A Fish Out of Water, Swimming Upstream

I was not so much swimming as hobbling upstream, moving gingerly in my wildly uncomfortable boots through the onrushing tide of Bears fans heading south for the opening game at Soldier Field. I yearned for the flip flops in my purse, but I was off to a soirée of sorts, a gathering of successful women, two of whom I had met only once, three of him I had never met at all. Not the kind of event that lends itself to comfortable shoes. 

Or maybe not. I felt intimidated, considered turning around and joining the football fans. They are devoted networkers, these women, and I happened to get caught up in their mystical web. Most of them had arrived before I did, in this eclectic condo in Printers Row lovingly packed with the most astonishing potpourri of perfect touches. They were outgoing and friendly, animated when speaking and intent when listening. This would be all right. 

They spoke in some sort of networking code, and I tried (in vain) to follow the evolution of all the various groups and sub-groups.  I know precious little about networking; my experience (other than the one meeting that brought me to this place) consists solely of trolling dating sites on a particularly boring Saturday evening, searching for somebody who might make me laugh. Nevertheless, I felt, almost immediately, entirely at home, at ease. I was barely even mortified when I dripped the juice of a  stuffed mushroom on my blouse. After about ten minutes, I felt like family.The company? The hors d'oeuvres? The smorgasbord of art pieces everywhere? Whatever it was, my feet were grateful. I went to my purse and retrieved my flip-flops. 

They are successful professionals in ways I was not raised to be; not lawyers or doctors or Indian chiefs but filmmakers and communications analysts and leadership consultants and holistic financial planners. A gifted musician who had traded in her violin, at least temporarily, for a more orderly profession. We are polar opposites really; I seek out disorder in hopes of achieving some gift, even a modicum of creativity. But we are both Scorpios. We sat together at dinner, gave a separate -- dare I say cliquey? -- toast to our Zodiac bond.  

They are armed with tales of discovery and adventure, so much more interesting that my old standby, the one about childbirth, in all its excruciating detail. There was a tale of a youthful encounter with a handsome stranger at the top of the Eiffel Tower. There was a tale of a serendipitous stop in a small and unassuming French Village left nearly emptied and silent by a brief and atrocious Nazi pass through. Trips to India and China and Milan. Oddly, I could not remember going anywhere, discovering any mysteries; I certainly could not conjure up any chance encounters with a handsome stranger. 

The writer among us piped up, eventually, somewhat embarrassed about the nature and extent of her travels.  She wished she had the travel bug, but she just did not. It's not that she hadn't thought about it; it's just that she prefers to travel by reading. It is her life blood, her books. She ventures across the globe and back through time. She realized, I think, as she spoke, that she is probably more well-traveled than any of us. 

By my count, only two of the six of us had chosen to have children. By my count, though everybody's life seemed full, not one of us could claim a great career and children and an intact marriage. Two of the three was the best any of us could do. 

I left both exhilarated and confused, uncertain of who I am supposed to be and what I am supposed to be doing.  I took comfort, when I returned home, settling into easy repartee in a group text with my old friends, all of them intelligent and accomplished in their own right but having chosen a somewhat different path from the women at the soiree. I admire all of them really, my steadfast and indispensable circle of old friends and my new acquaintances, certain that each one is far more sure of herself, whatever her choices have been, than I am. I take a few minutes to prepare for whatever I will work on tomorrow, and I remember that I am good at what I do. I remember that my resume is three pages long, which makes me either accomplished or flighty, maybe a little of both. 

This morning I walked up the same sidewalk I had hobbled down last night, now empty except for the occasional dog walker. Everybody is wearing comfortable shoes, and everybody seems lost in their own thoughts. Interesting if only for its ordinariness. I head east, toward Soldier Field, as the steady hum of rush-hour traffic builds. I wonder if I should maybe take an interest in football since I live so close. But then I think of the possibilities -- a chance encounter with a stranger, a serendipitous stop in a village with a heart-wrenching story to tell, a book that takes me somewhere far away, or back in time.

A fish out of water, sometimes. Swimming upstream, when I have to. But more and more, unapologetic about my comfortable shoes. 

Love Me Tender (But Please Don't Do My Laundry)

For our seventeenth wedding anniversary, my husband surprised me with an Elvis wedding. Well, a vow revewal. It's not that things went south after that, but it's the last anniversary I can remember. It made me laugh, mostly because he and our friends had come to Las Vegas armed with matching wedding guest attire, lewd sex gifts, and a well-kept secret, and my husband had written his own pitch perfect vows. And mine. After 17 years, at least you can be somewhat realistic. Elvis? Well, he was too skinny and couldn't sing. 

I found the video when I was packing up to move last spring, along with the certificate that, I suppose, still counts me as officially renewed in marriage in Nevada. It's more than we have from our actual wedding. The photographer went AWOL and the friend who insisted on being our unofficial videographer forgot to press "record." Or something. Viva Las Vegas for getting it right. 

The other night I took a chance and asked my Uber driver what his day job was. I should have known. From the moment I entered the car he peppered his conversation -- mostly one-sided -- with occasional bursts of baritone. The temperature okay back there. . . DARLIN'? How do you like the South Loop. . . LITTLE LADY? He gave me his card. An Elvis impersonator. Blue suede shoes, tight bell bottoms, gaudy belt buckle, big hair. The real fake deal. I bet he would've done a great re-wedding. I almost expected him to break out the guitar and jump through the sun roof when we passed the neighborhood, um, correctional facility. 

I'm heading to Vegas in a few months, with a handful and a half of friends and my two daughters. Not a wedding, or a vow renewal; just a regular old sixtieth birthday celebration. Still can't quite wrap my head around that one, but I suppose I'll have to. I told Elvis he should come with. I told him about my last Elvis, the skinny one who couldn't sing. He flexed a bicep muscle for me; he works hard to keep himself in character, he assured me. Who knows, maybe I'd still be married if the other guy had taken voice lessons and lifted a few weights now and then. Elvis, not my ex-husband. 

In that little chapel in Vegas, so many years ago, in the vows my husband wrote for me to read out loud, I promised never to do his laundry. He had this thing about clothes sitting in the dryer for days on end, shriveling. It was an easy promise to keep anyway. Still is, come to think of it. A wedding vow, kept. 

A View from a Rooftop

I could almost hear my mother saying it, that she had the map of Ireland on her face. On her whole body, really, from the flaming reddish hair on her head to the freckles on her bare legs, so plentiful they almost came together to make her look tan. That we would have been drawn to each other seemed unlikely -- this tall pale beauty with the pixie-ish nose and me, with the map of Minsk or Pinsk or some ill-defined border between Russia and Poland on my face. Hmm, no wonder that's never caught on as an expression. 

Her boyfriend was the leader of the band. I had shown up reluctantly to this rooftop party, as a favor to the drummer. She thought I looked like I needed some wine. I liked her immediately. She's dated lots of Jews, she told me, and has come away with a treasure trove of stories and a working knowledge of basic Yiddish. Better than your average M.O.T., I told her -- and she was stumped. Member of the Tribe, I explained. How odd that she had mastered meshugana (and all of its various conjugations) and never heard "M.O.T."? 

She went immediately to the "tribe" piece. Tribal. Tribalism. A bad word these days, in all of its various conjugations. She raised a good point; I rail against tribalism, and I had just declared myself to be a member. 

I thought about this today, when I read a post from a friend, reacting to all the meshugas with our president and Jews and Israel and the two rabble rousing Congresswomen who have almost made us forget about the lovely and talented A.O.C., at least for a few news cycles. It was an eloquent view from a center lane that has almost entirely disappeared, a cautionary tale, really, about the perils of tribalism when everybody -- EVERYBODY -- is behaving badly. Predictably, the president. Equally predictably, Bibi. And the provocative freshmen. And all the knee jerkers, on the right and on the left, which appears to be where everybody falls, these days. 

Denmark, we have a problem. (Houston seems so yesterday.) I attended a Mayor Pete event yesterday, and I was uplifted and inspired and, dare I say, optimistic. He is bright and articulate and thoughtful and calming. A natural leader, even if he looks like he is twelve. The event was in Bronzeville, deep in the South Side of Chicago, clearly intended to start a conversation with black and brown people. Yet Bronzeville has no doubt never hosted such a large crowd of white folks. If Mayor Pete can't draw out people of color in their own neighborhood, I wonder whether we will ever get out of our own lanes. 

Molly (remember, my new friend, map of Ireland; what else would her name be?), like everybody else on that rooftop, is solidly in my lane, in my tribe, even though she deemed tribe to be a dirty word. In the bubble of Oak Park, or white Chicago, we can't even imagine what life is like in the other bubbles, much less what they are thinking. 

I like Pete, and I truly believe he could wipe the floor with the idiot who has hijacked us and help steer us all out of our lanes, gather us together from the edges. If not Pete, or Joe, somebody needs to do it. The specifics can come later. 

Land of the Free?

I would not have guessed her name was Fatima. No hijab, her skin lighter than mine. The only hint of coming from somewhere else is a slight accent. I had guessed Eastern Europe, but a long time ago. She and her husband look like any American couple. They have a dog. 

As we sat watching our dogs play, we suddenly ran out of small talk. The weather. Work. How we like living in the city after migrating from suburbia. She misses the quiet. I do not. 

I asked her where she was from, before she moved to where she moved before she moved here. Have you heard of Bosnia? She was serious, which I guess is fair. She's lived here for almost 30 years, and she's no doubt become accustomed to our self-important ignorance, our dogged grip on the notion that bad shit happens elsewhere. 

She told me the story of how she and her young daughter escaped from war torn Bosnia to Austria, while her husband remained. How it was, without cell phones, unsure for long stretches whether he was alive or dead. Had she and her daughter stayed she would have been raped, they would have been killed. I tried to imagine this woman, about my age, on the run with a small child. Tried to imagine what it was like, listening to the sounds of war closing in. They had all lived together peacefully for years, she told me, all ethic groups. Until, somehow, everything changed. 

America in 2019. More than two and a half years into a nightmare presidency, more than two and a half years of watching one man dismantle our democracy in small increments while an entire party sits by in silence, complicit, as guilty as the man himself. It no longer surprises me that it happened; it surprises me now that people are still surprised. I hold my breath when nothing happens, when the latent hatred that has been given voice takes a day off from some kind of atrocity. I wonder, constantly, how many more people will die before we do something. 

Fatima's daughter, Yale educated, well-traveled, out of danger since she was four, is terrified. She wants her mother to change her name. At 32, she may not be hearing bombs, but she feels the unsettling rumble of rocks turning over and long-buried truths seeping out; she feels the deafening threat of silence. 

I walked into a sparkling shopping center in the heart of Chicago's Loop the other day. The stores are upscale, the shoppers well-heeled, but in a rainbow of colors. For the first time, I felt vulnerable, knowing that anyone is welcome here. I felt strangely afraid, not of an invading caravan of imaginary murderers from far away, but of something far more insidious, something homegrown. 

Fatima is Muslim, and I don't know if she ever did wear a hijab. But I get why she's not wearing one now. 

Dog Days

I watched today with fascination as the six dogs, all having spent the better part of ten minutes languishing in the shade and ignoring each other -- leapt up in unison to charge the fence. Two dogs from the other building -- the one with the bigger balconies and the pool, and, from what I've been told, a state of the art gym -- had entered the tiny pathway just beyond our fence, en route to their own park. 

The grass is not greener on the other side of the fence, at least if we're comparing dog parks. It's the same actually, the same synthetic turf, green even in the dead of winter, delightfully mud-free during the fickle days of spring thaw. But ours, well it stretches much farther away from the train tracks, gives us a buffer from the noise, if we prefer. We have benches and trees on our side, plenty of shade for the hot summer days we thought would never arrive. The dogs on our side of the fence have no idea how good they have it, while we humans sacrifice the more enticing people amenities in the building next door.  Still, they thrill at the sight of the other dogs on the other side of the fence, want only to be with them. 

So human. Sure that the good stuff is going on in somebody else's yard. I've spent the past four months slowly getting to know my neighborhood and its surroundings. I have explored the nearby dog parks and paths, I've biked north and south along the lake front, and I've wandered by dozens of restaurants, wondering when I'd be one of the lucky ones, sitting outside on a makeshift patio in the middle of the afternoon, stuffing myself and having an early cocktail. I've walked by those people dozens of times, thinking how charmed their lives must be. How green is their grass, as I can do no more than trudge by. 

I took the plunge today, dipped my toe into that mystical other place. I reminded myself I must belong, and I stretched my legs out into the sun while I carefully tucked my almost 60 year old face into a slice of shade. As I sipped my margarita and stuffed in the last remnants of my tacos, I thought it's not all that different, really.  Except, I suppose, that I was looking out from the table side of the sidewalk, thinking maybe I would have been better off had I kept walking. Thinking maybe I should have tried the hamburger place next door instead, with the adjoining ice cream shop. I wonder if I will ever grow wise enough to be fully impervious to the ridiculous fantasy of greener grass. 

In our dog park, we know all the dogs' names, but we humans remain cautiously anonymous. We barely recognize each other on the street, clutching purses instead of leashes, or maybe we just pretend, so as not to intrude. We are comfortable with each other on our synthetic turf, watching our dogs fall instinctively into their flirtations and friendships, unencumbered by leashes or age old insecurities. They run and they dance, or, as they did today, lay about in companionable silence, waiting for something better to come along, just on the other side of the fence. Blissfully unaware that the fantasy is no better than what they have. 

Twisted Fates

Fucking poignant.

That's how my friend described a moment this morning, as he sat gazing out at acres of natural beauty while life, as he's known it, anyway, unravels. He said it without even a hint of irony, though I suppose I could be wrong about that, since the message arrived by text. 

He's more serious these days than he used to be, back when we were in high school and we were convinced we -- and everybody around us -- were invincible. Substitute ridiculous for poignant, for starters, and that's how we were, back then. 

"Fucking poignant" has stuck with me since this morning, as I knew it would. I told him right off the bat I was stealing it. As I trudged through the realities of my day, I came back to the phrase several times. I imagined the perfect confluence of great joy and overwhelming sadness that had overcome my friend, caused him to pair up such incongruous words. 

He sent me a picture. It was dawn there, where he was, but it could have been dusk (had I not known better). The time when night and day intersect, the push and pull of light against dark. If I had to label the picture, I would have chosen "serenity." Or maybe, come to think of it, "fucking poignant." 

While I'm pilfering phrases, I'll work on the next thing he said --something about pondering the difference between fate and destiny. He's way ahead of me on that one. I've never really given it much thought, though my gut tells me if I had to choose, I'd go with destiny. At least I might have a fighting chance at shaping it. I wonder if that's what my friend was thinking, that he had arrived at this place not because of some malevolent twist of fate but because he had unwittingly prepared himself for it. This confluence of great joy and overwhelming sadness, of night and daylight, of being at once the shaper and the observer of ones own destiny. Whether you like it or not. Fucking poignant. Weirdly serene. 

Silencing Voices, in a Place Far Away

I know almost nothing about anime, except that it is colorful and vibrant and originated in Japan. I don't really get it, which is more a function of ignorance than any sort of rational assessment.

When my son was getting ready to move to Japan after he graduated from college, I had not so secretly hoped that maybe the tsunami and the nuclear disaster only a year earlier might dissuade him. I knew better, but it never hurts to dream. I comforted myself with the thought that a tsunami would never strike again in the same place. Right. And the nuclear plant glitches, well, they can certainly be fixed. I like to think. 

On a map, Japan seems so small, so fragile. Even after a half a dozen visits, I still think of it as an inch long strip of vulnerability, a heartbeat away from earth's next tectonic shift, spitting distance from Kim's missile playgrounds. I experienced an earthquake a few visits ago, and though the sensation of swaying back and forth in a high rise was disconcerting, and the deafening sound of the push alert on my phone, accompanied by what appeared to be a screaming text in Japanese, was frightening, my thoughts went immediately to my son, who was at work. He has assured me earthquakes are a daily occurrence. That was supposed to be comforting. It wasn't. 

When something bad happens in Japan, people tend to contact me, to make sure my son is okay. I suppose I'm not the only one who thinks it's small. This time, though, the disaster was close, in Kyoto, a sister to his home city of Kobe. Spitting distance for sure, or at least a short train ride away. A mass killing, 33 people killed after an arsonist destroyed Kyoto Animation. I knew my son was in Tokyo, but I texted to make sure. 

It's a studio that has produced some amazing and profound anime, he told me, including "The Silent Voice." I wondered how something that calls to my mind the "hello kitty" cartoons could be either profound or amazing, but I looked it up. The story is hardly cartoonish, and indeed sounds profound. I'm guessing the animation makes it amazing. 

I have grown accustomed to hearing about natural disasters in Japan, but this one is decidedly unnatural, at least on that inch long strip, which always strikes me as clean and orderly and crime free. Another misconception, up in smoke.