Ahh. The Holidays.

Ahh. The holidays. They seem to show up, whether you like it or not. Kind of like death and taxes, except a bit more festive. Theoretically.

This past week, no matter how thick and dark the cloud cover (oh, yeah, and the weather sucked too), the promise of good tidings peppered every chance encounter. The endless refrain of "Happy Passovers" and "Happy Easters"  (and generic "happy holidays" when things just aren't all that obvious) couldn't help but add a few molecules of optimism to the tired March air. Thoughts of matzoh balls and gefilte fish and several portions too many of my friend's butter drenched lemon chicken lifted my spirits all week. And all those glasses of wine, of course, because it's part of the ritual, and you never want to seem as if you're not taking the holiday seriously.

Ahh. The holidays. The anticipation, the rituals, the heartburn (oh, yeah, and the food can take its toll too). We look forward to them, and we should. Family, friends, too much food, too much to drink. The holidays allow us to take a breath, to catch up, to reflect. The holidays force us to take a breath, to catch up, to reflect. If it were easy, or uncomplicated, what would be the point?

A few months ago, when we rang in 2018, I toasted the new year with a touch of added enthusiasm. "Eighteen." "Chai," in Hebrew (not to be confused with the tea), the number eighteen, the symbol for life. The year of "chai," a nice change of pace from 2017, which had certainly had its share of surreal moments. Good ones, too, great ones even. But surreal seemed a pervasive theme.

All right, so a few months into it, and my optimism in certain respects may have been a bit premature, but I have also been blessed with  a few sweet surprises. As I sit here now, bloated and exhausted with a post-Seder hangover, I'm thinking "lighten up, Frances," life is good. Yes, the holidays arrived with the usual juggle of family and old wounds and new wounds and melancholy thoughts about the irony of how time flies even when the Seder itself seems to last an eternity. I wonder if it's possible to make everything else slow down and still get to dessert more quickly.

In this year of "chai," or "life," as in any year, we can't have it both ways. Time won't stand still, and the Passover story won't get any shorter. Life just doesn't seem to work like that, even in the extra special year of "chai." No, we can't have it both ways, but we can have it all; in fact, we are stuck with it all. The good, the bad, the high and the hangover. Or the afterglow, if you are able to look at it that way.

No graduation goggles or rose colored classes for me, or anything else that might warp my view of reality -- wine notwithstanding. Today, like all days, will be a mixed bag, complicated, as holidays are, by a few extra moving pieces. There will be petty annoyances and unexpected pleasures, as there should be. And, with a little bit of coffee and maybe an antacid or two,  I'll be armed and ready for yet another day of surprises -- just another day in the (year of) life.

Bombs and Bomshells

Somebody asked me yesterday what I would wish for if I had three wishes. Outside of the obvious (health, happiness, and prosperity for my children), I couldn't really think of anything that didn't make me sound shallow and just a tad self-involved. When you have spent the better part of the week hosting your very own pity party while you wait for antibiotics to work their magic on some mysterious infection, you find yourself not giving much of a shit about the greater good or making the world a better place. You aim low, and you go even lower.

It seems a lifetime ago that I dubbed this, 2018, the year of "chai" -- not the tea, but the Hebrew number "18," the symbol of life. I was filled with optimism, determined to seek out and derive full enjoyment of all the good things life had tossed my way. Nothing like a few minor setbacks in a row to suck the Pollyanna right out of you. To the extent that there was any Pollyanna in you in the first place.

Back in bed for the umpteenth time this week -- exhausted after finally washing my hair -- I cannot decide whether the bright spring sun streaming through my blinds is making me feel joyful or just bitchier. That's a lie; there's no contest. What good is sunshine if you can't be out enjoying it. It's just making me squint.

In keeping with my mood, I was thinking this morning about how ridiculous it is that we got rid of Al Franken. As if on cue, the Dems' sacrificial lamb emerged today, to call out the hypocrisy of Jeff Sessions -- the poster child for selective amnesia -- for firing the person investigating him for lack of candor. Yay! Such an intelligent perspective! But so what? Jeff Sessions' job is extra secure now, and our entire country remains at the mercy of an incompetent and corrupt buffoon and his shrinking but shameless band of sycophants.

So Al Franken, comedian, went down for a silly and somewhat lecherous but not at all secret picture. Now, our best hopes -- if there is any hope at all -- for bringing down our president, who has done nothing but compromise our security and pretty much undermine the very foundation of our democracy, are a porn star, a Playboy bunny, and an aspiring apprentice. I mean no disrespect to any of those women -- although I wanted to ask the bunny what possible reason she could have had for having sex with such a vile creature if it wasn't money. It's just fascinating to me that it's the bombshells -- not the nuclear bombs -- that get our collective attention.

If I am, indeed, as shallow as I think I am sometimes, I apparently have plenty of company.

Let's Hear it for the Girls!

When the going gets tough, you sometimes realize you're not as tough as you like to think you are. So when the going gets tough, the not-so-tough crumble into the arms of the wonderful women in their life -- typically the mothers and the girlfriends. And they are there, willing and able to serve, always.

And then, there are the daughters. It should be no surprise, I suppose, that the miraculous beings who once brought indescribable joy with just a smile -- you know, the whole body smile with arms and legs flailing and cheeks looking as though they might actually burst, the kind of smile we tend to unlearn all too quickly -- are there to lift you up. They are there, even though you have promised yourself over and over that you would never become a burden to them, that you would always remember that it is your job (a labor of love, of course) to be there for them. It's a slippery slope, I think. Let them take care of you once, and it's only a matter of time before they're taking away your car keys and changing your diapers. I come by it honestly; my own mother swats me away if I try to hold onto her when we cross the street.

I remember, once, long ago, a friend -- already a seasoned mother with two toddlers -- reminded me that I did not always have to like my child; all I had to do was love her. It was one of those days, the kind of day when a young, overtired mother begins to understand why some animals eat their young. I recall being horrified by the advice, determined to like my screaming, inconsolable, tyrannical baby no matter what she did, though I certainly tucked the wisdom away for future reference. It has come in handy, more than a few times.

My adult daughters -- beautiful, bright and, as I had always hoped, pursuing their own lives with determination and passion -- never cease to amaze. Like my girlfriends, the ones who, like me, have endured so many more years of the odd brew of experiences and emotions that prepare us to cope with the ravages and gifts of time, my daughters are wise and loving and always there when I just cannot help but need them, even when I insist I do not.

When I look at my peers, I don't see wrinkles or sagging breasts or arm flaps. To me, they look just as good as they always did -- even better -- because, to me, they are forever beautiful. When I look at my daughters, I sometimes see the babies they once were, doing the full body smile, and I forget to see the beautiful women they have become. I was reminded of that last night -- not just of the beautiful women that they are, but of how their beauty will only become richer as time marches on.

Sometimes, I sit back and enjoy the show. Sometimes, when I'm not so tough, I let them step in to recreate the joy I always felt, just when they smiled.

Ladies' Night Out

I had dinner last night with two ladies -- one, a decade or so younger than I but a relatively old friend, the other almost a decade older than I, a new acquaintance.

The three of us lead different lives with considerable overlap. The ages of our kids, the stages of our lives, our fluctuating levels of contentment and discontent and, for the most part, some ill-defined place in between. My younger friend and I had taken the traditional route. We had postponed our "swingin' adult singlehood," had raised kids and let our marriages fail first. Our new acquaintance did things in reverse, which leaves her with a startlingly rose colored memory of carefree dating days that neither of the other of us can quite understand.

Three women, shaped by our own unique choices -- good and bad -- and a lifetime of stuff that was beyond our control. Two of us ordered stick to your ribs, man-sized meals, the third ordered boiled chicken. She is determined to be thin at her daughters' college graduations.

Thin is overrated, I told her, shoveling in another hunk of bread slathered with butter.

You say that because you're thin, she responded, picking at some crumbs.

Of course, like any red-blooded woman, I don't consider myself thin, but that's beside the point. We agreed that thin may not be a bad thing, but it certainly doesn't guarantee happiness. Certainly not the way a huge plate of chicken Parmesan does. Or personal fulfillment or true love, I'd imagine, though I can only speak of what I know.

We found ourselves to be on the same page on lots of things. Trump -- tragic. Fox News -- unwatchable. My new acquaintance was a bit taken aback when she discovered that MSNBC was my perennial background noise -- she's a CNN addict -- but she was okay with it, because they're on her side. When did we all take sides? We had talked, earlier, about how we yearn for the days of George Bush. He was a dope, but a relatively harmless dope. I hated the way he pronounced "nuclear" ("nucular") but at least he wasn't treating the button as if it were attached to a pinball machine.

We have not only taken sides, but we have even begun to isolate ourselves within our own camps. We are, all three of us, unintentionally nocturnal. We cozy up with our pets to binge watch whatever we choose, and we find ourselves resenting intrusions by actual people during the day. We all made a great show of tucking our phones away when we sat down to dinner, but the sense of relief was palpable when we were able to retrieve them -- on the pretense of adding our new acquaintance to our virtual spheres. The phones stayed on the table, after that. Phew.

I supported my new friend's quest for thinness, mostly because she rejected my offer to share my chicken Parmesan. We scurried off to our respective cocoons, with promises to make this a regular "thing." It was lots of fun, but I don't know that any of us is capable of that kind of commitment.

No Place Like Home!

A friend asked me, the other day, if I have a bucket list.

I don't. There are lots of things I'd like to do before I "kick the bucket" -- am I the only one who just recently discovered that was the root of the phrase? -- but I also know I can die happy without doing most of them. Well, not happy to die, but certainly not feeling my time here was a complete waste.

This weekend my daughter and her husband are moving to Chicago from New York. From my home town and their adopted home town, to my adopted hometown and her home town and his soon to be home town because, for them, home is sweet as long as the other one is there too. (As long as he remains a Cubs fan.) This move is certainly a wish list item for me, since I have no bucket list. Semantics aside, my bucket runneth over.

They've been together in New York City for about four years. It never seemed all that far away to me, since I've never completely let it go. When I left, more than thirty years ago, I was terrified. I had spent time away before -- in college, in law school -- but I always assumed I would be back. So did my parents. The 800 miles was bad enough; add to it the gentile waiting for me at the other end of my journey, and, well, let's just say we had a bit of patching up to do over the next few months. Okay, years.

I've been thinking a lot about that time, when I chose to uproot myself and begin a life where I knew nobody and had no job, knowing my father was just about the only thing standing in between my mother's angry head and a hot oven. On my last night as an official New Yorker, friends from work took me out for dinner. I can't even remember their names. They came back with me to my studio apartment to help me pack, and stayed with me until the movers came in the morning. On the plane, I set next to a little boy who was off to see his dad in Chicago for the summer. We were kind of in the same boat, that young boy and I. Brave faces, ambivalent hearts, scared to death.

It doesn't matter that I know this was their plan, my daughter and her husband, to move back, eventually, to the home town she loves. This week, I could not help but be a little wistful, as she told me about a farewell run with one friend, a final barre class at the gym, a goodbye bash at one of their favorite haunts. Four years may not be a long time, but there will be so much for them to remember, fondly, and much for me to remember on their behalf. The craziness, the commotion, the exhilaration. Their engagement in Central Park. Their weekly Sunday dinners with my mom and brother. Their first home together.

They are en route as I write this. I know they are excited, and, like I said, my bucket runneth over. I just can't stop thinking about that little boy on the plane so long ago, and that scared little twenty-five year old girl sitting next to him.