Everlasting Visions

At my father's funeral, a vaguely familiar gentleman approached and gave me a hug. "Hello Mick," he said. Mick. Mickey. My mother. This man thought I was a 67 year old widow. I was 38 at the time, and 66 seemed ancient. For a brief moment, my grief turned to rage.

Mistaking my homicidal glare for confusion, the man introduced himself. Jerry. I had not seen Jerry since I was about ten. When my mother was, hmm, about 38. For Jerry, time had stood still; it was an honest mistake. I corrected him gently, returned his hug.

I don't even remember how my parents knew Jerry, but I remembered him fondly. He was hilarious. Not just in the garden variety kibbitzer sort of way, like Walter or Roy, the ones who were always on the guest list when my parents "had company," the ones I referred to as uncles even though we shared no DNA. Jerry was funny in a stand-up comedian sort of way, subtle, clever, grammatically correct.

I remember also that he was ill. He's not well, my mother would whisper, whenever his name came up. I remember thinking how unfair it was, that someone so funny and smart could be so sick. It was some gastrointestinal thing, as I recall. Not as bad as "cancer," the thing that was whispered with darting eyes and a hiss that made it sound almost dirty. Bad enough, though, that it was probably a good thing he wasn't around a lot on those Saturday nights when my elegant mother teased her guests' palates with pounds of the most delicious shrimp I have ever tasted while she slaved in the kitchen, closely monitoring a Corningware baking dish filled with chicken breasts drowned in Campbell's cream of mushroom soup. The digestive disconnect might have killed him.

My nineteen year old daughter and I went to see Beautiful yesterday. Tapestry was the album of my formative decade, debuting when I entered junior high and spinning right along with me all the way through college. I wondered whether my daughter would appreciate the music, the deeply personal lyrics and the piercing melodies of my youth, the story sung by the quintessential hippie chick pictured on the album cover. I wondered, too, whether the show could really be as good as everyone has claimed, and whether I should have saved some money and just dug up my old album collection, plugged in my son's vintage turntable, closed my eyes and let time stand still.

When the crowd cheered for the young woman cast as Carole King as she appeared on the stage for the grand finale, her long wavy hair draped over the shoulders of a long, peasant style dress, I thought about Jerry and time standing still and the tricks our minds play. For a moment, I think we all made the mistake of thinking it was Carole, the real Carole, And if the real, 72 year old had appeared, I think we would have believed she was thirty. The tapestry she wove and shared, all those years ago, is timeless.

The notes of Tapestry, the song, were played in short bursts throughout, but the lyrics were never sung. The omission surprised me, even disappointed me a bit. But when I woke this morning, those were the lyrics running in a continuous loop through my head, rich and royal, everlasting. A feeling, intangible, "impossible to hold."

It was wonderful to see and feel and hear, with my daughter, the story of an extraordinary young woman who came of age at a tumultuous time, a time more innocent than but not unlike the present, in many ways. I can't help but wonder what her tapestry looks like now, several lifetimes later. Larger and older, perhaps, but still rich and royal. Timeless.

A Galaxy Far Far Away

New Year's Eve, 1977. Times Square. Star Wars. With whatsisname.

The movie, for me, was little more than a welcome respite from the cold, two warm hours tucked between an outdoor, endless movie line and the crush, afterward, of shivering, drunk revelers waiting for the ball to drop. I thought the way the prologue scrolled into the far reaches of the galaxy was cool. I thought Princess Leia's side buns were adorable, in an odd sort of way. I thought anthropomorphic robots were a tad unrealistic, and I thought the Darth Vader thing was a bit over the top. I know I didn't really follow the plot, because years later I had no idea which Empire was striking back or why we cared about the Jedi returning. I didn't even know they had left.

I don't remember whatsisname's name but I remember he was nice and had come prepared with a bottle of cheap champagne and a couple of plastic flutes. Once, back at school, he had called the local radio station and dedicated RubyTuesday to me, just because he knew I liked it. And he tried to teach me to ski somewhere in New Jersey. I really wish I could remember his name.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, a memorable New Year's Eve with decidedly unmemorable details. Yesterday, about a week shy of thirty-nine years later, I sat between my son and my youngest daughter and saw the latest Star Wars flick. I was determined, this time, to follow the story. My son gave me a brief tutorial on the way, and there was at least the benefit of familiarity on this second go-round. A somewhat helpful prologue scrolled into the far reaches of the galaxy, and it still seemed cool. Harrison Ford, even thirty-nine years later, caught my attention. I'd get lost in space with him any time. Carrie Fisher, well, at least she saved face with a single dignified cinnamon bun at the nape of her neck. I got the feeling she would have happily accepted more than the chaste hug from Harrison, but that's all he offered. Even when she said she loved him. Cad.

Thanks to El Niño, this winter is warmer. It would have been a better year, I think, to celebrate the New Year outside, at Times Square. Or to stand in an endless line snaking around a city block just to see a movie I can't grasp. I enjoyed it more this time, though, sitting between two of my children. No offense to old whatsisname or the original flick. As I have from the time they were little, I would glance at their faces when something struck me as funny, or surprising, or, more often than not, ridiculous. It's always better seeing things with them, through their eyes.

Welcome back Jedi, and droids, and aging princesses and ageless heroes and assorted other motley creatures. Welcome back memories of years gone by and people who somehow stick in my mind though I cannot recall their names. And welcome home, albeit briefly, to my children from galaxies far, and sometimes farther away, and thanks to them for the occasional fresh glimpse at the world, shared through their eyes.

Playing Crap in Vegas

Had it not been for an eleventh hour "happy anniversary on your divorce wish" from a close friend, the occasion would have passed unnoticed, at least by me. Oddly, I kept thinking the date -- which is conspicuous by virtue of an unlikely symmetry of numbers --  rang a bell, but I could not for the life of me figure out why. Solid evidence of life moving in a good direction despite a deteriorating brain. Youth may be wasted on the young, but happiness is never wasted, no matter how thick the fog.

Though my memory may appear to have become selective, I am fairly certain that neither one of us has actually forgotten the occasional misery of our less than ideal marriage or the relentless torture of our drawn out divorce. It's just that the animosity no longer serves a purpose, especially now that the lawyers have been paid. With precious little opportunity these days to piss each other off, our relationship is not unpleasant. Our children have progressed from being bothered by our amicability to simply not being amused by it. Given that they were never amused by us -- either singly or together, at least not in an "I'm laughing with you" kind of way -- this is good.  Maybe as good as it will ever get, but I'll take it.

As apolitical as I am inclined to be -- being on different sides of the aisle did not factor into the break-up of our marriage, except maybe when I accused him of being a bit stodgy -- I could not wait to watch the final Republican debate last night. Animosity may not serve a purpose in my own life, but it sure is entertaining. As the candidates filed onto the stage, it seemed an SNL skit in the making, really writing itself. I mused about costume design and captions. Ben Carson, retired neurosurgeon, a stethoscope dangling in front of his decidedly un-party-like blue tie; Chris Christie, former federal prosecutor, pizza stains dotting his shirt; Carly Fiorina, dragon lady CEO, holding a puppy. And maybe squeezing it a bit too tightly when Chris Christie talked about moms at the bus stop and dads at work. Seriously? Donald Trump. Always in costume.

Yes, animosity is entertaining, but it certainly doesn't seem to serve much of a purpose. Why can't they all just get along, like me and my ex? My take on the whole thing -- and this is coming from a place of embarrassing political ignorance -- is that the Republicans have finally figured out that being divided means being conquered, so they decided to pair up and battle each other in twos in an effort to at least cut the field by half. Sure, Carly seems smart, but she's just downright scary and unlikeable (not just a bitch but a skinny bitch) and, therefore, irrelevant, so she was nominated to be the "why can't we all just get along" ambassador. The one to remind everyone that the enemies are Obama and Hillary, and if the Republicans all waste time ganging up on the buffoonish Trump that still leaves a gang of eight front runners to divide the shrinking pie. Jeb got the Don, Rubio got Cruz, and Paul took on Christie. John Kasich and Ben Carson, well, they both seem nice.

There are plenty of wishy washy Hillary lovers out there (although, to her credit, at least she's not a skinny bitch), and let's face it, desperate times call for desperate measures. In the months to come, I can only hope politics will indeed make some strange bedfellows, and unlikely but productive alliances will arise out of the muck.

Gosh, with all this bickering, it almost makes divorce look tame. Terrorists and like minded folks notwithstanding, one of the things that makes us distinctly human is our will to survive.  Maybe a few handshakes across the aisle will help us.

Guns and Poses

In two weeks, all of my children will be together, in one zip code — mine, no less — for the first time in what seems like forever. Knowing any attempt at resistance will be futile, they will grudgingly appease me and pose for a picture.

Their exasperation will be a well kept secret among us, a secret I will easily forget as soon as the moment is captured and permanently transferred from the present to a nostalgia-worthy past. The picture will tell the story as I would write it — a whole rendered far happier, by virtue of togetherness, than the sum of its not, by any means, unhappy parts.

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound? Is happiness real unless it is posted on some form of social media for all to see? Does the extent of the happiness depend on the number of “likes?”

I’ll be the first to admit I am and have long been a bit ambivalent and, worse still, hypocritical about social media. I resisted it at first, wondering why anyone is interested in what anyone else happens to be thinking or doing at any particular moment. If I cared, I would ask, and even then, I generally do so only to be polite.

I resisted also as a matter of principle, appalled by all the fake (I assumed, because I’m a bit nasty) smiles and the manipulated depictions of life. I held myself above it all, until I succumbed to reality, the reality that I was wildly envious of all these permanently happy people populating my news feed. Could the grass really be so much greener on the other side of all my fences? Months passed, still no evidence of misery. There was nothing else to do but jump on board.

I have done my share of posting pictures that nobody in their right mind should give a shit about, announcing to the world that I am a perfect mom or sister or daughter or a perfect friend or a perfect dog owner and that it is virtually impossible to be in my presence without smiling. I haven’t just tallied the “likes;” I have checked my phone obsessively for the little red superscript telling me there might be another thumbs up. I have silently grieved when the notification is not, in fact, a “like,” but a reminder about a birthday for someone I barely even know.

Other than posting a link to my blog each time I write one, I have steered clear of using Facebook as a forum for debate, whether civilized or not so much. I have not judged those who use it as a soapbox, as posting a link to my innermost and highly irrelevant thoughts places me in a bit of a glass house.

But when I heard, the other day, that the young mother who murdered more than a dozen innocent people before turning her six month old baby into an orphan had just posted her allegiance to ISIS on Facebook, I began to rethink the weird questions. Like the one about the tree in the forest or the one about true happiness being a warm “like.” Like the one about whether crazy talk inspires otherwise sane people to do crazy things — I still believe the answer to that one is “no.”

Like the one about whether guns kill people or people kill people. I suppose it's only a matter of time -- smart guns with smart triggers will be commonplace in the arsenal of smart weapons, and there'll be an ammo app in our smart phones that will enable us to spew bullets along with our rants. For now, though, as far as I know, it still takes two to tango.

Just hours after my daughter and I discussed whether Facebook has outlived its usefulness, whether the viciousness and the hostility has finally made the silly attention-seeking even sillier, a good friend who has tended toward the soapbox announced, eloquently and at length, that he was done. Done with saying things he would not say in person, done arguing with people he doesn’t know, people with whom he would never, not on the coldest day in Hell, achieve any sort of meeting of minds. Done stirring the pot on such a broad and, apparently, incendiary scale.

As a writer, or aspiring writer, can I truly be expressing my thoughts if nobody reads it? Of course. Will I still hope that I get a bit of an audience and an occasional “atta girl?” Of course. Will I take a stand and shut down my Facebook page? Not yet.

And will I post the picture I intend to take in two weeks, the one in which my kids and I and even the dog all pose as the happiest beings on earth, happier still to be basking in the glow of one another. Of course!Even if nobody “likes” it.

Going Nowhere Fast

At a hundred strides per minute and about a thirty per cent incline I was definitely going nowhere. As I watched the two television screens overhead -- I love multi-tasking at the gym, thanks to closed captioning -- I realized I am not alone.

Truth be told, nowhere seems like a better option than where we all seem to be heading. Then again, truth be told, the truth is overrated. On screen one, the Sunday talking heads spent a half hour talking about Donald Trump, and whether his aversion to truth telling is any different from, say, everybody else's. Okay, seriously?

The only thing that sets most politicians apart from the rest of us mortals is there's a lot more at stake when they lie. Let's face it though, in politics and in real life, "lie" is such a strong word; there are lots of shades of gray. "I did not have sex with that woman!" Only two people and a soiled dress know for sure, and different dictionaries might give us different definitions and different answers, but really, who cares? Except for Hillary, and only years later when the whole "affair" just became another little grenade for Hillary-haters to toss her way.

Mostly, for politicians, winning (or not losing what you've already won) is everything, and it's why they pay lots of money -- no doubt obtained from questionable sources -- to really smart people who know how to spin a good yarn. Most of us know what it's like to get caught with our hand in a cookie jar, and most of us know how nice it would be to have some help with the back pedaling while we're trying to floss the crumbs out of our teeth. It's human nature. In a presidential election year, it's human nature on steroids.

There are two things that set Donald Trump apart not only from the rest of us mortals but from the rest of the folks vying to be, arguably, the most powerful and important person on earth. First, he already believes he is the most powerful and important person on earth, so that's hard to top. Second -- and this is somewhat related to his penchant for delusion that led to reason number one -- he does not care about facts or crumbs in his teeth or back pedaling. Essentially, he has no shame. Look at the man's hair.

Is anyone really surprised that a whole lot of folks want him to be POTUS even though they know, deep down, he lies? Let she who has never chosen to believe her husband's answer when she asks "do these jeans make my ass look fat?" be the one to cast the first stone. People like to hear that we can easily identify all of our enemies and, as a result, easily obliterate them all. There is nothing like a basic formula to make everyone breathe a sigh of relief and sleep better at night. This isn't the first time somebody has stepped up to a soap box claiming to have a simple solution to "the problem" and gotten otherwise right thinking folks to believe him. And it certainly won't be the last.

Mostly, I shake my head in amusement at Donald Trump, but today I watched a bunch of really smart political commentators analyze why saying "your ass doesn't look fat in those jeans" when everyone knows damn well it does is different from trying to explain why your hand was in the cookie jar. And, I was thinking, if that's something that even merits discussion we really are going nowhere fast. All of us.

They say bad things happen in threes, and this morning, as I strode on a stair climber to nowhere while I watched the decline of civilization on two television screens (the second one was airing a piece about the millions of dollars celebrities spend on gifts for themselves and their loved ones, but that's a post for another time), I figured there was nowhere to go but up. Ha!

As if on cue, a fitness instructor who appeared to have a megaphone sewn into his vocal chords started screaming out instructions to the line of people on treadmills behind me.  In a room filled with signs reminding us not to talk on our cell phones, where the televisions are silent unless you plug yourself in, where the treadmills talk to you and encourage you and take you on virtual tours of the Alps and pretty much do everything for you except your laundry, seasoned runners with sinewy thighs and no body fat needed someone to scream at them at the top of his lungs for forty-five minutes. "Precision running," the class is called. I am not lying, not this time.

I was going nowhere. Politicians and talking heads were going nowhere. Celebrities were going nowhere. Actually, they were jetting off everywhere, looking for perfect and useless gifts. And now I was going deaf. What a morning, what a world.

The New Abnormal

I didn’t think twice about descending into a crowded New York City subway station yesterday. It’s cheap, it’s fast, and, under “normal circumstances,” far less death defying than your average taxi ride through midtown.

By all accounts, this city — like all other cities but maybe just a smidge more — is on high alert. Bomb sniffing dogs, increased police presence, Fort Knox style security in my daughter’s downtown office building, and invisible measures we average folks can’t even imagine, no matter how many episodes of Homeland we watch. New York still goes about its business, though. Surly crowds, accents that make the literate sound uneducated and the nice sound nasty. Old fashioned comforts of home.

It occurred to me, as I waited in my daughter’s lobby watching all the smartly dressed twenty-somethings slip into the heavily fortified bank of elevators. that 9/11, to them, is the defining event of their pubescence. When I was the age they were then, the south tower of the World Trade Center had just been completed; and it would be a year before the twin towers were officially open for business. The scandal-gate era had just begun with the Watergate break-in. We were fighting a pointless and horrific war, but it was really far away — particularly for a middle class Jewish kid in New York. As bad as things were, fear had not yet become a way of life.

What went up has since come down. The image of Richard Nixon insisting “I am not a crook” seems sweetly nostalgic. We pay more attention than we used to Asia in general these days, but it still seems very far away and vary unfamiliar. It’s not uncommon for people to ask me whether my son, who has lived in Japan for almost four years, is fluent in Chinese.

No matter what was going on in the world, back in the day, I don’t recall feeling vulnerable or threatened. Except when my mother caught me sneaking some Twinkies. I never thought movies or concerts or subway stations were dangerous on a mass scale. Sure, there was always street crime, but all I needed to do was pay attention, or, as my father always told me, “keep my wits about me.”

My daughter, the one who lives with the daily reality of twenty-first century New York, doesn’t think twice about taking the subway, or going about her business the way she has since moving here. When her younger sister said she would take the subway to her office, though, she put her foot down and insisted she take one of those garden variety death defying taxis. The kind of threat that seems manageable. We accept that we have no control over what happens to ourselves, but when it comes to the ones we love, the known, old-fashioned evil is definitely the lesser one.

My subway ride yesterday was indeed cheap, fast, and, to the naked eye, at least, not particularly death defying. It was mildly unpleasant, being crushed by way too many bodies crammed into way too small a space, but everybody seemed far more interested in getting to where they needed to be than, say, destroying human life. Despite the harsh accents, I could just tell.

Wedged in with my packages, unable to even hold on, I was startled when someone tapped me on the back. Braced for a New York style confrontation, I whipped around, ready to apologize. It was a woman seated near where I had achieved my precarious balance for the ride. She just wanted to let me know she was getting off soon.

Maybe the villains still are far, far away, in a place very unfamiliar. We know it’s not true, but it’s the way we keep going.

Toujours Paris

A friend last night remarked how eerie it was that I had written only days ago about Paris.

I had thought it wasn't really about Paris, at least not by design. I was musing, as I often do, about life and love and other profound mysteries. The elasticity of the human heart. The beauty of a crisp autumn day. The sweet buttery taste of a perfect croissant.

The caption at the bottom of the television screen remained unchanged for hours last night: At least 153 killed in Paris terror attacks. This could not be happening again. Less than a year after coordinated attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish grocery store and a few other gratuitous kills, satire lives on and Parisian Jews still buy food and people walk around, feeling safe. Months from now, Parisians will again enjoy concerts and soccer games on a Friday night, and an entire country will no longer be on lock down. C'est la vie. La vie continue. 

I am glad I remember Paris the way I do, exactly six years ago, when I finally fell hopelessly under its spell. The news coverage of last night's carnage was, somewhat mercifully, blurred by darkness. Mostly, I listened. To the not-so-distant wail of sirens. To tongue tied reporters trying to articulate what is still, to most of us humans, unthinkable. I wondered if Paris would look familiar to me when the sun came up. I wondered if the croissants would ever taste as good.

When I returned home from my first visit to Paris, I couldn't eat bread. Especially French bread; even the still warm, extra long loaves cleverly packaged in white bags adorned with tiny French flags. I learned, soon after, that it's all about the water. You just cannot replicate French bread with Chicago water. You can come close, but you can't make a New York bagel here either. French bread.* New York bagels.* That's the best we can do.

As humans, we adjust to these things, the minor adversities and inconveniences that go hand in hand with our instinctive will to survive and our realistic expectation that life is not perfect. Life goes on, la vie continue, without French bread or New York bagels in Chicago; there are certainly enough simple pleasures out there to keep us content, to help us appreciate the ones that are harder to come by.

Life also goes on after the unthinkable happens. We don't forget but we keep going. A sparkling new tower lights up the sky by Ground Zero now, lit up in red, white, and blue stripes, in solidarity with our friends across the pond. Tragedy is a part of life; we mourn, and then we keep living. I like to think it's not only because of a lack of better alternative. There really is a lot of good stuff here.

My Paris post the other day, my 'love and loss and mysteries of the universe' post, was a little bit about game theory. About how love isn't -- or at least shouldn't be -- a zero-sum game. Love for one thing doesn't -- or at least shouldn't -- cancel out love for another. And, I suppose, we can only hope that the kind of hate that cast darkness over Paris and humans everywhere last night cannot take away all the good stuff. I marveled, only days ago, about the capacity of the human heart to stretch and always make more room. I despair, today, about the capacity of a frightening number of seemingly heartless humans to hate and destroy and fail to see what seems so obvious to the rest of us.

It's counterproductive to wonder when the next monster will come out from under the bed, hell bent on destruction. But on mornings after, when the sun comes up and the unthinkable mess is in full view, it's tough to focus on the croissants. No matter how many terrorists have blown themselves up or let someone in law enforcement do the honors, we know it's not a zero-sum game, and there are plenty more where they came from.

Social media enabled folks in Paris to mark themselves safe. It was reassuring, for those of us who immediately ran through our mind's Rolodex to account for friends and loved ones who might be in harm's way. It would be nice if we could think of "safe" as a permanent status, but we all know better.

We'll always have croissants and French bread and New York bagels, and we'll always have Paris. And, la vie continue, because that's how we roll, Well, la vie continue.*