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.