The I of the Storm

The East Coast is bracing for the storm to end all storms ("see," said my daughter, "the end of the world is beginning..."), and the local news shows have been, as usual, looking for that all important "Chicago connection." It is, after all, or should be, all about us.

As far as I can tell, as I gaze out the window at the low, late afternoon sun of a beautiful October day, we folks here in the Midwest fit into the day's news of natural disasters only in a geographical sense, in that we are situated somewhere to the left of the hurricane churning up the Atlantic and somewhere to the right of the earthquake prompting tsunami warnings somewhere in the Pacific. Once again, we just sit here taking up space in the middle. The place where nothing happens. For me, we are like the hour or so between the opening scenes of a movie and the climax, the time when I generally doze off and don't really miss anything important.

Overlooked so often, we crave attention. "Look at us, look at us," we cry out, mostly to ourselves, since everybody else is paying attention to the more important things going on in the world's foreground. But being self-important is better than being not important at all, so our newscasters do not disappoint. Today, while folks on the Jersey shore were doing the opposite of partying and a crane was dangling precariously off a high rise in midtown Manhattan and Big Apple grocery stores were down to their last beer and my brother the Jewish doctor was preparing to stay indefinitely at the hospital and my eighty-one year old mother sat nervously looking out the window on Ocean Parkway hoping she would not actually see the ocean come rushing down the street, our local newscasters were wringing their hands over the winds that might end up swirling over Lake Michigan later this evening. A tempest in a teapot, I suppose, but it's our tempest, and it's the best we can do. Okay, the bikers and the joggers on the lake shore might have to head indoors to the health club for a day or two, but I'm guessing not too many people are actually going to be out on Lake Michigan on an evening in late October, no matter how pretty the day has been. If winds blow and waves churn and nobody is there to feel it, is it really happening?

Sometimes it's not such a bad thing to fly under the radar. If this is, as my daughter suggested this morning, the beginning of the end of the world, I'm thinking I'd like to distance myself from any connection Chicago might have to what's happening in the corners of the world that get attention whether they like it or not. I still refuse to believe the end of the Mayan calendar has anything to do with the end of the world; I believe with all my heart that they simply ran out of ink. Or got bored.

But if, by chance, I am wrong (hey, it's happened once or twice), I will take comfort in the notion that they probably forgot about the Midwest anyway. I'm already making arrangements for my loved ones who live where everything happens to come here for December, just in case. To the place in the middle of the movie, the place that could easily have been forgotten on the cutting room floor when the Mayans were figuring out the ending.

Charlotte's Web Site

I am now the proud proprietor of my very own web site. Woohoo! Twenty-first century here I come!

So anyway, the other day, as I lay helplessly on an inaptly named massage table (inaptly named because "massage" connotes some sort of pleasantness) I was telling the guy wielding the loudly vibrating instrument of torture against my aching muscles about it. Well, trying to tell him, between moans. Moans which must have sounded like moans of pleasure to the geezer lying serenely on the table next to me, who suddenly went from looking like a dusty old corpse to a frisky and very dirty old man.

"A web site?" he purred. "Really?"

I tried my best to purr back, although I probably sounded like a cougar in the throes of a deadly cat fight. "Yes. My very own web site." I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I figured out pretty quickly he was not assuming my website had anything to do with the drudgery of helping kids craft college application essays. My feline grin was no doubt a bit scary, but for him I think that was a good thing, adding a little something to the sexual tension that had gripped his once lifeless form. "AARP porn," I elaborated, winking as I grimaced my way through a particularly painful attempt at unknotting my hip.

Frisky doesn't even begin to describe what he looked like then. His entire body literally started to shake with a renewed youthful energy. Granted, my body was shaking too, but that was because somebody appeared to be driving a car across my back. I don't know what had excited the guy more -- the prospect of some new pay per view porn site filled with glistening women whose body parts were still under factory warranty, or the prospect of his AARP discount. I needed to clarify.

"AARP porn," I repeated over the din of the vehicle taking a joy ride over my piriformis. "The stars have the AARP cards," I explained, thinking it would be a cute party game to try to locate those damn cards (which I toss in the trash when they arrive in bulk around every birthday) within the wrinkles and folds. And there's no discount, butthead I thought to myself, although if there was an incentive I could provide to some younger male viewers to sign on and act as occasional arm candy and sex toy I would be sure to offer it up.

The old guy's body suddenly looked tired again. I was losing his attention, and, well, it's not as if I can afford to turn my other vibrating cheek at anyone these days. Even an octogenarian, especially if he has a big bank account and non-arthritic fingers, can look hot in the correct lighting (correct lighting being anything other than the bright ceiling fluorescents hanging directly overhead). Hoping his eyes were even worse than mine, I tried to look sexy as I winced. My guy was now pressing the vibrating instrument of torture against my hamstring. Somebody was getting jollies, and it sure wasn't me. And my geezer neighbor was back in corpse pose.

Food for thought, though, I suppose. If I don't get any nibbles for my writing services, I might just consider some more scintillating options. Writing, writhing? Really, what's the difference? Whatever I need to do to put food on the Formica table in the double wide.

Good Fortune 500

For Manny, it was the equivalent of a delicious roll in rabbit shit without having to be tossed outside as if he were, say, a dog. It was 4:30 in the morning, and we were doing laundry. The sweet aroma of worn underwear and socks, itself enticing (to him, not me), was suddenly no match for the pungent vapors seeping through the porous brick exterior of our house into the mud room. A skunk had clearly taken aim, and all that stood between us and a good soak in tomato juice, dishwashing liquid, and baking soda was the door to the side yard. Funny, it hasn't been much use as a door for several years, stuck as it is in the shut position.  And though I have learned over the years to never let a closed door interfere with my dreams, I was quite content to allow this one to thwart the nightmare that is a direct skunk hit.

Often, in the middle of the night, I lie awake contemplating the many ways in which I have wronged my children. Sometimes, for a change of pace, I lie awake contemplating how I have wronged other people. No doubt, my children -- and those other people -- lie awake on occasion as well, contemplating the ways in which I have wronged them. At least we're all on the same page. Even the neighborhood skunks try to get in on the action every now and then, punish me somehow for what I have done.

But that door, welded shut to keep me and Manny inside and relatively unscathed while Pepe le Pew flipped its tail at us, has become a symbol to me. A symbol of hope, of auspicious beginnings, of a rosy future that most assuredly will not be cut short by the dire consequences predicted as a result of the Mayans having run out of ink to complete their calendar. Life may be filled with narrow escapes, but it will go on, and it will be free of foul odors and baths in tomato juice. Even days that begin inauspiciously with pre-dawn trips to the laundry room will show signs of optimism and good tidings. When I run into a closed door, I will know, from now forward, that it is closed for good reason

I plan to take full advantage of the hope offered up by that door yesterday morning, take advantage of the shift in perspective one always enjoys after a narrow escape from disaster. Yesterday, with a renewed sense of purpose, I got off to a good start. I finally ordered my new business cards, I finally created my web site, and I went to see a man about a horse. Well, actually, a woman about a job, but that sounds so ordinary and mundane. And I even started looking into vacation options for me and my youngest child this winter. After all, if we are both lying awake at night contemplating the ways in which I have wronged her, we might as well do it together for a few days at a beach front hotel in Mexico.

This post is number 500 in An Eagle's Tale. My good fortune 500. Things are looking up, and sometimes a closed door is just a closed door. Not a deterrent, not a roadblock. Just something to help keep the skunks at bay.

Mommy Really IS Dearest. Really.

"When your kids are teenagers, it's important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you." 
Nora Ephron, I Feel Bad About My Neck

The other day, I was complaining to my brother the psychiatrist about how, to put it mildly, my sixteen year old daughter and I are not getting along too well. He was amused, telling me that he had been wondering when the shit would finally hit the fan for us; he had long been puzzled by the unnatural ease of our relationship.

A highly trained professional, he urged me to recall myself as a sixteen year old. He used the technical term -- raging fucking bitch. Maybe, but I seem to remember having good reason to be that way. I was surrounded by assholes. My daughter, on the other hand, is surrounded by me. Doting, non-intrusive, funny as hell. She should be kissing the ground I walk upon, thanking God every day for sending her such an extraordinary mother.

As educated and well regarded in his field as he might be, my brother the psychiatrist is probably too emotionally involved to make a correct assessment of the situation, so I am going to seek a second opinion. But hey, I am as introspective as they come (another reason my daughter is so damn lucky), so until I find someone who can offer up a more rational explanation of our current strife I will ponder ways in which I might improve my behavior and become so extraordinary as to be completely beyond reproach. I have already vowed to cater to her every whim, to refrain from confronting her when she refuses to speak to me unless she needs something.

Project Mommy Dearest is going well, I think. Yesterday, as she sat at the kitchen table studiously ignoring everything I said, I didn't slam any cabinet doors, didn't well up with tears,  and I persevered with my efforts at quality conversation. When she somehow knocked her empty water bottle onto the floor, I said nothing as I watched her glance at it, shrug, and stare back into the empty space that is me. With great cheer and not a hint of exasperation, I picked it up and practically skipped over to the recycling bin to toss it. I stopped short of thanking her for giving me her empties; less is more when you are fighting sarcasm with every cell in your body. I watched her watch me fold her laundry, and greeted her with a chipper "hi sweetie" each time I returned to lug another pile upstairs. She said nothing, but that's better than saying something nasty.

The fruits of my labor are becoming apparent. When I drove downtown this morning to retrieve her from her dad's so she wouldn't have to take the train on a Sunday (in all fairness, she was willing, but if I am to be the dearest mommy ever I need to be consistent), I received a text from her asking if I'd like her to get me a coffee. I was bursting with joy. When she got into the car, she actually smiled; a real smile, with teeth, a smile accompanied by actual small talk. And no, I didn't know that most salad dressings contain anchovy paste, but I was thrilled that she was sharing this news with me. Note to self: head to the grocery store and stock up on anchovy paste free salad dressing. As we drove home, we continued to chat amicably, and at one point we both said the same thing at the same time. "I love those Whole Foods veggie burgers," we both announced, in unison. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

It reminded me of a day long ago, when I was in the car with my parents driving into Manhattan from Brooklyn. As we approached a busy intersection, my mother and I, in unison, recited the name of the bar on the corner. "Friar Tuck," we both said, with the same exaggerated southern accent. As I recall, it was the first words we had spoken to each other in at least an hour. I remember being amused; I remember my mother being ecstatic. Two words, spoken in two part harmony, had literally made her glow. It seemed a bit odd to me, but my mother was my primary target back then, the object of my utter disdain, so "a bit odd" was almost endearing.

"I love those Whole Foods veggie burgers." My heart was singing. My daughter, apparently, was not quite as moved by the moment. She was amused, yes, but a bit thrown. "I'm getting out of the car!" she said. I assume she was joking, since we were going seventy, but being on the same wavelength as mom didn't give her the kind of warm and fuzzy feeling that had so overtaken me I wanted to leap into the passenger seat and smother her with hugs and kisses. Anyway, notwithstanding her feeble effort to dismiss the magnitude of the bonding incident, there was no denying we had relocated some tiny patch of common ground. Cherished common ground, no matter how hard she tried to pretend it wasn't there.

A few minutes ago, she texted to tell me she wanted to pick up dinner for the two of us, and gave me a choice of restaurants. Be still my fragile heart. It's a good thing I still text with one thumb. I needed my other hand to pinch myself.

If You Wanted Someone Who Changes Lightbulbs You Should Have Married a Gentile!

Tradition! It's the glue that ties us to our pasts and helps us to stick with it as we tread into unfamiliar territory. Tevye explains it best in Fiddler on the Roof. It's how we keep our balance. It's how we know who we are, and who God expects us to be.

Back in the day, when it was difficult to find a rabbi who would officiate at a mixed marriage, my Irish Catholic fiance and I settled on a self righteous flamingly gay pseudo intellectual who had turned tying the interfaith knot into a bit of a cottage industry. For an hour each week in the months leading up to our marriage, we attended meetings with the entrepreneurial rabbi and other wayward couples, learning not so much about what it means to be married (leave that to the priests) but rather what it means to be married to a Jew. We were as cynical about those meetings as we were about our Lamaze classes, where we giggled incessantly, knowing full well I would last about two contractions without narcotics. Still, our birthing instructor reluctantly allowed us to go forward with parenthood, and the rabbi showed up at our wedding (for a small fee, of course).

Our self righteous flamingly gay pseudo intellectual rabbi may have been no better than your average street hustler, but he was determined not to be a hypocrite. There would be no chupah, although we were welcome to get married under some unnamed lattice structure that sort of looked like one. There would be no Katubah, although we were certainly welcome to draw up our own contract with our own set of rules, on our own time. And, most disappointing to me, there would be no breaking of the glass by the groom. These were all distinctly Jewish traditions, and to incorporate them into our ceremony -- even though we had just spent months learning how to create a Jewish marriage with only fifty per cent Jew -- would just be wrong. Where was Tevye when I needed him? I was, indeed, feeling as shaky as a fiddler on the roof about the whole thing. How would I keep my balance? How would I know who I was and who God expected me to be?

I attended a Jewish wedding last weekend, and I could not help but wonder whether the trappings of tradition might have put us, way back when, on more solid ground. Even if, as I realized as I watched the traditions unfold before me, I have no idea why they exist and what they mean. So I did some research, just to see what I've been missing, and I realized that nobody really knows where these traditions came from or what they are supposed to mean. I have my own theories though.

First, there was the circling of the bride around the groom, then the groom around the bride. Three times each. Some say the three circles symbolize the three hallmarks of marriage: righteousness, justice, and loving kindness. Maybe so, but even with the bride's face covered by her veil (another tradition, which I believe arose out of the need to protect the five hundred dollar make-up job for pictures) I could see her expression.  I have my eye on you, buddy is what she appeared to be saying. You stray once, you even so much as look cross-eyed at some tall blond shiksa with skinny hips, you won't know what hit you. And the groom's circles? I imagine he gets his turn so nobody can tell how badly he's shaking.

Then, there the yichud, the seclusion of the bride and groom (after the public exchange of vows) in a private room so they can, um, conclude the ceremony. You know, consummate the marriage. In the old days, they'd come out waving the bloody sheet as proof that the act was done, done for the first time ever, at least by the bride. She's no shiksa whore, after all. I couldn't tell you for sure what goes on in that room, but I am certain, after all the money the bride's family has spent on make-up, manicures, pedicures, and skin treatments, not to mention the dress, the last thing that bride is doing is having sex. More likely, the newly minted wife is laying down the law, reading her groom the riot act, showing him who's the boss. Let's just say the blood on the sheet does not belong to her.

Finally, well into the evening, the wedding guests encircle the bride and groom and their families to dance the hora. Eventually, if they can find enough strong goyim (usually hotel staffers), the bride and groom are raised up in separate chairs, where they each grab on to the corner of a napkin as they rock precariously up and down in mid air. A nice festive ritual you might think. To me, though, the symbolism is all too clear. Hangin' on by a thread, is what I see. Hangin' on by a thread, as shaky as a fiddler on the roof.

And yes, naturally, there was the breaking of the glass, or, more accurately, the light bulb. Some say it symbolizes the destruction of some ancient temple. Yeah, right. You and I know it's the one and only time in the marriage when the Jewish groom gets to put his foot down.

Getting the Point!!!

It's not what you say, it's how you say it. Which is why text messages can be so confusing.

Months ago, my younger daughter told me all my texts seemed angry. I was constantly making her feel bad. Horrified -- lord knows the last thing I want is for her to feel bad while she's so busy making me feel like shit -- I scrolled through, looking for evidence. "I'll see you at 6." "I got us pizza for dinner." "Do you need anything from Walgreens?" No name calling, not a cuss word in the entire message stream. What was she talking about?

I texted her back. (What? Did you think she had brought this up in an actual conversation?) "I am not angry. I am never angry." I thought that pretty much covered it. Bored maybe. But I can't imagine I would ever seem angry about, say, having pizza for dinner at six after a quick Walgreens run.

"There you go again!" was her response. "Why are you mad at me?"

I was baffled. "I am not mad at you." Or, more accurately, angry, but I thought correcting her and pointing out the incorrect use of "mad," which in my mind conjures up images of rabid, salivating dogs, not rational people expressing displeasure, might add fuel to the fire.

"You don't use exclamation points! You use periods!"

Ahhh. So "I'll see you at 6." is angry. "I'll see you at 6!" is not angry. I get it. "Ill see you at 6!!!!!!!" is euphoric. I communicated my comprehension immediately. "Oh!!!!!!!!" "I'm sorry!!!!!!!!" "Love you!!!!!!" I was hoping I had wriggled my way out of that one relatively unscathed.

Over the course of the last few months, I have done my best to overcome the laziness that impels me to just hit the space button twice for a neat little period and expend the extra energy it takes to punctuate even the blandest of remarks with an exclamation point. "Almost there!" "In the bathroom!" "Manny has fleas!" In writing, I sound, if not happy, at least deranged.

Frankly, I've noticed there are far more sinister ways to make the recipient of a text feel like shit than by merely choosing unemphatic punctuation. "Yep" and "nope" are my two favorites. Just yesterday, I received responses from three different people containing one of those words (two of the texters once resided in my womb, the other simply put them there). I have used "yep" and "nope" as weapons myself; I know full well the impact of the subliminal messages those simple words are intended to transmit. Leave me alone. Screw you. You're an idiot. I hate your fucking guts. And yes, if you add an exclamation point, all of that goes away. "Yep!" means yee ha, woo hoo, I'm so excited I could spit! "Nope!" means thank goodness, what a relief, let's party!

I haven't confronted any of them, but all those curt "yep" and "nope" texts have put me in an extremely bad mood, which is not a good thing since I have to put on a happy face tonight at a wedding. In fact, I just filled out the card: Dear Shiny Young Couple. Yep. Two out of three do not make it. Nope. Good luck. I can't put my finger on it; something seems off, maybe even a little angry. Sure is honest, though, and I'm big on honesty.

The truth is weddings just make me ornery. It's not that the sight of other folks' happiness makes me angry. Wait. Of course it does. It makes me downright fucking miserable. But I'm going to take the lessons I've learned about the nuances of texting and put them to good use in the card I give to the woefully misguided young couple. I'm tossing the first, and replacing it with something that sounds suitably happy and the opposite of angry.

"Yep!!! Two out of three!!!" 

This Just In

Did I really just watch a four minute segment on the weather? At seven o'clock, during the lead minutes of the lead hour of a national news show? And I thought the local news lead (about the death of a Chicago fire fighter whose death -- though untimely -- had absolutely nothing to do with fire fighting) had been a bit thin.

I'd call in to offer up some real news, but I bet the phones are all tied up with people weighing in on the weather. Does a cold morning in October debunk everything we have heard about global warming? Is it inconsistent with the change of seasons? Is forty degrees before the sun comes up about a week earlier than the usual first forty degree morning really all that newsworthy? Anyway, just as I began to reevaluate my boredom with weather related plots, things started to pick up. A presumably well paid reporter was talking (with feeling) about a big brawl that broke out in a Philadelphia hotel between not one wedding party but two. I was a little puzzled about how the brawl would have broken out between one party, but the video was so priceless -- what I thought was a bulging and misshapen oversized wedding cake being flipped over was actually a bride -- I forgot about the linguistic issues and became transfixed. Say Yes to the Dress meets Jersey Shore meets Survivor meets The Biggest Loser. Now that's reality, that's news.

Yesterday, I watched the morning news for more than an hour as the show provided non-stop coverage of the Chicago Marathon. It may seem to some that watching thousands of scantily clad white people chase a handful of Africans down the street (seriously, had it not been for the clothing I would have thought it was about the suburban police chasing, ahem, presumed non-residents out of town) is dull, but for me, on DAY 2 (not to be confused with day ii) of my race training schedule, I found the coverage scintillating.

Speaking of scintillating news, let me fill you in on my training for the 15K that is now less than a month away. My left hip, the one that made me stop running in the first place, is in such pain I practically needed a fork lift to help me shift positions in bed the other night so I could drain my other nostril. (TMI?) My right knee, which never bothered me before, is swollen and achy, no doubt from my overcompensation when I chose to keep running on my incapacitated left hip. I tried to bend forward this morning and touch my toes. I was still so far away when I completed the stretch I needed a magnifying glass to see the floor. This from a self-proclaimed yogi, no less.

So a relatively intelligent person would say to herself, Self, you are too old and decrepit to run this race. Take the pretty fleece you paid a $75.00 registration fee for and run -- well, hobble -- to the finish line on the non-business side of the ropes where you can cheer your daughters on and act your age. Yes, a relatively intelligent person would definitely say that.

I am taking a few days off. Not because I have chosen to, but because I haven't yet been able to figure out how to walk again. I am going to run that friggin race if it kills me. News to anyone who knows me? Of course not. But puzzling -- and therefore riveting, at least to me -- all the same.

I wonder what the weather will be like in early November.