Of Marigolds and Monkeys

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. It's a movie about dreamers. Dreamers in their twenties, and dreamers in their golden years. Noticeably, nobody in between. Well, except for one woman about my age -- too old to dream, too young to dream. Theoretically, anyway.

It's a movie about a hotel (more accurately, some land with a structure upon it) in India where chairs are covered with dust, faucets don't work, rooms are missing things, like doors, and where British guests arrive with all kinds of reservations -- not merely of the booking kind. Their reasons for being there are as uncertain as their departure dates, their vision for the days ahead as vague as whatever led them to their hastily planned arrivals. In various stages of elderliness, they are, each of them, far wiser than they realize, caught up by a life that has suddenly cast them off as stupid, incompetent, simply waiting to become ill and die.

At fifty-two, I saw myself in these reluctant adventurers, adrift, productive pasts irrelevant, futures dictated by the stranglehold of the hands of time. Yet, at fifty-two, I saw myself also in the young manager, the man entering adulthood without an acceptable plan, trying to go forward on a wing and a prayer and an impossible dream. Propelled by youthful energy and plagued by naysayers and other obstacles, both real and imagined, he stumbles along at the helm of the motley crew of elderly British expats, the last beam standing in an otherwise crumbling house of cards. My own youthful energy has been replaced by a middle aged version, one marked by sporadic bursts of motivation with long bouts of lethargy in between. Like the young entrepreneur, I am plagued by naysayers (mostly the ones in my head) and other obstacles (in my case mostly imagined, except for my constant need to nap), yet I have somehow managed to keep my own house of cards from crumbling.

By all rights, I should be in my prime, like the woman about my age in the film, the one who is both too young and too old to dream. Like her, I should be the dream crusher, the person, no matter what the culture, who has learned to be a realist, to protect her young from being, well, young, to ensure that nobody, herself included, does anything rash. The woman who, as a young girl, may have married against the will of parents, and now finds herself on the other side of the altar. Squashing dreams, romance, chemistry. The woman who is still able to turn a blind eye to the reality that, not too far down the road, she will become old like the British guests. She, too, will be relegated to the margins. If she allows it.

After I got past the sentimental weepiness the movie inspired in me (as you might recall, coffee commercials make me cry), it made me realize I need not be either a dreamer or a dream crusher. That, at a still youthful fifty-two, I need not simply "wish," that I can silence the voices in my head that tell me what I cannot or should not do. That, at a slowly aging fifty-two, I need not simply "wish," that I can silence the voices in my head that tell me what I cannot or should not do. That, at a time in my life when at least a few people might still look to me for guidance, I need not rule with a heavy hand (not that I ever did). I've done the math; if I waste too much energy trying to control what anyone else is doing, I won't have much waking time left between naps to do the things I am meant to do.

There are always setbacks. After spending three weeks without a teenager nearby to tell me everything that is wrong about me, I was told only five minutes after welcoming my daughter back to American soil that the bra I was wearing was unacceptable. (No, I had not forgotten to put a shirt on over it.) I was thankful she hadn't seen the dress I wore the day before, the little tube thing that squashed my boobs so tightly into my chest that they may have been poking through my back. My lower back, naturally. And, as much as I love having her home, I am looking forward to a little respite again in a few weeks, one in which I can dress inappropriately with wild abandon and have my nipples tickle my knees if I damn well feel like it. I have a renewed "can-do" spirit, and if anyone out there doesn't want to see my boobs resting where gravity has taken them or catch sight of my flabby ass looking less than stellar in a pair of shorts, stay inside between July 14 and July 29.

I was only half listening the other day when my husband took the floor to speak during the meeting with our attorneys. (I'd like to say at least it doesn't cost anything when he talks, but unfortunately both legal teams were present. Cha-ching, cha-ching.)Anyway, out of the corner of my ear, I heard him saying he just wants to get the damn monkey off his back. Well, the slightly profane adjective notwithstanding, I was touched. A monkey; that's one of the nicest things he ever called me. As it turns out, I wasn't the monkey he was talking about, wasn't even a monkey at all (though he would not tell me what animal sprung to mind, and I had the good sense not to ask).

The point is, though, no matter what the monkey is, I, for one, need to get rid of it. Or them. The things that are holding me back, no matter how adorable they might be. I want to write a book. I don't know if I can, or even will, but I want to stop dreaming about it. So, again, I did some math. And I did some complicated figuring, and I realized that with my limited "awake" time, I probably can't spend as much of it as I would like on my blog (get it? the adorable monkey?)  if I am going to write a book. The space will remain open, of course, and I will visit often, particularly if something interesting happens. But I am going to venture off, more frequently, into my own Marigold Hotel. I will dust off my brain, unclog the pipes, knock down some doors, spend time in a place that is unfamiliar and scary and filled with obstacles, both real and imagined.

I will keep you posted.

Laugh Lines

For years, I have wished I could be Nora Ephron, or at least somebody like her.

When I heard the news of her death yesterday, none of that changed. Well, except that I prefer to be breathing. She was only seventy-one, and news of her illness and death came at me simultaneously, causing me to gasp for a moment, as if someone I had known well was suddenly gone.

People die all the time, and, for better or worse, they leave legacies. Famous people die as regularly as the rest of us do, their deaths, like their lives, touching more folks than can fit into your average funeral home. But, just like the rest of us, they leave behind only a handful -- at best a room full -- of people whose daily lives will be affected, who will continue to mourn beyond the initial gasp and feel as if a piece of themselves has been taken away.

The thing about writers -- particularly writers like Nora Ephron, who reveal so much about themselves in their work, fictional or otherwise -- is that they spend so much time with us, one on one time, when nobody else is around. They sit with us in our family room chairs, they help us pass the time in airports, they come to bed with us. And their voices, often, are the ones that linger in our heads as we drift off to sleep. It's not just that we get to think we know them; it's the power of their words, words so daring and jolting and shocking in their honesty that we begin to think the writer actually knows us, can see our innermost thoughts, our dirtiest little secrets.

I'd like to think Nora's death will have an impact on me greater than just a momentary gasp. Certainly not, by any means, the gaping hole her children and husband and other loved ones and friends will feel, but a sense of loss one feels when someone whose thoughts and insights touched and influenced many lives has been silenced. There will be a void until somebody picks up where she left off, feeling bad about her neck, inadvertently giving herself finger facelifts at the lunch table, laughing at herself for the hours she spends getting her hair dyed. We readers and movie goers will need somebody who can remind us, every once in a while, about the deep dark secrets that aren't really secret at all, about the orgasms every woman has faked, about the tantalizing romance of long distance e-mail.

I looked at my neck in the mirror this morning. There are worse things to feel bad about, to be sure, but my neck is certainly getting up there. I took my hands and pulled my cheeks back toward my ears, admiring my fantasy, low risk face lift. I looked over my shoulder to take a peek at my sagging butt. Okay, that did it. Aging can be funny, I suppose, but not before my morning coffee, not on an empty stomach, and certainly not before a dash of mascara and blush and a bit of clothing.

Maybe later today I'll pick up some of Nora's wonderful essays, let her remind me that there's humor in the sagging flesh on my upper and lower cheeks, that aging, though complicated, is the best alternative. And I will wait, and hope that some other writer will emerge to help guide me, laughing, through the stages ahead.

Love, Unleashed

My kids are all bugging me to get a puppy. A puppy to keep Manny company. Yes, those kids; the one in Japan, the one who lives downtown when she's not out of town traveling four days a week, and the one who still lives at home, mostly behind her closed bedroom door. Yes, that one, the one that complains constantly that Manny smells.

Naturally, all three have promised at one time or another to help with the new puppy (yes, the one that somehow won't smell like a dog). Maybe I heard them wrong when they promised to take care of the other two. Or maybe this time they really mean it. Actually, I think they really meant it those other times too. Kind of like I meant to do all my laundry yesterday.

Anyway, the latest puppy breed being bandied about is a French bulldog. Le bouledogue franćais. In a book called The Intelligence of Dogs, Frenchie is ranked 58th in a list that doesn't seem to extend beyond sixty something. Un chien stupide. Mon dieu! Leo, my beloved lab, hardly a rocket scientist, would have been in the top ten, which, let's just say, doesn't bode well for number 58.

Manny, a puggle - not just any mutt, but a designer mutt -- does not make it to the list. Blind as a bat and fat as a whelk, he has a keen beagle nose that somehow cannot detect a piece of sausage held only inches away. Bottom third of the class material. But put a morsel of chocolate inside an airtight container and place it out of reach of your average obese dog with stubby legs and he is brilliant, ingenious, an athlete to boot. A canine Houdini, he can sniff out the most undetectable speck of any variety of chocolate in any form, leaping tall tables in some sort of single bound (not sure what it looks like; he's a sneak) and penetrating packaging like a professional safe cracker. As far as I can tell, in terms of intelligence, Manny is pretty much an off the charts idiot savant, and my guess is that some dopey French pure bred won't have a chance. Most likely, the poor unsuspecting pup would spend much of his young life as Manny's step stool, a small fish of a soldier in his older buddy's criminal enterprises.

Maybe it has nothing to do with intelligence. Maybe it's just his addiction to food, his willingness to do anything for a fix, even though the vet and I have explained to him many times it's not good for him. Maybe it's something far less negative or sinister; maybe Manny has perfected his cunning brand of thievery so he could one day reciprocate for all the shit he has put me through. (Literally, shit; on the family room floor, in the kitchen, by the foot of my bed.) Case in point: last weekend, when Manny somehow got into an un-get-into-able chocolate cake that our dog sitter, Sue, had purchased, he was performing a service for both her and me, the hands that feed him. Sue was so freaked out that she had somehow done something (i.e. putting a boxed chocolate cake high up on a table not surrounded by a single chair) to endanger him that she refused to take money for three days of care taking. We're still in negotiations, but, at least temporarily, I've got a few extra dollars in my pocket I hadn't counted on. Aw, Manny is concerned about my financial situation. And, Sue was so freaked out that she had somehow done something to endanger him that four days of painful constipation was suddenly cured. She told me she felt ten pounds lighter. Aw, Manny was tuned into her bloat. He wanted her to feel better.

I'm going with the unconditional love theory. Maybe, if I get a puppy, Manny will walk him and feed him and clean up after him, just to thank me for a new friend (and, no doubt, partner in crime), and all the other things I've done for him. Or maybe my kids will do it. Mon dieu, sometimes I just crack myself up!

私はパレード愛 (I Love a Parade)

My son, if nothing else a quick study, has discovered within mere months of graduating from college that work is highly overrated, no matter where you choose to do it. I, not so quick a study, am starting to realize that Japan is maybe not as culturally different from us as I had thought.

Struggling through a typically Japanese six day work week, my son emailed to tell me of a festival he had, for the most part, missed out on because of his long hours. He admitted that it may have been somewhat of a blessing; though from a tourist's perspective, the so-called Matsuri would be thrilling in its seemingly authentic "Japanese-ness," he felt a bit unsure, as a resident, of how he was supposed to participate. This from somebody who experienced Mardi Gras as a resident of New Orleans for two years; not much mystery there -- just get shit faced, toss on some beads, and act like an idiot. I suppose he thinks things are more complicated in Japan. Or maybe just more civilized.

Unsure as to what the whole festival was about much less what his role should be, and bitter for having felt excluded, he suggested I look it up myself if I wanted details. The reliably omniscient (and cocky about it) Wikipedia was a bit skittish about its report on Japanese festivals, announcing up front in bold letters that the article might require some fact checking and rewriting. Duh. I assume that is usually the case, but I am gullible and lazy enough to just accept whatever the Wiki's tell me as gospel and repeat it to others sufficiently gullible and lazy to think I know what I am talking about.

The Wiki-failure on Japanese festivals (understandable, since apparently matsuri means festival, and how do you explain something that's called the Festival Festival?) forced me into some deeper research (meaning I had to scroll down past the first few entries from my initial Google search, dammit!) and do some serious leg work. Okay, finger work. I was on the verge of giving up, prepared to settle on the image I had already formed in my head of a gaggle of white faced geishas holding brightly colored lanterns as they shuffled by in a distinctly Japanese looking parade, but I remembered how much my son hates my ignorant stereotyping (he can be such a killjoy). So I scrolled further, looking for some greater insight, hoping I wouldn't sprout a giant blister on the tip of my finger from all the painstaking research.

Apparently, the Matsuri Festival in Himeji, Japan this past weekend involved some sort of walk from a famous shrine to somewhere else (maybe another shrine; I lost focus). I suppose the distinctly Japanese spin on the whole thing would be the light weight summer kimonos everyone would be wearing. Come to think of it, not much of a culture clash at all. What's the difference. Kimonos, beads? I'd bet a few yen that several revelers were wearing both at Chicago's gay pride parade this weekend. I am guessing many local festivals in Japan have as little to do in peoples' minds with whatever they were intended to celebrate as do many local festivals here; they are just an excuse for a community to come together, to enjoy the weather. Wear what you want; ethnicity, Visa status, or sexual orientation notwithstanding, as long as you're ready to party, let the festivities begin!

Back fat or side boobs? In any language?

My upcoming trip to Japan is daunting in terms of the number of miles I will have to travel, but the more I learn, the more I realize it's not as if I am heading to another planet. Culturally, it's probably no more alien than Wisconsin. Come to think of it (having been to a Walmart or two up there), probably a lot less so.

Sole Searching...

Gone Fishin!

The Eaves of Destruction

Last week, I alerted my soon to be ex that we would have to replace the roof on the castle before we moved into our respective trailers. "Any chance you can take one for the team," he suggested, and "do a roofer?"

Frankly, I'd consider it -- anything to get this whole mess behind me -- if I didn't also need a plumber, a carpenter, a driveway guy, and an electrician. Just to name a few. I have to consider my future, after all, and who the hell is going to want to date a bow legged middle aged woman who walks like a drunken sailor? Not to mention all the diseases. (Can you get shingles from a roofer?)

As luck would have it, I just ran into a guy I used to know (no not that way, you pigs) who is in the business of getting folks' property taxes reduced. He is busying himself as I write this evaluating my situation (minus a few details, to say the least), and I'm thinking maybe this could be my lucky day. Get the fixer upper assessed as low as possible, reduce the taxes, and let some other poor schmucks worry about the repairs. Worst case scenario, I'll only have to fuck the property tax guy.

Shit. He's still talking. Suddenly a handy man gang bang isn't looking as exhausting as this whole property tax evasion scheme. I definitely get the feeling there'll be a better pay off. Though I haven't been listening all that attentively to the details, it sounds like any tax money I save will just be paid to someone else in fees and commission. And, my guess is I'll have to listen to a lot of talking. And, if he's anything like our attorneys, it'll cost us dearly every time he talks, or, for that matter, farts. And, I'll still have a crumbling roof, leaky toilets, fallen closet doors, and a rutted driveway. Come to think of it, if I can't snag a hunky fireman with an axe and a big hose -- let's face it, it's not for lack of trying -- why not set my sights on something more attainable and give a shot to some tool belts and shit kickers? Like mom always said, never pass up an opportunity. 

I could always look for a jack of all trades. Someone who can handle all the tasks by himself, maybe even be a master of some of the more, um, delicate ones. Talk about home improvement.

i Chat, he Hears

For the first time in a long time, I visited my dad's grave for Father's Day. He's been gone fourteen years, and I had myself convinced the sight of his tombstone would no longer turn me into a sniveling idiot. My brother visits more frequently, has developed a thicker skin. He waved his arm toward the horizon behind the rows upon rows of graves and pointed out the beautiful view. It did nothing for me. "I see dead people," I responded.

I was sure fourteen years would make it easier. On the way to our family plot, I moseyed through the narrow lanes of the cemetery as I used to when I was a kid, before I actually knew anyone buried there. Grandparents and great grandparents whom I had never met generally had little effect on me. Their lives had not been real to me, they had all died well before I was born. I was always far more interested in reading the other epitaphs on the way to our plot. Cemeteries are fascinating, filled with couples who seem to die within months of each other, folks who have been dead so long I wonder if there is anyone alive who ever knew them, children who died at inexplicably young ages.

There is the pair of stones for Morris and Gussie something or other, the ones my brother and I noticed soon after my father passed away. We still wonder whether it is the same Morris and Gussie who owned the candy store around the corner from us when we were growing up. (Even in Brooklyn, what are the odds of there being another "Morris and Gussie?") The tiny corner store was crowded and dark, and, though I never considered this at the time, probably filthy. Morris and Gussie were as unhappy looking a pair as I had ever known. Gussie always sat, her ample ass spreading over the sides of a short metal stool, her heavy eastern European accent dripping with disdain, and meticulously counted our pennies as if her life depended on it. Morris just stood by quietly, waiting for kids who had never once shown any inclination to steal to suddenly have the impulse to snatch a morsel. It amazed me that two people, surrounded as they were by sugary treats and smiling children, could be so dour.

I was surprised at how shaky I felt when I arrived at my father's grave. For a long time before he died, his physical presence was not a part of my daily life. We lived almost a thousand miles apart, there was no Skype, no Facebook. We spoke regularly -- as much as we could before my mother would take over -- but I had long become accustomed to not seeing him, to making do with just his voice. His deep soothing voice, a voice I long more than anything to hear sometimes. Visiting his grave, even after all this time, still gives me a jolt. He is only six feet away but invisible and silent. A lone weed sprung up from the neatly pruned bush marking his spot. I had the distinct feeling he had left it there for me, a sign that if I spoke, he would listen.

My mother strolled from relative to relative, weepy in part from their "gone-ness," but in part because the landscaping had not been maintained as it should have been, certainly not to the extent it had been paid for. My brother whispered to me that he was pretty sure Daddy and Nana and the rest of the crew could care less about the landscaping. Frankly, neither did we. God help those maintenance people if they don't do their jobs once my mom takes residence; there'll be daggers shooting up from the soil.

There's something about siblings. No matter how much you can be at each other's throats, you know each other. You have been molded, somehow, by the same sculptors, after all. Which is why, I think, my brother had the grace to suggest that he walk my mother back to the office so she could scream about the weeds while I spend a bit more time with my father, alone. A gift for me from my brother, on Father's Day.

We chatted, Seymour and I. I told him I knew he was, as always, looking out for me, and always would. I cried, because I miss him, because I wish he could be here sometimes to tell me what to do, to assure me that everything will be okay. I cried because I knew he must be crying too, a tear welling up in the outer corners of each of his sparkling green eyes. Because he wished I could hear him, know that he will watch over me to make sure that everything will be okay. I gave the weed a little tug, but left it where it was.

The walk back to the office was just long enough for me to regain my composure, to wipe the mascara from my face and resume my cynical bitch persona. I glanced over at Morris and Gussie on my way; for the first time, I noticed they were born in 1889 and 1891, and it occurred to me they were most likely Holocaust survivors. That they had probably lost everything -- worst of all, children. The pall in the corner candy store finally made sense. How awful it must have been to be surrounded by happy American children and sugary morsels. I wonder if there is anyone left to mourn them, to yell at the people in the office about their weeds.

"Fatherless Day," as I have called it for fourteen years, wasn't so bad. I was fortunate enough to have a dad who loved me, unconditionally, who will always, somehow, look out for me. And, though I can no longer see him or hear him, we had a nice chat.