Disorientation

Somewhere near Tokyo is what I had been telling people when they asked where my son would be teaching English in Japan. Frankly, I had no idea of the name of the town, but how far could it be from Tokyo, or anywhere else for that matter in that tiny little archipelago of a nation? My son was appalled by my ignorance, more appalled knowing that even if I had been accurate and said somewhere a bit south and west of Osaka, nobody -- including me -- would have known the difference.

When I was growing up in New York, my mother and my brother used to give me geography quizzes each weekend as my father would drive us from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Not so much quizzes as the same question over and over, week after week. "East River or Hudson River?" they'd routinely ask, except on the days dad inexplicably decided to forego the relative speed and convenience of either riverside highway and buck the city traffic by driving up through the middle. Really, I never got that. But at least I could avoid the humiliation of getting the river wrong.

You would think that a child of slightly above average intelligence who sat in the back seat of a Cadillac with large, clean windows at least once a week for the journey from an outer borough into the real city would eventually be able to distinguish between the two rivers bordering the north-south sliver of island metropolis. I'd like to think I at least knew, when we came out of the Battery Tunnel at the lower tip of Manhattan, that we were at the southernmost point, since the street numbers -- once you got to them -- went from low to high. South to north. There was no reason to believe the urban planners had done it backwards. Life in the big city is hard enough.

The aptly named East River indeed ran up the east side, while the less obviously named but much prettier Hudson bordered the west. Heralded by the welcoming outstretched arm of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, the Hudson, on a sunny day, was a crystal and twinkling blue, the shores of New Jersey looking nondescript across the wide expanse. No big buildings, no sign of Snooki and her gang, just what appeared to be a giant suburb. Until you hit midtown, that is, to see the beginnings of the somewhat spectacular cliffs of the Palisades and, after that, the lighthouse at the base of the majestic George Washington Bridge, but, truthfully, we rarely headed that far. The views along the murky East River (officially not even a river but a "tidal estuary," as my brother loved to point out) were not quite as scenic, at times even unpleasant -- no offense intended to the residents of Long Island City.

With a fifty per cent chance of getting it right, I was pretty much wrong about half the time, much to my brother's amusement and my mother's frustration. Dad, my most steadfast cheerleader, always seemed not to care. Either he knew it didn't matter, in the grand scheme of things, or he was confident that, as with everything else, I would figure it out one day. Both, as it turns out, were true.

Granted, I know very little about the geography of Japan, very little about anything Asian, except maybe the food. All I know is my son is going to be so far away he might as well be on another planet. Culturally, that might not be so far from the truth. But insomnia in the wee hours of the morning can occasionally be a gift, and, this morning, I took advantage of that gift and decided to give myself a little geography lesson.  Looking at the map on my laptop, I cut myself a little slack on the Tokyo thing. Certainly less than a day trip. Sapporo in the north seems like it would be a bit of a schlep, but I'm sure the beer is available in Himeji, the town where my son will be living for the next year. Hiroshima and Nagasaki seem perilously close, but I worry far less about the ancient radiation there than the relatively fresh stuff emanating from Fukushima in the northeast.

The good news is Himeji is more southwest than northeast, and hopefully the ocean breezes have blown away enough of the nuclear cloud to render Himeji relatively free of radiation related illnesses. I was a little dismayed to notice that North Korea appears to be only a short boat ride away to the west, but as long as the lunatics over there keep shooting blanks I'll try not to give it too much thought. Bottom line: Himeji is far away, and I will have to try very hard to not count the days until my son's latest Japan adventure comes to a close. Selfish, I know, but I've done worse things.

For Mother's Day, I am getting a trip to Japan. Funny, it's the Far East, but I'll travel westward to get there. And I thought the whole East River/Hudson River quiz was confusing!

Dog Days of May

I believe dogs have a sixth sense, and Manny, my blind puggle is no exception. It's just that his sixth sense is actually only his fifth, since he cannot see. A mere technicality.

He knows, I believe, that this is the one year anniversary of the worst day of his life, the day I carried his best friend, Leo, away, and never brought him back. Sometimes I think I should have taken him with me that evening, given him the closure that I got as Leo looked at me with his trusting, soft brown eyes and wagged his weighty tail for the last time. But that would not have been fair to Leo, for whom the feeling of unconditional love wasn't exactly mutual.

Though I hate to admit it, the worst day of Leo's life was probably the day I drove off empty handed and returned with his odd looking new little brother. Like any older sibling, he resented the intrusion, the sudden sharing of his long held post as king of the castle. But Leo, a lab through and through, was always kind to Manny, or at least subtle in showing his annoyance. He never bit, never shoved, rarely even barked at the little pain in the ass (and believe me, there were times I would have barked and taken him in my powerful front paws and tossed him across the room, if I could have). Leo was kind to the core, and was just never much of an alpha male. I hate to speak ill of the dead, but he peed in a squat until he was about two, and continued to do so well beyond that, as long as none of the other guys were looking.

To be fair, in the months Leo was sick, Manny seemed to know, and became much more respectful of his privacy, his need for personal space. That sixth sense -- it kicked in almost immediately. He would stay away from Leo's food, he cut down on the frequent bark alerts when he thought there was something interesting enough outside to drag Leo to the window, he would stop spooning with Leo for naps, reluctantly skulking off to a less cozy location.

I wonder to this day whether Manny's eyesight had been failing him for a while, and I failed to notice. Manny had spent his entire life following Leo around, looking to him for guidance. When Leo was the first one barking at some fascinating scene out the window, Manny would race over, barking wildly before he even reached Leo's side. We often joked that he had no idea what he was barking at, but if Leo had seen it, it must have been a dilly. Maybe Leo was more than his mentor; maybe he was Manny's eyes.

Manny has decided to commemorate the anniversary of Leo's death with an ear infection. There's a part of me that is terrified, for both me and Manny, that he will lose his sense of hearing as well. Stranger things have happened. Come to think of it, he doesn't appear to hear me most of the time; maybe, like his blindness, it's something that's been brewing for a while and I've been so preoccupied I have failed to notice. I remain optimistic, though. There is no reason to believe Manny will be adding deafness to his list of disabilities (which, in addition to blindness, includes morbid obesity and unbridled stinkiness).

At the very least, he retains his sixth sense, and I expect that he will be quite subdued today, joining me in silent remembrance of our loyal friend.

You Should See the Other Guy!

At least I decided to go with the black dress. It went so much better with my black eye than the red would have. Especially once the bleeding stopped.

My reaction after I opened the rental car door into the top of my cheekbone was sufficiently unsettling that even my three children stopped picking on me for a moment. I could hear their stunned silence as I stood there, holding my hands over my left eye as my entire head throbbed. I felt like a toddler who had just fallen, mouth open in preparation for a good cry but unable to make a sound. My daughter pulled my hands away, and her reaction was calming. "Oy. You're bleeding!" Great. It seemed unlikely that I would be able to get a same day appointment for a blow dry, and now I was going to be a stringy haired mess with a huge shiner for my cousin's wedding. So much for the momentary high of people I haven't seen in a while telling me I looked great. As gushingly full of shit as my favorite cousins can be (okay, they're my only cousins, but they'd be my favorites no matter what), that would be a white lie beyond even their capabilities.

As quickly as my children sprung into action to get me some ice, my mother shifted effortlessly into 'nurturer in chief' mode, making me weepy with her compassionate and constructive commentary. "Why on earth did you do that???" she asked, giving me that look she's so good at, the same one she gave me when she first saw me sporting my freshman fifteen. How does one respond to that? Because there wasn't a train coming that I could throw myself in front of, so this was the next best option? 

Looking like a battered woman has its benefits. People -- even your children -- take pity on you. My daughter insisted on taking over the driving duties for the weekend. She said she wanted me to rest. I'm pretty sure it was more of a safety issue, but I was perfectly willing to relinquish the wheel and start drinking as early in the day as possible. I warned my soon to be ex that, in his absence, I was going to blame him for the shiner, finally give everyone the long awaited opportunity to nod and tsk tsk knowingly. (Goyim, they beat their wives. I could already hear the smug whispers.) My ex was generous about taking the heat; "they won't believe the car story anyway," he pointed out.

At the wedding, not only was I able to dance like a wild woman and blame it on the hallucinogens some hotel doctor gave me for the pain (who would know there was no hotel doctor?), but my children -- all three of them -- joined me on the dance floor. All it took was a quick snap of my head toward the parquet tiles, and they followed me as if I were Mother Goose, my three loyal subjects somehow feeling beholden to me for all the years of unconditional love, paying it forward. More likely they wanted to be there to pick me up and whisk me off as soon as I either tripped on my big clumsy feet or passed out, but I'll take it. There's a hint of devotion there, and I'm happy to grab onto it. It was nice to be able to dance, nicer still to have my three kids (and an occasional cousin) as partners.

I was even able to play the pity card at LaGuardia airport, not generally known for its smiling customer service. As infrequent flyers (or maybe just idiots) continued to hold up the security screening process -- when TSA agents repeatedly warn folks to make sure their pockets are completely empty before they go through the creepy x-ray machine, apparently what they mean is empty except for whatever any given person happens to still have in his pockets -- the agent monitoring the metal detector reserved only for crew waved me and my children over, rescuing us from the ridiculously long line. He even smiled and looked the other way when I told the college girl in front of us I was temporarily adopting her and she should come with us. Battered women are entitled to shelter for themselves and their offspring, and also to expedited airport screening. Good to know.

My eye is now an attractive reddish purple punctuated by a little brown scab just above the cheekbone. Today, the black dress wouldn't match so well. I might just have to go shopping so I can accentuate the new eye color.

Impermanent Stains

I'm still on a high from my uncharacteristic hissy fit, the one that seemed to knock all the lawyers' heads together. Things are going to start happening, The best way to get your attorneys to stop "working the file" is to make them think you're not going to pay them anymore because you're going to be shackled to a bed in the loony bin.

Now don't get me wrong. I don't mean to suggest I've never had a hissy fit before. I've tossed a few glasses of cheap red wine on laps, I've hurled unzipped suitcases down the stairs (long story), launched a few other improbable flying objects. And, yes, I've thrown incisive and incredibly angry words around with abandon, the kind that can do more lasting damage than any sticks and stones. Provoked or unprovoked? Well, that's usually in the eye of the beholder. But as long as the target is unsuspecting and not the usual recipient of my wrath, a hissy fit is worth more than a thousand mature, reasonable conversations.

Last night, when we literally blew in to my cousin's rehearsal dinner in Westport, Connecticut, unshowered and exhausted after a long day of travel, I was feeling a bit on the verge. First, there were the repeated flight delays -- always in twenty minute increments, although the final one was, oddly, only eighteen. Then there was the  interminable conversation at the rental car counter during which I had to reject thousands of upgrade options that I had already rejected in my online reservation and finally explain that I didn't give a flying fuck what kind of car I'd be driving to my cousin's wedding and, no, I was not willing to pay an extra million dollars for a BMW. The ride from New York City to Connecticut at the height of Friday rush hour was, as you can imagine, a treat, particularly since the effects of the tiny fraction of an anxiety pill I had taken so I could sleep on the plane had not quite passed through my system and I kept fighting the urge to doze.

No rest for the wicked, as usual, and after we went through our obligatory (and, seriously, heartfelt) screaming hugs with all the cousins at the hotel, my cousin (the mother of the bride) gave me the once over, told me we needed to be downstairs in ten minutes, and said "you're gonna change, aren't you?" I hope she was just referring to the fact I was wearing jeans and not to the big brown smudge marks on my upper left thigh, which may have led her to believe that, in the months since I last saw her, I had become incontinent. It was chocolate. Really. Remember the anxiety pill? Well, on take-off, I apparently fell asleep while eating a Baby Ruth. My daughter is still laughing at the image -- the candy bar in my left hand, raised on its way to my mouth, my head dropped back, my mouth open. She had thought I was offering her a bite, which she took. Apparently, gravity eventually took my arm down, candy bar and all, and I somehow rubbed what was left of it all over my jeans. Nice.

It's morning, and I'm back in my happy place. Sitting in a Starbucks, wearing baggy workout clothes -- I have twelve hours to lose enough weight so that my dress will zip -- and drug free. At least until my mom arrives in a few hours. I have no plans for any hissy fits today, but if the need arises, I will don my jeans with the suspicious brown stains and make sure that anyone who dares to mess with me knows I mean business. Craziness is like anything else. It's all about the outfit.

Paper Trails

Even I have a breaking point. Yesterday, after the umpteenth request from my attorneys to produce yet another year’s worth of pointless documents because my husband’s genius attorney keeps demanding them, I may have gone a bit ballistic.

I figure each email exchange about this nonsense costs a few hundred bucks, and I can only imagine what it will cost me once I produce stacks of statements so that both sets of attorneys can pretend to flip through them and conclude there’s nothing in there that could possibly have an impact on our divorce settlement.  The only thing having an impact on our settlement, after over two years of masterful fee generating, is the continuing emptying of the marital pot by the people we hired to protect our interests. Ironic, no?

Over time, I have discovered that if you are a person who generally appears to be calm and agreeable and you suddenly have a hissy fit, people react. And so it was, yesterday, when I sent a scathing email to my attorneys laying out what the only relevant issues are, how irrelevant everything else is, and how I refuse to allow them to rack up more fees over sheer and utter bullshit. To top it off, I emailed my husband – who, at least in theory, agrees with me about all this – and told him about the nasty email I sent to the thieving bulldogs of the bar, asking him if maybe he’d like to send a similar one to his. Which would have been fine, except I accidentally sent the email intended for my husband to my attorneys. Oopsy.

My husband was amused, and assured me – correctly, no doubt – that there are two groups unaffected by personal insults and rudeness: timeshare salespeople and divorce lawyers. I’d add telemarketers, by I certainly get his point. My attorney did, in fact, seem unaffected. “Breathe, and call me later when you’re calm,” she wrote. Since I didn’t expect to feel calm any time soon (although I did fully intend to keep breathing – I am determined to not let this kill me) I made a conscious decision not to call at all that day, even though I had earlier promised I would.

Back to the good news. Lo and behold, the next communications I had from my attorneys had absolutely nothing to do with requests for useless documents (good for my psyche, good for the trees) and everything to do with setting up a meeting to discuss the issues that are actually relevant. Dang. Even my husband jumped on the bandwagon and is slowly trying to explain to his dimwitted attorney that she needs to stop wasting time and money on pointless court pleadings and maybe focus on the stuff that matters. It will no doubt take her a while to process all this, and she’ll feel a bit naked when the shopping bag full of papers she totes into court (I am not making this up) is not as full as she likes it to be, but maybe she’ll get there.

We had hoped (and by we I mean the ones not getting paid royally for our participation in the matrimonial court circus) that this would all be over and done before another wedding anniversary was upon us. Not bloody likely, with only six days left until number twenty-six. At the outset of this whole ordeal, my attorney told me that the longer I stay married, the better it is for me. Theoretically I suppose that’s true, since my entitlements increase with every year I have under my belt. Whoop dee doo. My piece of the pie may be growing, but that doesn’t really help me when somebody else is eating the whole friggin’ pie. It’s like sitting in a bathtub with the drain open. Everything gets sucked out before I even have time to soap up. And (might as well beat the metaphor to death) I come out feeling icky.

All I can do is breathe. And throw an occasional hissy fit. Guess I’d better go shopping for an anniversary gift. Naturally, I’ll send the credit card statement to my attorneys.

The Art of Shopping

Weeks ago, when the unseasonably warm March weather put me in a shopping mood, I visited Sunflower in Highland Park. I needed a bit of retail therapy after endless months spent on the selling end of a cash register.

No matter how personal the touch might be, a cookie cutter national chain store in a large suburban shopping mall cannot possibly envelop you in its loving arms when you walk in the way a small boutique does. Granted, I have been to Sheridan Road in Highland Park more than a few times over the years, and have grown to expect a warm hug when I walk into Sunflower. But even my friends, the ones I drag there against their will for the first time, emerge feeling as if they are part of a new family. A nice family. A family with fantastic taste.

And so it was, a few weeks ago, when my two friends – Sunflower virgins – and I went on a little spring shopping spree. We are, the three of us, completely different from each other in size, shape, and temperament. We are, the three of us, a random sample of real women, women who have raised kids and worked (not to suggest that those two are mutually exclusive) and struggled sometimes to accept ourselves the way we are. We all have the fine, character lines – dare I say wrinkles? – to prove it. Sound familiar?

Three customers, three wildly different body types, a thousand different body hangups. Two fitting rooms. The racks, filled with colorful and, yes, rest assured, black garments beckoned us all. Tentatively, we each did some close examining of the merchandise, maybe even a little grabbing. Holding the enticing items up to the light, we all looked to our hosts, awaiting guidance.

The owner, Susie, and her sales associate, Mimi, did not disappoint. They never do. They sized up my friends in about three nanoseconds, processing enough information about their body types and temperaments to call immediately upon this gift they have – a sixth sense, really – of knowing exactly what to do. The fitting rooms filled up, pushing us out onto the sales floor – which seems more like a favorite friend’s parlor than anything – to finish buttoning and zipping and adjusting our various body parts. When you’re in your fifties, things just seem to stray. I found my left boob hovering near the floor when I bent over to slip on a pair of brightly colored skinny jeans. The folks at Sunflower seemed not to find that strange.

We each took several turns in front of the three way mirrors, and marveled at how good we looked. Transformed, somehow. We were all a bit skeptical. Maybe it was an optical illusion fueled by trick skinny mirrors. Susie assured us the mirrors in her store were accurate, that what we were seeing was absolutely real. I looked back and forth from the mirror to my friend. Hmm. Susie had a point. The “in the flesh” image and the reflection were remarkably the same.

My friends are hooked, and have already returned several times, bringing friends of their own. As for me, well let’s just say it’s become a bit of a habit for me, my visits to Sunflower. Beats drinking. No alcoholic haze, no alcohol induced brazenness, no hangover. Just lots of pretty new things, a brazenness to wear and to flaunt, inspired both by the realistic mirrors and the brutally Though I did blurt out an occasional “I love you guys,” I was not bullshitting. Stone cold sober, my professions of love and everlasting devotion were completely heartfelt.

My career as a retailer in a cookie cutter national chain store in a large suburban mall has come to an end, and the cookie cutter clothing I had amassed with my hefty discount has been pushed to the back of the closet. After all, I had to make room for all the new stuff.

Real women are unique. Their clothing – and the shopping experience that brings them together -- should be, as well.

Check out my favorite store, Sunflower, in Highland Park, IL.

http://www.facebook.com/sunflowerboutique

http://sunflowerboutique.wordpress.com

Become a follower of "An Eagle's Tale" (or, if you already are one, keep following!) and get a 15% discount if you mention it at Sunflower!

Fired Up

Does this outfit make me look fat?

When opportunity knocks, I seem to always be in the bathroom. 

Or, as will be the case this coming Saturday, a thousand miles away for a family wedding when the entire local fire department -- truck and all -- will be visiting my Starbucks. If the fees for changing flights weren't so steep, I'd skip the rehearsal dinner Friday (heck I'll see them all in six months for Thanksgiving; I can just watch the video) and stick around here a bit Saturday just for the chance to be lifted (hoisted?) onto the truck by one of deep dark suburbia's finest. The mere thought is making me swoon. Me, in my slightly too short fire engine red dress and slightly too high spiked heels (after all, I'm going to have to head right from the airport to the ceremony), a buff young stud steadying me with his large rough hands around my hips as I get ready to view the machinery. Watch the updo, I'll squeal, tossing my head back as he places his helmet on me.  Fuck it; I really wanted to wear my hair down anyway.

After I saw the flyer, I asked my morning fireman Starbucks buddy whether there was any way they could push things back a week. Shockingly, he laughed, apparently thinking I was joking (or nuts). In his wildest imagination, I suppose, he could not conjure up the images I was conjuring up. Of course not; to him, I'm just the tired looking old broad in sweats who taps away on her laptop every morning, squinting because her eyes have long outlived their shelf life. Ha! He hasn't seen me in the red dress. (And if he does, with any luck, his vision isn't so good either.)

Ah, well, back to reality. My baby cousin (who just turned thirty this week -- yipes!), the wobbly little toddler I propped up on my bed one day long ago so I could deck her out in all sorts of fake costume jewelry, is going to be heading down the aisle this weekend with, I'm guessing, not a fake bauble within striking distance of her bouquet. We all bring truckloads of our own baggage to weddings, depending on how lucky -- or, as is often the case -- unlucky we have been with the whole lifelong commitment thing. As cynical as I am, though, I remain optimistic for my cousin and her fiance, who seem so natural together. Deep down, I am a hopeless romantic, fully able to push aside thoughts of reality -- kids, money issues, middle age, boredom -- and believe wholeheartedly in the soul mate thing. Even if it begins when you're in your twenties and neither one of you really has any sense of who you are or who you might become.

It's no wonder, more than two years into a costly divorce, that I might find the idea of a quick hook up in a hook and ladder a bit more appealing than the prospect of something permanent. As expensive as weddings can be, the financial and emotional costs don't hold a candle to what you need to lay out to tear it all asunder. Maybe if they did, folks wouldn't rush to the altar so quickly. But where would that  leave us? There's something nice about the whole young nuclear family thing, the glue that keeps everything working relatively smoothly as kids and parents alike struggle through the challenges of growing up. Even if it all starts going to shit at some point, it still seems like a pretty good system.

The other night, I enjoyed a pizza dinner with my own nuclear family, us and our three kids, still somehow glued together even though the nucleus has unraveled a bit. I reminisced about how my husband and I used to share a pizza (I'd peel off the top, leaving him the bottom). "I always hated that," he said.

"So that's what it's all about!" my son piped up. Maybe he's right. Maybe it was all those little indignities, the splitting of a pizza vertically instead of on a horizontal plane. Why didn't he just say so back then? Hmm, come to think of it, he did. I'm sure he committed his fair share of petty crimes, but I can't even remember. Ha, that's bullshit! Of course, I remember each one, but there's no point in dwelling on it now. After all, Illinois is a no fault state. (I tremble to think what divorce would cost in a "fault" state.)

We've grown older, my husband and I, and I like to think we've both grown up a bit. No doubt, we'd do things differently now than we did back then, if only we had the chance. We don't, but my cousin and her fiance and every other young couple does. My advice to them? When opportunity knocks, don't get caught in the bathroom. And, to him in particular, never leave the seat up!

Do I believe in the possibility of love and commitment everlasting? You bet. For now, though, bring on the firemen.