrophes dominating the "real" (or, if you will, "fake") news? Not even a little. Hurricanes to end all hurricanes. Earthquakes to end all earthquakes. Climate change and rings of fire, conspiring to remind us just how small we really are. Kleptocrats and a good chunk of the Grand Old Party, conspiring to remind us just how small our government has become. I watch footage of regular people, some of whom have already lost a lot, picking through debris with their bare hands, emboldened by the faint hope of rescuing just one person. I watch footage of others, more fortunate, rushing in to give hope to the hopeless, lend a hand and a little bit of heart. 

I watch footage of clusters of white men in dark suits, working feverishly to ensure that privilege remains just that -- privilege. The good fortune reserved to a select few, entitlements for the entitled. That which the forces of nature cannot take away, Republicans will.  A president consumed with his own personal gain, chomping at the bit to sign his name to anything, no matter how inhumane. Soiling the White House, taking a break this week to soil the United Nations and insult entire continents. Still, he almost seems less repulsive than the buffoons on the Hill. There's something to be said for being genuine. At least he never had a soul to sell. 

It's going to be sunny today, the way its supposed to be on the Jewish High Holidays. A little warm for late September, but far be it from me to complain about the weather this hurricane season. The ground beneath me, here in Illinois, is quiet and still, and the air conditioning is working. 

I will pray, in my own way, today, for peace love and understanding and other stuff, like health care and human decency and generosity and compassion -- the things that lots of ordinary and not so ordinary people still seem to value. And I will pray, early and often, for a good coffee option on Monday, and a return to brassy and buxom Claudette on Tuesday. 

Squaring the Circle

On September 11, 2017, I went square dancing.

The day is always weighty, a time for reflection. I stop dead in my tracks if I happen to have the news on at one of those moments -- when a plane hit, when another plane hit, when the towers imploded, one, then the other. The Pentagon. The field somewhere in Pennsylvania. Every year, in between my moments of silence, I hold onto a faint hope, when I watch the images of the day, that the ending will be different.

This year, Mother Nature stole the show a bit. Images of the ocean rushing past houses. A woman desperately searching for her terrified cat in a half-submerged bush. Defiant folks determined to ride it out. First responders, as ever, certain of only one thing: that not responding is not an option.

As time rolls by, hurricane ravaged towns will be rebuilt, and the memories -- at least for those of us who were not there -- will fade. Lower Manhattan gleams and thrives now, sixteen years later, with little trace of the torn up streets and debris and makeshift memorials and gaping ash-filled hole that remained for what seemed like an eternity, no trace of the surreal horror of a beautiful September morning obliterated, the deafening roar of a city's -- and a nation's -- silent scream.

My son, eleven years old at the time, told me, back then, that he wanted to be an air force pilot when he grew up. Maybe it was irrational of me to encourage him, all those years ago, tell him I'd be so proud. More likely I was being realistic; time and maturity and his own growing sense of mortality would cure him of this selflessness, and I would come through it all with both my patriotism and my precious son in tact -- a win/win. These days, as proud as I am of my daughter, I wonder if I would have offered up full-throated encouragement, a few weeks ago, had she told me before she and some friends set out on a road trip to Houston to help. Would I have been able to suppress the mom piece, the one that worried about all that water and all that bacteria and wanted to tell her she should just stay safe and toss some extra dollars in cans. Would I have been able to misguide her so badly, just for my own peace of mind? I hope not.

When my son moved to Japan five years ago, I had not so secretly hoped the threat of repeated tsunamis and radiation would give him pause. It did not. These days, with North Korean missiles flying over his adopted island country on a regular basis -- at least as I see it -- I thought maybe he'd think it was time to leave. He gave me the standard rational explanation -- that he's not in Seoul, so there's no need to panic. He mused, though, that he had contemplated moving to Tokyo -- a more likely target than his smaller city and, given evidence of pretty bad aim, the one place most likely to be missed.

I laugh at myself, wishing he would come back to this side of the world, where crazy things like missile fly-overs don't happen. Ha. Safety is a crap shoot; the best I could hope for if he came back this way is a greater chance of sharing a meal together. Nothing to sneeze at, but certainly not a good enough reason to interfere with his journey.

Square dancing on September 11 was a good thing. It made the day seem ordinary, to the extent that figuring out what it means to allemande left or wheel around means is an ordinary thing for me. What else is there to do, really, with so much craziness outside the square?

Somewhere on Peachtree Road

A woman I just met told me she had recently met a much older woman in the elevator of her "senior living" building, somewhere in a leafy and hilly section of Atlanta. As it turns out, the older woman was from Jackson, Mississippi.

"What the heck would a Jew be doing in Jackson, Mississippi?" My new friend has a refreshingly endearing way of saying (or asking) whatever comes to mind, but she admitted that, this time, her hasty blurt had been a surprise, even to her. I silently chastised myself for my own ignorance, having assumed that the older woman from Jackson, Mississippi in the elevator must have been an employee; I hadn't noticed any residents who weren't white. 

As it turns out, the 97 year old woman from Jackson, Mississippi had perfectly good reasons to be from there, not the least of which was her years of civil rights activism -- with commendations and citations on her apartment wall to prove it. My new friend -- a much younger Jew (at about 85) from Philadelphia -- was fascinated by her new friend's story, even wrote about it in a a piece titled something like "Everything I ever knew about the South I learned from Gone With the Wind." 

Everything I ever knew about Jackson, Mississippi I learned from my drive through there with my daughter last January, at night, in a snowstorm. The roads were slick and desolate; everyone, except us, apparently, had heeded the warnings and stayed inside. It was dark and cold in Jackson, Mississippi, and we felt conspicuously White when we ran into a fast food joint to get dinner to eat in the car as we continued to speed toward civilization. Well, New Orleans. My daughter's veggie burger and my chicken sandwich both turned out to be leathery hamburgers. We pitched those, just ate the fries. If there's one thing you can depend on in the South, it's the fries. Speaking of stereotypes. 

My new friend was thrilled about all she had learned from the lady from Jackson, not just the stuff about being Jewish in the deep South and civil rights movements from long ago and sacrifices made by folks who would turn over in their graves if they saw the giant and hopefully temporary steps backward we have taken lately, although, at the very least, that stuff gives us hope. My friend was even more thrilled, though, about what she had done for this one, grand lady, a quiet survivor of a life well lived. Elderly, infirm, tucked away in a "senior living" building somewhere on one of the zillions of roads called "Peachtree" in Atlanta, she had become invisible. Many of us might have looked right through her, never knowing this Jew from Jackson, Mississippi had a lifetime of stories to tell and lessons to teach. 

I cannot wait to read my friend's article, inspired by a fortuitous lack of tact and endless curiosity, and a rare willingness to see the world from outside the comfort of the bubble that beckons us all. Different bubbles, same concept. Theoretically, they help us to make sense of things. Well, that hasn't worked out very well, now, has it? 

Fiddle-dee-dee, Scarlet. Frankly, it's high time time we all give a damn. 

Pregnant Pauses

I'm getting accustomed to the idea that people my age are becoming grandparents. It's only natural, with our kids coupling up and getting married and launching themselves into lives that don't really require our input. Yes, input. It must be why grandchildren were invented.

My friend put it all into perspective for me yesterday when she introduced me to a prospective grandmother -- well into her third trimester. She didn't look old at all, until my friend reminded me that she is, now,  who our mothers and mothers-in-law were back in the day, waiting for the call so they could come and help out. Wise. Ancient. Never too busy with their own lives to drop everything and take care of us. I looked at my new acquaintance through a different lens. Wise. Ancient. A has-been. She is a year younger than I.

She seems unfazed by her sudden descent into old age -- excited even. I thought about my other friend, newly "grandmothered" and looking even more spectacular then ever. I could swear she glows, especially when she announces how many ounces the baby sucked down yesterday. I gasped with enthusiasm at the news, though I had no idea why it was news. It's been a while since I've measured (or cared) what any of my kids have eaten.

Come to think of it, it's been a while since any of my kids have required my input. If anything, I am the seeker, not so much of input but of approval and validation and reassurance that they still need me, even though they really don't. Suddenly, I realize all is not lost. I remember those disconcerting feelings of incompetence, those early days when, suddenly, somebody's very existence depended on me. I had lost my status, I was no longer the omniscient and capable adult who wondered how her own parents managed to get through the day without doing something really stupid. I needed my mother, I needed my mother-in-law, I needed anybody who might be able to tell me what to do.

It didn't last long, that desperate need for input from the very people I had long discounted as somewhat ignorant and incompetent. But for the grandmothers, the new found joy long outlasted my temporary desperation. They had gotten a taste of "input," and they weren't about to let it go. It would be a long time before the grandchildren would catch on, begin to roll their eyes, figure out just how little their elders know.

Kudos to the guy or the gal who invented grandchildren. I think I get it.

Pink Houses and Soggy Blankets

Suddenly, it's late August.

Right on schedule, Mother Nature has unleashed its fury on our southern neighbors, while we here in the Midwest are enjoying what appears to be an early autumn. My town's last art fair of the season will be dismantled later today, and, soon, the outdoor concert traffic will dissipate --  the ribbons of creeping cars, the shuttle buses, the endless parade of visitors dragging coolers and chairs and blankets and folding tables and movable feasts.

As the harbingers of summer that put a spring in our step in May and provided us with welcome diversions through the dog days begin to signal the transition into shorter and cooler days, I start to savor my last gasp. Yesterday, I spent hours wandering among the art fair tents, searching for the reasonably priced memento that is different enough from everything I already own to always remind me of the summer of 2017. I will resume my search today.

Last night, I felt particularly lucky to be squeezed into a tight rectangle of grass with friends to enjoy tacos and tequila and wine and brownies and grapes (grapes?) while we waited for John Mellencamp to blast out the oldies that would bring us all back to our own separate pasts. The rain came in fits and starts, but most of us stayed, didn't even bother with umbrellas. I was acutely aware of how blessed I was, last night, enjoying a concert in a little bit of harmless drizzle.

Two of us ventured off to get some ice cream, tiptoeing around the mosaic of soggy blankets, tripping on coolers, squeezing past the motley array of makeshift living rooms. Nobody minded the jostling, and lots of people even pointed toward the quickest paths through the maze. We strolled around the perimeter, forgetting about the ice cream -- just enjoying the show, on and off the stage.

And, re-entering the sea of soggy blankets around where we thought we had exited, we got lost. The golden 40th birthday balloons that had been our landmark had disappeared, and suddenly, in the dark, everything looked the same. "Do you remember us?" we asked as we moved from cluster to cluster, hoping we might have made an impression on someone on our way out. We hadn't. We found ourselves in the middle of a big party. Colleen, the ringleader, begged us to have some chicken. She had brought crab dip, but everyone else had brought chicken. She introduced us to her friends.

Eventually, lots of folks started to recognize us. "You again?" They couldn't believe we were still lost. "It feels like Groundhog Day," one of them said. A guy in one of our favorite groups insisted we take some beers with us. There would be more waiting for us at our next pass.

We found our friends. We told them about our harrowing journey. They had not even noticed we were gone. We danced, we packed up our little makeshift living room, and we made our way out of the park -- a little fatter, a little drunker, and very content.

I glanced back at the end of another summer filled with simple pleasures. Now, if that ain't America, I don't know what is.

Slivers of Light

Enjoy the eclipse.

It sounded like a metaphor, more than half a year into what has seemed to be a descent into darkness. I smiled and opted for a more traditional farewell as I parted ways with an old acquaintance. Have a good day, I told him. 

Maybe it's not a coincidence, the astronomical event to end all astronomical events making its way through our country's heartland tomorrow. For two minutes and 40 seconds tomorrow, not too far south of here, the moon will pass between the earth and the sun and cast a huge shadow of darkness upon us, teasing us with a ghostly sliver of light from the solar corona that we dare not view with the naked eye. And then, back to daylight.

Two minutes and 40 seconds can seem like an eternity, not unlike the seven months and one day since our country was hijacked, seven months and one day of averting our eyes, afraid to stare directly at even the smallest glimmer of light.  We are long past believing the shadow will lift any time soon. We keep our dark glasses on, knowing it's not safe.

Who knows, though, maybe it really isn't a coincidence, this eclipse of 2017, visible in totality only here, in the United States. A swath of temporary blackness bisecting us, reminding us of our eternal flame, stoked all these years by the best intentions, even through periodic blips of hate and indecency, a flame far too powerful to be extinguished.

Maybe, I sometimes think, we needed this eclipse, in the way people sometimes need to hit rock bottom before there's nowhere to go but up. Had 45 and his band of deplorables (and, I refer here not to the desperate folks who were duped by false promises but to the ones who knew better all along but chose, inexplicably, to dance with the devil), been beaten down, many of us would still be in the dark. We would have had no idea what still lurked in the shadows, the thriving underground world of hate and ignorance that has suddenly been invited to remove its hoods. We would still be hearing about Hillary's emails, the root cause of all that is evil.

Maybe, just maybe, the ghostly sliver of light that we dare not view with the naked eye will grow bigger and less lethal, now that the eyes of so many holdouts have been peeled open. We have been forced to reflect, and we may just be ready for some daylight.

Modern Dance

The wedding season continues.

My friend, the grooms mother, half joked about her relief that nuclear war had been stalled for another day. I spent much of the day in the noble pursuit of bash worthy hair and makeup and pondering such earth shattering decisions as Spanx or no Spanx (I chose breathing over beauty) and whether anyone would notice that the shoes under my glittering gown were tacky and cheap. On that item, I chose discomfort, if only to not embarrass my mother, who wasn't even invited.

I barely paid attention to the news, had not really digested the enormity of what had happened in Charlottesville that morning. A twenty-first century version of Kristallnacht, right here where it could never happen,  went virtually unnoticed. I was vaguely aware of some unrest, vaguely aware that 45 was still spouting ridiculous apocalyptic rants like an old fashioned schoolyard bully. My dad can beat up your dad. My nukes are bigger than yours. Vaguely aware that though the net continues to gather momentum, we are still only in the early dawn hours of the twilight zone presidency, with no relief in sight.

As always, I hated my hair. The hair lady did exactly what I had asked her to do, but, as always, I was surprised to see my face still looked the same. I still await the curling iron that can smooth out wrinkles. I comforted myself with the prospect of makeup. Ah, again, surprise -- me, staring back at myself from the mirror. I put all my eggs in the basket of my dress. My Spanx-less dress, revolutionary and daring, a middle aged woman's version of bra burning. The day was turning to shit.

All while Charlottesville was burning. The kinds of things that just cannot happen here are happening here, and we find ourselves surprised, shocked really. (It brings to mind my Uber driver in New Orleans right after the election, mocking me for not knowing how close to the surface racism and hatred has always remained.) And, on the anniversary of Hiroshima, across a small sea on one side and a large sea on the other from a country that has devoted three quarters of a century to protecting the world from what science has enabled us to do, just because we can, two buffoons are having an atomic penis war, a frat boy contest to see who can best write his name in the snow.

My Uber driver, that day in New Orleans, told me he gets up every morning and he feels lucky to be alive. To have his children and his grandchildren and to see the sun and to chat with all sorts of people from all sorts of places as he transports them from here to there. And he reminded me that unless you take action, complaining is pointless. I think about my wise Uber driver every time I shake my head and roll my eyes in despair and wonder what action there is I can take.

In the meantime, it's wedding season, and we party like it's, well, some other time, and we revel in each others joys and we look forward to all the upcoming celebrations. And we complain about our hair and our makeup and our bodies even though there's not much we can do to change any of it. While the world teeters on the brink and Charlottesville burns. And we feel lucky, each day, for the reprieve, so we can continue to enjoy the good stuff.

Jogging Memories

I drove by the house I grew up in the other day.  Not the apartment building of my childhood, not any of the apartments or condos or town homes I landed in, briefly, along the way. The house I grew up in, from the time I was about thirty-four.

It wasn't even finished yet, the suburban house in the kind of neighborhood I used to drool over as a city kid, the kind of neighborhood I later began to dread as I embraced the kind and gentle (relatively speaking, for a New Yorker) urban life on the north side of Chicago. We were lured by the promise of fenced in back yards and cavernous two story family rooms and decent public schools.

My first morning there, I went for a run. The darkness and the quiet frightened me, almost as much as the young black boy had, down in the city months earlier, when he had reached inside his jacket for an imaginary gun while I sat in my car, boxed in at a traffic light, my two children sleeping ducks in their car seats. At least I could see him. Here, I could barely see the reflective stripes on my running shoes. I wondered what unknown evils lurked within the opaque suburban dawn.

As it turns out, though it wasn't all what one would dream it would be behind a white picket fence, it wasn't all bad. All sorts of memories flooded my brain as I drove by the old house -- the firsts, the joys, the challenges. Our swing set had been felled years earlier by a micro burst, but the loss seemed startlingly fresh when I noticed the new people had installed their own swing set, on the wrong side of the yard. Where the old cobwebbed trampoline was supposed to be. I wondered what other changes they had made, what else they had done to dismantle the life that had once belonged to us there. There, where I raised three children and grew up alongside them, or at least tried to. A jumble of years, memories of rude and not so rude awakenings in the quiet early morning hum of suburbia. By the time I left that house, I felt as unfinished as the kitchen had looked the day we moved in.

I went to a party in the old neighborhood last night, blocks away from that house where my kids -- and I -- grew up, a stone's throw away from my oldest daughter's best friend's house. There were a few familiar faces, but I felt like a stranger, not unlike the way I felt on that first morning run so many years ago. At the party in the old neighborhood, everybody still seemed forty-something, the way I used to be. They seemed so young and content, relieved by the relatively new found freedom of raising older children, but not yet struggling with the puzzling irrelevance that overtakes you when they actually leave. When the band packed up and the eerie darkness and quiet settled over the large yard, I wondered what unknown evils lurked beyond the orange flicker of the fire pit. I felt unfinished, still, and uncertain.

I am back in my townhouse, one suburb over but seemingly a world away, the house I am growing up in these days. The rumble of the train only a half block away is my security blanket, the steady stream of headlights reassures me. I will go for a run in the morning, a slower, more plodding run than that run so many years ago. It will hurt more, but I might not feel quite as lost. Still not quite sure, though, how I got here, or what lies ahead.