Looking for that Groovy Feeling

On my way to the hospital to visit my mom this morning, I walked under the tram that glides alongside the Queensboro Bridge (aka the 59th Street Bridge  and the "feelin groovy bridge of Simon & Garfunkel fame) to transport commuters back and forth to Roosevelt Island. Commuters and, one day about 46 years ago, me and my mom. Because it was new, and we had been shopping nearby, and, well, just because. 

It's one of those days that has always stayed with me, and when I asked my mom whether she remembered, her broad smile assured me that it has stayed with her as well. It was uncharacteristically impulsive for my mom, who, for as long as I can remember, has always tried to adhere to some sort of plan, to take a tram ride for no reason at all, particularly when there was still good shopping to be done. My favorite memories of her always seem to involve veering from the plan. I remember we giggled when we took that tram ride to nowhere, back and forth, just for the fun of it. Me and mom, feelin' groovy. 

I find myself yearning to tell the nurses, the doctors, anybody here, really, about that day in 1976 when my mom and I sailed through the air across the East River, the intricate frame of the bridge close enough to almost touch. I want to tell them about that groovy day, and all the other unexpectedly groovy days in between in an otherwise overly orderly life. Like the time she zip-lined over a canyon (in her seventies). Or when she laced up a pair of ice skates and seemed surprisingly graceful and at home. Or when she flew out to Chicago for a day just to see her grandchildren when my father was ill. 

There is somebody new in the bed on the other side of the curtain in mom's room today. I glanced at her as I walked in but I didn't really see her, did I. Like all the others who have come and gone in that bed, in all the beds here, she is sick. She is alone. She is utterly without history or context, other than whatever medical notes are in her chart. I don't know what might make her smile, what memories she holds dear, what she has done in her life to make herself feel groovy, if only for a little while. Nor do the doctors and nurses. It's not their business, and it is, quite legitimately, not relevant.

Last week, during a brief stint in the emergency room, it took me hours to realize that the woman languishing in the bed next to mom, still wearing her boots and street clothing, was somebody other than a woman languishing in a bed. It was only after I realized she was about to drift over the side of the bed that we started to talk. I learned of her husband, recently felled by a horrible dementia. How she grapples with what has happened to him, the man who practiced law for so many years and took such good care of her. How they lost a son 18 years ago, and how she is only now able to talk about it without bursting into tears. Her surviving son showed up later, seemingly as annoyed with his mother as I tend to get with my own. We both need reminders, I thought, of who they are and who they have been and how they have lived and what they have lost. What we stand to lose. 

A little over two months ago, just as things began to unravel, we took my mother out to dinner for her 91st birthday, and had to  put her in a wheelchair to make the journey feasible. Still, she could walk shorter distances, and take care of herself. Still, her hair was perfectly coiffed and she was wearing her impeccable designer clothing and her favorite jewelry. My brother is the one who noticed, as we wheeled her the few blocks to the restaurant, that she had become invisible. People always remark how beautiful she is (and with good reason), but in a wheelchair, as beautiful as she still was, nobody saw her. Oddly, from my vantage point behind her, I was pushing a veritable queen, or at least a force of nature. 

As I stare out the window of her hospital room now, I can see 59th Street Bridge, in all its splendor, and I can see the tram lumbering by every so often. I can see me and my mom through the windows, giggling, feelin' groovy, taking it all in just for the hell of it. 

Swimming Against the Tide

The gloves are off, and so are the masks. Spring is paying an early and no doubt brief visit to Chicago, just in time for the river to be dyed green for St. Patrick’s Day. A pall appears to have lifted, different from the previous teasing respites from pandemic restrictions. Very few masks at all today, not even hanging at the ready off of wrists. Tougher to discern political affiliations on sight, but that's probably a good thing.  

Today I reveled at the faces in the elevator, surprised at what some of the dog owners I've known for months actually look like. A new neighbor introduced himself, and it took us both a moment to realize we had spoken at length only weeks ago, hidden behind our masks. I reveled as I strolled along the lakefront toward the river, not just at the mosaic of faces but at the palpable sense of renewal, of a city being reborn. 

My revelry is tempered, of course, not quite as unadulterated as I would like. For two years, all of us -- my brother, my children, and I -- have taken every precaution to ensure that my elderly mother would not become an untimely covid statistic. We celebrated her 90th by zoom, and a few months later, about a minute after I received my second shot, I traveled in for a real hug. We convened for her 91st in person, about a  week late and complicated only by the need for a wheelchair to transport her. That was only a month ago. The tussle over the wheelchair seems quaint now. 

I resent the jarring twist of fate that suddenly stopped her in her tracks after two years of extraordinary prudence. A twist of fate having nothing to do with covid and everything to do with age and a deteriorating spine and a bunch of other "stuff" -- to be technical -- a twist of fate that I suppose should hardly be jarring. I'm not a mathematician, but I can do basic math, and I was pretty certain she was somewhere on the back nine (as am I). I chided her repeatedly when the threat would temporarily abate, told her to get out and live because, really, what was she waiting for. And she did get out, with some trepidation. And I kept my fingers crossed each time she did, because, realism notwithstanding, there is a piece of me that always believed my mother was immortal, and why mess with that.

In what seems like a blink of an eye, my mother is now confined to a bed in a hospital, existing in some ill-defined space between the mental coherence my brother and I crave and her dire need for pain medication. A blink of an eye for us, though knowing her she has likely been "playing through the pain" far longer than we realize. We don’t know if she will ever get better, and we don’t know what "better" might look like. We don't even know what we want it to look like, but, lucky for us, that's not our choice to make.

With somewhat divergent manifestations, my brother and I are devastated, and we will wallow together and separately in our sorrows as we need to. Geography and disposition have long allowed him to be far more attentive to our mother. This, with a sense of finality far greater than any illness or accidents we have dealt with before, has forced us both to reckon with our differences. Sometimes, I think we exaggerate our reactions to our newfound despair, if only to emphasize to the other -- or to ourselves -- that our own way makes sense. But none of it makes sense. If anything, though, these past few weeks of far too much time together in a hospital room followed by surprisingly therapeutic dinners together in a nearby Italian restaurant have helped us with that. For that, I am grateful, and I revel to the extent I am able.

The river is bright green today, and, thanks to a controversial feat of engineering at the turn of the last century that reversed its flow, neither that shade of green nor the algae- and clay-induced mud green of normal days will ever spill into the crystalline sparkle of our lakefront. Still, under the surface, the water is murky and the tides shift, no matter what we do. 

I Need a Hero. Or a Banana Forehand.

 Yesterday, I watched the final set of the men's final at the Australian Open three times, knowing the outcome before I saw a single point. No suspense, not even a shred of skin in the game, but for almost an hour, three times in one day, I watched, transfixed, holding my breath as I waited to see whether another seemingly wide ball would descend in some impossible arc onto the fuzzy edge of a line. 

Greatness is refreshing. I have not written in a while -- at least not for the sheer joy of it -- because, quite frankly, joy tends to be elusive these days. The kind of joy that infects your days, reminds you that everything will be all right, that makes you not toy with the idea that "it's five o'clock somewhere" at ten o'clock in the morning. Sure, happiness pays a visit every so often, and I still laugh (a lot), but it's so hard to keep the despair from creeping in, even with a quasi-moratorium on cable news. 

We are desperately in need of heroes, and I have believed for a long time that athletes are good candidates. As a Jewish girl growing up in Brooklyn, I was not exactly raised to value athletic prowess, at least not as a virtue that would benefit me in my own life. (I like to think I could've been a "contendah" in some sport or another, if only my parents had poured themselves into it, but they were probably right to assume that was not my best path to success.) Still, I discovered, when I was nine, the inexplicable and unadulterated joy one feels as a fan when athletes become heroes. The Mets beat the unbeatable Orioles. The Miracle Mets. The Amazin' Mets. Against all odds, they were the champs.

At some point, it's less about the athletic gifts than the sheer mental fortitude, and, as I spent more than three hours yesterday on the edge of my seat, I wondered why we don't have more heroes like Rafa (or my beloved Roger) or any of the others who have that rare combination of genius, integrity, grace under pressure, and faith in themselves that the rest of us can only dream about. Even for those among us without genius or gifts, the grace under pressure and faith in oneself is certainly a goal worth achieving, one that, for me, remains elusive. Shame on "Novax" and others like him who possess the genius but don't make the most of their gifts. For the rest of us mortals, who were not born with it, it's the chicken soup we need for our souls. 

I need a hero. We all need heroes. Maybe we need to be our own heroes, if we want to see how this is all going to play out. We are not alone in this, but we are supposed to be exceptional, and we find ourselves  at the mercy of evil, ignorance, cowardice, and greed. Evil, because the worst among us have crawled out from under rocks and have risen to the top, displacing the cream that's supposed to be there. Ignorance, because we have half a country that believes abortion is comparable to the Holocaust and books in school are bad but guns in school are not really a problem and the workings of a free market to eradicate hateful or dangerous speech equates to a violation of the First Amendment. Cowardice and greed, well, looking at you Republicans in power. 

We are spinning wildly out of control, and we need to be a bit more than good ball strikers. We need passion, and fortitude, and the belief that we can change the arc, bring ourselves back inside the lines.
We need a banana forehand.

A Brush with a Choice

When I was about 20 weeks pregnant with my first child, the doctor suspected something might be wrong. A possible genetic problem, large cranium, short femur, could be nothing, could be, well, everything. It was only days before Christmas, and everyone wanted to get out of town, so I would have to wait to find out for sure. 

We had already named our fetus, but neither of us had any illusions about its actual personhood. Actually, as it turns out, we knew very little of our fetus's personhood;  we had assigned it a boy's name and. lo and behold, he was a girl. We were taken aback, momentarily, but we shifted seamlessly (I hate to admit it) into thoughts of a pink-hued and frilly future. 

Like many moms-to-be, I loved the faceless and amorphous clump of cells growing inside me from the moment I confirmed its existence. I had become a mother of sorts, though the thing I was mothering had a long way to go before it took on a human shape. A mother of an idea really, a dream, of boundless potential and endless wonder. I became consumed with the need to protect, unwittingly cradling my belly even before it burst out of my jeans. Which did not take very long at all. 

In the way that only privileged people can -- meaning we had means and education and had figured out we didn't have to take no for an answer when things were really important -- we didn't have to wait, and the diagnostic ultrasound guy found a way to squeeze one more session in before Christmas Eve day. I could barely breathe, much less eat or sleep until we knew, but still, my husband and I tap-danced lightly around the options. The "what-ifs" if the news was "bad." 

An option we never considered was the one proposed by my mother-in-law. A devout Catholic, she told us she would keep the baby if we didn't want to. It was not a command, and it was well-intentioned, but it was horrifying. Yes, Judge Amy Handmaid, horrifying, the thought of carrying my baby -- our baby -- to term and handing him over. He was still a him, somebody I barely knew, but if I knew anything it was that I would never be able to let him go once I saw him. Even to the safest haven of all -- the arms of a loving grandmother. I have never faulted her for her beliefs, for her offer. Her affinity for Rush Limbaugh, well, that's another story. 

It was all moot, and the large cranium and the short femur (and the absence of a penis) meant only that we were having a diminutive baby girl with a big head. (Think Tweety-bird with a pink velcro bow.) And that I didn't have to make the most heart-wrenching of choices -- a choice that would have affected the life of my unborn child and me and my husband and, of course, any as yet un-conceived siblings of that unborn child. And nobody else. As it turns out, I was privileged again, this time by sheer luck. 

I have loved that clump of cells since the day it formed, and, 32 years later, cannot imagine what life would have been like without her, or the two who followed. My guess is I would have loved that clump of cells no matter how she had turned out, had the "what ifs" come to pass and had I chosen to keep a baby with, at the very least, a more uncertain and fraught future than the ones I ultimately had. And  dropping her on someone else's doorstep -- even grandma's. -- was a definite non-starter.

Unlike so many women, I was blessed with the outcome of not having to make the choice. But it was mine to make. That is an issue that should never be up for discussion. 

Full Circle

Saw some old friends yesterday. It's been 17 years, they told me, not since I've seen them but since they moved to Memphis -- where their native Southern twangs no doubt belie the inevitable disconnect of being blue folk in a sea of red. They are, nevertheless, at home and happy down there, and assure me they have wonderful friends and a good life. They are people who, by nature, do not disconnect. They shun unhappiness, and they are generous. They are far better equipped than I to keep their heads from exploding at the mere sight of a lawn sign.

At a wedding the other night, I saw another old friend. She and her husband, two unmistakable Jews from Chicago, sold their place, got an Airstream, and moved to Michigan. Not to Bloomfield Hills, mind you, where the diaspora somehow dispersed many of our ilk, but to western Michigan. Spitting distance from Chicago, or at least from the "Chicago Riviera" on Lake Michigan's eastern shore, but otherwise, well, Mars. The Beverly Hillbillies in reverse, I suggested, trading the stray bullets of Chicago for a smattering of loosely organized but well-armed militia groups. There were a couple of Biden-Harris signs nearby, they assured me. So no exploding heads. Well except if you piss off somebody with a gun and an axe to grind. 

The wedding itself was a marriage of different cultures, a blending of evangelicals with Jews, of reds with blues -- the kind of thing that would have kept my mother's head in the oven permanently. The happiest wedding I've ever witnessed actually, an unadulterated celebration of joy and acceptance. Non-sectarian and multi-sectarian and blended-sectarian. A proud Jew by nature, I am never prouder of my heritage than when I watch Gentiles getting swept up into their first Hora. 

My old friends, the ones who live in Memphis -- remember them? He is one of my most loyal blog fans, and this is for him, really, though a bit of much needed therapy for me as well. He told me, years ago, that what he enjoyed about my blog was never really knowing what it was about until the end. It's kind of like my tennis serve, actually, the erratic spinning thing that seems to have no trajectory at all. Like my readers and my tennis opponents, I too have no idea where things will land, until they do. 

Some of us choose a path that's straight, and some of us choose a wild ride. Most of us end up meandering a least a little bit, even if it's not our first choice. We find ourselves in places we never imagined, in situations no one in their right mind would have planned. Where we think we don't belong. But we land, and on the things that are important, we come full circle, which means, I think, we never left at all. There are the people from whom we can be apart longer than we were ever together, yet when we find ourselves in the same zip code it's as if nothing ever intervened. We settle in, we remember who we are, whom we love, and what matters. The rest, it seems, is just noise. 

Who Wore it Better

The optics are not good. Neither are the pictures coming out of Kabul.

Unlike the armchair quarterbacks fighting for airtime on cable news networks of all political stripes, I don't pretend to know much about military history or, frankly, what's been going on in Afghanistan for the past few years, if not more. The news of the past week or two has forced me to learn more, with the added benefit, of course, of  piling on to my sense of  despair. 

By all accounts, this could have been handled better. Like that's something new here. I wish everybody could just get along, but I know just enough about history to know that's not going to happen. 

The comparisons to the fall of Saigon were inevitable, with  side by side pictures of the last helicopter leaving Vietnam and desperate Afghanis hanging on to the wing of an American airplane flooding social media and the airwaves. A permanent stain on Biden't legacy, this is, or so I've heard. Good presidents before him have made horrible mistakes (FDR sending a shipload of Jews escaping Nazi Germany back to their deaths in Europe comes to mind), but legacies are far more complicated than we make them out to be each time we think we have crossed the line. 

So back to our own house. Cleaning up after four years of the worst president ever -- and I say that not so much as an expert in anything other than being a human for 61 years -- is like cleaning a bathroom with a toothbrush. A large bathroom; a travel sized toothbrush. Half our country buys into the concept that personal "liberty" trumps (pardon the term) public health. Our outgoing president incited a riot and watched with glee as his angry mob beat police officers with flags bearing his name, broke windows, stormed through the Capitol, chanted murderous intentions, and erected a gallows for the Vice President. The pictures from Kabul, for me, called to mind those still fresh images of lawless Americans attacking their own country, my country. Don't even get me started on voter suppression and an entire political party that can, with a straight face, decry the invasiveness of a mask but litigate uteruses they've never met. 

Might I suggest we focus less on finger-pointing and more on figuring out what to do now? The Republicans will do their best to avail themselves of the horrors of the past week to wound Democrats in general, President Biden in particular. Democrats will help, because we just love to eat our own while our impotent center falls prey to recalcitrant wings. Sensationalist photographs get our attention, until the next shocking images make us forget. Journalists and social media influencers will manipulate our focus according to the market and our appetites, and Afghanistan will be the stain du jour until the next telegenic atrocity catches our eye. My guess it will be a homegrown atrocity. Just going with the odds on that one. 

Tall Ships and High Hopes

What I remember most about the bicentennial celebration in New York City was the sailors. As the tall ships from around the world paraded through New York Harbor, past the Statue of Liberty, and up the Hudson, I recall being hoisted up off a ladder onto a ship docked at the South Street Seaport on the East River. My friend accused me of being a flirt. Forty-five years later, I still swoon for a man in uniform. 

It was inspirational and aspirational, that majestic display in 1976, the summer before I went to college, when I still believed that the world was mine for the taking. When getting caught up in a celebration of my country's 200th birthday meant little more to me than enjoying a sparkling summer day and a few winks from young deckhands as innocent and ill-prepared for what lay ahead as I was, starched white caps notwithstanding. 

To the extent I ever thought about it back then, I was proud to be an American. I'm sure I even felt superior. Why wouldn't I? I took for granted the torch bearing lady rising out of the water off Manhattan's southern tip, the beacon of freedom who had welcomed my ancestors but who, to me, was just another New Yorker. As I got older, I realized what that must have meant to people sailing in from other places, where people like me could not have imagined the simple joy of just existing, without fear, on a July afternoon. 

Fast forward, which is how everything seems to happen now that I am no longer sixteen, even though I could swear I just was. I watched some unofficial fireworks from my window the other night, as spectacular a display as I've ever seen though the Fourth of July was still days away. It is a fitting time for celebration, in some ways, as we emerge from the surreality of the pandemic. The Chicago lakefront is packed again, as are the bars and restaurants. Gone are the plexiglass barriers and the signs requiring masks, though I marvel at how so many have still refused to shed the face coverings. I, for one, am all in with the science, vaccinated and more than willing to expose myself to whatever germs humanity is spewing, because to live in fear of the air, to me, seems inconsistent with living. Pending variants and further notice, of course. 

When it comes to celebrating America's birthday though, I proceed with caution. Notions of liberty have been twisted, and a frightening segment of the country has bought into what I and every right thinking person I know believes to be utter lunacy. Dangerous lunacy. We are at the mercy of forces of indecency and evil, and playing by the rules seems to render us powerless. The rationality of the center has given way to extremes on both ends, and to the most ruthless of the extremes go all the spoils. We are spiraling downward, and as much as I cling to hope, I tend to despair. 

We are hovering at the edge of a precipice, and I pray for salvation. A young sailor in a starched white uniform to lift us up, an armada of tall ships to remind us of who we are supposed to be. An aspirational Fourth of July, perhaps, to bring us back.