The Restive Nest

This morning, I woke up searching for offspring.

Manny, still under the weather with some mysterious ailment (I know this because his ordinarily upward curled tail has been ramrod straight and pointed toward the floor for three days and he did not wake me in the wee hours of the morning to try to con me into a little breakfast), seemed unconcerned about the emptiness filling the house. With everybody else gone, he took advantage of the morning's flurry of inactivity and slept in. I did not know what to do. I willed myself to relax and stay in bed, just as normal people -- and dogs -- do on Sunday mornings. Maybe even get rid of some of the dark circles  around my eyes that appear to be widening at an alarming rate.

I shot my youngest a quick text to make sure she had arrived safely in France. Okay, well I was fairly certain she had arrived safely as I had not heard otherwise, but I needed an excuse to connect with her. I was feeling overly nostalgic for our standard morning interaction, my delivery of a tall white mocha to her room before she slams the door in my face. If it is possible to glean anything from the tone of a text, she is safely across the pond and bitchy with sleeplessness. I pity the person in charge of delivering her cafe au lait. She seemed particularly annoyed that she and the girl with whose family she is staying for the next two weeks don't really understand each other. Damn foreigners. Somehow it was easier long distance, both of them tapping away on their iPhones, complete with apps for translation. I'm thinking maybe I should have purchased a more expansive international messaging plan.

Texting or calling my son in Japan is not an option, since he, for some reason, does not have a phone. I considered emailing or Skyping, or maybe even sending him a message on Facebook, but, if history is any indication, there would be no immediate -- or even imminent -- response, and I would eventually tire of watching my phone for a flashing red light that might indicate my son was trying to reach me. Odds are my hopes would be dashed, as usual; it would be Victoria's Secret getting a jump on Sunday, trying to lure me out of bed with news of a sale on lacy thongs. Ugh. Slash the price on some good, old-fashioned granny pants and they might capture my attention.

Plan A -- which I had early on rejected for fear of, well, rejection -- was to contact my eldest daughter, the one who is actually in the same metropolitan area as I, within driving distance, at least today. Her time in Chicago is limited, and much of it tends to be reserved for her friends. I get it, and I refuse to be one of those moms who tries to insert herself in her daughter's busy life, taking up valuable time that could be so much better spent with people her age. People who aren't moronic. People who don't irritate her with nagging comments and stupid questions. People who can stay up past eight in the evening. Fuck it. I decided it was a good day to call in a few chits, payback for the twenty-three hours of labor and the twenty-three years of worry tacked onto that. And I could catch her when she was down -- virtually immobilized from running a half marathon the day before.

As luck would have it, she is in dire pain, barely able to get out of bed, and, best of all, without plans. So off I will go this afternoon, to spend time with one of my little birds, to alleviate the emptiness that fills the nest.

Skirting the Issues

Pinch me please. My good friend and perennial purveyor of articles that might provoke a post from me during a particularly dry spell sent me a dilly last night. It was a piece about a piece advising young women starting out in legal careers to choose skirts and heels over pants and flats if they want to succeed.

Really! It didn't even have anything to do with showing a little leg. (Case in point: an elderly blind male judge routinely asked his clerk what women appearing before him were wearing; and no mention was made of his hands disappearing beneath his robe if the answer was "skirt.") The piece was all about women kowtowing to the prevailing view among older men that a woman wearing a "skirt suit" is powerful, competent, and grown up. Apparently, a young woman in pants and low heels, no matter how skilled she might be, is not to be respected. Even if she's really tall. Jeez, it's the twenty-first century and life beneath the glass ceiling is still in a state of chaos; it is, indeed, nasty, brutish, and short. Especially if you're a woman wearing flats.

My hideous experience the other night with premium denim that did not stretch as had been promised notwithstanding, I have proudly eschewed uncomfortable clothing for years. No Spanx, no control top pantyhose, no spiked heels except for black tie affairs. I still bare the scars of corns on my toes from foot squeezing pumps, can still recall the frustration of stuffing myself into a gait-restricting skirt suit and needing extra time to get where I was going. Don't even get me started on the delightful feeling of thighs rubbing together on a particularly hot day. Come to think of it though, the writer of the piece might be on to something. I may be comfy sitting here in Starbucks in my workout clothes, but I am not exactly being paid the big bucks for anything. No pain no gain, I suppose.

So what of short men? Why are they not expected to wear lifts to achieve credibility? And is there not a decent argument to be made for spending less time on frivolous pursuits like skirt shopping and more time on things that matter? Not that I really think most legal briefs matter, but, honestly, where's the substance in all of this? When the geezers who think women should be stuffed into strait jackets die off, there will be a whole new crop of unenlightened men running the show. If they decide bikinis are the way to go for credibility of young women in the work place, are we going to listen? Will there ever come a time when women become the sovereign voice on dress codes, when we can tell young men there is a direct correlation between success and wearing a Speedo to the office? (Lord, I hope not; just sayin'.")

I suppose we all need to follow some silly guidelines for making first impressions. But until somebody can prove to me that years of wearing skirt suits and foot destroying heels does anything to raise or retract the glass ceiling, I'm going to tell my daughters to work hard and play hard and love well, and to wear the proverbial pants -- both at work and at home -- as they see fit. If that means wearing a skirt and heels every once in a while, go for it. Ladies' choice.

Stretching the Imagination (If Nothing Else)

Nothing comes between me and my new premium denim. Even if it wanted to. Nothing.

I have always believed that one should practice what she preaches, and so if I am going to encourage customers to go down a size or two in their new overpriced premium denims, I am going to follow the sage advice of the premium denim mavens. They should feel tight, just short of painful. Kind of like yoga. How Zen.

The other day, as I immersed myself in sales training and tried on every kind of jean sold in the store, I settled on a pair of crops -- primarily because they contained the word "Twiggy" in the label. A yoga aficionado in my own right, I know what discomfort just short of pain is supposed to feel like; we refer to it as "going to your edge." I went down, and down again, in sizes, until I felt fairly certain any tighter a squeeze would result in a raging camel toe (not necessarily painful for me so much as anyone looking at me) and a complete cessation of breath (again, not necessarily painful for me, since I'd end up unconscious, but here I was considering the potential heartache of my children).

Gazing in the three-way mirror and stretching myself into my best imitation of a teenaged Brooke Shields (no wonder her head was so large and her eyebrows were so bushy; no room for excess fat or, um, anything in those Calvins -- it all had to go somewhere), I thought about how far we have come since the eighties. At least I didn't have to lie down to get the jeans on, and there was the sincere, scientifically proven promise that, within an hour, the Lycra infused denim would stretch. Ah, Brooke. If only we had been so progressive back then you might have stuck it out, not escaped to the wilds of Princeton just so you could wear sweats.

Anyway, off I went yesterday in my Twiggy crops, relying on time spent in traffic to provide me with enough give so I could actually eat something more than a sprig of parsley when I arrived at dinner. But, like the traffic, my new premium denims were at a stand still. No matter what I did -- stick one leg out the window, toss the other up on the dashboard, engage in a series of seated pelvic thrusts (much to the delight, or, more likely, revulsion, of the guy staring over at me from the car in the next lane), even stick my substantially stuffed wallet down my pants, the material clung to me for dear life. I could feel the muffin top rising. The pressure continued to mount. My phone shot out of my back pocket. My nose began to look fat, and I could swear my eyebrows were filling in. Note to self -- get a bikini wax.

I raced through dinner, praying the strain on the premium denim wouldn't cause it to explode off me. By the time I hit the road to head home, the traffic was moving and so were my new jeans, if only because I had unzipped them fully and allowed my aching belly to hang out and rest on my lap, the way it's supposed to.

Premium denim may, indeed, stretch, but at fifty-two, I don't have the time or patience to wait, and, let me tell you, stuck in traffic and my new pants, I was about as close to the edge as I'd ever want to be. This is probably a well kept secret, but sweat pants stretch as well, and a lot faster. All you need to do is loosen the drawstring.

Yep, we've come a long way, baby, since the eighties.

Shui Feng

It's become a habit, the good natured smile and schmooze. I automatically flashed a genuine, warm grin at the woman who appeared to live in the house two blocks away from mine as she brought a few more stray items to the recycling bin already awaiting the trucks by the curb. She smiled back, and struck up a conversation.

Within minutes, we were well past basic small talk, and I had already learned of her recent surgeries on her cervical and mid spine. Her gait, which had reminded me of my mother's -- halting in a way that hinted at a fairly recent blow to spryness -- and her face, which reminded me, at least in terms of wrinkle count, of my own, were incongruous. My guess was breast cancer, generally the go-to illness for women in their prime. She seemed like such a nice person with whom to share the planet; I was glad to know her infirmities were more chronic than deadly, although a minor form of cancer had, she told me, jumped in to round out the festivities. "Things happen in threes," I told her. She should be done, at least for a while. Maybe that's why she was smiling.

Her house is one I have passed many times, yet this was the first time I could put a face to a person living there. It is set back from the street, with what appears to be a free standing brick wall blocking any doors or windows. The front lawn is as inviting as the solid brick windowless blockade is not. It is landscaped in that way that seems casual but is anything but. Painstakingly organized chaos.

Everything about the woman, come to think of it, was anomalous. Her gait and her face, her garden and the facade of her home, her open and genuine sociability and the way she described her home. "You must come and visit one day, come in for some iced tea," she insisted, and I believed her. "We hide from everybody in there." I wondered, if she had built herself a hiding place, why she was inviting me inside.

She must have noticed my confusion. I stared at the formidable and decidedly uninviting brick wall, trying to figure out how I would manage to cross the threshold. Maybe the threshold was invisible, like some magical Harry Potter style train track that would appear just in time to whisk the chosen ones in, then disappear." It's not what you would think at all," she explained, "back there. It's all open, walls of glass, kind of a feng shui house." This woman who is hobbling around after three debilitating surgeries was telling me she lived in a feng shui  house, an auspicious house. (My understanding of feng shui is limited; all I know is that it somehow creates some sense of well being and good fortune.) Kind of up there with the tooth fairy.

I assured my new friend I would visit soon, without my dog. She looked down at Manny and agreed that would be a good idea. She claimed her cats would not like him. I explained that he would pee in her house. Whatever the reason, Manny and feng shui would not be a good fit. He is the opposite of feng shui. Shui feng. 

As for my house, the furniture just kind of faces this way and that, wherever it landed. The front door and the garage both face north, which may or may not be auspicious but at least they are not hidden behind a solid brick wall. Auspicious for guests and, yes, poor blind Manny, who would no doubt bump his weary snout into it every time. There are no wide open glass walls, although people seem to see in anyway. Or at least they think they do.

Well, to each her own, and as incongruous as this woman's house may seem, my curiosity has been piqued. She is as upbeat and kind and welcoming as anyone I have met, in spite of some catastrophic and untimely blows to her being. Heck, I despise any kind of tea, but I'm goin' in!

Mess for Success

Back in the day, during finals exams, the boys would grow unsightly beards and the girls would deck themselves out in baggy sweats and greasy hair. Looking and feeling unseemly somehow became an apt accompaniment to the misery of coming down the academic year's home stretch.

Like almost everything, finals time slovenliness has evolved into something ever bigger, ever more hideous. It's no longer just about personal hygiene. My house has become a veritable garbage receptacle for note cards, study guides, crumpled bits of paper, and, my personal favorite, plates speckled with petrified crumbs that seem to have been superglued on. I find them everywhere. Everywhere, that is, except for the sink (which would be lovely), or the dishwasher (which would be orgasmic).

My daughter is as diligent as anyone can be about creating a finals week dust cloud, which I know, from my own personal experience, correlates very little with the amount of effort she is actually putting into studying. At least I know she has the capacity to work hard on an impressive mess. And, as an extra bonus, her newly acquired driver's license has provided her with countless ways to make herself useful and contribute to household chores during the "breaks" from studying. Let's face it, nobody can spend an entire day just tossing school supplies and garbage about and gluing food particles to porcelain.

As a prime beneficiary of her new pastime (running errands), I must say I've become even more lenient than usual about her academic habits. "Do you need anything, mom?" she asks repeatedly, each time she conjures up a new urgent matter that requires her to grab her car keys. I've gotten over thinking it's a trick question, and I'm actually kind of enjoying the service. We no longer have to use scattered fast food napkins as paper towels, or toilet paper to blow our noses. We are well stocked. And I don't care how deeply I am sleeping; when my daughter -- who up until ten days ago would be hard pressed to venture downstairs to get something for me -- delivers frozen yogurt to me in bed, I can prop those eyelids open just long enough to suck it down. I have learned, the hard way sometimes, to not take anything for granted.

I am not even all that concerned about my new found obsolescence anymore.  Not as worried as my daughter is, apparently. Keep your retail job, she tells me. It's good for you to have something to do. Something to do? I have plenty to do. My youngest child may be driving, and finals week (with all its detritus) may be winding down, but I still have a blind dog who reminds me constantly that I do, indeed, serve a purpose. A dog who cannot remember where the walls are in the house he's lived in all his life, who cannot see (or even sniff out) an actual dog treat when I hold it under his nose, but a dog who can somehow detect a one pound box of chocolate Frango mints, still wrapped in cellophane, still inside a shopping bag, sitting up on a desk which should, by all rights, be out of his reach, and somehow get to it, open it up, and devour the entire thing.

Well thank goodness. For most dogs, such a chocolate binge could be life threatening, but Manny's girth allows him to withstand the poison. From the moment I saw the telltale dark green box top on the floor and the empty little candy papers neatly lined up on the couch, I knew it was going to be a long night of service. Let's just say you have not seen a chocolate mess until it has passed through to the other end of Manny and onto your wood floors. Sometimes, when God closes a door, he opens a window. My hours taking the retail world by storm may have been cancelled at the last minute yesterday afternoon, but, as always, my services were required somewhere, by someone. I have more than enough to do, thank you very much.

My daughter, the driver, played a major role in the whole Frango affair. She's the one who went out to buy them in the first place -- a "Chicago" gift for the French family with whom she will be staying for the next two weeks. Upon seeing the empty candy papers, she immediately -- without any prodding -- grabbed her car keys to venture out and replace the Frangos. After all, she was exhausted from studying, and this would be a well earned break.

Somehow, though, she was not around for the aftermath, the cleanups in aisle five. And six. And seven. She must have been greasing up her hair and tossing bits of paper around in her room. Lots of studying to be done.

More Weddings and a Funeral (and a Booty Call)

Things that can be depressing: funerals, weddings, Saturday nights.

The funeral thing may seem obvious, particularly if the deceased is someone who should, by all rights, have had many more years ahead of her. Often, though, whether the person lived a long full life or one that was unfairly cut short, it's the eulogy, not the demise, that depresses us. A well constructed eulogy can send even the most sane among us into a tail spin. Frankly, very few of us get to hear -- from outside the confines of a pine box -- someone describe in great detail, in front of hoards of people, how full and inordinately productive our lives have been, how well loved we have been, how little cause we have for regret. Except maybe for folks like Betty White, who earn the right to some pre-posthumous kudos by sheer virtue of longevity and a keen sense of humor.

Last week, a good friend of mine attended the funeral of a woman who had fought valiantly against the ravages of cancer for quite a while, a woman much too young to die. In her fifties, she still had children at home, an adoring husband, and a thriving business. I met her once; she was gorgeous -- a former model -- stunning and fit looking, except for maybe the disease and treatment related distended abdomen she tried so  desperately to hide under a dark tunic. She spoke frankly of her plight, upbeat in the throes of a short lived remission.

Like the rest of us humans, this woman no doubt engaged in her share of regrettable behavior. She was, no doubt, as imperfect as the rest of us, maybe unkind when she should not have been, maybe unfair to someone she loved, maybe even caught red handed a time or two, her panties around her ankles, guilty as sin for some, well, minor sin. But, like most folks who leave behind friends and loved ones, she was deified at her funeral, her life captured and reported through the rose colored remembrances of filtered glass, the good magnified, the bad sanitized. Before the funeral, my friend was devastated by the much too early loss of someone she had admired and enjoyed. After the funeral, my friend was devastated not only by the death but by feelings of inadequacy, for being nowhere near as accomplished or admired or just downright fucking fabulous as this woman had been. Envious, oddly enough, of the too young woman in the pine box.

Tis always the season, sadly, for funerals, but spring is more often the season to feign jolliness and eternal optimism at weddings. We sit in our party clothes and listen to officiants and toast masters extol the virtues of love everlasting, make us believe that this couple will enjoy a lifetime of enduring affection and, if not unadulterated happiness (let's be realistic after all) the loyal companionship of a partner who will never forsake, never intentionally cause any pain. We watch ordinary women who have endured months of dieting and at least a full day's worth of painstaking hair arranging and make-up application become transformed, briefly, into otherworldly beauties as they take their long awaited walk down the aisle. The newly anointed husband looks on with what appears to be love but is really the aftermath of an alcoholic stupor, nauseated from the pack of tic tacs he chugged to help dull the scent of the afternoon's drinking orgy. We sit, some of us with a spouse, some of us on the arm of a new loved one, some of us alone, dateless, pretending our tears have something remotely to do with joy, and we contemplate our own lives. Even the paired up ones can't help but wonder why they don't measure up.

I have to catch my cynicism sometimes, hide it beneath my taffeta skirt and hope for the best for the new couple, two people who, as most of us know, have a tough journey ahead, to say the least. I have to remind myself, sometimes, that though I might be lonely at the moment -- exaggeratedly so amidst the festivities -- I am in charge. I have to remember that life is ever changing, and that good things might happen tomorrow that might seem impossible today, and that I even have some say as to whether -- and when -- my dreams might come true.

Likewise, my friend, fresh from the funeral, had to catch her despair and bury it within the pocket of her dark suit. She, unlike the much celebrated -- and deservedly so -- young woman, I reminded her, is still very much alive. Like everybody, she'll have her share of disappointment and regrets, but odds are she still has a lot of years at her disposal, years during which she will be able to continue to grow, continue to accomplish, continue to love. Beats the shit out of being the one in the pine box.

No, these are not the boots I bought!

Then there's the issue of Saturday nights. The nights when, at least here in deep dark suburbia, all the "happy" couples go out, dates get underway, and everyone in the universe (albeit a small and claustrophobic one) showers, dresses, and celebrates companionship. This week, solo at the last minute, I opted for a booty call. Yes, off I went to Bloomies to purchase yet another pair of really cool boots that I hardly need. And I snuck them into the house while my daughter, aware (from me) that money is tight, was out of sight. Lord knows I didn't need to get caught, yet again, with my panties around my ankles. Lord knows my child will not be charitable (or dishonest) enough to omit shit like that from my eulogy.

If I die tomorrow, I will truly have no regrets, at least when it comes to boots. And if I get married tomorrow, I will wear them.

Project Runaway

My son is in Japan. My older daughter is in the Cayman Islands. My soon to be ex is in Arizona. And my youngest is heading to France in a week. It is time to dust off my passport.

This weekend, I am going to take a break from house-on-wheels hunting and spread out a map of the world on my kitchen table, start throwing darts. At the map, of course. And no, I will not be drawing voodoo doll type pictures on it, mostly because I can't draw. My bags will be packed, and I'll be ready to go at a moment's notice. My luck it'll be the South Pole in June, but no matter what, I'm outta here. Hey, I've always wanted to see the march of the penguins in 3D.

I used to love airports. Sitting in the gate area, gazing out the large windows and watching the planes take off at two minute intervals, noiseless but for the baritone vibration from the revving of the massive engines. You can see the air molecules churning as the giant birds take off, enveloping the tiny heads in the tiny windows in a surreal haze. Blurry and faceless people, all going places. Escaping.

Lately, when I go to the airport, it's generally to drop a kid off or pick one up -- a vicarious thrill versus a real one. Either way, I still enjoy the sight of the airplanes taxiing off to exotic destinations (even though I know full well Newark, New Jersey is likely to be one of them; not that there's anything wrong with Newark, New Jersey), and I still duck as I catch sight of the belly of a frighteningly close airplane coming in for an approach. Maybe it has nothing to do with escape or return or trips of a lifetime. Maybe it's just about being on the move, folks pulling up roots, if only for a moment.

The older I get, the more I realize how much things are not as they seem. The lines on our faces offer hints about our pasts -- the laughter, the sadness, the worry, the pride. But the layers run deep, and no amount of botox can help anyone escape the history, the years of good stuff and bad shit that has happened, the stuff we should either try harder to remember or the shit we try really hard, usually in vain, to forget. The botox may hide it, the exotic airplane rides may offer up a brief respite, but the histories are here to stay, for better or for worse.

Recently, I asked someone how it is possible to love again after suffering the worst kind of tragedy, the loss of a child. He explained that even though a chunk of your heart is gone, permanently gone, love is infinite. We humans have an amazing capacity -- to love after loss, to be happy after indescribable sadness, even to be sad despite years of incredible joy. We keep moving. We never escape, but we never remain quite in the same place either. Or at least we shouldn't. Wingless, we were born to fly.

Just ask the emperor penguins. The journey, year after year, is arduous, but the ones that survive keep going. By summer, their tuxedos look as fresh and pressed, and, well, ordinary (if there can be anything ordinary about a penguin to someone who lives in the northern hemisphere) as the day they were made. Like us, though, each penguin has its own history. You just have to know where to look.