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by Jill Sherer Murray
Lately, I’ve taken to calling my backside “donkey.” It all started when my stepdaughter, C, reprimanded me for saying “ass” too much.
“But ass isn’t a bad word,” I say to her. “It means donkey.”
And so now, I’ve started treated my “donkey” as a separate entity.
Donkey don’t fit in the chair. Donkey needs to get smaller. Donkey refuses to shrink. Donkey don’t fit in them jeans. Donkey bad. Donkey flabby. Dead lifts good for tightening donkey. Donkey sore. Bed too hard for donkey. Donkey looks bad in those stretch pants.
You get the drift.
I’m not sure why, but naming my rear quarters “donkey” has been cathartic in an odd sort of way. It’s as if it’s become something separate. So I’m freer to look at and it talk about it in a more objective and less personal way which, for a person with body-image issues, is quite fabulous. By detaching it from the rest of my body, it’s as if I’m no longer responsible for it. I like that.
And even though it still comes with me wherever I go, like a cold sore or a pair of old sneakers with holes in them, it doesn’t have to dictate how I feel about myself. In fact, calling it donkey—and thinking about it as a donkey—has made it almost loveable.
Imagine that.
So there you have it. Me and my donkey are doing just fine. Thank you for asking. Why yes. We’d love to meet you for dinner. What night is good for you?
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Speaking of donkeys, mine and I have been holding steady with my wellness program. If you recall from my last post, I did, in fact, wind up seeking the help of Dr. G, who, I’ll admit, I disliked in the way you dislike the taste of goat cheese before you’ve ever really had any.
Now that I’ve been working with her towards, among other things, a smaller and more fit donkey, I must say, were I in the market for a new best friend, she might be at the top of my list.
Since I have one of those already, instead, I’ll look to her as a great teacher, a fellow journeyman, my physiological fly girl, my chiropractic Kazoo, the Mahareshi Mahesh Yogi who starts me on my quest for spiritual, mental, and physical wellbeing. Or, who keeps me from tipping the scales at 800 pounds as I delve ever deeper into the vortex of middle age, taking my metabolism, willpower, resolve, and good luck along with it.
And as it turns out, she’s arrived just in the nick of time.
Since taking the first step towards hotness, I mean, good health, I have learned from Dr. G’s magical x-rays that I have a tinge of arthritis in my neck. Bad for me, of course, but much worse for my husband. “Honey, I can’t empty the dishwasher…I’m arthritic.” ”Can’t walk the dogs, babe, my arthritis is acting up.” “Ouch oh mighty, that pesky neck-thritis, would you mind massaging it, again?”
On a positive note, I also have some of the best posture G’s seen this side of the millennium. And, my body, albeit it robust, is perfectly proportioned, which means instead of having a skinny waist and a donkey the size of a double wide, I’m large all over.
Great.
It also turns out that while my cholesterol is somewhat borderline, my triglycerides are a hair’s breath short of award-winning (damn that writer’s strike). Reason to celebrate? Well, not quite yet.
That’s because my CRPJKV (or some such) marker is slightly high. In other words, I'm precariously inflamed. Of course, who didn’t know that? I didn't need to give blood to know that I'm bloated a good 20 days out of the month. What I didn't know was that, my friends, can be bad for the ol’ ticker.
Now when I heard this news, naturally I panicked. Because that’s one of the things I do really well. Then, after having some time to digest it, I decided to crawl into bed with my therapy dog Elvis and cry for six hours straight. “Oh Elvy, why me? Why am I so bloated? Why oh WHY is my donkey so large? Oh my babeeee, I’m so hungry…..”
Of course, in the middle of all this, my primary care physician called to re-deliver the news and tell me to take a baby aspirin, so I don’t drop dead suddenly from a heart attack (well, she didn’t say that). Which, of course, made me fell ancient and served to intensify the hysterics already underway. I mean, who knew that, at 45, I’d wind up in such lousy shape? This has defied all my plans.
After all, I've been taking precautions. I’ve never smoked, drank, or done drugs—save a few emergency Women’s Correctol’s. I’ve always watched my food intake and been active, lifting weights for several years (although I did stop when I got married last year). So naturally, when I heard that my CRVXZ was high and my B-M-I was B-A-D, I was not only baffled, but slightly despondent.
I mean, good grief. If I had known it’d all turn out like this, I’d have spent the first half of my life having some fun--tokin it up, drinking like a fish, shooting heroin, and overdosing on pie and pizza.
But then, after several conversations with my boo boo girl Doc Gigi, I started to feel better about things. She reassured me that if I stuck to the nutrition and exercise plan and even calmed my crazy brain through meditation, all my nasty markers would find their way back to where I’d like them.
Since then, I’ve been like a priest at a sexual harassment convention—diligent in my efforts to stay disciplined. Goodbye potatoes, rice, and bread. Hello low-glycemic vegetables and lean protein. Goodbye just an hour walk with the dogs. And a big how’d-you-do to five 30-minute high intensity interval training and two weight training sessions a week (along with shin splints, calf soreness, and lower back tension).
I’m on a mission. And it ain’t to find religion.
I’m looking for a donkey that stops traffic—one that barely moves when slapped but one that shimmies and shakes in just the right tempo, as appropriate of course.
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So after 11 days on the course to drop weight and CRPJKS levels like a skydiver with a faulty parachute, I decided to check my progress on the scale. Proud, excited, and terrified like a Marine called to active duty, I raced to the Wellness Center to get weighed (because I don’t own a scale and please don’t buy me one for Christmas). I was sure I’d dropped a good four pounds—at least. After all, the folks on the Biggest Loser were dropping the body weight of small toddlers. If they could do it, I could certainly lose four pounds. Maybe even FIVE.
Once there, I waved to the young metabolically rich girls who staff the front desk, and head straight for the scale in Dee-to-the-Dee-to-the-Gee’s office. I took off my coat, sneakers, socks, earrings, sweat jacket, rings, spit out my gum, and stepped on the scale. What I saw shocked me.
I had lost two pounds.
Two lousy stinkin’ pounds. Two pounds—a steak dinner large enough for, maybe, four—the number after one and before three. As I stood there, with I’m sure a look of pure horror on my face, as if I’d seen Dr. Atkins’ spirit rise up through the brown carpet like a chorus line of rusty nails, Dr. G’s brother, Dr. E, peaked in to see me. “Hey,” he says, smiling a big white toothpaste-ad smile. “How’d you do?”
“Let’s put it this way,” I said. “I do not need an agent. I am NOT the biggest loser.”
It was in that moment that I realized: my fat should go on the record as the most dedicated life partner on the planet. Who knew that instead of looking for companionship in another person, I needed only look to my own hips? No matter what I do, no matter how many times I try to break up with it, no matter how much I deprive it of love, my excess flesh will never leave me. Til’ death do us part no longer an abstract concept.
I’m starting to believe that the only way I’ll ever lose any real weight is through decomposition. Yep, you heard me. I'll have to decompose. And that, my friends, is a very depressing notion.
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So of course, I left that day wanting desperately to hit Dominos—HARD—but I didn’t. Because really, what would be the point? Like Britney Spears, my fat would merely attract more fat like bad papparazzi. Hey guys, my fat cells would say, c’mon over here, the feedin’ is FINE, check me out, take my picture, roll with me, grow and prosper, make money, multiply, c’mon, this is where the action is really happenin.
I could just hear those nasty genetic buggers now.
So, instead of stopping for Italian, I went home and cried, again, into Elvis’ fur. “Oh Elvy, Can you just see it now? ‘Famous blogger, talented, loses 40 pounds. How’d she do it? She’s on the D-compose diet. That’s right. See page 35 for details’.” Course the poor animal just looked at me and yawned, while I sobbed, groaned, choked, and blew my nose. (Desperation is not pretty.)
And so, from there, life had to go on. I decided, after releasing Elvis who made it clear through much squirming that he could take no more, to stay the course for eight weeks and see what happens. If, after that time, me and my donkey are still inflamed to the point of our CRPJQST hitting triple and even quadruple digits, well, we’ll both spend another few days in bed with Elvis and then do something entirely different.
Please don't ask me what.
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That night, drained of all bodily fluid, I went to bed hungry. And dreamt I was eating a corned beef sandwich. I could almost taste the meat (which, when fully conscious, I don’t even like) when my husband’s alarm went off. I rolled over and moaned and he spooned me, whispering, “Good morning, honey, I love you.”
To which I replied, “Get your own sandwich. I’m not sharing.”
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On another subject entirely, I had a meeting the other day with a recruiter for some freelance work. Let’s call her Coco Paloma.
Somehow we got on the subject of divorce. And I found out that Coco P had finally lost custody of her young children to her ex-husband after a 10-year court battle. I have no idea how she endured for 10 years what we endured for five months—or how that father managed to convince the court he was the better parent.
I wanted to ask more questions, but given that I don’t know her well enough, I simply marveled on how prevalent the issue of child custody is. I don’t know why that surprises me, given the 50-percent-and-higher rate of divorce. Something’s gotta give--or someone's gotta get caught in the crossfire of emotions--and sadly and typically, it’s the children.
I think about how all my friends who married in mid-life and became stepparents—every single one of them—has a bad and sometimes bizarre tale to tell of how their husbands’ ex has wreaked havoc in their lives, and even more specifically, in the spirit and minds of the kids.
Which leads me to wonder how, after a childhood spent stuck in the middle of two angry people, they’ll grow into adults. What kind of people will they be? How will they move through the world? How will they contribute? What kind of dreams will they have? And how will they reach for them? Will they? What will this future generation look like?
It scares me to think about it—and of them, bruised and battered and, eventually, in charge of their own healing. It hurts me even more to know that, at least in our own situation, we’re powerless to do anything about it.
Because even though we’re all nicey nicey now, the schedule in terms of when we see C is precarious. It can roll over on a dime. That at any moment, Dan’s ex can do what she did before—remove the child—for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Because that’s how it happened in the first place.
I know it. Dan knows it. And even more tragically, at least in my opinion, C knows it. And she is suffering. Migraines, nails chewed to the quick, allergies, fear of going to sleep at night. Crying that when she’s with her mom she misses us and when she’s with us, she misses her mom. And we are powerless. We can’t reassure her that what happened will never happen again because not even we know that for sure. We can’t make promises about the other parent’s actions because we surely don’t control them. That much we can say with conviction.
So we acknowledge how hard the back and forth must be for her and tell her we love her and we’ll be here and that we’ll see her soon. To wit, she replies, quiet and broken, “I hope so.”
They’re words that break my heart. And, for the first time in my life, make the issue of my donkey seem small.
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Switching subjects again, just one last thing: I apologize to all waiting for my New Year’s resolution blog. But frankly, I have resolved to stop being a bad cliché. Making resolutions is, therefore, out of bounds.
(Although I am going to try to be nicer to the assholes in the park who insist on walking their dogs off leash, even though it’s not their backyard as indicated by the fact that they don’t, among other things, get their mail at the public park, and hey lady, when I ask you to leash your dog, it ain’t because I like the way those particular words feel coming out of my voicebox, and have you never heard of leash laws…Oh, I’m also going to be nicer about asking the folks at Ruby Tuesdays for crayons when they seat us because for some reason, once you’re over the age of 11, the hostesses at most major restaurant chains don’t think you deserve to color…I’m also going to stop starting my sentences with “Kids these days…” because that’s just unoriginal…and I guess I’ll give flossing another shot this year but I don’t make any promises…”)
Other than that (and a few others, wait, they'll come to me), no resolutions.
I will, however, pay homage to my father’s brilliant lone resolution: Which is to gain seven pounds because, as he so eloquently puts it, “that’s one I know I can keep.”
Rock on daddy! And to you all.
Until next time.
Sometimes, being a writer for money puts you in front of things you might not otherwise see.
Case in point: Last week, I was putting the finishing touches on a story for Bucks County Woman magazine. It’s a how-to for brides looking to get fit for their weddings. I interviewed a lot of people for the story. However, none made as big of an impression on me as did my very last interview—it was with a chiropractor (let’s call her Dr. G) who, along with her brother, runs a two-month wellness program (read intense) out of their Bucks County office.
When we spoke, I was just looking for a few quotables for my article, since Dr. G was my last interview, the story was due the next day, and I was already well through a first draft of it.
Little did I know, however, the association would provide me with much more than prose for my piece. Not right away, of course, because instant gratification isn’t my strong suit (for example, William Morris hasn’t called yet and I’m still not a supermodel).
What did happen immediately, however, was, a visceral dislike of Dr. G and her principles, despite the fact that I had never met her or them face to face. After all, she was confident if not defiant in her approach. For one, she insisted that we women only need 1,200 to 1,500 calories a day. That we have no idea how much we’re eating and that’s why we’re overweight. And, for another, we only need one serving of starch (i.e., bread, pasta, potato) every 24 hours. For the rest of our lives. That’s it.
The nerve of her, I thought during and after our conversation. If everything she says is true, it directly violates everything I NEED to believe.
For example, I can’t live on 1,200 calories a day. That doesn’t even begin to account for pizza (especially eaten whole) or dessert. And telling me I can only have one starch a day is like telling me I can only scream at the dogs once every 24 hours. Apply lip gloss once. Rearrange the pictures in the living room once. It's just not possible.
Is she nuts? Did she shoot up this morning? Is she hallucinating?
As if that weren’t bad enough, in the second half of our conversation, she suggested we women engage in interval training—like, four momentary wind sprints or something equally unpleasant in the context of a moderately strenuous 30 minutes of exercise. Which made me think: ye gads woman. How do you ever expect to stay in business?
As she went on and on, all I could think was how much I hated her. How her voice was like fingernails on a chalkboard—like Sol stopping to say hello while my dogs cut their teeth on the park’s metal trashcans. How I felt bad for the brides who would take my advice and enroll in her turbo-program for help getting into their wedding dresses.
How she had to be a descendent of Satan, disguised in fuller hair and a white lab coat.
Do no harm, my ass. You can’t fool me, Doc G, with your AMA code and your fancy words. Try to get one over, Karen B, I know you made out with Ricky M in the 10th grade, when he was my boyfriend and you were my best friend. I know it now and I knew it then. Word.
I’ve been around the block, as my mother likes to say, and I know better than to believe just anything anybody tells me about health and fitness.
And I know—the way you know that you’ll probably wait until the last minute to write that story, buy that airline ticket, and get out those thank-you notes—that even though my gently fortified Jenny Craig menu is working slowly, it's working. Sort of.
That even though my dear Jenny Craig counselor Bette has taken to saying, “You haven’t gained that much this week,” those words are better than anything spoken by the devil.
That promoting the twisted have-only-one-potato-in-all-of-summer-2008 philosophies of Dr. G could very well crush readers' hopes of laying on the sofa eating junk food and getting away with it ever again.
And yet, while Dr. G's is a dangerous and punitive message, I still had to report it. That's my job. So I grabbed for my second Jenny Craig brownie of the day and did it.
But I didn’t have to feel good about it.
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And then, just days after, with Mercury in Retrograde and Karma getting time and a half, Dan and I got in a car accident.
It happened on my niece Sloane’s birthday (hi Sloane – happy birthday sweetie!). We were driving home from a cake-and-coffee celebration at my brother’s house when a large oak tree, heaving with ice from the day’s sleet, dropped in front of us from out of nowhere.
With no time to brake or avoid it, our Honda Element jumped the trunk at 40 miles an hour. And like an ingenue in the automotive Cirque de Soleil, landed on the other side in one piece.
Tada!
After a few moments of just sitting there, I opened my eyes (because you’d have closed yours too) and noticed steam coming out of the front radiator. Dan turned off the ignition, which was somehow still running, and shifted towards me. I, on the other hand, clung to my crash position—sitting upright, back stiff as a brick against the seat, one hand clutching the door the other clutching a lipstick, looking straight ahead, wearing the same petrified look I do every week when I get on the scale for my beloved Bette.
“Oh my God,” he says. “One second faster, and we’d have been toast. That tree would’ve come right through our windshield.” I am silent. “There's a bigger plan for us, babe.”
“Cake,” I whisper.
“Did you say rake?”
All I could think about was how I didn’t have a piece of Sloane’s birthday cake. I was trying to “be good.” And look where it got me. I could’ve gone out--ended it all--on a 230-calorie frozen dinner.
“Babe, are you okay? Do you have a head injury?”
I look at him and then out the window. Traffic is stopped in both directions and a woman in a nightgown and a parka is running our way. She seems upset. “I CALLED 911. ARE YOU OKAY? IS ANYBODY HURT?”
“Her cable lines must’ve come down,” Dan says.
I look at him. I love him. I want cake.
They say when you look death in the face, a white light appears and your whole life flashes by you. Me? I saw creamy white frosting, an entire year of Jenny Craig frozen meals, and a closet full of jeans that are too tight on me to wear out of the bathroom.
It was enough to get me to do the unthinkable: Call Dr. G.
That’s right. You read correctly. I called her office to sign up for her program. Because, while I initially responded to her like somebody who’d been stung by a bee and gone into anaphylaxis shock, I knew that, at the heart of it, she is right.
What she was saying about losing weight and getting fit, hardcore as it is, is right. On the money. Bullseye. In the dead center of true.
And perfect for helping someone like me: desperate.
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So I call to schedule my spot in the program and Dr. G's husband, a corporate America refugee, answers. And we get to chatting. Turns out, he's been through the program himself. Lost 45 pounds during and 40 pounds after. And since then, has become a personal trainer and salesperson who works with program participants.
I tell him how I'm at my wit's end. I need help.
So he tells me the story of how and why he decided to do the program. Apparently, he was coaching his kids, then in little league, when he remembered how his father coached him. And how, when he was 12, he died on the field from a heart attack.
It was a powerful and moving story. And so I thought about my own. Have I resorted to this boot-campy extreme because I thought of cake before my family when faced with my own mortality? Then I realized, no. It was deeper than that.
So, after some meditation, I finally tell him the reason why I'm doing it: "I just want to be hot.”
After all, when you’re in the vortex of a mid-life crisis, as I am, really, you just want to figure out how to get back to your youth – when you were, well, young and your metabolism was lot faster and nobody talked to you about menopause and you didn’t get applications in the mail for the AARP and you weren’t so obsessed with shrinking.
When possibility had no limits in terms of not only eating, but writing and dreaming.
When you were hot—or at least as hot as you were ever gonna be, whether you realized it back then or not.
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And so, like the car accident, once again, the universe gave me a sign—only this time, that aiming for hotness was the right motivation. Or perhaps, the best motivation. At least in this moment.
Yesterday, we celebrated Hanukah in lieu of Christmas at my parents' house (since we hadn't been able to get together until then). My mom made a big dinner and after, my snoopy sister-in-law-to-be-someday found an old picture of me that my parents had hidden on their bookshelves.
“Is this you?” she asks, passing around the photo, her disbelief palpable.
I look at the picture when it finally makes its way to where I'm sitting. It’s me alright, in my 20s, with long hair—the longest I ever remember it—wearing a halter top, black tights, and an open button-down jersey top that says "Margate" in big black letters.
I’m smiling. And why not? I’m a size 8. Tops. And HOT. Truly hot. Objectively hot. Even though, back then, I was convinced otherwise.
I make the mistake of putting the picture down, when my sis-to-be sends it back around, like a five-year-old on a Merry Go Round. Like it was a video she'd taken of George Bush being dropped into an active volcano.
“WOW,” Dan says, eyes popping out of his head. “Look at that hair.”
Look at it. “I’m so young there.” I want to die. Or at least vomit. Or at least eat the pie on the table with a spatula.
My father laughs. “Welcome to middle age!”
I shoot him a dirty look and am suddenly depressed. So much so, that not even the 12 green slotted spoons and plastic cutting board my brother and sis-to-be got me for the holiday could cheer me up.
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Fortunately, I am married to a man who sees beyond the physical. Not that I need outside validation but, okay, last night, yeah, I did.
As we drove home from my parents house in our rented PT Cruiser (since our Element is STILL in the shop), I recount to my husband how despondent I am over that picture.
"But why," he says, "you're still beautiful."
"Not like that! C'mon, admit it." I point to my pocketbook, where I put the picture so I remember to burn it in the morning, when I look for my cell phone and find it there.
"Honey, I fell in love with you," he says. "Not that girl in the picture. YOU."
But I AM the girl in the picture. We're all the girl in the picture. Or the guy. And I know that we all want to do our best. I do too. I don't expect to ever go out in public in a spandex halter ever again, but I do expect to be an older version of someone I'm proud of.
And so, bring it on Dr. G. I'm more than ready. Just watch me.
Until next time.
In just a few short weeks, I’m going to turn 45. And while that may not be “old” to some people, it’s the oldest I’ll ever be. And as a result, I feel, well, old.
You know, my niece-is-going-to-college-next-year-my-husband-is-old-enough-for-a-colonoscopy-I-need-a-mammogram-and-a-fresh-set-of-tweezers-a-month old.
It doesn’t help that, at this age, married life is stressful and complex. Not that I’m complaining. I love being married—the commitment of a life together. And the joy of having the right partner. It really is awesome.
It’s just all the flotsam that comes with a joined life that can be exhausting—stepchildren and lawyers. A mutual bathroom. Realizing a collective set of dreams.
The expectation that, now married, you’re grown up enough to, say, host Thanksgiving dinner and, beyond that, be the bigger person—whether it’s your fault or not.
Add to that, the sometimes desperate writing for dollars, rising fuel costs, dieting for naught, dry skin issues, a revolving door of house guests (albeit beloved), the holidays, two shelter dogs, and the constant need to pack 10 pounds of potatoes into a five-pound sack and what do you get: Old. Aching bones. Torn muscles.
Mall brain.
I don’t like it for the obvious reasons. But also because feeling old distracts me from negotiating all I want to do in this second act of life. Like finish a book proposal and then a book and then find my way to the New York Times bestseller list. And stay there.
Or just keep up with the massive growth of new chin hairs and mind-bending versions of Microsoft Office (yep, Vista, I'm talkin' to you).
And yet, since I’m not one to sit around and let the ravages of time eat away at my flesh like a vicious strain of e-coli, the other day I decided to soothe myself with a haircut. And, while at the salon, book a massage and a facial for the day of my birthday.
What the heck. I know one facial ain’t gonna erase the parentheses starting to form just under my nostrils, but denial truly is the most beautiful gift one can give to oneself.
And, hey, I deserve it.
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After Cheyenne rids me of two solid inches of frizz, I approach the 22-year-old 125-pound receptionist with hair like French tassles and skin like a fresh bottle of Windex to book my other treatments. I tell her I want a Swedish massage and a triple-duty facial. To which, she says, “Time to get that glow back, huh?”
What is this an interrogation?
“Please. I’m not that optimistic,” I say, rummaging through my pocketbook for my credit card. “I’m just trying to stay off the slinky going down.” And it’s true, I’m starting to think that what I’ve already got is possibly the best I can hope for.
She and the other anatomically-correct receptionist who's now joined her behind the desk smile politely. Still, I know what they’re thinking. Thank God I’m not as old as she is. So I allow myself the quiet consolation of knowing that someday they, too, will be old like me, exhaustion and dry skin sneaking up on them like a pair of anorexic joggers.
I know, that’s kind of mean spirited. But I can’t help it. I’m too tired to be contrite about my jealousy.
Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I’m happy about it. I’m not. Who wants to be so exhausted anyway? To have to drop on the couch with a steaming cup of Swiss Hazelnut once Oprah comes on at 4 o’clock every day? To wake up without ever feeling fully rested, despite three consecutive cups of French Roast (brought to her, I might add, by her saintly husband and inhaled like a triple-play of fine whiskey)?
As if general poopedness isn't bad enough, I’m losing my vigor for the one thing I could always count on—vanity. Yet, as the years pass, I'm growing lax about moisturizing, painting my toenails, plucking my eyebrows, everything.
In fact, I’m starting to question what it all means anyway?
Why just the other day, I was watching Oprah, who did an entire show on what not to wear. It was the do’s and don’ts of, among other things, bras, blue jeans, and shoes. At every age, no less.
As I watched, I couldn't help but wonder, “When I’m lying on my deathbed, looking back at my life, will I really feel bad about wearing too much blush? Too few low-rise boot cuts?”
Which then brought me to the question of what I would be thinking about, which is probably, sadly, food. And wishing I’d had more of it. Which, of course, makes me hungry. (Leading to, naturally, too many pretzels and the dreaded carbohydrate coma. Not good.)
As if my longing for carbs, my chipped nails, and consistently dry T-zone aren’t enough, I’m cranky. Once a week I accuse my husband of not putting his dishes in the sink, not telling me I’m a hottie, or asking me to stop dieting because I’m simply looking too thin.
Men just don’t get it. The way to keep us aging females happy is to buy us flowers—as many as you can find and for every occasion, even Columbus Day—and LIE.
Especially to those of us who are sluggish and on the precipice of 45.
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That said, my crankiness is not confined to the family. Why, just the other day, I was out walking the dogs, when an older gentleman approached us with what looked like a puppy Golden Retriever. Before he got too close, I did what I always do when I see other dogs coming and want to avoid a Michael Vick: I pull my eager and sometimes-temperamental dogs off to the side of the trail and make them sit until the other dogs and their owners pass us.
Unfortunately, this man, let’s call him Sol , decides that instead of passing, he’ll stop right in front of us to chat about his new puppy. All while my dogs re-enact the Pearl Harbor scene in Saving Private Ryan.
“Hey, yeah, my dog’s a puppy,” Sol says, oblivious to my dogs going ballistic. “Only six months. Cute, huh?”
“WHAT?” I shout to be heard over the barking, groping their leashes like a rescue swimmer attached to a rope and a helicopter. “SHUT UP YOU TWO. HEAL!@”
Is Sol blind? Can he not see the foam starting to form on Winnie’s mouth?
While his puppy calmly sniffs his shoe, he says something else, but I can't hear him. So, instead, I curse him to Hades. And promise God I’ll never eat a whole pizza again if he drop kicks Sol to the other side of the park—and quickly.
After a few more minutes, my dogs are in two-part bad harmony, barking and shrieking like they’re being skinned alive. I’m doing all I can to hold them back, knowing that it won't be long before my wrist snaps off my forearm like a twig.
While I still have some use of my hands, I string Elvis up by his prong collar to try to get him quiet. Instead he squeals like a pair of faulty brakes on an 18 wheeler. Fortunately, Winnie stops barking, but only long enough to snarl, bare her incisors, and generate a noise that would’ve made an effective soundtrack to The Exorcist.
I don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to hold on to them. And yet, there Sol stands. Oblivious. Like somebody who has no idea he's walked onto the stage in the middle of the play--with toilet paper on his shoe, no less.
I, on the other hand, now highly agitated like my dogs, am worried about the legal ramifications of unleashing a spontaneous running of the canines. And going from cranky to angry. Until finally, while I still have some feeling in my thumbs and forefingers, say this:
“MOTHER OF GOD ARE YOU BLIND HOW LONG DO YOU EXPECT ME TO KEEP THESE WRETCHED BEASTS FROM TURNING YOU INTO CHOPPED SIRLOIN??”
Sol looks at me as if I’ve just told him his dog is really a cow. And with a “Harumph” I can actually hear, he marches off, shaking his head, and muttering to himself.
I stand there, waiting for my animals to reground themselves in good behavior and the feeling to return to my hands. Sure, I feel bad about yelling and good riddens goodnight Sol simultaneously.
Which brings me to another byproduct of aging. Confusion.
--------------------------
At this point, it’s not only emotions I’m grappling with, but the disheartenment I feel in response to my being doomed to this size 12 body until they drop me in the dirt. If I’m LUCKY, that is, a slowing peri-menopausal metabolism notwithstanding.
What I would give for just one two-pound weight loss in a week at Jenny Craig just so I can say, before I die, that I’ve had the experience. I’d also like an Egg Nog latte with no after-effects, but I now know that both are about as likely as my husband’s ex-wife calling to say how much she likes me.
It ain’t happenin.
See, because while some people have human stalkers, I am being stalked by my own flesh. It simply won’t go away.
Never was that clearer than the other night, when after two solid months of dieting, I lay belly up on the bed, trying to button the jeans I’ve had for a year. The task had me sweating, belting out an acid-rock rendition of four-letter expletives that required my husband and stepdaughter to evacuate the building.
Albeit temporarily.
--------------------------------------------------
After finally resorting to a pair of black pants with stretch, Dan, C and I leave to meet my best friend Lorrie and her family for a night of burgers (salad for me, of course, sans dressing, cheese, olives, chick peas, avocado, and anything with flavor) and bowling. Once there, the situation gets immediately worse.
See Lorrie just lost 26 easy pounds (that she didn’t need to lose, by the way) on Weight Watchers. Easy in the sense that she went on a diet and, lo and behold, her body shrunk.
Imagine that.
“Hey,” she says, pulling me to the side once we arrive. “Check this out.” She pushes her coat aside to reveal the tag on a new pair of jeans. They’re a size two.
A SIZE TWO. I look at her, as if she just unveiled a penis.
“I know, can you believe it? I saved the tag,” she says, “because I wanted to show it to the one person who’d understand.”
Oh, I understand all right. I understand that I could starve myself from now until the winner of the 2008 presidential election is sworn into office, and still never be a size two.
I could go off into the wild, like Alexander Supertramp, and die on the vine. And, then, when they find me months later and wrap a tape measure around my decomposing body, I’d still be solid size 10. Okay, maybe an eight. But a size two? No way.
No friggin way.
So I say, “That’s great, Lor. Must be nice.” What a crappy friend I am, so sarcastic and bitter. And really, I hate myself for it.
Yet, I want to cry. From why-not-me-what-about-me-why-is-it-easy-for-everybody-else frustration that really has nothing to do with Lorrie.
I want to drop to the floor, right there in front of the teenyboppers in their painted-on denim who are the Saturday night mall crowd at Dave and Buster’s, and swim a hysterical freestyle on the dirty carpet.
“I know, it’s frustrating, Jill. I’m sorry,” Lorrie says, her goodness making my badness even uglier. To make matters worse, she puts her arm around me in comfort. Around cranky, hungry, tired, lay-down-and-die-I-no-longer-get-vanity, dry me.
Even though, I really don’t deserve it.
----------------------------------------
Now I know what you’re thinking. The same thing I thought the entire way through reading “Angela’s Ashes” by Frank McCourt. Please, good God, let something GOOD happen to this man. And in his book nothing does.
But in my blog, well, all is not lost. See I did manage to buckle up that night and bowl a solid 63. Enjoy myself. Get some of my fighting spirit back. And learn an important lesson through the allegorical experience of sport.
After my mini meltdown, Lorrie encouraged me to take my frustration out on the lanes and throw the ball as if it were nine pounds of fat from behind my thighs going into a big dark hole. Never to find its way back again.
And so I did, which manifested into a series of gutter balls. To which Lorrie’s husband Frank said, “Do you want us to put up the bumpers?” He points to his kids (11 and 14 respectively) and Dan. “We’re all using them. It’s okay, really.”
What a bunch of wussies.
I look at Lorrie, who shakes her head “no” and gives me a you-can-do-anything smile. And she's right.
“No thank you Frank. I think I can manage without the bumpers. After all, I’m almost 45 now.”
It was then I decided that if all I could muster up, for now, were gutter balls, well then, so be it. They’d be the best gutter balls this side of state lines.
Instead of trying to fight them, I’d embrace them. Use them to practice my swing. Find grounding in consistency. Remind myself that there's always room for improvement and that's a good thing.
That gutter balls, like the birthdays and exhaustion and being crabby and lacking moisture and suffering from the clawing feeling of time, don’t define me.
I get to do that.
---------------------------------------------------
Here's how: Today, I found my way into the Gap looking for a little something to take the edge off. I picked up a few scarves and a cream-colored cable knit sweater and took them into the dressing room.
Cable knit isn’t always so flattering when you have robust biceps (she says, diplomatically), but I went for it anyway. And as I stood there, in front of the mirror, pulling the thick woolen material over the chubby arms I inherited from my favorite grandmother, I looked in my own eyes and said this:
Jill, this is it. Never mind losing weight, gaining weight, getting taller, shorter, thinner, dumber, or smarter. This is it. This is you. And it’s good. It’s all good. Time to embrace it. There’s no time left to be so selective and precise. It’s half gone. This life. Getting shorter. So just shove it all into your grab bag and run. Step into 45 with a renewed sense of vigor and joy. And love yourself. Already. It's time.
And by the way, you look great in that sweater.
Until next time.
A few things:
First, I invite you all to read an unsolicited review (I swear) of my chapbook, “Diary of a Writer in Mid-Life Crisis”—a simple but thoughtful, elegant, and edited compilation of these here blogs. (Agents and editors, are you listening?)
I handed one of my chapbooks off to Marc Schuster, a very talented writer in his own right (who also authored a terrific story called “Slow” on this site, so check it out!), at the writers’ conference I mentioned in my last post. And lo and behold, he surprised me with this delightful analysis. You can read it at http://smallpressreviews.blogspot.com/ . Scroll down until you find my title. And please do send me a note if you want me to send you a copy.
Second, it was my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary this month. A feat almost as spectacular as the invention of lipo and spandex (thank God), especially in this day and age. Not too many of us get 50 years with our significant others, especially since we’re now marrying in mid-life. (Although, I tell Dan that we’ll be celebrating our 50, even if we have to do it with him stuffed and on castors.)
To commemorate their amazing half century, mom and dad threw themselves a similarly awe-inspiring party at the Centre Bridge Inn, where Dan and I got married, for 100 of their closest friends and family.
Of course, nary a rites of passage in the Sherer clan where I’m not compelled to write and read a relevant story. And so, I’m delighted to share it with you all as always. Whether you’re married, single, or otherwise, I hope you find it both enjoyable and inspiring.
Finally, I wish you all the very happiest of Thanksgivings. May you eat beyond your threshold, enjoy several hours of stomach gurgling, use it as a great excuse to get other people to clean the table and do the dishes, find a great hiding spot for the pastries you know you’ll want to eat in secret on Friday (cause who are we kidding), and pass out on the sofa in front of the television.
Now THERE’S a holiday.
Until next time!
Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad
The other week, I stopped by my parents’ house just in time to watch my mother and father bicker about cake. He’d just come home from the mother ship—Costco—with $25 worth of pound cake for my mother’s cousin’s funeral. This is despite her instructions to only spend $20.
After the funeral, they came over to drop off something I-can’t-remember, when I asked how everybody liked the overpriced pastry. (I know, I’m a troublemaker.) But by then, they had moved on to something else. It seems that, during the service, my mother wanted to say something to the woman sitting in front of my father. But when she asked him to tap her on the shoulder, he refused.
“You’re so queer Owen,” she says, shaking her head.
“Why should I tap somebody on the shoulder I don’t know?”
“Because I asked you to.”
“If you asked me to jump off a bridge, should I do it?”
“You’re just queer.”
“You said that already.”
As I sat and listened, wishing I had a pencil and a piece of paper so I could accurately capture the details, I had to smile: So this is what 50 years of marriage looks like.
Every time my new husband and I are out with my parents, they bicker. About why my Dad shouldn’t order potatoes. Why it’s too cold to sit on the patio. Whether they should share an entrée or each order their own. We’re almost flattered that, when they’re with us, they’re comfortable enough to be so openly disgruntled.
And yet when we leave, Dan will always ask, “Do you think that will be us someday?”
And I reply: “I hope so.” As I watch my parents head to their car, holding hands.
Because we know that their bickering is just a shill for something else. That in between the nitpicking, there’s the giggling and playful hitting, and, yes, the implied joy of shared living. Even though it doesn’t always look like what you might expect it to. And yet, you don’t spend 50 years with another person to wind up with nothing, just like you don’t spend a lifetime investing in a 401K to retire in the red.
Over the course of five decades, my parents have enjoyed the payoffs—and countless rites of passages. Two wonderful children, grandchildren, dogs. Several cars and houses. Too many vacations too count. Pretty things. Things that work. Special occasions, like this one. An ever-improving quality of life.
Still, there have also been the challenges to survive—the pain of loss, the pressures of debt, and the traumas of their children.
Cancer.
My father was diagnosed with it some three years ago, after having a routine stress test forced upon him by my mother. That’s when they found the small speck of dust on his lungs.
It was a defining moment for our family. My father’s response was to acknowledge a “good run” and curl up on the bed for a nap. My mother, however, lay awake with it for months—in silent fear until she knew for sure that, like an exposed cad, the cancer had been run out of town.
I remember the moment they rolled my father into recovery after surgery. He was clean and safe. The cancer put out like an unwelcome guest. Laying there quiet on a gurney, wearing tubes linked to computers chirping, his eyes were open and his face flushed like a tri-athlete fresh from competition.
And my brother said, “Hey dad. We love you.”
And I said, “We’re right here dad.”
And my mother leaned in real close, tears in her eyes, and whispered, “I saved your life, Owen. And now, I want a diamond tennis bracelet.”
He made pretend he didn’t hear it. But I know he did. Because after my mother and brother left me there to take first watch, the sides of his lips curled up ever so slightly.
It’s that kind of code between two people that makes me want to cry. The fact that they’re my parents makes it all the more powerful. Because as their daughter, their love and 50 years together has been the greatest gift they’ve ever given me. Hands down.
So generous, in that I’ve never had to choose sides, worry about the burden of their loneliness or independence, or wonder what real love and commitment looks like. I see it and touch it every day. Laced like fine thread through the minutiae of real life.
As I stand here today, Mom and Dad, I am both grateful and proud. And so blessed with having parents who know what marriage and family is all about. Who know how to make a promise and keep it. Who know that for better or worse always means for the better, if you’re up to the half-century task.
Congratulations, you guys. And thank you. Your commitment is one of my most treasured possessions. And I will carry it in my heart forever.
This past weekend, I gave a speech at the Montgomery County Community College Writer’s Conference on telling the truth in writing. It was a fabulous conference. Lots of great information—and fun.
And now, here I sit, riveted to a blank page, trying to figure out how to tell the truth of something that’s happening in my own life without offending those involved—something a few of my students asked about and I promptly and theoretically answered. You have to make choices, I said.
And that’s true.
So here’s my choice—in practice. To walk my own talk, and show my students (if you’re reading, hey hey) one way it can be done.
See, I have a situation with one of my husband’s older daughters. And it’s weighing heavily on us—especially me since, as a writer, I am compelled to purge in words. And as a blogger, well, to the public.
You can see my quandary.
Now, I could avoid it altogether and write around a few other things on my mind (like why do all my married friends schedule sex with their spouses on Sunday mornings and why does my father spend most of his free time at Costco?). But that would only be postponing the inevitable—like a pap smear or a root canal.
Besides, I’m the kind of person who’s got to get it out. So mindful of not telling another person's story (which you should never do) and staying focused on my own, here's it is: My stepdaughter, for the sake of a religion that has its followers shun those who are not followers, has chosen to cut me, her father, and her step-sister out of her life.
(Hello? Are you still with me? Are you breathing? Oh wait, I’m talking to myself here.)
Now, I suspect, if you ask her if it’s true, she will deny it. That’s why I’ll make it my subjective, but I’m pretty sure fairly accurate, truth. At least according to the circumstantial evidence that we have not heard from her since she told us she was going back to said religion (which, as a former member, she was asked to leave a while back). She also told us she'd never stop talking to us because she loved and respected us too much.
That was almost a month ago. Well, maybe a little past three weeks, to be safe.
Let me stop and say that if she reads this (which I doubt she ever will), she may say it’s not true. That we brought it on ourselves—you know, the “shunning.” That I put the nail in my own coffin by calling her up angry after her father told me she was returning to the religion that already had claims on his other three children. Who, as result, don’t have anything to do with him.
She told him over the phone while he was on I-276 driving east towards home from his job in Exton. Since he'd already had his suspicions, he wasn’t totally shocked. But, like a big want-to-believe-the-best-of-people, I was.
And so it’s true. I did call her slightly emotional. Hit the digits on the receiver in anger. Dan said, “Honey, be careful what you say.” But I didn’t. I burst into the conversation with how-dare-you-what-are-you-thinking hostility. And I don’t relieve myself of that responsibility. I’m not afraid of accepting some blame. Blame is part of life, as is forgiveness.
Still, I was mad. Human mad. I hated the way she told my husband--and how she had been lying to us about it for months. (Since I had asked her a few times point blank if she had plans to go back —and she doth protested.) And something else she had done—or was doing—that I won’t get into here. (Note the choices, students.)
And yet, in my defense, who doesn’t get angry when they learn that a person they love is about to leave them. Whether they themselves are ready to be real about it or not.
Now, I can imagine her reading this (although, again, I doubt she ever will), shaking her head, dropping her jaw, “I can’t believe HER. I can’t believe she said that! Or that!”
And then repeating what she said during our second phone call--the one I made the next morning to tell her how badly I felt about the first. “You are a child. I am the grownup!” My attempts at reconciliation met with a hostile residue.
In that moment, I couldn't (and still can't) imagine how someone calling with the message of love and support could remain so rebuked. So offended. And yet, when I shared my desire to talk more about it, she basically told me we couldn't.
Evidently, ever.
Because, I guess, I am a child. Me. The “She.” The “HER.”
Me. The woman who bought for her, listened to her, rubbed her feet when she was in the hospital preparing to give birth. Gave her a baby shower, unconditional love, and several pairs of my favorite earrings and flip flops. Handed over lip gloss, clothes, and comfort like they were cash owed for services.
Me. The woman who stepped in as a surrogate when I said, “I do” and she said she was struggling to relate to her biological mother, in the religion also.
Me. The woman who encouraged her to accept her mom for all she can offer and move forward. None of us are perfect, after all.
And I’d tell her: I’m just paying it forward, when she’d say “You’re so good to me. You LOVE me.” Yes, I do. Why not? You are infinitely lovable. Besides, I have a good mom. She did all these things for me. Somebody should do them for you. So I did. And now, well…
Anyway, as I said before, we have not heard from her in weeks. Her father, my husband, has been through his paces health wise, having had a dicey and invasive surgical procedure to eliminate heart disease (which, thankfully, at 50 he has the heart of a 30-year-old, and I’m sure he’ll be fine with me telling you this).
And then a full-body rash that had us spending Halloween in the emergency room. His candy was three intravenous rounds of Benedryl and a week-long course of Prednisone. (I’m not sure how he’ll feel about me sharing that, but what the heck.)
Mine was a midnight round of the 800 Hershey’s Kisses we weren’t home to give out.
And yet, no phone call from his daughter—my stepdaughter. No nothing.
Sadly, having grown up in this religion and then leaving it when he was of legal age to do so, he’s all too accustomed to losing family members for reasons other than death. He’s lost practically all of them to this religion—mom, dad, brothers, sisters, children. (Sorry, his story.)
In fact, I suspect, losing them to death might be easier since at least it probably hurts less to think that people are no longer part of your life because it's difficult to make a phone call when you're dead.
And, now, apparently, when you’re alive, but in a certain religion as well.
And that’s the truth. At least, mine.
And so, to my students: Yes, the people involved in this tale know who they are. But hopefully, the rest of the world doesn’t. Wouldn’t know my stepdaughter if she rang their doorbell with a copy of The Watchtower and some extras for sharing.
Wouldn’t know my husband if he showed up at their doorstep asking for directions back to Doylestown.
And in the truth-telling business, that’s the best we can hope for, save the players in our stories getting amnesia and forgetting altogether. Which I can say from experience, rarely happens.
Until next time.
Well, it’s a new dawn. It’s a new day. Especially when it comes to going to the doctor and being middle-aged.
Used to be, even at 40, that going to the doctor to get a new prescription each year for my Zyrtec-D medicine (ragweed sucks) was a five-minute experience. But now, just five years more into the decade where peri-menopause and the need for Botox become gruesome realities, five minutes turns into 57 really quickly.
Never was that clearer than this past week, when I had an appointment with Nancy C—a physician’s assistant at Buckingham Family Medicine—to get a refill on my seasonal allergy medication.
“How are you feeling?” she asks, while I sit next to her, fully clothed, groping my pocketbook (like a “fat person,” my mother always says, whatever that means) in the dark examination room.
And, we’re off…
10 minutes on the antidepressants:
“Well, you know, I’m off the antidepressants.” Not at all the reason why I’m here, but thought I’d share anyway.
She looks down at her electronic pad and clicks with purpose. “And how’s that going?”
“You know, Nancy,” I read her name tag, which had a P.A. on it. “Uh, I mean, Dr. Carnie, oh, uh, Nanc, it’s very interesting.” I never know what to call the physician assistant.
I launch into the story of how I’m recently married and how we wrote our own vows and how my husband sang me a love song and how touching his vows were and how there wasn’t a dry eye in the place and how I didn’t shed a tear and now I know why because since I’ve been off the drugs if I watch a bee pollinate a flower I find myself weeping and it’s just fascinating and how she might want to share this with some of her other patients who are thinking about weening themselves off since it's all about giving back and how I should’ve weened myself more gradually because I suffered—oh, how I suffered—but then it was all worth it because I now cry with the best of them, on a dime if asked, which comes in handy if I ever get stopped by a traffic cop because you know how vulnerable they are to that a whole vulnerable female thingy of course my new son-in-law is a cop so that does help as well.
She looks at me. “Well, yes, they can numb the emotions. So is the Allegra still working for you?”
Five minutes on my allergies:
“Oh goodness, no. Allegra doesn’t do a thing. I take Zyrtec D.”
“You sure you need the D?”
“Thank GOD for the Zyrtec D. Last year, I swear, I begged my husband to take a carving knife and stab me in the chest, my allergies were so bad. NOTHING worked. And I mean nothing. I blew my nose straight through three Lifetime Television movies. And not in a good way, if you know what I’m saying.”
I pause and feel my eyes get teary. “Until the Zyrtec D. “ Thank God for medical technology. I need a moment.
“Great. So it is D?”
“Yes. Well, I think.” Now she’s confusing me. “I mean, I’m pretty sure that’s what it is.” I pull out an old prescription bottle I fill with Advil and keep in my pocketbook. But it’s the wrong label. “Oh shoot, this was the bottle from the old antidepressants.” I feel wistful. “Gosh, I mean, I could cry RIGHT NOW.”
She smiles, that sort of terrified smile you get when you’re not sure if the person you’re dealing with is homicidal.
“But you’re pretty sure it’s D?”
“I am, but why does it matter?”
“Well, just in case I have to justify it to the insurance company.”
“Oh, ahhh. D, yes, definitely. I’m super positive.” But not really.
Five minutes on getting a mammogram:
When did I last have one?
The good ol’ boob squish, I say with melancholy. “You know, if men needed to have that done, they’d have come up with a more civilized method, don’t you think?”
She smiles.
“The first time I went for a mammogram, I was so nervous. And my best friend, who trust me, has her own set of issues,” I snort, “made it worse by telling me to think about a band of thieves coming in to rob the place while my boob is stuck in the machine. Can you believe her?
"Well, I told the technician when I got there and she showed me the little lever or button or whatever to push to release my boob in an emergency. Hey, they don't teach you that in Girl Scouts.”
Now, I’m laughing. NC looks at me like I’m crazy.
But I don’t think I am. I’ve been alive long enough now to know that anything could happen. Even this.
10 minutes on the gynocologist:
Me bad. The last time I went to the gynecologist, people were still debating whether Bush really beat Gore in the presidential election. Well, maybe not that long ago, but still. I tell Nancy, Dr. Carnie, whatever, that I just got a referral from a woman at the check-in desk, but still have to call. So, I’m going. I know I have to. And I’m REALLY sorry for waiting so long.
Like we’re friends and I haven’t paid her back that $20 she lent me a year ago.
While I go on and on about the fact that, well, I’m almost menopausal and feel it and have all kind of new issues going on, my sex drive is, well, interesting, and my ability to sleep variable and, please don’t tell me how much I weigh, because my fat wants to cling to me like a pack of leeches, and, well, where’s the joy? Where’s the love? What happened to the body that used to sleep and lose weight and get hot to trot just thinking about a naked foot?
And yet, doctor-sort-of-almost-or-close Nancy is starting to look bored.
I wait for her to probe me on some of these issues, but she doesn’t. She looks at her watch and the door. Laughs appropriately at my self-deprecating humor regarding the size of my crow’s feet and love handles, and remains safely focused on her electronics.
“Which name shall I use to refill the prescription? Your old name or your new one?” She let’s the fake pen rest precariously over the keypad.
I tell her both.
Five minutes on losing weight:
I can't seem to do it, despite my devotion to Jenny Craig.
“Thanks to me, the center can afford to re-carpet.”
She seems nonplussed. Like she’s heard it all before. Like countless others before me have told her that they reason they can’t shrink their ass is because of 45. It’s 45’s fault.
Has nothing to do with the Lee’s Hoagie I had on Saturday and the leftovers I had on Sunday and the pretzels I ate last night because I was hungry and the four pieces of pizza I plan on having if I lose even two ounces (likely) during my weigh-in on Friday.
Well, if nothing else, she’s a good listener.
10 minutes on "the fall":
I recount the details of my fall back in the park, when a biker ignored the signs to WALK HER BIKE and the dogs brought me down to a crashing tumble, and the bones in my left arm and elbow and who knows where else decided to twist and turn like sticks in a food processor and how I went to the hospital and got an x-ray where they didn’t find anything but that I still can’t put any pressure on it to, say, get up out of the bathtub or fluff my own pillows and that sometimes when I stretch it out really far, say to turn out the light on my nightstand before I pass out at the end of the day (and I mean pass out), I feel a sharp shooting pain as if somebody is pulling the bone right out of the joint. And I know I shouldn’t’ do it, but I forget because other than that I can use it, so I’m not sure if it’s just a minor bruise that the x-ray didn’t pick up or perhaps I’m seriously damaged and need surgery or perhaps it’s a permanent irritation that I’ll have to live with now that I’m old and my body isn’t healing like it used to.
“Well, where does it hurt?”
I press around my elbow and just above. And then I drop my hands. “I’m not sure.” And really, I know I should be, but I’m not. Because what if I show her the wrong spot and they do all this imaging and bloodwork, only to find nothing wrong or, even worse, that I was like 2.3 centimeters off from the real source of the problem. Of course, we’d learn this only after several days of testing, a few surgeries, loss of blood, and thousands of dollars.
Now that I think about it, it’s kind of unfair for her to even ask. I mean, I’m not a doctor. How should I know where it hurts?
Five minutes on my cholesterol:
Now that I’m thinking about all that’s wrong with me, I’m starting to get a bit worried. Perhaps I need my blood analyzed. This is a question I’ve been asking myself now several times a day, especially since Dan had his analyzed and can’t stop talking about the results. It’s like he’s PROUD that his cholesterol is higher than usual.
After all, at 50 years old, he doesn’t have an ounce of body fat (jerk), can eat whatever he wants and never gains weight. The man didn’t go to the dentist for 13 YEARS and, when he finally did, he came out with perfect dental health. I’m surprised they didn’t call Discovery Health to profile him in a special.
Even the people in the office were flabbergasted.
At every family dinner, we watch him eat whatever he wants—20-ounce steaks, pulled pork sandwiches, salads with real cheese and enough Thousand Island dressing to fill a bathtub. While our family genes have us gain weight from accidentally taking a sip of whole milk, Dan remains consistently svelte and muscular.
But now, I think he thinks that high cholesterol gives him legitimate entry into our family. “Wanna know what my bad cholesterol is?” he brags at dinner for my father’s birthday, proud like he’s just been nominated for an Emmy. Or, we’ll be shopping for sneakers and he’ll say, “Say, if I have high cholesterol, can I still eat eggs?”
Show off.
Well, I’ll show him. “And while you’re at it,” I say to NC. “Gimme a scrip for some blood analysis. I wanna know what my cholesterol is up to.”
Five minutes on my sex drive:
I start to tell her how much I love my husband but we do have a lot of stress—ex-wives accusing us of unspeakable horrors, lawyers calling for their money, step-children going back into cults, mothers falling and needing surgery, fathers going for PET scans, lines-of-credit soaring by the hour.
You know, the usual suspects.
She asks me if I want a flu shot.
I guess some people just aren’t comfortable talking about sex.
Two minutes on the flu shot:
Hey great! I’d never even think of it if she hadn’t offered it up, and consider her doing so a value add. I’d like to put that on a comment card, if they have one. I know I didn’t feel this way at first, but Dr. Not is turning out to be pretty darn terrific.
“Sure, I’ll take a flu shot!” As if a waitress had just asked me if I wanted pie with my whipped cream. “How much?”
“How much what?”
“How much does it cost?” I have no idea why I’m asking this. I mean, we can’t afford a Mercedes M-Class, but we can afford a flu shot.
She looks confused.
“Whatever! I’m worth it. Right?” I nudge her with my good elbow.
“Great,” she mumbles. “I’ll get the nurse.”
It’s amazing how a flu shot can just make everything seem better.
Now, you can imagine, that after all this time, I’m thinking we’re going to have to take out a third mortgage on our house (since we already have second to pay the lawyers for doing absolutely nothing wrong). So imagine to my surprise when the nice lady at the check out desk asked me for $10.
Everything should only be $10. It was great.
Of course, now I have to go get bloodwork, an arm x-ray, physical therapy, a pap smear, a mammogram, maybe a little psychotherapy, and after doing all that, who knows what else. But at least I don’t have to worry about my allergies anymore. I'm covered!
Until next time!
The other day, I sat on my sofa and cried. Alone, into a Jenny Craig meal (chicken fettucini), my husband away for business. Staring blankly at the television screen, I was for some reason compelled to tears.
It was one year ago this past week that Dan and I got married. And I am emotional at the memory.
I remember that time as being one of the greats in my life. And not because I needed a man to complete me, since I was okay with the prospect of living single for how ever long that meant. But because it was perfect.
Now, I pick up one of the many photo albums that linger around our Pulte-designed townhouse and browse the wedding pictures. There we are, on the bridge that connects Pennsylvania to New Jersey, New Hope to Stockton, real hope to reality, the river to the ends of the earth.
We look dreamy.
I turn the page to another, and am drawn to my open smile, glowing brightly in the tea lights. I am laughing. We all are. The whole crowd. While we can’t see everybody in the cropped photo, I remember it in Technicolor: My then 72-year-old father, raising his glass to us, telling the story of me and Dan as if we were celebrities being roasted and he was the Dean Martin of ceremonies.
I turn the paper again to find the new husband and wife, bodies pressed together like bashful lovers. He is looking down at her bouquet of white hydrangeas. She is looking mischievously at the camera from the side of her eyes. They—we—look like quiet sinners. Catalogue models for a special section on aging in the Sunday newspaper. Look. The boomers get married—and it can still be magical.
We look carefree, blissfully rapt. And we were. We still are. Despite all we’ve been through since then.
I love my husband. And I adore our life together. And now, tonight especially, I am overwhelmed by a kaleidoscope of emotions that are retrospective of our first year. Joy. Melancholy. Sadness. Anger. Frustration. Elation. Anxiety. Euphoria. Calm.
As I look back at all that we’ve endured over the past 12 months, it feels funny to look at the two oblivious people in the pictures. They had no idea they’d spend their first year dodging the shrapnel of other people’s insecurities. And still find their way on the anniversary of their middle-aged innocence, to happiness.
There we are. Two people in a picture book, with no idea of what lays in wait. We only knew, in that moment, to walk the short but soulful aisle at the Centre Bridge Inn. Our friends from the four corners of everywhere sitting in tightly wound rows, watching the song of our vows rise up against the mist of a postcard river—and the flock of dense trees that made it shimmer.
We had no idea we’d sell our home to buyers with no morals—people who would try to squeeze the life out of us before backing out of the deal illegally on a technicality a few weeks before we were set to close on another property.
We had no idea that instead of getting swept away by an exquisite rites of passage, we’d get swept away by a long, painful, and unnecessary custody battle for Dan’s young daughter. One that put us on trial for something imaginary--and was the manifest of somebody else’s fiction and anxiety.
We had no idea that, on top of the stress and pressure of managing a newly doubled mortgage, we’d have to take out a $35,000 second-home loan barely one month after moving. To pay the lawyers, now flush, to defend us for doing, well, absolutely nothing.
To the contrary, I cannot imagine any other way we could have been more loving and caring of C.
We had no idea how hard the pointless extraction of a child from her father would be on not only him, but on my once-idealized version of a young marriage. For four long months—as long as we were not allowed to see C—I was married to a man who, while considerate to my needs, was rightly tearful and distracted.
I had no idea that we’d swap pleasure trips, big nights out, and all spirited celebration for sadness and despair—until C was allowed back into our lives.
I had no idea that Dan’s other daughter, who I adore, would have another baby and, just as I’d gotten used to being a grandmother, tell me she's moving 11 hours away. That we’d get another rescue dog named Elvis, who'd try my patience with every accident in the house and irrational barking at strangers. That I’d put a dent in my husband’s beloved convertible.
That we’d fall into bed every night exhausted from things younger brides and grooms might only dream about--or fear.
It's been a full-moon experience. Bright and brooding all at once. Every day.
And yet, one year later, as I look back on what I didn’t know before the day I got married, I can say with confidence I’d do it all over again. Because I love my husband and our life together. External forces be damned. Shoo fly. Get out of here. Go flood another river. You’ll never make it through our levees.
They’re too thick.
I love being married. And in our very short union, I’ve learned something invaluable (or rather, had it reconfirmed): Nothing is guaranteed—or predictable. The best we can do is just look as far out as our aging eyes will let us, plan for the worst, hope for the best, and be thankful we're not alone.
Until next time.
Quick note:
For those of you writers and fans (yes, you too mom) who are local and are interested, I'll be speaking about blogging, brutal blunt honesty, firearms, and chocolate at the Montgomery County Community College Writers Conference in November.
Come see me!
Here's more info: http://www.mc3.edu/writers-conf/
Ciao!
I just have to keep telling this story because it is full of horrors. Who knew that a simple fall in the park could generate such turmoil?
So, I left you lying in the park, full of mulch, while hoards of bicyclists whizzed by me. None of whom cared to stop to see if I was alright or still breathing. (Okay, the story is getting more inflated but so is my elbow, so let me have it.)
I finally drag myself and the dogs home and call my father, since my husband is on a flight to San Antonio. "I fell and I’m fine,” I tell him, lying. “But the dogs did NOT poop and rather than risk any further damage, I respectfully request your help walking them.” I’m sorry, but I’d rather live with a broken limb that have pee and poop all over my precious rugs.
"WHAT? Are you okay? Do we need to go to the hospital?"
"No, I'm fine. As long as I don't move anything."
Cut to Jill and Owen at the Doylestown Emergency Room (only after stopping for a fountain soda at 7-Eleven for dad). There Brenda, a lovely woman in a pair of print scrubs that did not flatter her (Bren, stick with solids), asks me a litany of questions one might expect while at triage.
Why are you here? What happened? Where does it hurt? What's your birth date? Do you still get your periods?
WHAM! SMACK. CLACK. BOOM! SHAZAM! Followed up by a soccer punch in the gut, a wide-palmed slap across the ass, and a chaser of one dry heave.
First of all, why do they need to know if I still get my periods when I'm there for an arm x-ray? And second, am I really that old? I mean, I’m just barely out of my 30s. (Okay, well maybe a bit longer, but C’MON!)
Bren, Bren, forgive me if you can hear my thoughts about the duck print accentuating your midsection, but PLEASE. There’s no need to be nasty. Pick another question. Like, how do you keep your skin so soft?
Suddenly, a minor arm fracture has become a most traumatic event.
“Jill, I want you to list the 10 most critical moments in your life,” says Dr. Phil.
“Easy. The first time my mother told me I was fat and would never fit in—and the time I hurt my arm and the triage nurse asked me if I still menstruated.” Audience applause. The front row looks teary.
This fall might require some follow-up psychoanalysis.
“Jill,” I say to myself, “Take a deep breath. Brenda is clearly borderline. Go to your happy place. You’re on Oprah talking about your New York Times bestselling novel. Wendy Manuel and Tammy Levin, the torture queens from high school are in the front, weighing in like a couple of Sumo wrestlers. Karen Brog, who made out with Ricky Moss, your then boyfriend, is sitting next to them. The years have not been kind to her, as evidenced by, among other things, a deeply receding hairline.
“There, there now, Jill. You’re doing fine.” I breathe in, close my eyes, and relax.
Brenda speaks. “I know, it’s a silly question. But you do still get your periods, right?” She is looking for a reaction.
RIGHT BRENDA. SHIT. DUH. OF COURSE. Yo, yo, Bren, you ain’t no spring chicken yourself.
“Yes, I do.” I bat my eyelashes. “You?”
She looks at me and chuckles. I notice there are baby chicks on her socks.
Even though I’m now fully upright, this fall just keeps getting worse and worse.
As I wait for Brenda to complete my paperwork, I have to wonder: when did all these years go by? I mean, I’m used to these nosy health care types asking me when I’ve gotten my last period—not whether it’s over. Fertility out. Uterus useless. That’s a wrap.
Next stop: death.
I guess it wouldn’t be so horrific if 12 more people (from the radiologist to the woman taking my insurance information) didn’t ask me the same damn question. I stop for a soda after in the hospital cafeteria and say to the woman at the register, “I suppose you want to know if I’m still getting my periods too?”
“That’ll be $1.12.” She doesn't look directly at me.
“I like your hairnet,” I squeak, only slightly mortified.
I give up. This aging stuff. Can’t help it. And so, I’ll try to embrace the fact that I still have good hair and that, while I’m not Twiggy, I still take up only one seat on the airplane.
At least for now.
Until next time.
I just want to say that people suck. (Well, not all of them. Not you, dear reader. But most. Go ahead. Nod. It's okay. You know it too.)
Case in point: Today, I was walking our two dogs, Elvis (the new guy) and Winnie. Winnie, who we've had for more than a year now, is an angel. In fact, sometimes, I see the sprouting of wings from behind her prototypical border collie ears. She walks great on a leash. Doesn't bark at pedestrians or bikers. And is generally and mostly interested in a good poop and a little exercise (kind of like me on a good day).
Elvis, on the other hand, is new. We've had him for barely a month and, frankly, he's a bit of a hothead. Small, but maniacal in a "he's-so-cute-OH-MY-that-hurts" sort of way. He'll often grumble at pedestrians, whine when he sees a rabbit, and go into full-on hysterics when somebody on a bicycle pedals by. (Characteristics of a few of my ex's, but I digress.)
Of course, we're working with him, but Rome wasn't built in a day. And Elvis will not be sprouting wings for several months, at least.
So today, I'm out with Winnie and Elvis walking on the path that circles the small but scenic pond by our house. It's a beautiful sunny day, moderate and bright, when a biker comes by on a five-speed. Elvis let's out a low squeal.
To prevent any escalation, I quickly respond: "No, don't you dare." Then, I pull him close to prep him for the sharp but humane snap of the leash that will come if he goes ballistic at the poor woman.
Typically, this tug is enough. Elvis is usually compliant.
But not today.
Instead, he barks, and then Winnie barks, and then, as the young woman calmly whizzes by, I trip over a small piece of mulch and begin my descent downward towards the ground. The dogs, in their frenzy, pull me to my demise.
With a leash around either wrist, I fall face, hands, knees, and elbows first (which doesn't really leave too many other body parts), into a dense mountain of brown dirt, scraping all of these parts and then some--and twisting my left forearm to the point of hurting.
"Expletive. EXPLETIVE." The dogs look at me like I'm an idiot.
Not my proudest moment, I will say, laying there with stones down my bra, but it was inevitable. I'm not all that graceful and between the stuff in the road and the bikers (now there were two), and the maniacal new rescue dog, going down was simply a matter of time.
And yet, I could not anticipate that, when I did, the people walking by, the bikers biking, the planes in the sky, would do nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Just walk over me. Ride by me, heads shaking in disdain. Stay on course in terms of speed and flight path. While I wiped the blood from my chin and mumbled a strained, "Si-it, you two. [expletive. expletive.] Stay. Good GOD, I beg you."
When did white middle-to-upper class America get so callous? I mean, people, I was LAYING BLOODY IN THE MULCH? (Okay, well, a slight exaggeration, but still.)
After a few minutes of squeaking out a few commands and praying the cyclists had gone off to a new trail (in Hades), I pulled myself up, wiped the dirt and God knows what else off of my stretch pants, and yanked the dogs to my side. "Let's GO." I said, as if I were yanking two abberrant toddlers from a china shop.
They both stared at me like I had been invaded by aliens. What did you do with our mother? Are you going to hurt us?
In all fairness, it really wasn't their fault. (They have nothing to do with the fact that people have no scruples anymore--and could care less whether one of their neighbors was laying dead in the azaleas.)
So I did come home and, after settling down, gave them each a pig's ear and a Vanilla Wafer to signify the body of Christ--or whatever for good luck (felt oddly good in theory).
And frankly, were it not for the extreme housing bubble and the fact that we're still paying attorneys (to see C), I'd be on realtor.com right now, looking for a kinder gentler environment. One where people loved one another. And stopped when they saw the person from next door face down in the shrubs.
So now, I sit here, shaky from the fall, longing for THREE Dunkin Munchkins, and disheartened from the lack of character in our social consciousness. (My arm hurts.)
And to those bikers, if you're reading (and you know who you are); shame on you.
Until next time.
I cannot believe what I just saw. I was walking the dogs (yes, two, we rescued Elvis, a cocker/sheltie mix, long story) in the township park by our house, when, like, 3,000 pregnant women and their children came off a yellow bus and head straight for the Kids Castle—one of the family attractions in our area.
They were all smoking. (The mothers, that is, not the children.)
I was both appalled and dumbstruck, when one stopped to ask me where to pay for admission into the Castle. Using all the bicep strength I could muster to hold the dogs back—and myself, from yelling at her—I said, “It’s free.”
She smiled, took a drag of her cigarette, rubbed her belly, and thanked me. Leaving me simply too shocked to say anything else. And yes, okay, afraid of being mauled by the other hormonal smokers for expressing my viewpoint on the subject.
After all, I’ve seen You Tube. I watch the news. I’m a regular of Dr. Phil’s. I knew that suggesting they don’t smoke, however gently, could have gone very poorly. And frankly, my life is just starting to get good.
Which is why I chose to say nothing and simply hate myself instead.
Besides, I was unsteady enough, trying to guide the two animals with a shady past who were dragging me around the path like I was road kill.
So, I’ll say it here: if any of you reading are pregnant (which is highly unlikely, given the tenor of this blog), please don’t smoke. It’s not good for you.
----------------------------------------------------
Speaking of new mothers, I’d like to talk about my adorable stepdaughter Heidi. (Love her.)
A few weeks ago, she had her second baby—via C-section, after an unnecessarily long, painful, and high-risk pregnancy. The morning Logan would finally arrive, we met Heidi and her husband Mike at the hospital. It was still morning. The doctors had told them they’d deliver the baby by 3. But 3 came and went and all that had happened was Dan almost choked on a cherry pit and I made 57 trips to the potty.
By 4, Heidi was in active labor. (Kinda crazy that a pregnant woman scheduled way in advance for a C-section would have to experience active labor, but then again, her obstetrician felt it was more important to go to Aruba on vacation than take care of her patient.)
It makes only the best of sense that, a woman going through labor and pre-op simultaneously, would be a bit cranky. As the poor kid’s patience began to wither away like wet string—and as she proceeded to yell at her husband for, among other things, breathing—my husband (father to a small football team), leans in and whispers to me, “She’s transitioning, you know.”
“What?” I was busy imagining myself at the Bally’s Casino day spa, getting a hot stone massage while being fed truffles by a hot-but-desperate cabana boy named Guido. (I love my husband.)
“Transitioning. All pregnant women go through it during labor. Where they go from the passive state into the active, and prepare to start pushing.”
Hmmm. I pondered his words for a moment while Heidi ripped Mike a new one for coughing. I couldn’t really relate to the concept of “transitioning” as a new mother, but I could certainly relate to it as a writer. In fact, his description sounded a lot like trying to get a book deal.
“Well, if that’s the case, I’ve been transitioning for years now.” I promptly crawl next to Heidi on the bed.
“Move over sister. You’re not the only one in labor. I’ve been trying to spit a book out for years.” I look at Dan. “Now hand me the cherries.”
Transitioning can be very empowering.
--------------------------------------------
After several relentless hours of waiting (which, if relentless to me, could only be excruciating to poor Heidi), the nice doctor on call comes in with the not-taller-than 5” 4’ anesthesiologist (who is probably overcompensating, as a result) to take Heidi to surgery. Finally.
Now transitioning in the other direction, Heidi’s face goes from a wince to a big smile, as she grabs my hand and then her father’s and says “Bye guys!” Like she is going off to summer camp.
Mike runs after her, tripping as he tries to wrap a pair of surgical booties over his Converse sneakers, probably wishing he was at the gun range (not exactly the fatherly type). We wave like American Gothic, without the gardening tools. And stand in the hallway like the two tired, hungry, and aged people we had become.
As I watch them roll Heidi through the double doors that lead to the operating rooms, the swatch of her blonde hair getting smaller and smaller, I yell, “We’ll be right here, sweetie, waiting for you. Break a leg!”
Dan looks at me. “Break a leg?”
“Well, I’ve never done this before.”
“Done what, honey?”
And then, before I know what hit me, I hear a voice channel like a whisper through my freshly glossed lips. “Be old.”
My husband puts his arm around me. “You’re not. You’re beautiful.”
I look up at him. And before I knew it, I am crying, tears rolling down my cheeks like Niagra Falls over worn rock. It seems I have transitioned from bored, tired, and anxious, to an emotional wreck. A bad cliché. The childless stepmother—the accidental grandmother—watching, wishing, wondering. Living vicariously through her younger version.
I am suddenly overwhelmed and confused by the desire to follow Heidi into surgery. To pass through the double doors and lay next to her, rub her head, help her push.
Dan puts his arm around me. “Honey, she’ll be fine.”
But I am not crying for her. I am mourning the fact that I never had the experience. The occasion to look back at my parents, watching with pride and joy, while I was rolled into the delivery room to give birth to their grandchildren.
And now, it’s too late. Maybe not physiologically, although at almost 45, it’d probably be easier to get a discount membership to the movies. But in every other sense, the time has passed. I don’t have the desire for children. Or to parent. And yet, I can’t help but wish, in a retroactive dreamy sort of way, that I’d had the chance.
----------------------------------------------------
We wait until about 9 o’clock, when they bring Heidi and Logan back to the room, to squish him and take pictures of the happy family (on our camera phones, of course, we forgot the digital in our haste). And then we leave. Go home and drop into bed like hard sleet.
I look over at Dan, who’s glasses are hanging off the tip of his nose, sprawled out like Jesus on the cross (only in our case, it’s a fabulous designer patchwork comforter in earth tones I got on sale from Macy’s). His mouth is open and I detect a bit of saliva on his lower lip. I nudge him.
“Babe.”
“Huh? Wha?”
“I need you.”
“Huh?” He snorts and rolls over.
"I need to talk about what happened today.”
“What happened?”
“You know, at the hospital.”
“Heidi had a baby.”
“My crying.”
“Huh? Oh, yeah. Are you (yawn) okay?”
“I just got so emotional because I never got to be pregnant and stuff and lay in bed while everyone waited with great anticipation. I guess it made me sad. Going through it with Heidi and all.”
“I know sweetie.” He does a half roll and pats my leg. “You’re okay.”
“Not that I’d want to do it now, don’t get me wrong. Oh dear God. Although I still could, you know. Well, with the right drugs and surrogate. And the right psychotherapist.”
Dan sits up. “You’re not serious?”
“But I wouldn’t. I mean, we can barely handle the dogs. Besides, our creative pursuits are our babies now, right?”
“That’s right, honey. Absolutely.” He kisses me on the cheek. “Now don’t hurt your brain. Go to sleep.”
So I did. I dreamt of diapers and a book deal.
------------------------------------------
I attribute the accelerated rush of emotions I’ve been feeling lately, at least in part, to my coming off the antidepressants I took for the past five years.
Despite a nasty bout of withdrawal (nausea, dizziness, lack of sleep, being hungry all the time, irritable, etc.) that has blessedly subsided, I now feel absolutely the same as I ever did when I was on them. With one exception: I feel absolutely everything and then some.
The other day, my mother gave me a bag of rotting grapefruits ("eat them or they'll go bad") and I swear, I cried, “Mommy, I love you SO MUCH!!!”
Dan taught Elvis to sit. And I cried. “Such a good BABY!” You would have thought he’d just found a missing child.
When C was here last week, she told me I forgot to pack her a Gatorade for camp, and I almost hung myself from the shower rod.
The thing is I know I’m out of control. That my tidal wave of emotions is excessive. That my response to mediocrity is borderline.
And yet, it feels good to cry over some sappy cable movie. Or to feel excited at the prospect of a 20-percent off coupon. I love the wash of melancholy that comes over me when I see Winnie and Elvis on either side of a chew toy. Tails wagging like trees in a hurricane. Wishing that my Sophie was here to join them.
It reminds me of how much I’d forgotten I could feel pre-Lexapro. How much I missed it.
And how much being on Lexapro, despite this side effect, changed my life.
Because, while I would cry at a Kodak commercial before I went on it, I was also stuck in the sand and fog of a life that didn’t work.
And so, I learned: medicine is not always an either/or proposition. Advances in technology don’t always give you the choice—feel this if you want, and erase that if you don’t. There’s no fine tuning. No bass up, treble down. No balance or fade.
It's take the meds and feel better, but feel less. Or, don’t take them, but feel a lot—and mostly sad.
If I had to do it all over again, I'd opt for the former. Because without the help, I might still be stuck—alone, in a third-floor walkup in Chicago, far from home, in an 11-year relationship going nowhere, and a good job that anybody in their right mind would like. But left me numb.
Now, in the shadow of the drug, I celebrate having every primary emotion imaginable. With my brain chemicals calm and my system clean, I am elated—or something—at least once daily. Even when I’m not.
And with that thought, I'm off to tell someone I love them. Until next time.
The most horrible thing just happened to me and I've got to share it with somebody (or several thousand somebodies): Every day around 3, I leave my home office to get coffee. I know I can brew some here, but when you work three feet from where you sleep, sometimes it's just nice to get out of the house. So I take Winnie the Wonderdog and off we go to Starbucks or, more recently, Dunkin Donuts. I don't know why or how or what, but ever since I've been off those damn antidepressants, Starbucks just doesn't hold the same magic. (Don't ask.)
So we go to Dunkin today and I pull into the drive thru. Once at the speaker, I yell into it, "One medium french vanilla with light cream and one Splenda please." The clerk repeats my order back to me, which I can't understand for a variety of reasons, but since I prefer to deal in good faith, I say, "Yes, that's it." And pull around to the window.
As I did, the craving for 8,000 Dunkin Munchkins overwhelmed me like a blast of tear gas. Like too much spandex. It was excruciating.
My body was screaming, "GIVE ME A MUNCHKIN. NOW, YOU *@(&$!!!$$@@@*"
Now, I'm not sure if it's the 800 months on Jenny Craig for the return of a 12-pound weight loss (thank you middle age) or the fact that it's that time of the month (thank you middle age) or the fact that I just wanted a Munchkin because they're cheap and, dammit, they're good and I can (thank you middle age).
But I wanted one. More than anything. And I mean anything. (Think three-carat diamond, a double-thick crust pizza from Giordanos, long silky blonde hair, a 12-book JK Rowling-esque book deal, long limbs, nail polish that drys in a minute, a closet full of Butterfly Dropout tank tops [preferably V-necks], and a lifetime supply of free Botox.)
Suddenly, I felt Bette, my Jenny Craig counselor, perched upon my shoulder. "Don't do it, sweetie. If you lose 1/18 of a pound this week, you can lose 100 pounds by 2040. Granted, you'll be 80, but you'll be gorgeous!"
And then I felt the angry deprived fat Jewish girl who'll never have thin knees in this lifetime saying, "What's the difference, chubbo. You're married now. Get a friggin munchkin. Who's gonna know?"
I look over at the dog. I know her vote. And then it dawns on me. I'll get three. Three lil' Dunkin Munchkins--two for Winnie and one to satisfy my now Godzilla-sized craving. Who's THAT gonna hurt?
The nice fellow leans through the window to hand me my coffee. Excellent timing. I pay him and say, "You know what? Can I also get just THREE Dunkin Munchkins? Anything but chocolate." Chocolate can kill a dog and I don't want to take the chance.
He smiles at me--that "I like you" smile. That "I get you" smile. That "I know what you REALLY want" smile. That "I can see you naked from the waist up and like what I see" smile. (Go figure.)
And within a few minutes, he's leaning through the window to hand me the goods. I take it, thank him, thank the universe, roll up my window, and immediately notice that the bag feels unusually heavy for just three little hole-sized rolls of breading.
SHIT.
I look inside. There they are. The sight of it--of them--worse than finding Wendy Manuel and Tammy Levin together at Pizza Boy off Cottman Ave. when I was 16--after they'd both told me they were "busy" that day because they "had the flu" or "some strange stomach thing."
Talk about feeling rejected, dejected, deprived, betrayed and panic stricken. There were at least 25 DUNKIN MUNCHKINS in that little paper satchel. And there I was, in the parking lot of Dunkin Donuts, alone with my mutt, staring at the traffic on 611, counting the hours til my next weigh in, having a come-to-Jesus talk with myself. It was a pivotal moment. Substantial. My choice could set in motion a course I didn't even want to think about. (My ass, a farm tractor, hard to tell the difference. You get the picture?)
I look at Winnie. She looks at me and I begin to wonder how many Munchkins I can feed her WITHOUT killing her from too much sugar--and how quickly I can get them into her mouth. Better hers than mine. (After all, isn't that what dogs are for? Someone once told me dogs were here to help us carry our burdens. But what about our cellulite? Does that count?)
At that point, I don't have the luxury of time. My resolve is fading. Treating them like small balls of fire, I start tossing the Munchkins at her. "Here you go girl." For every four I throw at her, I keep one for myself. And fortunately, I only wind up eating three.
Unfortunately, the dog is looking a little peaked.
Note to all the Dunkin Donut Clerks (especially those reading from the store on 611, right across the street from Target, a few miles downroad from the entrance to the turnpike): When blue-eyed, redheaded customers with white furry dogs and dazed expressions ask for three Dunkin Munchkins, chances are they want 100. So only give them two.
If that.
More later. And until next time.
The other day, I was doing the laundry when I opened the top of the washer to find a pair of large frogs sitting on top of the wet and shrunken clothing. Naturally, I screamed in horror. Until I moved in close and noticed they were rubber.
C. That little stinker. She was here last week and must’ve decided that it’d be super fun to play a trick on the anal stepmother.
(“Sweetie,” through quasi-clenched teeth, “can you please not rest your hands on the freshly painted walls?” “Honey, can you please just wipe up the Gatorade you spilled on the counter. No biggie, accidents happen. Love you. Mean it.” “We put the curtain IN the shower, yes? Otherwise, we have a flood on our hands. You ARE the best.”)
What could be a better way to aggravate a woman who’s never known from two straight weeks with somebody else’s nine-year-old—who needs to have everything just so, after decades of fluffing pillows as a single woman—than burying two rubber frogs in her laundry basket.
How passive aggressive. How slightly genius.
I must’ve missed the little buggers when I scooped up the dark colors and shoved them, mindlessly, as I always do, into the washer—even though the rubber makes them large and rather heavy. But then again, that’s the beauty of laundry: it doesn’t require much in the way of attention. I can do it while I think about other things—like what’s for dinner and where I put my favorite blue- and brown-striped poncho.
Still, I must say, the reptiles—fake or otherwise—sure did give me a jolt. I tried to laugh about it with my husband that night over steamed brussel sprouts and a Jenny Craig frozen pasta dinner.
“Can you believe her? What a jokester. FROGS of all things? And she knows how much I HATE bugs, worms, frogs and, you know, all things horror filmy. So CUTE.”
I think about the time she walked in the house with 47 caterpillars crawling up her arm, wanting to “save them.” Dan looked for an appropriate Tupperware. I crossed my chest, even though I’m Jewish, and near had a coronary.
“I believe one of them is a lizard, honey,” Dan says, referring to the rubber duo. He laughs. Humorless, I watch as he douses the healthy salad I spent 20 minutes making with several heaping doses of Thousand Island dressing. My favorite. And, as you might imagine, a big no no on Jenny.
I hate him.
“She is something else.” I smile, thinking about the challenges of being a stepmother to a moody and insect-loving preadolescent. “Scared the crap outta me.”
He laughs louder.
“And gosh,” I say, “I sure am glad the rubber frogs didn’t do any damage to the brand new and very expensive washer. But good one!”
I take a bite of a large sprout and chew slowly. “Although, you know, that could’ve been a problem.” I laugh again. “I mean, that could really have cost us and, well, we’re already out THOUSANDS thanks to all the lawyers.” I smile, take a sip of my ice water, and think about how long and hard we fought to see that little prankster regularly. “But honey, you know that. I don’t have to remind you. Silly me. We’re fine. Just doing great.”
He looks at me and puts his fork down. “Everything okay?”
“You betcha!” I think about the reptiles, now tucked inconspicuously under C’s pillow.
Gosh, I love being married.
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I know this happened a while ago already, but since my brain is all too often on a time delay, I can only talk about it now (so please don’t write): The very disappointing ending to the Sopranos. I mean, what was that? I’ve been watching for seven years, staying home on Sunday nights, foregoing dinners out and "Two and a Half Men" and the Grammy's, to see what Tony, Carmela, and the gang were up to next.
To watch Big Pussy get whacked oceanside. And wonder how the naked pole dancers at the Bada Bing keep their trim figures? Or how Christopher could let them kill Ade without at least having her come to him in a few dreams?
And yet, all I got for my 84 months of devotion was the anticlimactic thrill of seeing the Soprano family eat onion rings. Good grief, I can watch my husband eat onion rings. And do. Often. (Hate him.)
Do you think that whoever’s left at my deathbed will be all that excited to watch me eat, say, Buffalo Wings? While some sinister looking nurse throws me a few questionable nods?
I think not.
I think, instead, my spectators will be looking for a few good pearls of wisdom, a few end-of-life-revelations, a few dramatic last gasps of oxygen. They'll want to know if I've left a juicy living will, who gets what, and whether I've planned well for my 400 pairs of black pants, Sophie's ashes, and favorite Tony LaSalle painting of "Shirley."
They will likely not be compelled by me, eating a French fry. Smiling, like I’m having a happy ending under the table—or a poignant experience in my diaper. While James Blunt sings "You're Beautiful" through the hospital-bed speaker.
Like them, I wanted to see something riveting, like bodily fluids. Blood. Guts. Or a riot. A good mafia rustle. A dead fish. A unexpected dismemberment of sorts. I even took a Dramamene in preparation, in case the camera jostled and things got a bit dicey.
I was ready to be shocked. To see that whiny little AJ find his way to Mecca. Tony, break down in tears in front of the bar, and then get whacked by a drunk driver—and a dose of righteous irony. I wanted to see Carmela fall in love with a cop. And Meadow get into medical school, only to find a life of crime more lucrative. And interesting. And to go on to become head of “the family.”
I wanted to see Tony And Dr. Melfi get it on already. And hey, I bet I’m speaking for a lot of people on this one.
Now THERE’s an ending worth waiting seven years for.
--------------------------------
This ending was truly disappointing, but then, so are a lot of things.
For example, I’m disappointed that there’s all kinds of coding in some of my previous posts and that I’ve got to go in and figure out how to fix it—in the middle of walking the dog, cooking dinner, washing our skivvies, tending to the needs of a bazillion clients (by the way, thank you for your business!) and a few small children, and trying to keep the cellulite on the back of my thighs in check—and, simultaneously, well hidden.
I’m disappointed every time I hear my computer make that little ringy sound that alerts and me to a new and exciting email—only to find it’s usually SPAM and not the literary agent or lottery board I know will someday be desperate to contact me. (Go away Vitacost. I ordered calcium once in the 70s. Take me off your list.)
I’m disappointed that, after all these years, I still haven’t really won anything.
I’m disappointed that my body is only capable of shedding a few ounces each week. Even though I spend most of my time watching other people eat pizza, while I pick from tiny bowls of crucifers and other bland objects.
I’m disappointed that being a stepmother is as difficult and thankless as it is. I mean, who really cares about us? Sure, our men do. (Love you, honey. You’re the tops.) But the kids secretly (and sometimes not-so-secretly) wish we’d shrivel up and float away so mommy and daddy could get back to hating each other, together, without us.
C was with us for the past two weeks. On the last day, we took her to a nice restaurant for lunch in the city. While seated at our table for three, she decided the chairs at the tables for two looked interesting. “C’mon, daddy, let’s try them.”
My poor husband. Looked torn. Like Meryl Streep in Sophie’s choice. “Which child are you going to give up, sir?” I patted him on the back as if to say, “It’s okay. She’s nine and I’m 44. (Although, that’s not my fault and I shouldn’t be punished.) Go for it.”
So he did. And there I sat, alone at a three-top, wondering if doing so made me a better person. Silently reciting affirmations. “You’re okay, Jill. People like you. I like you. Soon, you’ll be eating.”
On the way home, I proposed the idea of starting and celebrating a “Stepmother’s Day.” It was met with a resounding, “What’s for dinner?”
I have a headache.
Whatever.
------------------------
So I’ve made a few decisions that I feel will make me more spiritual:
#1: I am no longer going to be contrary, but conciliatory. Conciliatory is my new persona. “Jill, can we go see Spiderman 3?” (No desire, whatsoever. Would rather watch somebody having electrolysis on the IMAX big screen, than see Spiderman 3.)
Old contrary Jill: “Hmmm. Not my first pick. Why don’t we pick a few movies and choose something we’d all like to see?”
New conciliatory Jill: “Sure thing! Hey, let’s go to an early show so maybe we can stay and, once it’s over, see it again. Wouldn’t that be fantastic!”
(By the way, just heard the ringy sound, checked and it’s an email from some group taking a national smoking survey. Bummer.)
#2: I am no longer going to have problems. Instead, I am going to have neuroses. Why? Because neuroses are far more interesting than just problems. You can write books about neuroses. Get in the National Enquirer for neuroses. Be arrested. Win a Pulitzer. Even make a career out of it.. (Think David Sedaris, Kirstie Alley, and Annie Lamott, my favorites.) But problems? Well, they just get old and people get sick of hearing about them and then they just avoid you.
Old problematic Jill: Every time I buy shoes, they’re really comfortable in the store. And then, when I get them home, they hurt my feet.
New neurotic Jill: I find shoes confine me to the point where I become immobile. Stuck in my current reality. And not sure how to break free. I’m working on it though. But, hey, it’s a journey. (Another ringy: This time, it’s an offer for cheap Viagra. They should at least check their demographics. Sheesh.)
#3: I am no longer going to speak in full sentences but use acronyms as much as possible. Because people love acronyms (right?). They’re very efficient. And, just as a very important side, the people with the most acronyms have all the money. (Think pharmaceutical companies and the government.)
Old Jill: Gosh, I really wish I didn’t have this little pocket of fat around my knees. No matter how much I diet and exercise, I fear the only thing that will get rid of it is liposuction. And I’m just not good in situations that require somebody to slice open—or off—any part of my body.
New Jill: Gosh, I really wish I didn’t have JKS (Jewish Knee Syndrome). No matter how much DEP (diet, exercise, and prayer) I do, I’m afraid the only thing that will help is PEL (painful and expensive liposuction).
#4: I will never run in the park. Not that the old Jill ran in the park. Never. But I see people run in the park by our house all the time. And I just don’t get it. They look tortured. Sweat is pouring down their red faces, like they’ve just been spit out of a lake of hot lava. Their legs are barely airborne. It’s like some mad killer is chasing them, yet there’s nobody there but a few lost fireflies.
JUST WALK. That’s what I want to say. But don’t.
Because they’re just setting themselves up for disappointment (a sensation I know a great deal about) anyway, unless they plan to run until they’re 90. It’s just common sense. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard women complain. “I was so thin back then, when I was running.” Then they stopped. And what happened? Presto, bingo, bulbous once again.
So ladies, STOP RUNNING. It's not worth it. And you ain’t no Joyce Joiner Kersey or whatever. Go home. Bathe. Change. And then meet me at Starbucks for a latte.
Now, THAT, folks, seems more reasonable.
-------------------------------------------------------
So I’ve been taking antidepressants for four years now. (C’mon, you know you all take them too. Yes, you.) Started when I turned 40 and realized that I was living somebody else’s perfect life—but not mine—and so I started taking Lexapro. The drug made my then-neighbor suicidal, but being the risk taker that I am, I thought it might work fine for me.
I remember taking the first pill. It was on January 1, 2003. It was a new year that called for a new set of brain chemicals. On that day, I ate a thick-crust Giordano's pizza, called my mother, walked the now-dead dog Sophie, threw back the little white dot with a McDonald’s chocolate milkshake, and hoped for the best.
And just a few days later? Boy, did I feel fantastic. Not like heroin high (not that I would know, since the strongest drug I’ve ever taken is a Women’s Correctol). But just clear. Like fully hydrated urine. Or the perfect diamond. (Honey, are you reading?)
Anyway, now I’m here: Married, working as a writer (even though I’m not touring the country doing readings and Ira Glass isn’t begging me to be on This American Life, yet), living the American dream, all right.
I’ve got countless pairs of black stretch pants, a nice back deck replete with gas grill and dead azaleas, cable on three televisions, and 45 tubes of Crayola lipgloss in my makeup cabinet. Little kids play soccer just behind our air conditioning, which is loud, to remind us it’s working. And every Tuesday and Friday, green plastic garbage bins line up like toy soldiers in our yuppie-designed suburban kingdom.
We are the lucky ones. We have the stuff that immigrants climbing over those wobbly little fences along Texas can only dream of.
Who could want more than that? So, as I look around at my middle-aged wonderland, I decided to go for broke. And just took myself off the little suckers. Tossed what was left of the tiny pills down the toilet.
Just decided four years on antidepressants is enough. I’m not depressed anymore. So, fly away little birdies. Down the hatch. Through the tube. Go find your way into some misguided dolphin. I’m done with you.
And you know what, I’m still rolling with the punches. Sharpening up those neuroses. Doing just fine with MNDFE (my new drug-free existence). A little nauseous (apparantly, there's a bit of withdrawal associated with this cold turkey, which I find somewhat naughty and exciting), but according to the highly qualified pages of the Internet, that too shall pass.
Hold on. I need to get a tissue.
You know, a good cry can really do wonders.
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Last week, I planned a binge with my Jenny Craig counselor. I think it was the most fun I’ve had in about 16 weeks. And while I complained about losing a mere one pound to every seven days, she pointed out the positive: that by the end of the year, I’d be down 52 pounds.
“If I lose 52 pounds, don’t you think I’ll look a little like Keith Richards?”
“So what? You’ll be beautiful.” I conjure up an image of the rocker in my mind and find it physically painful to stay focused on it.
“I think I’ll be calling you from the eating disorders ward at Holy Redeemer Hospital.” But who am I, except a happy gal. Super duper gay and joyful.
--------------------------------
This having children. It’s heady business. I’m not sure it’s for me. Not that I have a choice at this point. I’m 44, soon to be 45, and tired. I’m not all that into Barney. Spongebob. Or keeping mini-packets of snacks in my DKNY backpack. I'm not sure I'm very good at sitting in the carpool line.
C was with us for a few weeks. And I took her to camp. Dropped her off and became a fish out of water. Because, at that moment, the soccer moms suddenly wanted to talk to me. Standing outside of the campsite after having just dropped off our little ones, they wanted to commiserate on how painful it is to see them try to assimilate. And how some do it better than others.
As I stood at the precipice of a club I could never get into (and frankly, never tried or desired), I had to wonder: who am I? Again. After all, in the past, I was the anti-club--the anti-mom, anti-member. And even though I’m just a “step,” as long as I keep it on the downlow, me and the soccer moms now have something to talk about.
So we stood there, chatting, as scenes of modern-day suburbia flashed before me. All the things I used to once want, then mourned, and then decided weren’t “me” or what I was born to be—were mine. Whether I liked it—and knew what to do with it—or not.
It's all so confusing. One minute, I love the experience of being something to a child. Another, I wish to God, Jehovah, Buddhist, Jesus, the Goddess, and whoever, that all I had to worry about was getting to the next shoe sale at Nordstroms. And hoping that Donald Pliner would showsomething in a platform for Fall.
------------------------
And yet, I find that all it takes to ground us is one good thunderstorm, book, and email from a dear old friend who we haven't heard from in a while. It all reminds us, on those occasions we risk forgetting, of who we are. And what, about us, is most important.
Because we aren’t just the manifestation of our collective neuroses, experiences, acronyms, medications, or even new situations. But a cumulation of the people who’ve helped to shape us --and the circumference of our hearts.
So I say, big hugs to you all (Stacey, Marie-Claude, Andreas, you know who you are). And c’mon, you old friend who’s out there right now, reading...
Write to me.
Until next time.
Sunday was a beautiful day.
Not just because it was the morning after a very successful surprise party I threw with friends for my husband’s 50th birthday.
Not just because the diet lemonade out of the fountain at Wawa that morning was chilled to perfection.
And not just because it was raining the way I like it best—steady, warm, and lyrical.
Sunday was beautiful because I witnessed, no, participated in something monumental, something I never thought would ever happen in my lifetime. Something I had entirely given up on.
And it happened at the most peculiar of places: the Delaware I-95 rest stop. Also the midway point between our house and C’s house in Maryland, where she lives with her mother “S”—and the pick-up and drop-off point for our visits.
On Sunday, we went to drop C off to S like any other Sunday (barring the 16 Sundays we missed when S wouldn’t allow us to see C for reasons that still baffle us). We had no idea, however, that this Sunday would be special.
On that day, as I imagine it is on all other days, parking at the rest stop was scarce and the traffic chaotic. Mothers changed diapers in the backs of metallic-green minivans, while fathers took their sons inside the small brick building to the bathroom. There, they bought them hot dogs and fruit juice and cheeseburgers at Bob’s Big Boy.
Still, others drove in circles looking for the road back to the highway.
Despite the rain, people were everywhere. Stretching their legs and walking their dogs on the long strips of dirty grass that separated cars, parking spots, and metal trash cans.
It was a slice of life. A scene like any you’d see at any other rest stop across the country, save for what happened to us—well, C, S, and me.
Here it is:
When we pulled up to the rest stop, we found S waiting for us, as usual, in the driver’s seat of her Subaru wagon. As we came to a stop, she climbed out to greet us and retrieve C’s bag from our trunk. And, as usual, C and I went inside to use the facilities.
We always use the facilities, even if we don’t have to go. Even if the 90-minute drive and three sodas between us haven’t yet made it through our small intestines.
Because using the facilities, whether we need to or not, gives us a few more minutes try to get the water out of the automatic faucet. And a paper towel out of the dispenser. A few more minutes together before C goes back to Maryland with her mother.
Usually, when we’re done playing our bathroom games and wiping our hands on each other, we go back outside to the car, where Dan and S are standing in discomfort, waiting.
But not this time. Not on Sunday.
Because it was raining—a glorious relentless pelting that hammered at the ground like a band of spirited musicians—Dan and C’s mom were waiting for us inside, in front of Cinnabon, surrounded by a revolving stage of bakers and travelers and lattes in big white cups with green logos.
Distracted by the sight of vanilla icing, we almost walked right past them. Until S called out.
“Yoo hoo.” She is smiling and waving. I don’t know why, but suddenly I am surprised to see her standing there, with my husband.
“Oh, hey,” I say.
“No sense waiting outside in the rain.”
Dan stands there looking like somebody just shot him.
“There goes my good hair day.” Knowing full well that my hair looked lousy from the moment I woke up.
She points to her ponytail. “I hear ya.”
I ask about her stepmother's surgery. Bev was at my bridal shower and our wedding with S’s father, both once very important to my husband.
“Doing better, got an email from Dad today and they’ve got her up and moving.”
“Great. That's so important.” Although, what do I know? I’m never sure how much aspirin to take.
As S and I talk about Bev and my mother’s shattered elbow and my father’s lung cancer and subsequent depression, and her dad’s disillusion, C finds a place in between us.
Then, she takes her mother’s hand in her left hand and mine in her right. And she starts to swing. Like a see-saw. Mine and C’s hands go up, S and C’s go down. S and C’s go up, mine and C’s go down.
You know what I’m talking about. You’ve probably seen it—or done it—a thousand times yourself. Might be doing it right now. Probably didn’t even notice it.
But I did.
“You should definitely try the Boca Burgers,” I say, referring to C’s recent proclamation that she’s now a vegetarian. Trying to act natural. Like something I never thought would or could happen was—like winning the lotto or squeezing into a pair of size 2 Levi’s.
The ex-wife, the new wife, the child, newly connected by a fleshy a string of lights, like stick figures drawn by a pre-schooler in brown and red crayon. After, that is, too many months of accusations, lawyers' fees, court dates, and heated silences.
“I’ve had Boca burgers before. They’re good.”
I tell S how we gave them to C earlier and how she loved them.
All the while, swing. Swing. Swing. Three hands swinging. C’s, S’s, and mine. I look at C. She’s beaming, like she was just awarded a new American Doll every year for life. I look out the glass door ahead to the parking lot. The rain's dropping like confetti from a freshly whacked pinata.
I am so relieved.
“Dad even ate one,” C says. "And we all know how he LOVES meat." She starts to giggle. It’s contagious.
Swing a ding a ling.
“I used to feed him that stuff all the time,” S says, eyes rolling. “He never knew the difference.”
“I know,” I say. “I do too. And he still doesn’t.” We all laugh again. I think about tofu and the way C's nine-year-old hand feels against my palm. Dan looks a bit like his pants have suddenly dropped to his ankles for no reason. Yet, I feel fine. Not a bit awkward. After all, that was then and this is now.
One woman’s trash is another woman’s treasure. Right?
And by the way? Swing a ling a ling.
After a few more minutes of small talk about the weekend and how I left a part of Dan’s birthday cake that I had saved for S at home, and how we’re looking at camps for C, and what a good girl she is, C wrapped her arms around me and then her father and then her father again, and then me, and then we all waved and smiled as C and S got back into the wagon and I took Dan’s hand and swing a ling a ding and off we went in the Element, back to the house where C leaves her sneakers and the necklace her sister Heidi bought her and the blue rose ring that matches the one I have in white and Heidi has in black, and her sister-dog Winnie, and her turtle statue, and her kids Claritin.
Life is so surprising. I say it all the time, don’t I?
------------------------------
For those of you who’ve been following the story, well, this story, you’re probably very confused. Probably, the last time we spoke or you read, I was either scorned-wife angry or cover-my-butt unclear. Not sure why we couldn’t see C. Not allowed to talk about it online. Write about my true feelings.
Well, here it is, the answer to the puzzle, the mystery exposed, finally:
See, for some reason, S believed I had been unkind to her daughter, yelling and screaming, inserting myself wrongly into the parental process. That was the problem. At least the way it was laid out in the summons and court orders, in bold print and quotations. In legal-speak.
But that’s all over now. And while the system worked on some level for Cody, humanity and reason worked even better.
Here’s what happened:
I was recounting to my novel group one night about the horrors of being the new wife to an ex-wife who hated you. And for no good or easily identifiable reason.
"But I love C, and I’m so good to her. You’d think she’d be happy about that."
But my writer girls, older, wiser, and far more seasoned in the darker aspects of jealousy, divorce, and the dysfunction of parental separation, laughed at me.
Silly girl.
So naïve.
Idealistic.
Be happy? About what? About the fact that some other woman is married to her husband, even though she didn’t—doesn’t—want him, playing mommy dearest to her daughter.
She hates you.
Of course she does.
But she doesn’t even know me.
So. Has nothing to do with knowing you.
But that doesn’t make any sense.
Silly girl.
My mother would hate you too. She hated my stepmother.
Did you?
No, but so what.
I don’t get it. Why can’t we all just get along. For the child.
It’s her child, not yours.
But I’m not trying to be the child’s mother. I already have a dog, two nieces, and a slow metabolism. I’m tired. I don’t want somebody else’s child.
It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t like it. Or you. And that’s just the way it works. Get over it.
But I don’t want to! Wah! Wah!
Just stay out of her way and don’t cross the line.
I didn’t realize I crossed the line the first time. I don’t even know where the line is.
Well you did. Don’t be so likeable. Back off.
Okay, I will. I don’t understand, but I will. I don’t know when I backed on, but I’m off as of right now.
Smart. Finally.
But I do have to say that if I had a daughter and was in her situation, I’d be grateful to the new wife for being so kind to my child.
Bullshit.
Silly girl.
So naïve.
Idealistic.
You’d hate her.
Now who's turn is it to read?
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The next day, I was walking Winnie in the park, when it hit me. Stop being mad. It hurts too much. Put yourself in her shoes. How would you feel? Really feel? Okay, maybe you wouldn’t hire a lawyer to write all those nasty things, but you might feel jealous. Threatened. Upset that your child enjoyed the company of another woman. Protective.
These are basic human emotions. Visceral. Part of everyone. Don’t fault her for it. De-escalate. Assure her you’re not trying to take her place.
You’re like a fun old aunt, not a replacement mom.
You don’t know what in the Sam hell you’re doing. You’ve never been a stepmother before. You’re a newbie. An amateur. Just being your old idiotic self.
You need "Stepmother for Dummies." A personal consultation. A customized course.
You're an alien. And hey, to C's mom, I know you don’t know me and you have to leave your kid with an alien. But it’s not so bad out here in space. You’d know it if you got to know me. So do it. C’mon. If you do, you’ll see, I couldn’t insert myself into the process of parenting a fly. I’m too clueless.
Too tired.
Too into books and Lifetime Television. Too attached to my border collie.
And really, I just wanted a date.
All I did was fall in love with a man who you happened to toss back into the wading pool. So don’t hate me. I’ll follow your rules. Just tell me what they are. Just be my friend. Let’s all be friends. For C.
Well, okay, and for me. Because it takes too much for me to sustain this anger all day, every day. I have laundry to do. And deadlines.
And so I said it. Took 57 deep breaths as we approached the rest stop after that first visit after that long break and said it. And you know what happened?
Swing a ding a ling.
Until next time.
Today, I had it all planned.
I’d go to Saratoga Springs, NY, with Dan (where I am right now). He’d go to service his client in the morning and I’d go to Starbucks to work until he was finished. I’d have 12 cups of coffee, write a blog, edit a story for a client, and then shop the strip until it was time to get into the Honda Element and head back south.
And everything went according to plan. Until this morning, when my mother called.
And now, I am here. Crying into a full-fat latte. Watching a group of tourists through the Starbucks window pose for a picture in front of the stone horse outside. Wondering how they can do it. How they can possibly go about life as usual.
Today, a very very dear friend of our family died. Well, actually, she was family. Not technically. But who cares. She was family. Our family.
She went early this morning. We knew it was coming. But that doesn’t help now. And when my mother said the words, “She died last night,” I am suddenly overcome by a barrage of tears. I knew it was coming. And felt sad. Of course, sad. But now, I am crying. And the water keeps pouring from my eyes like a small hole in the ecosystem.
You’d think the ladies in front of the stone horse would notice. Come over. Console me. “Are you allright honey?” But they don’t. They’re laughing as if they don’t have a care in the world. I feel like shouting, “Hey, yo. Somebody died today. A moment, please. I need a moment.” Go be joyful somewhere else.
Two years ago, she was perfectly healthy. Fine. Nothing wrong, except the usual aches and pains that come with age. But certainly not old. Barely 70. In the prime of life, still. Her children grown, with her own kids. Married. Working. Living like the rest of us.
She and her husband of 50 years, who’d survived his own bout of cancer, were living out their retirement. “They are a real love story,” my mother would tell me. More than once, I might add. “Such a handsome couple. Really. I have the pictures.”
Then, on her birthday, when she was supposed to be eating white cake, opening gifts, and marveling in her new nightgown and real jewelry, something else happened: She got a diagnosis of leukemia.
Leukemia. The gift that keeps on giving.
Another moment please.
The doctors said she’d survive it. Told her to prepare for a series of treatments that were really bad, but would see her through. That she’d come out the other side.
And she did. The “really bad” treatments weren’t so for her. “Apparently, they didn’t bother her that much,” my mother would say, eyes dancing. "Amazing."
And while she ran the medical marathon that involved an endurance none of us can train for, she came out a winner. Sure, the disease would never go away, but she could live with it.
Live with it—like diabetes, and Turrets, and the memory of war in your brain.
She got well enough for the wedding. My getting married for the first time at 43 better than chemo--too powerful a force for her to miss. Not even life-altering disease could keep her from it.
And she looked beautiful. Sounded beautiful. Smelled beautiful. Hugged beautiful. Ate her chicken piccata beautiful. Laughed at my vows beautiful. Mugged for the pictures beautiful.
Her face glowed as I remembered it. Sure, she was a little thinner, but when is that a bad thing? And everybody looked happy. The family that surrounded her like petals on the face of a daisy. They looked happy.
She was alive. We all were.
I need a tissue.
Then, another diagnosis came. Two months ago. More cancer. Now in the lungs and the kidney (or a reasonable facsimile thereof). When you’re talking about cancer, the details are almost irrelevant.
But still, there’s chemo, radiation, hospital beds, urine pans, nurse’s lights, charts, cafeterias, needles, and, of course, the best cardiologists. We’ll treat it. You’ll beat it. You’ll see.
And my mother said, “That’s not good. It’s not.” And I said, “But they’re optimistic still, right?” And she said, “Well, yes, but still. I don’t know. Not good.” And I thought, “That’s just my mother being a pessimist.” And I said, “Well, she came through the last time.” And she said, “You’re right. She did. Maybe I’m wrong. I hope so.” “Well, let’s think positively,” I said.
And then we went on to talk about my belly fat or a reasonable facsimile body part thereof.
And so life went on. Our basement flooded. The roof leaked. The microwave died. I lost 11 pounds. We’re now seeing C. I threw Heidi a baby shower. I was asked to speak at a writer’s conference. Dan’s been traveling a lot for work. We replaced the carpet in the basement with some green shaggy stuff. I’m craving pizza.
Three weeks ago, when my mother was in the hospital, she called. “I hear mom’s in the hospital,” she said. “Is she okay?” I had to marvel. Here, this woman had been on the roller coaster of cancer for 18 months. And she's asking about somebody else.
“She’s fine,” I say. “They think it might be her appendix or kidney stones.”
And after we talked about cancer and wigs and her kids and us kids and our new house, she said, “Will you keep me posted?” Of course, I said.
Today, I long to give her an update. Everything’s fine. We’re all fine. You’re fine too.
A few days after that phone call, my mother told me she was back in the hospital. Pneumonia. They were draining her lungs, but after a week or so of that, they realized, the fluid wasn’t just from pneumonia. It was from cancer. Tumors multiplying like cockroaches.
“She’s not coming out,” my mother said. I could hear her voice shake. “Pneumonia. That’s it.”
Tomorrow is my mother’s birthday. She’ll be 69. I ask her what she wants to do. She doesn’t feel much like celebrating. “This year, I won’t get a card from her. For the past 50 years, I’ve gotten a birthday card from her. This year, I won’t.” She’s been saying that for the past two weeks.
This weekend we took C to see Shrek 3, while the woman who owns a chip in my memory lay like a child in the hospital. On the psychedelic dream of cancer--and a cocktail of Adavan, Morphine, and Demerol. Curled up in an electric bed like a fetus in the womb. Her husband of 50 years propped up in a chair next to her, dazed. Her children in the corner, crying.
Comfortable. They were keeping her “comfortable.” Everybody’s comfortable.
This morning, I had it all planned out. I was going to write about this writer’s conference I’ve been invited to speak at, and book publishing, and running in the park, and my intense craving for cheese. I have my laptop and the little notes I keep over the weeks to jog my middle-aged brain into recognition.
But none of those things seem important. Maybe they will be next week. Or whenever.
But today, nothing else really matters, except the love we feel for each other and the ache in our bellies when it’s time for someone to leave. And, of course, the shadow of her spirit in our tears.
Today, nothing else really matters, but Carol.
My dear sweet Carol, may you be swinging on a cotton-tufted cloud at the greatest reunion imaginable, all those who've gone before passing you candy and golden nickels.
I will miss you.
Last week was a real bear. There was a Nor'easter storm that came through and, while I'm usually excited about the prospect of a rainy weekend (I call it "off the hook" weather), this one really took me by surprise. I guess, now that I'm a grownup, I have more at stake than I did in the past (when I lived in a condo sans a basement and a house with a musty attic and a roof I never saw).
Now that I'm married and living in a quasi-single house, I am prone to the things I've only seen happen to other people, as recounted on the local news: Flooded basements. Leaky roofs. Tears. Cherub-like women in house frocks and bad lipstick. Sirens. (Well, okay, maybe not sirens.)
Because, sure enough, the Sunday when the storm was at its peak, I heard the call of the wild come from my husband as he went into our finished basement to put a box into our freshly carpeted and organized storage closet.
"JILLLLLLLL!"
It reminded me of all the times I used to sneak food in the middle of the night when I was a child. With my mother fast asleep, 3 a.m. was like prime time. It was the eating hour, and I'd curl myself up in the bathroom (where the fan would hide my moaning) and satisfy my craving for chocolate with something other than the broiled dry fish, fruit, and raw broccoli my mother would allow me during the daylight.
Still, there was always the risk of being caught, which made it exciting (in some demented way that tells me I haven't had enough therapy). And every once in a while, my mother did. Catch me, that is. Find evidence of my binge—say a vagrant cookie crumb or errant piece of cheese on the bathroom tile or counter. And she'd call me on it. She’d say:
"JILLLLLLLL!" Good times.
The memory comes flooding back to me as my husband screams like a woman in her 36th hour of labor.
I run down the stairs to find our new $500 Weider Pro Universal and two sofas awash in an in-ground swimming pool we didn’t order, replete with about one inch of dirty rain water. My ALDO flip flops squish on the carpet as I walk over to get a closer look.
“Oh dear, the carpet’s wet.”
“No kidding.” Dan looks frustrated.
“Well,” I throw my hands up. “Let’s just call someone to fix it and have dinner.” I am a Jewish girl, after all. We’re not equipped for these things.
"No time," Dan grunts, now sweaty and wet from trying to wrestle the pipe to the sump pump as if it were an alligator trying to eat his leg. "Quick,” he motions to the section of the basement he uses as his music studio. “Start carrying all the electrical equipment out of here."
I look over at the 400 pounds of amplifiers, microphones, and assorted stereo components, cords twisted around one another like Jamaican braids, and wonder if the water has put him in some sort of altered state. I have no idea how he expects me to haul those football-player-size speakers up the stairs. Besides, I’m eager to get to those vegetable pot stickers.
I open my mouth to tell him that “I’m just not up for a hernia tonight, honey,” when I notice the water now shooting out of the pump like a geyser. Dan is trying to hold it down with his body. But it’s like using the tip of a finger to plug a hole in the Titanic. And I find it difficult to watch him.
So, instead, I turn my head and figure that, unless I can figure out how to morph into Arnold Schwarzenegger within the next 30 seconds, we've got another problem. With that, I try to assess where the plugs buried under the now soaking carpet lead to (and how I’ll disarm them without electrocuting myself), Dan moves into action.
Before I know it, the geyser's turned into a leaky faucet (I have no idea how he did it) and my husband's shoving keyboards and guitars at me like they’re hot potatoes. He, on the other hand, starts balancing the heavier equipment on his shoulders like Carmen Miranda holding a 3,000 pound set of fruit baskets.
I must say, it was impressive.
Fortunately, none of his stuff was damaged (although a box of my favorite summer shoes didn’t fare as well, SHIT). Especially since our insurance company (Keystone, hello Keystone in Doylestown, YOU SUCK SUCK SUCK) refused to cover us because when the agent (who keeps applying our payments to somebody else’s account—IDIOT) “allegedly” offered us flood insurance or whatever it’s called, they say we turned it down.
“WHY WOULD WE DO THAT?” I scream into the phone. Not the best approach, in hindsight.
Anyway, after we spent the rest of our Sunday soaking up the news that we’d have to pay for the damage caused by mud water flowing through our basement like "namaste" at a yoga convention, I went upstairs to get Winnie, who was perched in front of the window in C's room. Her usual spot.
That's when I noticed a leak coming from the ceiling. It had formed the outline of a cloud in what looked like brown poop. I wondered if the $400 duvet cover was ruined but decided to not even go there. Because by then, I’d had enough.
Overwhelmed from the flood and too tired to tackle the roof, I go downstairs to pop in a frozen dinner. After all, hours had passed, we hadn't eaten, and I'm on Jenny Craig. So I’m acutely and obsessively aware of when it’s time to eat.
I head to the kitchen and retrieve my vegetable potstickers (about 230 calories) and wonder whether we’ll have to trash the Berber carpet in the basement the people before us had installed. Not that I liked it anyway.
As I contemplate what to replace it with, I poke a few holes on the plastic protecting my frozen noodles, place it squarely in the center of the microwave, and hit "start." I wait for the whirring sound that indicates its cooking, when instead, the entire unit goes black.
I start slamming at the digits, and the clear, end, and start buttons. Nothing happens. The thing is dead. Powerless. (How’s that for irony?) Slowly, my fear and panic escalate.
"DANNNNNN!" Now THIS is an emergency.
I hear a gurgling sound.
"DAN.” Nothing.
“HELP ME!” Still yelling. “FIRE? Help? Hello?”
More gurgling and then gushing.
As I stand there, holding the frozen potstickers, I decide we'll eat later. Turns out, I am good in emergencies after all.
------------------------------
On a more positive note, Dan went to a preliminary hearing with you-might-know-who last Tuesday (after the flood and we ripped up all the carpets) to see if we could get to see C again. Ever.
I stayed home to stare in disbelief at the massive studio equipment now crammed in our living room and dining room—its chaos surpassing the hardwood floors and fancy paint job that was once the focal point of our beautiful new home.
It was a good way to distract myself from what Dan was doing—which was, hopefully, making progress. And not playing on the losing end of a pissing match.
And as it turns out, he wasn't. To the contrary, we finally got to see C this past weekend for the first time in a long time. It was a great weekend and I'll write more on it later, but it's not the point of the rest of this post. What is the point is this:
After the flood, the leak, the microwave, the child custody battle, the slow and disastrous weight gain, the half-frozen Jenny Craig meal, and the diss by our insurance company, I got a phone call from my father.
"I'm taking mom to the hospital. She's got pains in her side and back."
Huh?
Suddenly, what flood, leak, malfunctioning microwave, misguided ex-wife, and useless homeowner's policy? What freezer-burnt potstickers? What were those things again? And why do I care? Because when you hear you father say "I'm taking mom to the hospital," suddenly, nothing else counts.
"Well, what's wrong with her?"
"We don't know." He sounds cranky. Like she's interrupting him halfway through his favorite episode of Seinfeld. (You know, the one with the bubble boy.)
"Well, what do you mean you don't know?"
"We're busy here getting ready. Mom's in the shower. We'll call you later." He hangs up.
Suddenly, I feel sick. Like maybe I need to go too. I call back. My mother answers.
"I'm okay. Don't worry. Might be appendix. We'll call you after we see the doctor. Don't worry. But we've got to go." Click. She sounds like she’s on fire.
I hang up and remember a conversation Lorrie and I just had about her father. It seems last week, when I was in Chicago, the doctors found a lump on his kidney and for a few days, they worried it was a tumor. "Boy," she said. "It's amazing how your world just stops. How things just change in a second. How you go from clear to completely out of focus. I can't handle it."
Those words now haunt me. Fortunately for Irv (Lorrie' father), it turned out to be something benign. Unfortunately, for me, however, I am now standing in Lorrie's shoes—just one week after. Now, it's my turn.
And even though we still didn't know for sure that there was anything really wrong with my mother, I felt vulnerable. Alone and useless. Afraid. After all, I know, if not this time, there will come a next time, when the news will not be welcomed.
And I’m not ready for it. Not even close. Because no matter how old you are, you want your mother. It doesn’t matter that you’re at that age. That many of your friends are starting to lose their parents. That someday, our kids will be saying that about us. That we’ll be next. That if we’re lucky, and take care of ourselves, we’ll be them.
I look over at the clutter, still overwhelming our space, but no longer my brain. It had become meaningless. The amplifier could self destruct, dirt and particles and tiny little pieces of knobs and screws and plastic could cover the floor like an oversized pile of plastic throw up and it wouldn’t matter.
My mother is in the hospital. The earth has stopped rotating. Jill has stopped breathing.
The phone rings and it’s my father. "Mom's in the emergency room, waiting to have a CAT scan."
"In the emergency room? Why? Is it that bad?"
"Well, she's in pain. So they want to find out what the problem is."
"Where are you? At a concert?" I hear music and voices.
"I'm having lunch."
"At the hospital?"
"No. Quiznos."
"You're at Quiznos and mom's in the emergency room?"
"Yeah. So? What should I do? Sit and stare at her, while she drifts in and out of sleep from the medication? I’m hungry."
"They gave her medication?"
"I think so. Something."
"Should I go there? I’m going." I look around at the manilla folders lining the floor of my office and start flipping them into a pile and tossing papers. “Where the heck are my shoes?”
"Jill, she doesn't want anybody there. What are you going to do there?"
“I don’t know, Dad. Not have a barbeque chicken melt. I’ll tell you that much.”
“Huh?” I hear chewing.
"So let me get this straight. You can sit for five hours and wait for them to put brakes on your car, but you can't wait with mom in the hospital?"
"She's fine. I'll call you back." Click.
---------------------------------
As it turns out, my mother spent three days at Holy Redeemer only to find out that she passed a kidney stone. Joyfully and gloriously anticlimactic. Hallelujah.
Lorrie, on the other hand, called me this morning to tell me that her father is still having pain and they want to go in for more tests. Her husband Frank’s father, who has Parkinson’s, fell over the weekend and broke his hip. At 80, they think he’ll never walk or leave the hospital again.
This time of life—middle age—can be so glorious. We’re so grownup. We don’t sweat the small stuff. We know how to stand up for what we want. We don’t want to save the world anymore, but we’re not ready to give up on it either. Or on doing our part.
We’re a little chubbier than we used to be, but much more okay with it than ever before. We’ll eat chocolate with a little less guilt, because we're tired of depriving ourselves. After all, life is short. We welcome control top pantyhose, as long as we don't have to wear them more than once a month. We’ll work out when we can and be proud of ourselves for staying awake past 10 o’clock. We don't tweak out if we spend more than we should have at Nordstroms.
We're mainly concerned with taking hormone replacement therapy, plucking or waxing, and turbo-saving for retirement.
Yet, at the same time, it can be an awful time. Because the seasons are changing. Our choices are dwindling and our parents, well, we realize they may not be around forever. The generations are cycling—and we’re moving up on the chain. We realize that we better take care of our business—any residual resentments or childhood issues—because someday not so far away, anymore, we won't always have our parents to help us resolve them.
I think about the food I used to eat in the bathroom. And actually long for those moments, when my mother was young. And I was afraid she would find me.
---------------------------------
Now that the crises of the past few weeks are either over or under control, I take a moment to consider what might come next. I hope, pray, and throw out an energy beam to whoever, that we get a few weeks of calm, followed by a gust of motivation to write that book. It's gonna be a good book. A great book. And I want my parents around to see it.
Because if they're not, I’ll be pissed. (You hear that Keystone. Pissed. You know what that looks like, don't ya?)
Until next time.
I’m sitting at Chicago O’Hare Airport, heading home after facilitating a class for Gatorade (one of my clients) and wondering what it is about being at the airport that makes everybody want to eat. I mean, I just had a huge sandwich, chips (which frankly, I didn’t need), a soda, a bottle of water, a pretzel, and since my gate is directly across the way from McDonald’s, I’m thinking that a chocolate shake would hit the spot right about now.
And I’m not alone. I mean, pretty much everybody I see is either eating or drinking something that, honestly, looks rather unhealthy (think fried chicken fingers, oily roast beef sandwiches, and chocolate-covered peanuts).
Is it because there are so many places to get food? Do you think McDonalds and Starbucks bribe tower operators with french fries and lattes so they’ll delay flights and trigger emotional eaters (like me) into a buying frenzy?
I mean, what gives?
I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking there are better and more productive ways to spend the time we're forced to endure while waiting for our flights. Why aren’t there any, say, nail salons, or spa’s offering massages and facials at the airport? (I can see it now: C’mon in for the "orange alert special" where we aim to eliminate bad corns and callouses.)
Why are there no banks? Post offices? UPS stores? How about theaters or chain stores? Doctor’s offices and pharmacies, where I can get and then refill my Zyrtec prescription. What about a few mini-gyms, where people can take their anxiety out on a treadmill instead of flight attendants or, worse, fellow travelers?
It makes me mad. I mean, it would be uber helpful to mail a letter while I wait to board my flight. Deposit that Gap return check. Ship a package. Get a pap smear. Fix a chip on my pinky finger. Buy those paper clips I keep forgetting to get at Staples.
Maybe, just maybe, if I could bench press at the airport, I would have more toned triceps and a better attitude. Give this middle-aged woman a place to strengthen her bones. Her nailbeds. Her love handles.
GIVE ME SOMETHING TO DO OTHER THAN EAT.
Perhaps if we (okay, me) had some of these things, we wouldn’t be so damn bloated and agitated when we travel.
I’m just saying.
And now that a small child and his extended family have sat down next to me with a series of cheeseburgers, I’m off for a milkshake. The scent is just too much for my frontal cortex.
Besides, I’m only human.
--------------------------------------------
Okay, so since my last post, Dan and I have been Secretized.
No, we have not been anointed with special cream, invited to any Salem witch ceremonies, or traveled to Tibet to meet with the Dalai Lama. (Although we do like animals.)
No, no, we read the book “The Secret.” We watched the movie. We listened to the DVDs. We’ve been on www.thesecret.com, www.thesecretsoupforyoursoul.com, and www.universeisus.com.
And now, we can recite the concepts as performance art.
I tell you, I’m making fun here, but the Secret really does rock. It’s all about the law of attraction and energy and that we’re not really cellulite and good boobs, and thick wavy hair, and neuroses, but a collection of millions of little pin-like atoms of energy (making this up now)that, once released into the atmosphere, find their way to like energy bringing it back to us (think you lose 15 pounds, you gain 20 back) so that we may benefit by achieving our wildest dreams. Or, done poorly, raise the devil from a sound sleep.
Either one.
How does it work? Well, you’ll have to read it for yourself to know for sure, but in my elementary interpretation, it states something like this:
I’m supposed to ask for stuff as if I’ve already gotten it and then believe down to my itty bitty little heartstrings that it will be harkened to me and, alas, I will be rich and thin and can stop coloring my hair because it will be naturally a glorious auburn and I’ll stop aging entirely. There will no longer be hair on my chin. And any book I write will automatically go up for auction with publishers.
Well, that’s an oversimplification, but I think it gives you the gist. And even though it sounds like I’m mocking the book, really, I’m not, because Dan and I really do believe that embracing it has made a difference in our lives. For example, I no longer wake up thinking, “Oh shit.”
Instead, I remember, that whatever I want is in reach. I just have to ask for it, believe I will have it, and then digest some sort of mind-altering substance (caffeine, heroin, Women’s Correctol) to complete the ritual.
Since we’re been practicing, my freelance work has picked up, my creativity feels to be at its peak, and Dan has even gotten to talk to C on the telephone, at least. (Something he’s not been able to do for the past four months.)
So, in that spirit, I’m on the phone with my mother one day (‘cause I’m long overdue for a mother story), when I decide to tell her about the Secret. After all, she and my dad have been a bit whiny lately and I think their negative energy is just coming back to them in the form of gas and clogged sinuses and, well, too many "That 70s Show" reruns.
I’m telling my mother that they both have to “change their frequencies”—put themselves on a new lighter and more positive set of energy beams. Show gratitude and love for all the good things and find a way to be happy. Even if my father has a bad golf game or my mother misses a day at Curves.
That if they do, the good things they put out will come back. I go on with a very inspired pep talk—as if I’m Donald Trump telling her how to set up a new savings account. And just as I’m recounting the merits of living in this newfound joyfulness, she responds with this:
“Do you know how dangerous belly fat is?”
“Mom, what does this have to do with the Secret?”
“Well, Oprah had those Secret folks on. And Dr. Oz is on right now. Have you ever seen Dr. Oz. He’s wonderful. And he talks about belly fat. Do you have belly fat? I think you do.”
How does the conversation always come back to my fat? HOW? HOW? (Calm down, Jill, remember, ask and you shall receive. GOD DAMN IT, THINK POSITIVELY.)
Although, I guess I shouldn’t feel bad. Because she really gives it to my poor father these days too. In fact, he tells me that just the other day, he and my mom were out for lunch when the waitress delivered his hamburger with a healthy serving of French fries.
So, he picks one up and aims it towards his mouth like a scud missile, when he stops just short of his lips to contemplate my mother’s reaction. Would she yell? Would she miss it if he moved quickly? Would she say, “Life is short, have as many as you want?” Would she lean over the table and give him the best kiss of their marriage? What would she do?
But she didn’t do any of this. Instead, she stood up, put on her coat, grabbed her pocketbook, and, in an irritated huff, said goodbye and walked out, leaving my poor and perplexed father sitting there holding a deep fried piece of potato.
No doubt, wondering what he had done to deserve it. (And therein lays the crux of my childhood. But I’m over it now, Mom, really. I LOVE YOU!!!)
--------------------------------------------------
I was supposed to fly home last night but, surprise, there was a snowstorm in April in Chicago and my flight was cancelled so they put me on this one, the next day. It was supposed to leave three hours ago. Now, I’m on the plane, and, without a lot of soda and candy to keep the masses satisfied, people are fidgety. The flight is full, carrying the residual from last night’s cancellations, and the pilot is speaking. I can barely understand him.
I’m cranky.
“Folks,” he says. Why do they always call us folks? Why not, “Oh mighty and loyal customers without whom I could not afford my mortgage...?" Or, why don’t they leave their ivory castles and come down through the aisles to talk to the people? Shake hands? Kiss babies? Face time goes a long way in business. Didn’t they learn that in flight school?
“We just heard from the control tower.” He sounds like he’s talking to us from under a foam pillow. “And uh…”
He's stammering. Not good.
“…and so, the planes have to circle around several times, and well, it takes them off track…”
Just tell me: How long do I have pack this too-many pounds of potatoes into a two-pound seat?
“…and so, we are now scheduled for takeoff in two hours.”
TWO MORE HOURS? Just sitting here? That puts me at serious risk of blood clotting. Going out like David Bloom, embedded with the soldiers in Iraq, who died from a blood embolism. Or whatever.
“We just don’t like to fly in thunderstorms, so we’re grounded until control tower says it’s okay to get moving.”
Oh sure, thunderstorms. Lame. I mean, what do you sell here?
Once, an old boyfriend and I went to a Kentucky Fried Chicken and ordered all white meat. They said they were out. Kentucky Fried Chicken was out of chicken. So we said, “Hey, what do you sell here?” And then left, snickering.
As I think about whether I’ll ever get home, the flight attendant (stewardess) with too much eye makeup and a bad dye job asks me if I mind moving back two rows to the very last row. Where even though I’ll keep my window seat, I shouldn't expect to find a window.
I immediately want to say, “You’re damn straight I mind.” But I hold off to hear the rest of her explanation, since my seatmates are quite eager to move. Friggin good Samaritans. They bug me. (If you're reading, hi guys! :))
“The little children are afraid and need to be by a window.”
I look over to find a mom, dad, and two teary toddlers standing there, looking at me as if they’re trapped in Barney’s jaw and I’m the only person who can yank them free. And then, method acting to hide my bitterness and resentment (this is my window seat, MINE MINE MINE), I say, “Sure. Yes, why not? Be happy to. My pleasure. Can't wait.”
Little bastards. Maybe I’m clausterphobic? Did anyone ever stop to think of that? What are they going to do next, ask me to fly on the wing?
Boy, I’ll tell you what: If I miss Gray’s Anatomy because of thunderstorms, well, heads will ROLL.
That’s all I’m saying.
At least until next time.
Last week, we had our friends Rick and Deb over for dinner. We were going through an especially rough time, not having seen Dan’s daughter C for a long while and not having access to her, and Rick and Deb have been a strong set of shoulders for us to lean on. We got to talking about what we could do in terms of keeping the faith when Rick suggested we all go to a “sweat lodge.”
I had never heard of a sweat lodge before so I was intrigued. What is it? Do they keep the heat over 75? Do they do hot yoga? Give pedicures by moistening the skin so intensely that it just flakes off on its own—no scraping or rubbing required? Do they let you sample a variety of hydration beverages? Do some sort of mud wrap that brings all the toxins to the surface so you look younger? Have less cellulite? I had so many questions.
So Rick and Deb told me that it was an ancient Native American ceremony of prayer and purification that involved heating rocks in a fire, bringing them into the center of the lodge, pouring water on them so they steam, and praying.
Is there Jesus talk, because, you know, I’m Jewish. We don’t generally pray to Jesus.
No, it’s all very spiritual and soul-cleansing.
Like a colonic?
Well, not as graphic.
Good, because my mother worked for a proctologist when I was growing up and an enema was her cure-all, so I have issues.
Too much information.
Does it involve some alternative language, like Hebrew, say, or Swahili? Cause I don’t speak either.
No, prayer could be words or songs or silence. Even chanting.
I like chanting. I do it all the time in the shoe department at Nordstroms. "Do you really need those? YES YES YES NO YES OH GOD YES."
This isn't anything at all like Nordstroms.
That's okay. Will there be pound cake? There’s usually pound cake after services at a synogague.
Well, no. But there’ll be a pot luck feast, so we each have to bring something to eat.
Oh, okay, good. So you're saying there might be pound cake, then?
As we played Q&A, I let my mind conjure up the image of a peaceful getaway at a well-kept spa in an exotic location. Where you can call upon the spirits to relax you enough to soothe your puffy eyes, eliminate unnecessary wrinkles, and leave you feeling younger, thinner, and less hungry for pizza or tuna salad with REAL mayonnaise. It sounded like a place to commune with aestheticians for a reasonable price. And then, attend a nice buffet of cold items, perhaps a nice pasta salad with pesto or cold shrimp.
This could be very Las Vegas meets the Berkshires, I thought to myself. Upscale gym meets Ruby Tuesdays. Hot springs meet Denny’s. What could be bad?
I’m in. Let’s do it.
So we did. With much excitement and anticipation, we went on a Sunday night, two days after a late March ice storm that laid a dirty carpet of hard snow on the grass and roads. Dan and I picked up Rick and Deb after a brief stop at Giant to get a set of broccoli and mushroom quiches and a tub of hummus. (Rick had suggested we bring something “sort of vegan-y.”) We were excited. We’d had enough of the cold and looked forward to the warmth of the lodge. I was looking forward to some effective moisturizing after.
As we pulled up a long driveway to somebody’s backyard (who I would later learn was “Jim”), we saw several people standing around a fire by an old garage. A few sat on an old bench next to a wooden fence. We followed Rick and Deb into the old single house to put away the food we had brought for after “the sweat.”
I asked Deb, “Where’s the lodge?” After all, I didn’t see anything in the back yard but the fire, the people, and the garage. Did we have to go somewhere else to get there? Would there be a shuttle? Did it have a bathroom? (I pee a lot.)
She took my hand, led me back out to the people and the bonfire, and pointed to a small blue dome behind them. It looked like a latex igloo, large enough to sleep two at a campsite.
“What’s that?” I said.
“The sweat lodge.”
“That’s it?” My heart started to race.
“That’s it.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Oh.”
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Everything after that happened fast. The girls got changed into shorts, tee shirts, and flip flops in what I assumed was Jim’s bedroom, while the guys changed in the old garage. We grabbed our towels on the way back out and covered ourselves with sweatshirts that, just moments later, would be yanked off and flung to the side just prior to entering “the lodge.”
Scantily clad (for me, at least), in bare feet, and shivering, I waited in line behind Dan for safety. When it was his turn to go in, a skinny guy, who was topless, waved a piece of lit sage around his body as if he were drying an SUV just out of the car wash. Then, he instructed my poor husband to get on his hands and knees and crawl through a brown slushy pool of God-knows-what to get into the small latex igloo. I was next.
“You okay?” Dan asked, once I found a place crammed next to him.
“Don’t touch anything,” I whispered, picking a piece of something disgusting off the bottom of my foot and wondering why I wasn’t getting a hot stone facial at Zanya's. Big mistake. “You don’t know where this dirt has been.”
He looked at me like I had hit my head on one of the tree branches upon entry. “It’ll be okay, honey. You’ll be fine. This is fun. Something different, right.”
I wanted to slap him. Did something in the lodge cause a sudden misfiring of synapses in his brain? Fun? Crawling through winter muck is fun? I look down at my foot. The brown thing isn't coming off so easily.
Some 15 minutes later, with 28 or so of us crammed together like mixed nuts, Jim, otherwise known as Painted Arrow or some such title, called for the first rock. That’s when one skinny kid yanked a white hot rock from the fire and passed it with something that looked like a pitchfork made of sticks to another skinny kid who dropped it into a hole in the center of the tent. They did that six times as Jim chanted, “Welcome Grandfather”--a nod to the fact that they were very old rocks.
After the old guys were all in, Jim instructed the skinny people to close the flap on the tent, eliminating any remaining light. Since there was no longer a difference when I opened my eyes and closed them, I opted for the latter. (What I couldn't attempt to see couldn't hurt me.)
I grabbed Dan’s knee for comfort and grounding, and listened as Jim poured several dollops of water over the rocks, like a gang member firing off an AK47 (or whatever). Steam danced and hissed around us.
We all started to sweat like ice cubes in an incinerator, as Jim led us in a conversation about war, and why our world was in such turmoil. I thought about the lavender-scented fern-decorated old-but-pristine and moderately heated old lodge somebody else—somewhere—might be sitting in, blissfully, and reasonably detoxifying. Lemon water waiting for them when they finished.
How did I get here, I wonder, recognizing that it’s not excess saliva on my teeth, but a composition of oozing fluid and electrolytes? Then I remembered.
Oh Great Spirit, Jim says, we are living in such a volatile time. The girl next to me leans in and quietly informs me she’s not wearing underwear. The girl in front of me (or rather, literally, now ON me, as she attempts to get further away from the hot rocks) starts dry heaving and belching.
“Are you okay?” I whisper.
“Oh yes, thanks. This is normal.”
“Gotcha.” I reach for Dan’s hand and go to my happy place—Starbucks, an egg nog latte has just been delivered to my quivering lips, I prepare to drink..
I hang on to that thought, while the white hot rocks cause me to sweat more than I ever have previously--more than I do at the thought of having actually married Todd Goldman when I was 29 (can you say “sociopath?”). Or, at the memory of walking in the city while, unbeknownst to me, a faulty set of buttons left me exposed to all of 8th and Walnut Streets. (I thought it felt awfully breezy.)
After I listened to a few people pray to the “Great Spirit” for a good bounty, useful creativity, and food for third-world children, I decided to ignore the fact that I was on fire without being in actual flames and participate. So I spoke up, “Oh Great Spirit,” I said. “Thank you for keeping me hyperconscious in this heat.”
Nobody even tittered at the profound realism of my prayer (except, of course, my devoted husband). It surprised me. I mean if you can’t recognize something smart or call upon a good sense of humor when you’ve been spit into an active volcano, when can you? What are you waiting for?
My skin was starting to crisper like an oversized overcooked piece of turkey bacon. I wanted to cry, but couldn't risk losing the body fluids. And yet, not even the thought of mushroom quiche or lemon hummus could save me at that point. So I had to distract myself from the agony of the man with the trigger finger--Jim and his little bucket of death water.
And then here, I suspect, is where the whole point of the experience hit me.
Because suddenly, like a gold rush, thoughts of wishing we could see C overcame me. I prayed that, if and when we do, she remembers how much we love her. I encouraged myself to get busy writing that book. After all, my time was coming. I had earned it, deserved it, worked hard to get here. It was time to recommit to the momentum—and the task of doing it. And then I thought about my father, who survived lung cancer two years ago. We all live on borrowed time, and I prayed for the longest extension possible from his lender.
In that moment, I gave my sweat reason and purpose. And as it dripped off of me and onto the wet soil under my own dampness, I felt my thoughts lifting, floating straight up through a tiny hole in the blue bubble and onto, well, somewhere.
Suddenly, everything got oddly moving. I wanted to cry for Sophie and for my grandmother, who died when I was 13. If I was a Russian spy, I suspect now would've been the time to interrogate me. The heat was like the ultimate truth serum. It was both dangerous and exhilerating.
And as I listened to the girl in front of me belch and Jim chant and Dan breathe in long familiar gusts, and as I felt the girl next to me fidget with her skirt, and as I clung to the cool dirt beneath my fingertips, I stopped wondering why people came to endure such discomfort.
I couldn’t tell if there were tears in my eyes or my corneas were perspiring. And yet, it didn’t matter.
These were all strange revelations—that I was hot and emotional and it didn’t matter—and I detached from them almost immediately. (As soon as Jim said, "That's it. Open up.")
I guess you can only hold on for so long after surviving a 45-minute schvitzfest and then crawling out of a tent into 32 degrees. I felt like a drug addict leaving a heroin convention—all woozy, wet, and spent.
“Go ahead and lay on the ice,” Jim says, as he ushers us out like a bunch of termites from a damp basement. “You’ll love it.”
“The man must be drunk,” I muttered to myself as I tried to stand upright on the icy ground without shrieking like an African monkey. My now soaking tank top and thinly insulated Gap Body cotton Capri pants failing miserably. Although, I did manage to find my way to my flip flops and towel rather quickly, an act marked by relative calm and a real feeling of accomplishment. Then, I stood with Dan, wet arm in wet arm, in front of the still blazing campfire to revel in the fact that we had survived.
I had survived, breathing in fire and breathing out something else that let me know I was alive. Now, out of the sweat tent (because I refuse to call it a lodge), back to 98 degrees Fahrenheit, I felt like I had just repaved all the streets in the city in 45 minutes. Overcome a personal hostage situation. Endured a plane crash. It was surprise to me, this feeling that was both thrilling and horrifying.
I could pretty much survive anything. Probably. Yes. I can. Dan's ex. A publisher's rejection. Half a pound a week in weight loss.
As I stood there, watching the belcher, the girl going commando, and a crew of others lay down on the ground as if they had been shot by airfire, I had an ephipany. I would not do that. I would be a leader, not a follower. I'd be me, and not somebody else.
After all, while they may have craved deeper meaning in the Jackson Pollack painting of the sky, I craved deodorant, a dry tee shirt, lip gloss, and chocolate. To make sense of any of this, I needed to get back to the real world—my real world—and hydrate. Moisturize. And nurture my body with some very VERY bad carbohydrates.
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Before the sweat, while I was getting ready, I met a woman named Rosemary in the bedroom. We were down to our bras and undies so there seemed no need for small talk. It was obvious we were both freshmen. “First time?” she asked.
I nodded. She smiled. And we finished changing. It was the kind of exchange you’d have with a woman while you waited to get your first mammogram.
Now, hydrated, dry, and relaxed in the way you are when you know your surgery is behind you, we met up again over a table of curried rice, too much hummus (a popular item), salad, and chili.
“Well?” she said, putting a scoop of brown rice and peas on her plate. “What did you think?”
I thought hard for a moment. “It sure was hot in there.” When it doubt, go with the obvious.
She laughed. “I’ll say.”
I scooped a piece of quiche onto my plate and spread some hummus on top. (I’m weird, I know.) “I liked some of it and didn’t like some of it.”
She nodded her head. “Yeah. Good way to put it.”
“It was hot in there.”
She laughed. “Too hot.”
“Thank you.”
“So hot that I really couldn’t focus on anything other than….”
“How hot you were?”
“Yes.”
Turns out, I wasn’t the only person in there after all. Sensing that we had bonded, I really opened up. “It was just stupid hot.” I wondered if she knew how to play the air guitar.
“Yes. Really. Just hot.”
We shared a moment of soulful eye contact and then, I said this: “Have you tried the hummus?”
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The best part of the whole experience for me, at an especially hot moment, when I thought I couldn’t take anymore, was holding my husband’s sweaty palm. And knowing that we were in it for the long haul.
That no matter what happened in life—a dying dog, a real estate deal gone sour, a misguided ex-wife, cancer, old age, a slowing metabolism, menopause, the loss of one daughter, the joy of seeing another give birth, rejection from book publishers and music studios, acceptance from book publishers and music studios, the court's misjudgement, hearing from an old friend, remembering childhood, making peace with fat knees, forgetting what it was like to have perfect eyesight, laughing, crying, singing, dancing, reeling in agony, and rejoicing—that we would always be okay.
And together.
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As I look back on the experience, I have to question why we put ourselves through so much suffering to realize things. I think about the contortions of yoga, the exhaustion of aerobics, the pain and agony of self-actualization. I mean, can’t we figure it out on a nice spring day, on a walk with our dogs, smiling at our neighbors? Watching reruns of Jeopardy? Or laying on four inches of memory foam, listening to the toilet drip before we fall asleep?
Can’t we just know because we do that life gives us a little bit of everything and never an excess of anything and that we don’t need to cause our own suffering to come to this conclusion.
I mean, sweating and all is great. In fact, my skin did glow for about a week after. (Although I didn’t lose a pound and we still can’t see or talk to C.) And I might even do it again, if somebody, say, put a Rufie in my drink or threatened to kill my family.
I guess.
Still, I also know here, in the comfort of my temperature-adjusted home with cable and raspberry-flavored Aquafina, exactly what I knew then in the sweat igloo: That it’s up to us.
It’s all up to us. Whatever “it” is? Well, that’s up to us too. It was up to me to sweat like an snowman in Aruba and I got it out of my system (along with who knows what else) and now, well, I'm glad I did it.
But do I need to do it again? I don't know. For now, I’m just looking for something crunchy. (It's moon time.)
So, until next time.
I am a grandmother.
It’s true. I went from being a single woman with as many chances as finding as husband as being picked off by a terrorist to having a granddaughter and a grandson on the way.
Not exactly the most conventional or linear way of going about the circle of life, but hey, I’m here nonetheless.
And I can handle it. I can handle a gaggle of stepchildren and the fact that I’ve completely bypassed parenthood for grandparenthood—the fact that I have pictures of a one-year-old all over my house like my nanny used to have pictures of me and my brother. The fact that I’ve got baby cookies in my pantry and they’re not for me. The fact that I’m looking for inexpensive baby cribs and strollers and accessories to help my stepdaughter Heidi put together another room for another grandchild.
But what I cannot handle, at the less-than-ripe age of 44 (in this instance only) is being called “Grandma.”
C’mon. Grandma? I’m sorry, but I don’t think I fit the traditional picture of a “grandma” (the sexy grandma aside). Now I know what you’re thinking: What is the traditional picture anymore? I don’t know what yours is, but mine is a woman with wrinkles in a neck that jiggles. (Not you, mom. [She’s so fragile.]) It’s frizzy short hair that gets teased and sprayed once a week by a woman named Marlene at a hair salon in a strip mall. It’s a closet full of house frocks made of polyester. It’s furniture with slipcovers. Tissues rolled up in shirt sleeves. And transistor radios in every bedroom so talk radio is accessible when senior hormones keep you from Delta sleep.
It’s not blue jeans and a copper red shag. Four computers and wireless Internet. Tassimo coffee. A new Honda Element. It’s not mountain bikes, guitars, blogs, and novel drafts. My grandmas didn’t have gas fireplaces. They never spent a weekend pulling up carpets to lay their own hardwood. Child custody and visitation issues were discussed on the AM dial. And they surely weren’t newlyweds.
So you can see how I’m struggling with the moniker. Grandma? Who’s that? And when did she get here?
No, no, no. I just can’t do it. I can’t let some poor creature barely on earth for a year indulge such a lapse in judgment. Kylie (and babyX-to-be), let me give you your first piece of advice as your whatever: DON’T CALL ME GRANDMA.
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When I tell my friends that I don’t want my new grandchildren to actually call me Grandma, they come up with a set of alternatives so piss poor that I want to eat an entire chocolate Pepperidge Farm layer cake and throw myself into traffic.
“Why don’t you have them call you ‘Nona’? That means grandmother in Phillipino.”
“How about Mimi, that’s grandmother in [insert foreign country since the origin escapes me]?”
“Or chokolatay, which is grandmother in the old Indian language of Ijibaway Reservationo?”
“How about ‘Glam-ma?”
Now, if I was Phillipino, Spanish, Italian, Swahili, Cherokee Indian, or wore anything other than Gap Body black stretch pants and flip flops, I might consider some of these options. But I’m not. And I don’t. I’m Jewish and hardly glamorous. (Sorry again, mom.) And before you say anything, I REFUSE to be called “Bubby.” That’d just send me over edge I now live on.
A year ago, when Kylie, was born, Dan and I agreed she’d call us “Mick and Jeri”—named for Mick Jagger and Jeri Hall, grandparents before their time. After all, we were only 43 and 49 respectively when Kylie shot out of her mother like a kidney stone the size of a refrigerator. Poor Heidi, her labor was more like captivity. (It was so insufferable, her four-day experience became urban legend—the worst of the worst--at the Princeton Hospital.)
And yet, Mick and Jeri didn’t get us very far and for the first year of Kylie’s life, that was fine. But now the little bugger is talking. And we have to give her something to work with or be relegated to whatever she comes up with. And I’m not willing to risk it. After all, if “Poopy and Pop-Pop” sticks, there’s scant little we’ll be able to do about it.
As if that weren’t bad enough, now that there’s another one on the way, the stakes have doubled. So, Dan and I are on the hunt for just the right label.
Last weekend, we thought we had it. We were at the Food Court at the Mall, when it hit us. The perfect names. Kylie would call Dan “Master Wok.” And she’d call me “Sbarro.” Yes, they may be a bit difficult to pronounce in the early years, but eventually, they’d roll off her tongue like a good bit of throw up.
When I told Heidi, however, she laughed for a bit and then said, “You are kidding, right?”
I wasn’t—we weren’t. But I took that as a sign that she wasn’t too happy about it. So, here’s where you come in: Please, sweet Jesus, HELP US.
Now I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but save your grandmother or grandfather in a foreign language. We just can’t do it. We’re Americans and that’s irrefutable. With that caveat, we are hoping (praying? begging?) that somebody somewhere out there can provide us with names more appropriate than “Bain’s Deli.”
Let’s make it a contest, although there is no prize save the fact that you’ll be helping out a fellow American. Like the many advertisements for writers and editors on Craigslist.com, there is no compensation, but millions will be exposed to your genuis.
So let us know what you’ve got. Hurry. Kylie will soon be reciting Shakespeare and planning her wedding. Hit the little "Comments" button below and give us SOMETHING. ANYTHING.
Thank you in advance. And until next time.
This is for all divorced fathers, who are being denied access to their children by misguided mothers. And to C, of course, who we love.
“Today, I made a choice. I chose to hold you close to me instead of going off into my sorrow. I chose to let the wound in my heart heal for a day, instead of letting it open up once again to remind me of the intense pain of my loss, and the pain of knowing that somewhere my little girl is lost and scared. Today, I chose to dream of how good it will feel to have her back in my arms instead of crying for her and what she is going through. I chose to celebrate that some day she will be healthy, and that she will understand, and that she too, will heal. I chose to feel sorry for those hurting her instead of feeling yesterday’s anger towards them, knowing they do this out of ignorance rather than clouded love. I chose to forgive them for their hatred, prejudice, lying and selfish misguidance. Tomorrow, I will have to choose again.”
Daniel Lee Murray
“Today and everyday, I am a stepmother. I love being a stepmother, although it brings no glory, save for the warmth of knowing and loving a child. And while I’m not my stepdaughter’s biological mother, I am part of the village of people with the privilege—and the charter—of loving her. Helping to create for her a healthy and stable childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Contrary to the old and all-too-well accepted fable (which should be put to rest with Saddam Hussein and the eight-track tape player), I am not evil. Unless, of course, you put olives on my pizza—or deny me pizza altogether. Then, I’ll hurt you.”
Daniel’s wife (me)
I first met C two years ago, when Dan and I had been dating for a few months but knew we were onto something serious. She was seven--and very protective of her father. I knew that because she arrived at my door looking like an angry customer—arms crossed, scowling, as if I had sold her a $5,000 flat screen TV that, once home, crumbled to ash.
I was an oversized piece of fresh flesh and she was a dinosaur. I was an alien force invading her father’s world, threatening her place in it. With parents who’ve been married for 50 years, I’ve never had the experience of meeting my mother or father’s new partner, but I can only imagine that it’s weird. And unsettling. Unless, of course, in the end, the new alien turns out to be ET. And even more importantly, makes clear in the eyes of the child the role she plays in her universe.
This was all I aspired to be—ET. Fun, considerate, loving. Clear. In the past, my role models were gifted authors like Isabelle Allende and David Sedaris. Today, however, it’s a made-up character from a 30-year-old Stephen Spielberg movie. And this night, I knew, was the first in a long ladder of steps for C and I towards my achieving it.
I remember before Dan and C arrived that that night, that I’d spent hours searching for just the right “meet the daughter” outfit. Funny, since the last time I started a new relationship, I was going to meet my boyfriend’s parents.
I tossed clothes around my closet like a police officer looking for the murder weapon. The final choice couldn’t be too school marmy or porn starry (not that I have either of those kinds of clothes in my closet, much to my husband’s chagrin). Something that screamed, “I’m going to be your stepmother and please LOVE ME.”
Forty minutes, seven shirts, five expletives, four pairs of pants, and three pairs of shoes later, I ended up wearing my “uniform”: Black jeans, my favorite beige flip flop wedgies from ALDO, and a basic white V-neck. I figured it was innocuous enough to keep me out of trouble.
When the doorbell rang, Sophie, still with us back then, barked with great glee at the sight of a new blonde playmate. I opened the door and my Golden Retriever, wearing a tee-shirt to hide the scars from a recent surgery, stuck her big wet snout against C’s cheek, licking it like it was a lollipop made of pure beef.
Before I knew it, my angry customer had gotten her refund. Placated and now smiling, we head for hill that led us into town, where there was a street fair and, should we need it, the healing effects of a calm and gentle river.
On Main, we spent an hour browsing the local vendors. Mystics, shopkeepers, and tourists lined up in booths on either sides of the road like a pair of painted valances. I bought C an appropriately cheap charm for her bracelet at “Love Saves the Day”—a novelty shop with a cult following that I found appropriately euphemistic for the moment. And I sweat. A lot. Out of nerves and middle-aged heat, until finally, the sun set on the event, the August air got crisp, and we prepared to leave for the shelter of the restaurant: Giuseppes. That’s right, pizza.
There, the wait was short and the dinner was caloric. We ate cheesy everything and drank soda pop. Dan did his “salt trick.” C and I blew straw covers at one another. Played footsies. Giggled at way we could make bubbles in our liquids. And while C rolled strands of cheese around her fingers like a nurse bandaging a wound, Dan and I snuck in a few knowing glances. By the end of the night, we were all in good standing.
When the time came for Dan to take C back home, I shook C’s hand. She clung to the light blue poncho (an evening gown on her small frame) I had given her before the street fair in case she got cold when the sun went down. And I let her have it, even though it was one of my favorites.
While they drove away, I felt proud that I had tamed the dinosaur—and that C had soothed my alien. Still, I think we both knew, in our own age-respective way, that this was just the beginning. I hoped she was just as excited about getting to what came next as I was.
After they left, I waited patiently for Dan’s phone call so we could recap while he drove home. “What did she say?” “Did she like me?” “Did she have fun?” “Does she know we’re a couple or does she think we’re just friends?” “How did I do?” “Was the charm bracelet too much?” “Did Sophie help?”
It was an excruciating 15 minutes, and then he called. “Hey.”
“Hey, did you drop her off?”
“Yep.” He laughed.
“She hates me.”
“No.” Still laughing.
“I had a booger in my nose the whole time and you both made fun of me on the ride.”
“No, c’mon babe.”
“I sweat too much.”
“Stop.”
“Well, what did she say?” Good lord, it was more important for a seven-year-old to like me than for my mother to tell me I looked thin in my blue jeans. Who was I?
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? What do you mean, nothing?”
“She didn’t say a word. I dropped her off. She gave me a hug and a kiss and that was it.”
Shit. I did something worse than make a bad impression—I didn’t make ANY impression.
“Well, okay then.” I felt like crying. All that energy, the tee-shirt, the black pants, the bracelet, my dying dog, the pizza, for naught.
He started laughing.
“Why are you laughing? I mean, I’m FORGETABLLE.” I was getting pissed. It wasn’t his ass on the line. He already knew C. She already loved him. She didn’t cling to his blue poncho. She didn’t ignore who he was.
“Well, I’m laughing because she called me after I dropped her off. In tears.”
Oh my God, it’s worse than I thought. “Did I do something to offend her? SHE HATES ME. I HURT A CHILD. Who am I, babe? WHO AM I? Was it the poncho? Wrong color? The charm bracelet? The sight of a middle-aged woman sweating like an overheated St. Bernard? WHAT?”
“No, no. She said that when we get married, can she please be the flower girl because Heidi [Dan’s other daughter, 26, married, pregnant and utterly delightful] promised she could be the flower girl and then got married in Las Vegas without her!” He is laughing hard now.
Kids are smart, you know. Smarter than we give them credit for. And C was—and still is—no exception. In fact, we’re counting on it.
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For a long time, C didn't call me by name. She just sort of tugged on my sleeve, or looked at me when she spoke. I told Dan that when she actually called me by my name, I knew I'd be "in." It took about a month. But one day, while we were all in the car heading for the Columbus Flea Market to buy socks and a bunch of plastic things we didn't need, she said it. "Hey Jill? While we're there? Want to get something for Sophie?"
It was a great moment. One that makes me chuckle at the memory. I remember, Dan squeezed my hand and mouthed the words, "See, she likes you." And I remember thinking, yeah, maybe she does.
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Dan and I got engaged by surprise, one Saturday morning, when we were out for a walk and a latte. There was an antique jewelry store next to Starbucks, and we found ourselves browsing the diamonds in the window.
“Let’s go in,” I said, “Just for fun.”
When we came out, we were engaged. We hadn’t planned it that way. Still, the diamond was “me”, the moment was spontaneous, the match was right, Mercury was out of retrograde, and we had a credit card with a low balance and 0 percent APR for a year. So Dan got on one good knee (which is a gift in and of itself at middle age) and popped the question—much to his surprise and mine. He asked me to marry him much the way you’d ask your accountant if you could take your new guitar as a tax deduction—with great hope and wonder. I said yes. We hugged each other and Ronnie the salesperson, and off we went.
The following weekend we had C. We really wanted her to be a part of things—to feel that she had a heavy hand in the decision and, really, she did. If she didn’t want it, we wouldn’t do it—not until she was comfortable. But by then, C and I had made it up a few rungs of the relationship ladder and were doing just fine.
So as a way to include her, we decided to re-enact the event. On the Friday night of the next weekend we had her, I went to my friend Lorrie’s house for a girl’s night so Dan and C could spend the evening without me.
He picked her up in Delaware (the halfway point between here and Maryland, where C and her mother now live) with my ring in his pocket. (And believe me, it was not easy to part with it.) As they drove, he told her that, the next morning, he wanted to ask me to be part of their family. And that he had invited Heidi for breakfast. And together, they’d all propose. He showed her the ring.
I got home at about 10 that night. That’s when Dan went to walk Sophie for her last poop of the evening. He was no sooner out the door, than C dragged me into the kitchen. She was frantic.
“Jill, okay, I have to tell you something, but you can’t tell my dad that I told you. Swear. SWEAR.”
“I swear. I SWEAR. What?” Is she on drugs? Did she get in trouble at school? Does she harbor a secret desire to be a man?
“Okay,” and off she goes, talking in warped speed. “Um, my dad told me that he is going to ask you to be part of our family tomorrow morning and that, um, Heidi is coming over and that we’re going to make you breakfast as a surprise in the morning and that he bought you a diamond ring and that we’re all going to ask you to be part of our family and marry us.”
She looks nervous. I am stunned and unsure what to do—suddenly, I’m keeping the secret from C that we’re engaged, even though the secret is that we're already engaged and now I have to negotiate a new secret from Dan that I know what C knows about our getting engaged and I know how we're getting engaged, even though we are engaged and have been engaged for a week.
This was almost as confusing as the computer class I had to take in grad school.
“Uh, uh,” I say. “Wow, really? Really?” I smile. Even though I know it’s true and we’ve already done it, I can’t help but feel a fresh rush at the prospect of doing it with C and Heidi present. I am also washed by long waves of love for this small child who, so adorable and innocent, is trying to cram in everything she has to say (which is a lot) before her Dad comes home.
“Jill, wipe that look off your face,” she says. “WIPE THAT LOOK OFF YOUR FACE!”
I have no idea what the look is, but I can only imagine. “You mean, this one?” And I cross my eyes and scrunch up my nose and pull my lips out real wide and start to laugh. C does too. I grab her shoulders and pull her close, whispering in her ear, “How I love you, silly.”
Tomorrow morning, when the event takes place, I wink at her. Kids are smart all right.
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Since that time, there have been so many of these stories. Each weave creates the yarn that continues to expand and grow into a giant blanket, warm and cozy, as time passes. I’ve worked hard to build a strong relationship with C and Heidi—and to learn the freedoms and boundaries, the joys and perils, of being a step parent.
While it’s always rewarding, it isn’t always easy—in our case, we have a mother who,for whatever reason, we feel she does not want us in C’s life as she continues to stop us from seeing her. Perhaps she is fearful that she’ll lose her, or is threatened by having another woman love her. I guess I can understand that to a point. But we can all love her. We're not trying to take her away. And I'm not trying to be her mother. It’s not a contest.
Sadly, it's a situation that's all too common. Just last week, Dan and I were out running errands, when we met a car dealer and a florist who had gone through divorce and alienation from their child under similar circumstances. And when I tell the story to my friends, they tell me about somebody else they know going through it.
Which leads me to this: I recognize that there are many fathers who default on their obligations, but what about the fathers who are being frozen without recourse out of their child’s lives? What about the fathers who love their children but are denied access because of the dysfunction that rises like a cloud of toxic air in the other household? What about the fathers who, like my husband and too many others, walk around with a set of ready tears—triggered by the common sight of a tender moment between somebody else and their child?
What an awful and precarious way to go through life. And even more tragic, how unnecessary.
I would think all mothers would want as many people as possible on their child’s side. But then again, I’m healthy. I’ve done my work—and keep doing it. I see it as my personal, emotional, and spiritual obligation to make sure that I bring to all the children in my life (and there are many) the best I have to offer—on their behalf.
Because I am a grownup. I had my childhood and am able to fend for myself. Children, on the other hand, rely on us to make decisions that are best for them. I have to ask: Are we doing that? Daily? All of us?
God bless Hillary Clinton who, no matter what your politics, was dead on in saying that “It takes a village to raise a child.” It’s a nice and perhaps overused catchphrase—only because it’s an even more powerful truth.
I say that there’s room for a lot of people in that village—biologically connected and otherwise.
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I have two step-daughters. (Well, actually four, but that’s another story for another time.) C is nine now. And Heidi is 26, married, the mother of a one-year-old, and pregnant with her second. They are both blessings. C is a blooming flower (or was, who knows now given the toll of current circumstances). And Heidi shines so brightly, sometimes I can barely see past the light that glows around her.
Step-parenting each has been a completely different experience, requiring completely different sets of skills and reflexes. It’s like being in two separate novels simultaneously. Two separate action films. Two different parts of the moon, sun, and the universe. The air is similar, but the ground strength varies. Sometimes, it’s like riding a motorcycle on thin ice. And others, it’s like frolicking in a sea of cotton.
I love my stepchildren. And not because I’m trying to be their mother, but because we are all born with the instinct to love for a reason. It’s nature. And it’s beautiful.
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So I will end this post with this:
The notion of the evil stepmother is a fallacy. It’s a time-honored non-truth. Not all stepmothers are evil, just like not all mothers are good.
Senseless conflicts at the cost of a child are just that: senseless. I stand firmly in the belief that there’s room for all of us in a child’s heart. Especially a father. Because we only get one, and for such a short time. Because life is short.
Remove the village from the child and what remains is a sad and lonely little girl on a hill.
When we asked the car dealer and the florist how they overcame the situation of never being able to see their child, their answer was simple: They never gave up.
And just like them, neither will we.
Until next time.
Today, I am crying. I am crying for a little girl who has been isolated from a community that loves her. I am crying for how she must feel, out there, all alone. Wondering why. I am crying because of all the promises she thinks we've broken even though we've done (are doing) all we can to keep them. Still we cannot tell her. Because she comes first.
I'm crying for my deep love for her. Because although she is not my own, she is mine. As are all of our children all of ours to love and safe keep.
Today, I am crying. For her, first and foremost. And for the people I love and their pain. I am crying because I am in pain. And I know that there are others, like me, like us, who are struggling. I long to wrap my arms around them and tell them, it'll all be okay. But I can't. Because I don't know that. None of us do.
Some days, I don't know what I know. Or if I know anything.
Today, I am crying because, in the middle of the world spinning, we are all hurt. And yet, to heal ourselves is a dying and transcendent act. To take every moment in every day to ask ourselves, how can we do better to lick life's wounds, to recover what we've lost, is something we owe ourselves--and, even more importantly, we owe our children.
Today, I am crying because too many forget. Even though, I haven't.
Today, I reflect on how different things might be if more remembered. If they stayed awake and lived in truth. Our children might never feel isolated. Or alone. And I might be crying, instead, for a broken finger or a peeled onion.
Or perhaps there would be no tears.
What I do know is that, today, I would be writing something much different.
The other night, I had drinks and a light dinner with a few folks from the Wild River Review (yes, the sexy grandma was there and she did not disappoint! :)). For some reason, we got into this heated debate (well, maybe low boil) over whether a woman should change her name after marriage. One of the women there, we'll call her "Big Tall Blonde Drink of Water" said that she didn't understand why women who got married later in life would change their name.
As one of those said women, I quickly came to my own defense. "I really think that if you're in the same family, you should have the same last name. It's a question of shared values." I have no idea what I'm saying. But it sounded good.
"Oh," said Big Tall Blonde Drink of Water (who happens to be very thin and have fabulous clothes which she gets at a discount because her daughter works for the retailer... bitch), "well, I'm not saying it's a bad thing but you've worked so hard to earn your professional name, why change it?"
(Why? WHY? WHY? Always so many questions. Can we get through ONE day without a question?)
"Well," I said, "I changed it because I can now be Jill Sherer or Jill Murray or Jill Sherer Murray or Just Jill if I feel like it." Besides, I thought to myself, I like having options. Options are good. I like seeing the name Murray on a cable bill. It gives me a feeling of comfort in knowing that it's not just my responsibility. Murray is something new and different. A novelty. I like the change. Change is good. It sounds better than Sherer. It's easier to spell. People like it. Sometimes, when I say it, I notice they look at me differently. Like I'm special. And they want to hug me. Praise me. Tell me I'm a great writer. And that I'm looking very toned these days.
Why? Who the hell knows why? Because it's just someting you do. And since it took me so long to get into the "wife club" I'm gonna milk it by taking my husband's name. And saying "my husband" a lot.
Now, that doesn't mean I'm having a sex change operation so I can take on some of his other attributes (although wouldn't we all like THAT for just one day, don't lie, you know it's true). It's just a collection of letters, for goodness sakes. Still, it's not the first time I've had this debate since I've gotten married. Friends, family, continue to tell me how weird it is to see my name come up as "J. Murray" instead of "J. Sherer" on their caller IDs. As if I've thrown something off axis in the universe. I mean, sometimes they sound downright belligerant.
"You know, I screen you because I forget you're Jill Murray," says my best friend, Lorrie. "I hope you're happy now."
Well I say "live with it." "Adapt." After all, I have. And, if you've been reading, you know that hasn't exactly been a walk through the shoe department at Nordstrom's.
So anyway, back to the bar with Big Tall Drink and Sexy Grandma and another WRR Staffer who I'll call "The Other Big Tall Drink." Now, several minutes have passed and I'm still talking to Big Tall Drink, who's at this point on the cell phone confirming her next appointment. When it hits me the conversation ended several minutes ago and I'm now officially talking to myself--in my head, of course--because I really do adore Big Tall Drink of Water. She is very wise and I look to her on many matters as a mentor.
Still, I'm tired and hungry and cranky and tired of explaining myself and wondering if women in their 20s who get married get interrogated as often as I do about changing their names. See, this is why I can NEVER wean myself off of transfats. They comfort me in these moments (I hear Geneen Roth and Richard Simmons collectively gasp). And while they're bad for me, I know, they're a lot better for me than heroin. Ergo, my logic.
In fact, a a tuna hoagie from the old Maggios sounds really good right about now. (I hear the new Maggios isn't so good.) But some hotshot behind the bar is asking me, instead, if I want wine. I snort and take a deep breath.
"I don't waste my calories on liquor," I tell him. "Ple-ease."
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I was very disturbed to learn of the recent trend that, experts say, marks a new turning point in the history of our cultural consciousness. (Hey, that sounded pretty good, didn't it?) I'm talking about the fact that 51 percent of all women today are now single. And that, for the first time in history, married women are now the minority.
To that I say this: Life is so not fair. I mean, I finally got myself into the majority by getting married and now I'm in the minority again? Where's the justice? Not that I'm not happy about being married. I love my husband. He is the most perfect partner on earth for me--and I have yet to go into the bathroom and find the toilet seat up.
Still, it sure was nice for five minutes not to be the odd woman out. The poor poor single Sally everybody worried would grow old and die alone. Without children or family. Hair sprouting from her chin, neck and upper lip like a hormonal Chia pet. Too large to fit into a Minicooper and too feeble to drive a bus for extra income. Ugly, despondent and perfectly representative of the classic spinster--only modern day. Well, you know where I'm going ..."
It took me decades to finally be able to drop the phrase, "Well, my husband thinks ..." or "My husband and I went there ..." or "Oh, we just moved here ..." and so on and it doesn't matter. Nobody cares anymore. In fact, from all the news reports, it sounds like I'm to be pitied by the recently widowed, single and divorced.
Well, from where I sit, being in the majority is starting to look overrated. So take that ladies. If being in the majority means going back to buying throw pillows and hauling groceries up six flights of stairs by myself? Forget about it.
Until next time.
I resolve not to resolve any more because, frankly, my resolve is just not strong enough. See, resolving is just a set up for failure. Folks, trust me, don't do it. I'm talking from experience.
After all, it's 2:35 p.m. on January 3rd--just THREE DAYS, barely 36 hours, since the start of the New Year,when all good resolutions take effect. Yet, with you as my witness, I have to confess: I've been to Home Goods already in 2007. (See previous post.)
Twice.
As if that weren't bad enough, there's not a lick of beer in the house. Not even an empty bottle in the trash. I have yet to pull a full string of floss from its brand new defective container. And this morning, the dog growled at me when I gave her a gourmet doggie treat.
See? This is what I'm talking about. This is why I don't resolve to resolve. Why spend the money on a crate makeover? Trimming class? Expensive moisturizers? Because when I do, it's a setup for failure. (I know I shouldn't write that out loud, but c'mon.) Thank GOD I didn't resolve to lose weight, because I don't know how I would've survived the weekend without that tuna hoagie and onion rings.
And can I help it if we spent the past four days painting the dining room, toiling over four coats of "Autumn Maple," and I needed a little reward for my efforts? Is it my fault that I was compelled to buy a discounted plant to complete the look of the room that was the sacrifice our long weekend?
Can I help it if our new house just happens to be a spit and a kick away from a shopping complex as enticing as George Clooney in a jock strap and baby oil?
Good grief, I'M ONLY HUMAN people. Lighten up.
Now, I know what you're thinking: there's no hope for me. And yet, to all those who have been looking to me for inspiration here, my deepest apologies. I've let you down. I know it. (This is one of the perils of public life.) But don't give up on me just yet. In fact, as I write, I'm out the door for a family-sized box of condoms and a six pack.
Everybody deserves a second chance.
Until then, I'll keep you posted on my progress. Rest assured, I vow to drink, engage in lewd and suggestive behavior, and write a book in the days and months ahead. So keep the faith, people.
Keep the faith.
I would be remiss if I didn’t post an entry with my New Year’s resolutions, you know, those things we either vow to do every year or not to make at all. This year, I’m going middle road. I’ll put them out there, but I’m not going to beat myself up if I don’t achieve them.
That’s because I’m looking for a no pressure year. In fact, that’s my first new year’s resolution:
1. Create no pressure.
I liken it to the “Do no harm” clause in the doctor’s handbook.
My second new year’s resolution is CLEARLY to write a book. I mean, c’mon. I am a “writer” in mid-life crisis. Not just your "average Joe" in mid-life crisis because, really, isn’t that how most writers see themselves? As not average? (Although, I’m not saying we see ourselves as necessarily better than average either.) Or maybe that’s just a human thing.
Whatever. (Goes to create no pressure, which includes not having to fully explain myself. At least not for the next 12 months.)
Okay, so we’ve got one and two:
1. Create no pressure.
2. Write a book.
Here’s number three: Floss.
Threw you off, didn’t I? You thought I was going to put something in there about losing weight. (It’s okay, I’m not offended. I know I’m chubby.) But I refuse to do it. No way. I’d rather repave all the potholes in Colorado than put a clause in my new year’s resolutions about losing weight. Because it never works. Never. If it works for you, tell me how. I’m serious. Write to me. Has anybody out there EVER resolved to lose weight and actually done it? Because I’ve seen you all at the gym, where I have to wait mercilessly for an elliptical machine in January and, come February, it’s all mine again. Whenever I want it. So don’t judge me. I’m you. (Remember?) AND I’M NOT RESOLVING TO LOSE WEIGHT. Forget it.
Again, create no pressure. Do no harm. Which brings me back to flossing.
Why do so many of us fail to do this? It’s what? A five-minute experience once a day? Not the most pleasant—surely not like having an egg nog latte or finding the perfect white tee shirt. On sale. But it’s better than gum surgery (sans the gas).
And so, I will add it to my evening ritual like having sex.
Which brings me to my next new year’s resolution (mom, cover your eyes): MORE SEX. Even if I don’t want it. Even if I’ve spent the entire day painting, doing sit ups, push ups, walking the dog, actually having gum surgery and then hauling large vats of cement up my neighbor’s long steps. Even if I throw out my back, dislodge an important knee joint, feel the full wrath of my peri-menopausal condition (night sweats, afternoon hot flashes) or fail to fit into my sweats. Even if I lose my biggest client and our Home Depot card is repossessed. Even if the cable goes out and Comcast can’t fix the problem for a week. Even if Dan slips into a coma. Or develops sudden amnesia and is found wandering the streets. I’ll find him. Make it happen. I’m that resolute. No matter what the physical, mental or emotional issues of the day, I vow to have MORE SEX. (After all, if the sexy grandma can do it -- see fellow blogger.)
So let’s recap to this point:
1. Create no pressure.
2. Write a book.
3. Floss.
4. Sex it up.
Oh, ooh, take more pictures with our digital camera and actually develop them. Yep, that’s definitely my next one. First, though, I have to find the camera. I know it’s in this house somewhere. But where?
Number six: Stay out of Home Goods. Even though I can practically spit at it from my new house where I need just about EVERYTHING. Even though every time I drive by I hear it call me in a voice that resembles Linda Blair’s in the Exorcist. “Jill,” deep guttural growl. “You WILL come in. You WILL shop.” And then, there’s green spew everywhere. (Well, not really, but consider it for effect”¦)
Which leads me naturally into the next one: Remember that credit is real money. (I might have to delete this one, however, because it directly violates resolutions number one, three and four. Don’t ask.)
Number eight: Learn how to be a better trimmer. I’m talking all things ”“ bushes, eyebrows, upper lip hair, painting the bathroom, bangs, Winnie’s nails, the fat, just anything in general. I mean, we never really stop to think about how trimming impacts our every day lives. Aside from the obvious improvements, I think being a better trimmer would greatly improve the quality of my life (not to mention give me a better shot at heaven, in a non-secular way, if you know what I’m saying).
Nine: Moisturize. Seems self-explanatory.
Ten: Learn how to sell shit on eBay. I am so sick and tired of people saying to me, “You should sell that on ebay.” If I had a nickel ... Like the box of Rolling Stone Magazines I have in the garage, my old eight tracks, and a half-closet full of size six clothes. (Contrary to the new agers, optimistic thinking doesn’t always work.)
And then I think, yeah, I should. I should do a lot of things, like get Tivo and program the VCR and change the oil in my car. Read up on the Intel Pentium chip because I know it’s more than just a ring tone and a logo with a nice collection of primary colors.
Number 11: Get the dog to love me. I mean, I know she does. Especially when it’s bodily function time (feed me, I have to poop, pee, run in circles in the park, mount strangers). But as soon as Dan comes home, I could be lying dead in the gas fireplace, toked to the max, and she’d be oblivious. So, this year, I’m upping the ante.
Better treats. Designer booties. Gold-plated chew toys. More one-on-one time doing things with other mommies and their collies and retrievers. A few more heart to hearts. Stuffed wildebeests, with easy open seams and access to fuzz stuffing. More table food. An extreme makeover of her crate. (I can hear Ty now, "Move that, uh, chair!") More throw up time, with leniency to let go on the carpet. More productive begging. I’m optimistic here. After all, how do you think I landed my husband? (Single ladies, take note.)
Where we’re at:
1. Create no pressure.
2. Write a book.
3. Floss.
4. Sex it up.
5. Locate digital camera.
6. Shun Home Goods.
7. Credit is money. Really.
8. Improve trimming skills.
9. Lube a lot.
10. Master eBay.
11. Win over the dog.
Yep, sounds good. Okay, just a few more. Number 12: Get better at pretending to like football (baby, this one’s for you). I think this is really a patience issue, so let me reword (it’s all about rewriting): Develop more patience for football. Because I think it’s unrealistic to think that I’d ever be more patient in general. I am, after all, now 34. (Shut up, you.)
Thirteen: Drink more so I can cut back on my antidepressants. Frankly, I hardly ever remember to take the little pink pills anymore (and where are they anyway? probably with the camera) so I think it’d just be easier to keep a beer at the ready.
Which brings me to my next and final resolution:
Buy more beer.
To recap:
12. Dig football.
13. Take up drinking.
14. More Ying Ylueng.
Well, I think that does it. Sheesh, I had a lot more resolutions than I realized. Thank you! Writing is so cathartic. Well, I’d love to know about your resolutions. And if you don’t feel like sharing or fall into that category I mentioned way back when—“I don’t make resolutions”—well, have a happy new year anyway.
(Kill joy.)
Until 2007!
Well, folks, this past month has TRULY taken the cake. My deepest apologies for taking so long to post, but I’ve had a lot of life over the past 30 days and simply had to prioritize. Not that you — or this blog — aren’t important, but the basics of living had to come first.
What’s been happening you ask? Well, we went on a honeymoon, cancelled buying a new house only to have a cash buyer on our old house come in at the last minute so we could recommit to the new house, which left us with two weeks to pack 1,500 square feet of space and move in to almost 3,000.
We went through two settlements (both of them nail biters), three moves (we had to put our stuff in storage and live with my folks for a week), several states (on vacation and otherwise), one bout of the flu (me, of course), countless numbers of Tums, several bottles of Nyquil, three vet visits (Winnie jumped out of a moving car and lived to tell, but that’s another blog), 10 six packs, and a credit crisis (to Pier 1: I am Jill Murray, REALLY).
But now, I’m back. A little world weary and road tested, with an ever deepening identity crisis, but back. In our new house, unpacked, and happy to have finally landed.
Aaah, rites of passages bring so many interest things. A new name, a new address, a new telephone number, a new dog, a new life. When I call Comcast to tell them that I still can’t get online even though they’ve been here 17 times, and they ask me for my name and address so they can access my account, I’m often stumped. I mean, where am I? Who am I? Really? Who is anybody?
This question comes to me almost every day anymore. Case in point, a few days after we moved in to what I now call “our final resting place” (because I’ll never move again), I had to vacuum. That’s because we have plush bland neutral vanilla carpets throughout the entire house and they attract dirt like Match.com attracts lonely singles at the end of their ropes.
With a heavy heart, and mourning the beautiful hard wood we had in the old house, I brush the dust off the Hoover WindTunnel I was forced to buy when I moved home (thanks mom) and spent a few minutes locating the “on” switch. After 15 minutes, I got down to work, pushing the toddler-sized appliance towards the kaleidoscope specks of fresh dirt and watching them disappear like old boyfriends. It was almost rewarding and that’s when I realized that I might need help.
I mean, there I stood, pushing the vacuum cleaner like a soccer mom pushes a baby carriage — with simultaneous fascination, boredom, and fortitude — wondering how Jill Sherer found her way to this very spot: Vacuuming in black stretch pants and an old pair of flip flops, with The View on the television in the background.
Talk about a seismic shift in image. If Jill Sherer and Jill Murray got in a boxing ring, Jill Sherer would likely win the fight, but Jill Murray would have the best remedy for getting the blood off of the floor without damaging the varnish.
Oh dear.
It dawns on me that the divide between Jill Murray and Jill Sherer is beginning to widen quickly, as time and circumstance march forward. One thing is for sure: It they were put to a Rorschach test, they would certainly respond much differently than ever before.
Three months ago:
JM: “Definitely a pair of Ugg boots. Mid-calf. Probably brown.”
JS: “Absolutely. Could even be tan.”
Today
JM: “Obviously a new screen door with cream-colored trim. Or, wait, some kind of newfangled filter for the air conditioner or a dining room table top? Did you say 13 months to pay with no interest?”
JS: “That Mackenzie Thorpe’s is a genius. Why, look at the new shape of his canvas. I can only imagine the brushstrokes. Love it. Do you take a personal check?”
Jill Murray and Jill Sherer are the modern day middle-aged more cowardly versions of little darlings Thelma and Louise. Steve Martin and John Candy in “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.” Betty and Wilma with cellulite (thanks to a lack of exercise due to progress in the auto engine industry — but that’s obvious).
Jill Murray vacuums regularly, has a Home Depot credit card, neighbors with a minivan and two cars seats, and a collection of Walt Disney DVDs.
Jill Sherer would have never seen the point of a Home Depot credit card. Walt Disney is for little people with runny noses, low expectations, and desirous of a milky before bedtime. A minivan is for transporting inmates. And a car seat is simply inconvenient, especially when you need the real estate for too many shopping bags and large purchases.
Now I know I talk about these girls a lot, and won’t for much longer, but here’s my point: I’m living in a real house now after decades of apartment and city living and, well, I’m just confused. So there you have it. Now let’s move on, shall we?
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A blog wouldn’t be a blog without a mom story, so here goes:
My mother and I had a fight the other day because she called to remind me to change the address on our car insurance. I said we’d get to it when they forwarded the bill. She said what if they didn’t forward the bill. I said what if there was a nuclear bomb and we were all blown up tomorrow. She wasn’t amused. Then I said we’d call, but we just haven’t had time. She said I had plenty of time for lunch with Lorraine and Lorrie for my birthday and to go to Home Goods, I should make these more important things a priority. After all, she had two children, a job (as a receptionist for a proctologist, working from 9 to noon, mind you), a husband who traveled and yet, she still had time to take care of important things. I’m married now. I should do it. After all, my husband goes to work everyday. (Gee, what do I do?) Because, after all, if we have a problem, who’s gonna bail us out? She is. That’s right. She is. So she has the right to ask whether we’ve taken care of it. After all, she’s always been there to bail us out. To take care of it. But I am taking care of it, mom, I said. We just moved in, we went out of town for business, I’ve been sick. Well, that’s not good enough, she said. And if you don’t take care of it, I won’t sleep. Well, as long as she doesn’t call me in the middle of the night, I guess that’s okay. Because what can I do? Get an affidavit from the insurance company that we took care of it to alleviate her concerns? A notarized statement? Am I not taking care of things? Am I a total and complete incompetent because we haven’t yet addressed the issue of changing our address on the bill for our car insurance? You know what, she said, I’m just not gonna care about it or anything anymore. You’re on your own. You’re married now. You said that already, I said. You take care of it. You do whatever you want to do. You set your own priorities. Because I can’t be in charge of them or worry about them. Okay, mom, good point. And so if you have a problem, you’ll have to fix it. Okay, mom. I think that’s just fine. Because daddy and I have done all we could to raise you and make you and your brother the best people you can be. Now, we just have to wash our hands of it all. Okay, mom. (As if I’m talking to her from prison.) That’s okay. We’ll be okay. It’s just that I would think you’d stay on top of these things. I mean, you’re a grown woman. You’re gonna be 44. I know that, but thanks for the reminder, I said. (Like I’d forgotten.) Well, yes, usually we do, but it’s been very hectic. Well, we all have hectic lives and I have a hard enough time staying on top of my own so you know what? I wash my hands of it. Okay mom. Okay? Okay. I’ll just talk to you later. Okay? Okay. Okay. Bye.
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I have got to tell you about the cranky Holiday Grinch of a FedEx guy who came to my door yesterday to deliver some furniture I ordered and then I’m off to walk the dog up the merciless hill in our new park. (When, for heaven’s sake, are they coming out the MIRACLE WEIGHT LOSS PILL ALREADY?) It was the kind of furniture that’s heavy, granted, and in several boxes needing assembly (thank God I married a contractor). But hey, it’s not my fault that’s how it was constructed. And, as far as I’m concerned, I’m helping to support his salary, so let me just say that up front.
I’m upstairs in the loft working when the dog starts to bark mercilessly. Now usually I just scream and tell her to shut up (in a loving yet firm way of course), but this was especially merciless. Like canine distress. So I run down the stairs and peer out the front curtains to see a large delivery truck backing up into our driveway and heading for the front door. First, I wasn’t sure it was going to stop and prepared to call 911. But when it finally did, I was free to stop praying, drop the phone, and regain my clear vision long enough to make out the blue and green FedEx logo. Then, with great glee, I put the dog in her crate and opened the door with a smile. New stuff! Love that!
“Hello. Whaddya got?” I ordered a dresser, a chest, a Asian-inspired file cabinet and credenza, and a rockin’ daybed for the guest bedroom.
The FedEx guy looks like he wants to throw a large box at my upper molars. “Uh, a few very heavy boxes. Did you order something from Home Decorators?” He stops to wipe his brow.
“I sure did. Great! What is it?”
“Gee, I don’t know. They didn’t call to tell me.”
“Oh, uh, huh.” Is he joking?
“I suppose now that you’ve heard me and opened the door, you’re gonna want me to bring them inside?”
No, I think, throw them into the street. “Well, yes, is that okay?” Suddenly I need approval from the FedEx guy? I guess it’s true what they say: You can’t ever have enough therapy.
“Well, not really. But okay.”
“Gee, can I help?” I try to be hospitable. I even think about making him a sandwich.
“Yes,” he says, grunting and lifting the first of three boxes. Tossing them into my living room. “You can stop buying this crap in the first place.”
Okay, am I hearing things or did the FedEx guy just reprimand me for shopping? Does he have my mother in the back of the truck? My lender? A representative from the credit bureau?
“Oh uh.” I laugh nervously.
“I’m not kidding.” He looks right at me, and then spins on his heels to go get the next box. As he approaches the doorway, he says, “People with all these friggin Christmas presents. I’m exhausted.”
For once, I think maybe I should promote the fact that I’m Jewish. “Yeah, well...!”
He cuts me off. “You got more of these boxes coming?”
I’m afraid to answer. I must look really guilty because he says, “Yep, that’s what I figured.”
“Thanks?”
“Uh huh.” And with that, he closes up the back of the truck, climbs into the cabin and drives off. He doesn’t even look back. He’s that good.
Good GODI have a lot to learn from him. And as I head back into the house, I look forward to when he returns.
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One more story and then, I promise, I’m finished. I went on an interview for a freelance gig a few weeks ago. The gentleman who interviewed me, Brian, is a real nice guy. Down to earth. Amiable. Friendly and authentic. I enjoyed our conversation, as it veered from professional to personal. Turns out he’s been married to his high school sweetheart for a long time. (I can’t remember the exact number of years.) And he still speaks very highly and lovingly about her. So I have to ask, as I do of all people I meet who tell me they’ve been happily married for a while: What’s your secret?
He thinks for a minute and gives me an answer I haven’t heard yet: “I always remember to say thank you.”
Wow. I’ve heard friendship, good communication, a sense of humor. But never something as wise and specific as remembering to speak two simple words: thank you. Still, it makes sense. We should thank our partners for all the things they bring to our lives every day — even if it’s just a cup of coffee or a supportive smile. Never take them for granted. (Dan, honey, by the way, trash day is Friday, not Thursday. I had to bring all the boxes you left at the curb this morning back in. Just saying.) So, I say thank you to my husband Dan for, well, staying alive. Because after all we’ve been through with this move, I’d say, that’s enough.
I’d also like to thank all my readers. For reading and being there. I know a lot of you are my friends and family and your taking the time to hear what I have to say means a lot. So, thanks.
Until next time!
Jill
One last thing: Tomorrow (the 22nd) is my birthday. And I’d like to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ALL THE LOST AND FORGOTTEN HOLIDAY-BURIED-BEATEN-AND-SQUANDERED DECEMBER BIRTHDAYS. We deserve better. (I swear, I’m tearing up.)
Okay, now, bye!
A little holiday diversion for you all:
It's a blustery Saturday in New Hope and I'm walking down Main Street. Talking to myself the whole way, saying, “Go ahead, Jill. You deserve it. Life is short.†I pass Primadonna's Closet and Farley's, Heart of the Home and Old World Jewelers, on the corner by the pretzel place. All of the stores are decked out in holiday garb, green mistletoe, silver bells and red sale signs taking up too much space in their windows.
I pull my coat tighter around my shoulders and cross the street. The wind and the traffic are brutal, but the green, white and black logo that beckons gives me the courage to face just about anything. I skip up the three steps that lead me into my Starbucks and pull open the wooden door. The smell of coffee hits me hard. Finally, I'm here. For my first egg nog latte of the season. I click my mental heels together and yodel quietly. Then, I saunter up to the counter.
Barista Colleen, like a treasured member of the clergy, greets me. “Can I help you?â€
“Can you ever?†I say. “I'll have a grande skim no foam egg nog latte with a sprinkle of cinnamon and a double cup please.†I give her a big smile. “And don't screw it up,†I want to say, but don't.
All too willing to please, she takes my four dollars and thirteen cents and heads over to the coffee bar. Within moments, she is very busy on my behalf. Pouring liquid, filling cups, and hitting little steel instruments against flat surfaces.
I watch calmly while my insides host a carnival. I'm a five-year-old on the first day of Hanukah, waiting to open my Easy Bake Oven, cook something and sample. My mouth salivates as it prepares for the sweet creamy yellow nectar to come passing through, down my throat and deep into my stomach. My whole body heats up just thinking about it.
“Hey,†I say. “Who ever thought to put egg nog in coffee?â€
“Gee,†she says, winking. “I'm not sure.†Feeling generous, I forgive her for not knowing. I pull a cardboard sleeve from a metal basket and allow the hissing and whirring of the steamer and the smell of eggs, cream and sugar to lull me into an altered state. I prepare myself emotionally for my naughty pleasure. I'm EXCITED.
I check my watch. Well, I've been here for almost two whole minutes. What's the hold up? I pull at the bottom of my sweatshirt and get up on my toes to survey the situation. The espresso is dripping out of a steel pin like a leaky faucet. Good lord, I've waited three fiscal quarters for this. Hurry. HURRY. I'm THIRSTY.
Finally, Colleen pours two shots into a tiny red cup and tops it with what looks like yellow paint. She drops the drink on the counter and calls out: “Grande skim no foam egg nog latte for Jill.†She smiles. I know she hates me. But I don't care. Not at the moment.
“THANK YOU,†I say. “And happy holidays.†For once, I really mean it. Then, I move over to the napkins and sugar table, gently remove the lid and sprinkle some cinnamon on the top of the liquid gold—my hands shaking. I get my face close to the cup and let the steam awaken my nostrils. It forms pin-sized beads of sweat above my lipline. I can feel them, they tingle, like little needles. The hot air travels up through my sinuses and out the top of my head. Then, it engulfs my body like a wild campfire.
I am drooling and wipe my chin with my sleeve. This is it. The moment I've been waiting for since last January. Never mind that I finally just got married at the ripe age of 43. THIS IS IT. I'm ready.
I replace the lid, hands still quivering, close my eyes and, as if taking my first kiss, take a slow sip. My lips open ever so slightly. My nose aligns with the drink hole. I take a deep breath in and the floodgates open. The liquid comes rushing into my mouth like a waterfall. I roll it around slowly, letting it wash over my gums, my palette, and the lining of my cheeks. I can hear myself moaning. But I don't care who's listening. There's a holiday light show exploding inside of me. The egg nog latte is brewed to perfection. No burnt aftertaste. No watery bouquet. Just pure rich thick holiday heaven, sliding its way down the back of my throat, smooth like silk, right into the core of my existence. Gosh, I love Colleen. Right now, almost as much as my husband.
And so we dance: Me and my latte under a crystal chandelier, pressed together. Moving in a rhythm of sipping and swallowing until there's nothing left but the stained white insides of a cardboard cup. People start to stare, but again, I don't care. Not at the moment.
I gaze into the emptiness and try to believe that what I just had will last me until next season, since too many of these creamy delights make for an ass the size of Connecticut. But, even at the surface, I know tomorrow, like I do every year, I'll have another and then another until they stop making them after New Year's. I am powerless against them. Hello 10 pounds. Goodbye 300 bucks.
It's a price I'm willing to pay for the indulgence. For the one thing that truly gets me into the spirit of the season (especially since I'm Jewish)—Egg Nog Lattes. Sure as there will be gift certificates, holiday sweaters and Virgin Mary's on grass (oy), I'll have one every day until January 1st, when I'll be forced to wait another 11 months for the privilege.
Unless, of course, somebody buys me a cappuccino maker for Christmas.
It's a story that's too long to tell, but suffice to say it involves a shady realtor, an unethical home inspector, nasty buyer number one, better buyer number two, young yuppie sellers with a sense of entitlement the size of Cuba, their innocent and all-too-professional realtor, our realtors (also dear friends), several attorneys, a huge financial loss, a good screwing (and not in a good way) and us. Do with that what you will.
Until the sale of our house and the buy of our new one goes through, I have to be tight-lipped about the specifics, you know the inverted pyramid of who (Coldwell Banker, Lahaska), what (selling our house and the wrath of “Option 1â€), where (here), when (now and before and hopefully not forever) and how (not fun, awful).
Suffice to say, I now keep a bottle of vodka in my desk drawer and my finger on the trigger of a large bar of Toblerone at all times. Whereas my husband used to send me love notes, he now sends me links to the web sites of anti-anxiety medications. Not good.
Note to self: Never buy and sell a house again. Grow old and die in the next one. You say that all the time, Jill, but this time, do it. JUST DO IT. Prepare to plant roots so deep that even an atomic blast won't jolt them loose.
Whew. Okay. I feel better now. On to happy things.
Well then, until next time.
No, just kidding. (Almost had you there, didn't I?) Fortunately, there are happy things—like my wonderful family, my all-too-good-to-us parents, my delightful new husband who is the gift that keeps on giving. That's all good. Even when it's bad, it's good.
Take our long-awaited honeymoon. We just got back from 12 days in a secluded cabin in the Smoky Mountains. The view from our back deck was just as good as any lookout point I've seen from here to the Grand Canyon. Better. Every day, we'd wake up in a lofted bedroom, looking out a wall of windows that featured a spectacular mountain view. Like looking at Everest from a cloud. And every night we'd light a fire and relax. Read a book. Dan played guitar, I watched cable and longed for a Pumkin-Spice latte from Starbucks. (Okay, I can't help it. I am, a city girl at heart. )
He kept me posted on all the dead animals he suspected were rotting under the deck. I kept him posted on the fact that, while I was “roughing it in the wilderness†with an open mind, it wasn't that open. And if he didn't "shut it" (appropriately, of course--what I don't know won't haunt me), our next vacation would be at a spa in the Berkshires.
It was fantastic.
About our third night in, I went to bed early because we had spent a grueling day on the mountain, hiking the kiddie trail and then stuffing our aching bodies with a large pepperoni and sausage pizza. (I love camping.)
The subsequent indigestion had become so unbearable, I took a hot bath and retired to the loft area just after Inside Edition. (That Mary Hart surely had a face lift.) My husband, however, decided to spend a little time on the back deck--45 minutes, to be exact. And while we were, for that oh so precarious time, separated, I lay back on a bed of feathers thinking, “My husband is so deep. He's probably out there gazing at the stars. Thinking about how much he loves me and how blessed he is to have found our life together. I'm so lucky.â€
When I finally went downstairs to call him in, however, I grew fearful that one of those alleged dead animals wasn't so dead after all. And, in fact, had eaten my new husband--the one it took me so long to find.
“Dan?†The deck was pitch black. No outdoor lights gleaming off the cheap white plastic chairs, no tall shadowy figures against a bright moon, no shooting stars lighting up the sky. “DAN?â€
My mind started playing out the scenarios. What if he was lying under the deck, his heart laying next to a bear that was licking its fingers? Was if he was killed by a wolf or, worse yet, shot by a drunken neighbor? Even though we were secluded, I saw some house lights about a half mile up the dirt path. What if a crazed and boozed redneck came down to use my poor husband as part of some twisted hunting experiment?
How would I survive? I mean, sure, I have cable and some wine and salad, but how long could they possibly last? I'm much too afraid of heights to drive down the dangerous road that gets us up to this God-forsaken mountain paradise. What if my cell phone service, tenuous at best, goes completely cold? Thoughts of “The Shining", “Poltergeist†and "Private Benjamin" come rushing into my brain like a cranial tsunami. I start to sweat.
“DAN! DAN!†I'm about to fly down the stairs and out the sliding glass door to call to him, like Barbara Streisand in "A Star is Born", when he peeks his head through a tiny opening in the glass and says, “Yeah, sshhh, yeah, what's up?†He looks a bit maniacal.
“What are you doing?â€
“Standing still.â€
“In the dark?â€
“Yeah, yeah, what's up. I gotta go.†It's like his car is double-parked in Times Square and an angry cop is making his way over on horseback. I look out at the blackness
“You've been out there for almost an hour.â€
“Yeah, I know.â€
“Are you smoking pot?
"What? No. Of course not. Do we have pot?"
"Drinking?"
"Babe, I've gotta go. Wassup?"
"Well, it's just that you've been out there for a long time." I'm starting to wonder if he's morphing into a personality I've never met before. And how long it takes for an annulment.
“Yeah, okay, I'll be up in a few. K? Everything's fine. Go back to bed.â€
I listen to Samantha Harris give Mario and Karina their scores on "Dancing with the Stars" from the television upstairs. A 9.8. Not bad.
“I'm not sleeping, babe, I'm wondering where you are and why you're standing out there in the dark.â€
“I'm listening for bears. I think I hear something, although I can't tell if it's just a bunch of squirrels or possums or what. But I have to be in the dark and perfectly still to get any of these animals to come forward.â€
"Are they on trial?"
"Ha ha."
My husband has been obsessed with seeing a bear since we arrived. Unfortunately, all we've seen is several stray dogs and one dead possum. Of course, he stopped for 12 minutes to examine it, while I remained in the car, dry hurling.
“What if you actually attract a bear? And he eats you. How will I pay for our new house by myself?â€
“Hon, don't be ridiculous. That's not going to happen. I'm a black belt and a survivalist.â€
It's true, he has not stopped instructing me on what to do if a bear backs me into a corner. I keep telling him that there are no bears at the coffee chop, the sandwich shop, or on the Smoky Mountain train ride, but it hasn't slowed him down any.
“Yeah, I guess you could always give the bear a good roundhouse kick and be done with it.†We're in trouble.
“Right, right. Is that it? I'll be in soon.†And with that, he slides the glass door shut and I .let him. After all, it's his vacation too. And if wants to spend some of it standing alone in the dark on a mountaintop for 45 minutes in the hopes that some critter will come and do a jig for him, well then, so be it. Letting the other person be who they are is what marriage is all about, right?
I, on the other hand, see that as redundant. After all, most days, I already feel like I'm out on a limb in the dark waiting for something extraordinary to happen (especially when it comes to writing). There are truly lessons in everything, aren't there?
Oh well, until next time.
The other day I did something I have never done in almost 44 years of living: I ate a hamburger in front of my mother.
It was a bold move. And I almost didn't go through with it. But when you exceed the age of 40, you're less inclined to ignore your body's impulses for cosmetic or other reasons. Who cares? Life doesn't go on forever. And I really needed beef. Pure fat-infested-juicy-medium-well-cooked-dead-cow-gooey-on-a-bun-with-condiments. My body was screaming at me, like Fat Bastard from Austin Powers: GET IN MY BELLY. Like a Latin Cabana boy who's just been released from prison, my stomach gurgled: GIVE IT TO ME BABY. So I did.
I remember the moment. Sara, the tattooed and pierce waitress at our favorite café in New Hope, came over to take our order. My mother went first.
“I'll have a Portobello mushroom salad with no cheese, onions, olives, or dressing, and a glass of water with a lemon.†With great pride, she closed her menu, handed it to Sara, and glared at me like a prize fighter challenging his opponent in the ring.
I take a deep gulp and contemplate crossing my chest for solace, until I remember that I'm Jewish. And then, like a novice getting ready to jump out of plane, afraid there's a hole in my parachute, I speak: “I'll have the Lulu burger? With swiss cheese? Medium well?â€
“You got it,†Sara says, clueless as to the monumental effort behind what I've just said. She smiles, takes my menu and leaves.
I look over at my mother and mentally wrap my arms around the top of my head for cover. She fishes into her pocketbook. I fear she's looking for pistol. But instead she pulls out a tissue and blows her nose. Then, as if Mama Cass Elliott didn't just rise out from under Main Street in front of us, she asks me what time Dan's flight leaves on Saturday for Germany. (He's going on business.)
HUH?
I mean, I'm ready. For the lecture. (Do you really need a hamburger?) For the rolling eyes. (Well, I've done all I can to help you.) The guilt induced language designed to make me question my rights. (You know, boys don't like fat girls.) The scrutiny of my chubby arms. (Like former Senator Mark Foley eyeing a new Page.) My full cheeks. (Just like your father.) The fact that I'm keeping my pocketbook on my lap which, in my mother's eyes, is a technique designed to hide my paunch. (Which it's not, I just like something to hold on to.)
She does nothing. She says nothing. Sara brings our lunch. I eat the hamburger slowly and suspiciously, while she chirps happily about whether or not to cut her hair shorter and add highlights. I'm out with an alien. And at any moment, her “people†are going to swoop down in a spaceship, land on top of Lulu's patio, and melt me down hard with a laser.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want her to scrutinize my food choices (like she does with all of us), to get pissed because I'm not eating the way she would, or slap my wrist because I'm being rebellious. My mother has always taken what I choose to eat as a personal assault on both her character and parenting abilities.
Still, I don't know what to do with this new behavior. I'm already struggling with Bree and Vivica (see previous blog), now I have a whole new MOTHER to negotiate? It's becoming clear that I"m going to need a higher dosage of antidepressants.
So I eat my hamburger in silence, even though she has taken all the joy and pure pleasure out of it. And instead of going to the chocolate shop once we part ways (like I would have done in the past, after she yelled at me for being too fat to eat beef), I go home to work on book edits and drink a large bottle of water. Stupified.
My father calls and I tell him what happened. “Really?†He is just as shocked as I am.
“Dad, she was AWESOME. She didn't say a word. I mean, at first, I wanted to shake her and see if recognized me. Maybe she's experiencing an early form of Alzheimers. When was the last time she saw a doctor?â€
“She's perfectly fine.†Big sigh. "Trust me."
“But after I thought about it for a while, well, now, I'm really proud of her for doing that. Maybe she's finally learning that she can't badger us to eat healthy. Or get mad. I mean, I really want to tell her how proud I am of her!â€
“Don't push it,†he says. The voice of reason.
So I don't. And after several days, I finally figure out why my mother said nothing and did nothing in the face of my ordering hamburger: I'm married now. DUH. And while she insists she never cared whether or not I got married, she's a bold-faced liar. She did care. Does care, even if she can't admit out loud. Not that I have a free ticket to get as big as a trailer (see my “vows†a few blogs earlier), but I guess it's now okay if I have an indiscretion every once in a while.
I take a deep breath. And, upon this revelation, am able to rest easier. Mostly because it aligns with the universe--and the long-held perceptions I've always had of my mother's behavior. All is right with the world, until, of course, the next crisis appears. And it has, of course, but I can't talk about it yet, not until the lawyers let me. Could be a while.
So stay tuned. (Yep, this here is what they call a tease.) And until next time.
I'm married now and one month in, something is happening that I didn't anticipate: I'm having an identity crisis. AGAIN. This one is precipitated by the fact that we're buying a new house, since the 1,400 square foot structure we live in currently is perfect for one person, way too small for two—and mercilessly small for:
• Three (add the occasional stepdaughter Cody).
• Four and five (add the occasional nieces Samantha and Sloane).
• Six and seven (add the occasional quasi-nephews Spencer and Kyle).
• Eight and nine (add the live-in 40-pound Border Collie mix Winnie and her soccer ball—which we haven't officially named—don't ask).
I don't know what it is about the process of moving that is has me questioning who I am, but it's set a ball in motion that I can't seem to get ahead of. At least not yet. Could it be that I am now sharing my office with a nine-year-old who looks to me for guidance and flexibility? The only person I'm used to doing that is my alter ego and all it's offshoots--professional Jill, personal Jill, writer Jill, daughter Jill and, of course, little Jilly from childhood.
Unfortunately, there's no getting around said crisis, because right now, when number three (see above) comes to visit, we're in close quarters. Her room doubles for my office. There's a sofa that opens into a bed and, when it does (usually for the entire weekend she's with us), the only things moving around freely are Cody, the dog, and a few dust mites. If a 118-pound woman like myself (okay, it's my blog, I can lie if I want to) spends too much time in there, she starts to feel like an elephant in a Port-A-Potty.
And that's not good.
Suffice to say, sharing command central with a nine-year-old is about as stressful as sharing a sleeping bag with a rattlesnake. And would have anybody—over 40, newly married, and biologically childless, that is—re-evaluating their situation.
Yet, this is all through no fault of her own, as my stepdaughter is simply playing to type. Agile and lithe, she is a true nine-year-old. Forever slithering up and down our spiral staircase, hanging off the rails, going in and out of crevices, and throwing her kid stuff (crayons, toys, the potentially poisonous leaves from outside she likes to use for experimental purposes) all over the place.
She's a multi-tasker, that one. We could all take a lesson. With indelible markers and a stack of my copy paper, she uses our special-order bed sheets as her drafting table. All the while, she watches Nickelodeon, tosses stuffed animals on the floor (even though Winnie likes to pull the stuffing out of them), and literally dances on my designer pillows (from Anthropologie, no less, cut to Jill with her head in her hands) which are typically sprawled across the floor within 20 minutes of her arrival.
In the meantime, I try hard to look elsewhere. Since I refuse to be a bad cliché—the person I never thought I'd be if I married a man with children—the evil stepmother, the spinster who doesn't know how to co-exist in small spaces with a person too young to see a movie called “Little Miss Sunshine.†I hold my tongue and swallow my need to direct.
Instead of screaming, I try to simply mouth the words “DON'T TOUCH THAT†when Cody isn't looking. And when she is, to be organic. To act natural. Who needs anger management? Not me. Who cares that her steaming mug of hot chocolate is precariously close to my $3,000 laptop? Whatever, that's what I say. Who needs to access their email? I don't need to know if I got that $5,000 project I was after—or if my editor thinks my novel is a set of minor revisions or a total rewrite. But if the Pilgrims lived without the Internet, well then, gosh darn it, so can I.
But sometimes, well, I'm only human. And I need to check AOL. So my natural gets stilted. And, my words come out strained, flanked by a set of bookend blue veins that pop like bolts on either side of my craned neck. I think Cody finds me amusing when that happens, because I am good at deflecting my real feelings. But I know there is way too much truth in jest. And I'm working on getting it in check.
Because, again, it's not Cody's fault. She's a great kid. Terrific. Soulful and sweet, like her daddy. I, on the other hand, am a grownup who should know enough to let her ramshackle the room (within reason of course), if she wants to. After all, it's not a five-star restaurant, a historical landmark, or a museum. It's an 11 x 14 box in her house too. And just like everybody else, she needs a place of her own to go—and permission to breathe along with it.
But my recently constricting breath flow is the byproduct of a struggling identity. In my case, I know I can be, well, a bit uptight lately, trying to manage a SMALL household that's no longer just my own. Still, it's hard to shake the habits that have become part of my genetic compost. I've been a solo act for more than four decades and my stage is full of set points. I'm used to what I'm used to. Order. Closed up sofas. Empty cups. Outwardly showing everything, even my frustration.
I'm used to things being just so--Jill so--sans ransacking, interference, or hot liquids.
Yet, it becomes increasingly clear that approach just isn't gonna work anymore. That I've got to reckon with the trickier side effects of my new life. Granted, they're not nearly as bad as weight gain or e-coli, but can be at least as irritating as a runny nose.
See, beyond the joy of falling in love, gathering family, being a bride, and experiencing the gaiety of no longer having to go it alone, there is a whole new set of transitions to be negotiated. Like how to do with too little aloneness. Over-extension versus under-extension. How to share decisions on the structure of life with another person—where we live, how to live, what, why, and how often—when all you want to do is take a bath, read More magazine and fall asleep to the news.
The new Jill, the one who is married and full (versus single and, admittedly, hungry), has to balance the benefits of her new life with a whole new genre of compromise. Beyond fighting for a parking spot or spending a vacation day sleeping in, reading a book, and drinking coffee. Past a special assessment by the condo board, going short with my hair or agreeing on a new shade of highlights.
I have to compromise on letting my new family, from top to bottom, be themselves, without worrying about drowning my computer or ruining the linens. To let there be ink on the walls because that's better than walls without anything. To ask things of me, like to relax, let go, throw a pillow over my head, or commit to doing something even if I'd rather stay home and lay on the sofa. I'm learning that life isn't about keeping the edges neat. It's messy and jagged—and, to me, signs of a life lived right. At least for now.
So what if an occasional “don't touch that†escapes me. Single, married or otherwise, I'm not perfect. And no matter which box I check on my mortgage papers, to be honest, that's quite all right with me.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So we bought a house. It's in the, gulp, suburbs. A fabulous suburb, but a suburb is a suburb just like jeans that dig into your stomach are jeans that dig into your stomach and the only way to stop the digging is to take them off.
But I'm not taking mine off any time soon. I'll take the house, in the corner of a cul de sac and all. I'm going to shut my mouth and adjust. Make peace with the fact that our new house is in the suburbs. There. I said it again. This city girl lives just 35 miles north of the skyscrapers on Broad Street. Come off the highway, make a right and a left and a right and a left and after a long series of turns, drive right onto our street and into our development. That's where my, no our, house is. Yes, they all look the same, but don't judge a book by its cover. Puppies all look the same too, but they're not. And I'm not—we're not--either.
No soccer moms or dads here. The house may be closer to a center hall colonial than a third-floor vintage walk up but big deal. There are still no minivans here. And our fresh white walls and pale cream carpeting look like clean and ready canvas to us. All we need is time to roll out the paint.
Now if I could only get the new married suburban me (I'll call her Bree) and the old single city me (I'll call her Vivica) to agree. To reconcile their differences, and play nice in the sandbox in my dreams, well, that'd be honky dory. I say every night before I go to sleep: “Please. Ladies. Stop fighting!†Because if you don't, I'm going to wind up writing this blog from cellblock number something, somewhere in the no-fault divorce state of Pennsylvania.
Last night:
Bree: What's your problem? You're married now. This is what you've wanted for years. And if you think you could ever find another man like Dan, you're high. So zip it.
Vivica: I love Dan. But why do I have to give up my hardwood floors? Why is it an either or proposition? Why can't we live like chic single hippie bohemians? Wear long skirts and tie dye tee-shirts? Buy all natural cosmetics? Shop the street vendors?
Bree: You live in Doylestown, not Santa Fe.
Vivica: They don't take applications from people like me in the mommy club, you know.
Bree: So? Get over it already. Embrace your dwindling fertility. It's a house. And frankly, you're at that stage in life. You got a hubby, a step kid, family. Go ahead and have a fenced in yard. What's the big deal? Miranda did it.
Vivica: Who's Miranda? One of the ladies you met at the Central Bucks YMCA, Mrs. Mrs.?
Bree: Very funny. No, it's the red head from Sex in the City.
Vivica: You're not serious.
Bree: I couldn't be more serious.
Vivica: Bree, Miranda is not real. See, this is what the suburbs do to the brain. They freeze it. Have you focus on things that aren't there to keep breathing.
Bree: Have you looked in the mirror lately? She is YOU. Remember how Miranda didn't want to move out of Manhattan, because she thought it defined her? But it was all she and Steve could afford. And she had to choose between her city life or a new life happily married to somebody she loved in the suburbs? They did a whole episode on it.
Vivica: I can't believe you're comparing me to Miranda—an idea in somebody's head.
Bree: Oh, I beg to differ. the only difference between the two of you is that she's taller, with shorter hair. Oh, and of course, the obvious thinner knees.
Vivica: I would never cut my hair that short. I think it made her look boyish.
Bree: Yes, but that was her style. And she wore it well.
Vivica: So I suppose once she moved to the suburbs, she wore a lot of tennis shoes and let her hair grow out so she could wear it in a pony tail.
Bree: Would that be so terrible?
Vivica: Admit it, you can't wait to live in that big ol' house in the suburbs.
Bree: You're right. And what's wrong with that. It's a beautiful house. And I have a family to share it with now. I'm thrilled to pieces. What am I going to miss? Sleeping alone in a king size bed? Living in an apartment without a dishwasher? Trying not to walk alone on the streets after 10? At least now, if I choke on a chocolate brownie while I'm at home, somebody will find me.
Vivica: Oh, how easily you fling off single city girl life, you former you. Remember the woman who used to walk to work, rollerblade on the lakefront, ride the El, order a few SaBe rolls in for dinner? Or Mediterranean from Andie's?
Bree: I do miss Andie's.
Vivica: Remember their chicken kebobs? To die for. Do they even know what Babaganoush is in the suburbs?
Bree: Well, I did get fined for asking once.
Vivica: Exactly my point.
Bree: (Groan.) So what. I'll mash my own eggplant. I'll have a nice big kitchen and lots of fancy utensils to make it with. And A FAMILY to make it for. Besides, we haven't been on rollerblades since Todd cheated on us with another woman—twice our age, I might add—and left us to be with her.
Vivica: Ooh, I thought we made a blood oath we'd never mention his name again.
Bree: Sorry, but you're the one who brought it up.
Vivica: Jerk.
Bree: Sorry, Viv, but this is who we are now. We're in the suburban stage of things. And it's okay. It's the circle of life. Evolution. We start out as young adults power-walking to work with a Coach briefcase and a pair of black leather Franco Sartos. And by the time we're 40, we're happy to stroll around the block with a Golden Retriever and a pair of Reeboks.
Vivica: At least you have the common decency to hold off on the whole sneaker and jeans ensemble.
Bree: Signals the alarm on my frumpometer.
Vivica: (Laugh) Oh, we are funny!
Bree: Finally something we can agree on!
(Guffaws. Then silence.)
Bree: You know a house is just bricks and mortar anyway, don't you?
Vivica: That's so not true. A house is a reflection of you. It's the shell that people see when they enter your universe. It has to be different and funky and wild and so individual that people hear a stadium full of applause when they walk through the doorway.
Bree: Oh Viv, cut the writer crap. YOU—your personality, your spirit, the essence of who you are—is the real reflection of who you are. Not the house.
Vivica: Do you have any chocolate?
Bree: Don't change the subject.
Vivica: You haven't given that up too, have you?
Bree: Please, the world has not spun off its axis just yet.
(Silence.)
Bree: Hey, if it's any consolation, I'll still live close to Starbucks. Two even. One's a drive thru. Does that count for anything? I can still walk to the ATM machine? The bookstore?
Vivica: Well, why didn't you say so?
Bree: I guess I didn't think of it until now. You've got my head spinning.
Vivica: Okay, but just one last thing.
Bree: Shoot.
Vivica: Will there be pillows in the new place?
Bree: In moderation. I don't want to drive Dan away, after all, it took me long enough to find him.
Vivica: If he leaves you because of your pillows, well, then, you've lost nothing.
Bree: Oh sweetie, trust me, he ain't leavin' these pillows. (Finger snapping.) Uh uh.
Vivica: No you didn't.
(Laughter.)
Vivica: Hey, I hear the mommy club is overrated.
Bree: Who told you that?
Vivica: You did. A few years ago.
Bree: Hmm. Guess we'll never know for sure, though, huh?
Vivica: Just promise me one thing.
Bree: Okay, already, I'll never wear white shoes after Labor Day or order a happy meal from the driver's side of a 1999 Dodge Caravan.
Vivica: Not that.
Bree: What then?
Vivica: Now that you're the Jewish June Cleaver, you won't forget about the individual, the woman writer inside. The bohemian artist. The culture queen. The girl who spent as much time with her own thoughts and desires and dreams as she did buying lattes at Starbucks and shoes at DSW.
Bree: Oh Vivy.
Vivica: PROMISE!
Bree: You got it, girl. I'll never go anywhere without you.
Vivica: Okay then I guess, well, congratulations.
Bree: Thanks, sister. That means everything.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The other night, I woke up in a sweat, even though I sleep in a tank top and shorts. I look over at Dan, poor guy, in a fleece down to his knees and a pair of sweat pants. (Middle age is a bitch.) And then it dawns on me. I've got a problem. I shake him awake.
“What? Are you okay? Where's Winnie? Is the door open?†He throws his two legs off the side of the bed and puts up his dukes. I notice only one of his eyes is fully open. So cute. Probably can't even see his way to the bathroom. Yet he's ready to fight to the finish.
“I've got a big problem.â€
He gets back into bed. “We're not being robbed?â€
“No, baby. It's worse.â€
He rubs my back. “What is it, babe? Tell me.â€
There a long silence before I say it: “I have too many pillows.â€
I'm talking decorative pillows, the kind that fill up a sectional. That you have to move before you can sit. In all different shapes, sizes, colors, fabrics, and dimensions. Overpriced and underutilized. These pillows have defined me for all my single life. Because, I don't know if you've noticed or not, but single women are highly predisposed to having excessive quantities of decorative pillows and cats. Now, I never got the cats (allergic to dander and their sneaky nature). But I got the pillows. And they must always be in just the right place at the right time. In fact, if one falls out of line, I can't rest until it's just perfect.
I get a great sense of accomplishment in fixing my pillows—fluffing them, whacking them on all sides so they're even in perimeter and diameter and what have you. Laying them on another cushion just so. It's a process I've been overseeing for as long as I've been paying my own rent. It caps off each and every evening, like a cup of weak decaf or a warm bath.
I stand up, fold any requisite throws, and plump and place the pillows. And, with one person, that's been a quick and easy task. But with two, sometimes three, four, five, six, seven, and even a dog that doubles as eight (not to mention the soccer ball), well, it's becoming burdensome.
I realize in my current nocturnal sweat, oddly shivering, that I've got to give them up. The pillows. There's just no way around it. I look at the dog, sleeping on the corner of the bed. How nice for her. Delta sleep. Now I know what it looks like. In desperate need of something to hold on to, I grab her from the middle and pull her close. She opens her eyes, sneezes, untangles herself from my grip and lays back down in the corner without a bleep.
“That's it?†Dan asks. “You have too many pillows? That's why we're up?â€
“How can you be so insensitive?†I can't believe I married this man. I wipe a little drool from the side of my lips. Thank goodness I have girlfriends.
“I'm not being insensitive but it's 3:15 in the morning. Can't we talk about the pillows when real people wake up?â€
“I betcha Diane Sawyer is up.â€
He sighs, drags himself out of bed and heads for the bathroom. I shout, “I'VE GOT TO GET RID OF THEM, DON'T I?†The dog starts to bark. She retrieves a bone from the hallway and brings it on the bed with her. I hear her carving away at its sides. “Winnie, not on the bed.†She ignores me.
“GET RID OF WHAT?†he says. I hear the toilet flush. He reappears in the doorway.
“The pillows. They've got to go, don't they?†Winnie pushes the bone off the bed and then looks confused—like she wants it after all. We women are all the same. We just don't know what we want.
He crawls back in bed and puts his arms around me, whispering in my ear, “Yes.â€
“Yes what?†I'm crushed.
“Yes, you can get rid of those pillows.â€
But I don't know how. Where will be my soft place to land? And then he speaks, again, this voice that I pledged my life to.
“But only if you want to, okay? No pressure. Whatever you decide is okay. It's all okay.†Then he kisses me on the side of my head, lies back down, and rolls over onto his side. The side he sleeps on every night. Facing away from me. But next to me. The backs of his ankles and his butt pressed firmly against mine.
I take a deep breath in and let it out quietly through my nostrils. I roll away from my husband, tingling from his touch. I'm having an identity crisis. Call the paramedics. See, not so long ago, I was a single woman, sad to have never had the experience of real commitment, to live a life without children. A part-time daughter, sister, aunt and best friend, living far from the people and places that laid the foundation for who I would become over a lifetime.
Now, everything is different. It's wonderful different, but still different. And being a wife, stepmother, and full-time member of the family is like wearing skin from the body of another person. Sometimes, it's a couch with the wrong cushions. Too sleek and super modern, instead of overstuffed and pleasantly worn, ready to hold me like memory foam, in whatever form I happen to be in.
But, as my wonderful husband, my so-right-for-me life partner, says: “It's okay. It's all okay.†In time, somebody else's onion will peel like mine again, feel right, perfect, like a glove on a willing hand, layering fresh skin, one on top of the other, in a way that gives new meaning to the phrase, “love handles.â€
For the first time in my life, I can honestly say I look forward to having them.
Until next time!
Hello everybody from the Magnificent Mrs. M! Well, I did it. Took the plunge. Said “I do.†Got hitched. I am officially married.
It was a glorious weekend, kind of like Bastille Day and Mardi Gras, all consuming. During which the rain came down in the buckets and my spirit soared like that new commercial airbus everyone's talkin' about (you know, the really big one).
“Team Jill†at Zanya did a spectacular job of making me a presentable middle-aged bride. My “buddy-daughters†(or “buddy-d’s†since I refuse to use the prefix “stepâ€) were gloriously warm and adoring. And my bridesmaids came through like backup dancers for Madonna—rehearsed and ready to sweat. I was amazed when my nieces were nice to me for the whole day (even made a toast at the reception). My eight-year-old buddy-d stopped whining about her mosquito bites long enough to toss one petal at a time out to the audience. And the other made sure to say something duly spectacular about my quasi-parenting skills during the ceremony.
As if that weren’t enough, my matron-of-honor, may the lord bless her, held up my bustle all of the nine times I had to pee before the big moment. (Can I help it if rites of passages make me urinate?) Of course, it would've helped move things along a bit if she didn't dance and sing Rick James' "She's a Very Kinky Girl" while I tried to go, but alas, it all worked out in the end.
And my husband, well, he was glorious. Set like art against the backdrop of the misty Delaware River (and two mules hired to pull our guests in a barge down the canal after the ceremony, yes, you read that correctly). In a suit that looked like it dropped through the clouds and melted right onto him. Wearing a smile that made me feel like a fertile 22-year-old in a size 2 strapless wedding gown.
My father walked me down the aisle (again, one year after surviving lung cancer) and when we got to the mid-point where Dan was to retrieve me, he lifted my veil to kiss my cheek. Except I wasn’t wearing a veil, so the audience laughed and the tone for the evening was set. Under a white ruffled tent lit by 101 candles—under a series of gentle but steady raindrops—the experience was just as we had hoped: Funny, soulful, poignant, original, and romantic. It reflected love, family, and our finally finding both. I relished every minute of it.
Even the donkeys.
Since then, there has been a large rally and cry from some of our guests (okay, well, maybe five or six requests, still) to post the vows Dan and I made to each other during those moments, written as a reflection of our true selves and in our quest to create a wedding ceremony that was memorable and unique. After some discussion, we’ve agreed to share them.
So here they are. We hope you enjoy these most personal words and ask that, if you do, please send us a check. We’ll take any amount over $0. In advance, thanks.
Oh, and from now on, please think of me as Jill Sherer Murray Murray. Not just my stage name, but my new author’s name—a published book next on my to do list. (After we move into a new house that is, oy.) It’s a name and a novelty I’m just not over yet.
Until then!
A very excited and exhausted new wife in New Hope (a town that surely lives up to its name)
Dan’s vows:
So many people try to define love.
But how can you define a constantly changing thing?
Love is looking into your eyes and seeing an entire lifetime of love, laughter, peace, joy, adventure, sharing and dreaming.
Love is being able to say that of all the people on this earth, I choose you.
When I look in your eyes, I see your heart, and when I open your heart, I see me.
So look in my eyes, and open my heart, and always know that you are there forever.
Today, I promise you, your mom and dad, your brother, to all that are here.;
That from here to eternity, every day I wake up, you will be my first thought.
Every night when I fall asleep, you will be my last.
Everywhere I go, I will take you with me, if not physically, then spiritually.
That everywhere I am, you will be there with me.
I promise that every time you look into my eyes, and open my heart, you will see yourself standing there.
I promise to be the one to make you laugh, love, and live life to its fullest.
That I will always take out the trash in the house, but more importantly, the trash in life that tries to stop us from living, laughing, and loving every moment.
I promise to fix all the things around the house, but more importantly, to fix your heart whenever it’s broken.
I promise to help you see the world as you have helped me to see it.
To share with you all my wisdom as you have shared yours with me.
I promise to help you live life to the fullest, and seize every moment of joy, love, and laughter, as you have helped me.
I promise to keep you and our family safe to the very best of my ability.
I promise that whatever changes we go through in life, that you will always be in my heart, and that I will always be there for you.
Love is being able to say you are my contentment, my peace, my life.
And so, I promise to let our passion for life, love, and each other show us the direction to go in, through whatever changes we go through, whoever we become, and wherever we go.
Jill’s vows:
Dan,
When you showed up for our first date at Karla’s, looking like you’d make a wrong turn off the highway, in a shirt as wrinkled as an elephant’s skin, I had no idea that just 14 months later, I’d be pledging my life to you. That after four long decades and too many Mr. Wrong’s, you were finally the right one for me.
So, today, as I stand here before our friends and family in the bloom of mid-life, I promise to keep a therapist and Spatola’s Pizza on speed dial—and a fleece sweatshirt next to the bed, so you don’t freeze in your sleep while I sweat.
I promise to keep your belly full of bland food so you’ll stay healthy and strong and with me for as long as it took me to find you. To stand by you even when I don’t understand why, for example, you can’t find my brother’s house after you’ve been there too many times to count. I promise to hold my tongue every time you call me from the grocery store and come home with the wrong wheat bread and creamer anyway. To remind you of the names of all my friends. And to find the cotton balls for you, even when you’re looking directly at them. I promise to embrace a guitar and a pair of brown shoes in every room of the house.
I promise to be vigilant about my mental, physical and spiritual wellbeing so I can be the best partner possible. I promise to keep my retail therapy in check (note: fingers crossed here) and my butt smaller than a farm tractor. I also promise to never ever cover it in floral print capri’s or a matching sweat outfit.
I promise you’ll never look like a homeless person, as long as we have credit cards. To look at your previous marriages as practice runs. And make you smile when you think that things are so bad, you can’t imagine the sides of your lips curling any way but down.
I promise to always be on your side—even if I think you’re wrong. To wear the hats you hate ONLY when I’m out with girlfriends. Or you’re drunk.
Most of all, I promise to make your decision to ignore Duane’s “do you need to be saved†call during our first date the best you ever made. And to love and live joyfully with you in the “foxhole†for the rest of your natural born days. Whether you like it or not.
I love you.
Thought you might like to know how the brain of a 43-year-old woman who’s about to get married for the first time in nine days (or sooner, depending on when you read) works:
“Oh my gosh did I remember to tell the florist I need three roses for the ceremony I shouldn’t spray tan again this week because I’ll look like Oprah in The Color Purple for my wedding not that there’s anything wrong with that which reminds me that I need to starve myself completely for the next nine days oh my gosh what time is lunch which reminds me that I’m going to have to get a lot of rest and maybe a massage because nary a life event without a menstrual flow and if I don’t relax this PMS is going to last for the entire first year of marriage which they say will happen anyway but I’m not concerned since Dan and I have been living together for a year already and his biggest fault is that he’s too close to perfect I better send another email to Pam because I still don’t know what she wants for dinner which reminds me I have to wear my wedding shoes before the day so they don’t kill me damn those idiotic weather forecasters New Hope gutter scum calling for thunderstorms the weekend of the wedding WHAT DO THEY KNOW although the farmer’s almanac predicted it way back when and I do tend to live in denial my fault guess I should just be grateful everyone’s still alive to see me get married I WANT COOKIES so sick of salads and still chubby I’m addicted to corn and cherries this summer even though corn sticks in my teeth like a lace thong not good I’M SO BLOATED I hope my guests don’t think I look like Randy Jackson before gastric bypass but I haven’t had a pizza in months maybe that’s why I’m cranky and still I’m going to be the ugliest bride in creation they should call like Ripley’s Believe it or Not I have no idea why Dan wants to marry me really I just can’t wait to eat a pizza that’s all I want all I’ve ever wanted which reminds me that I have to fill out the form to change my name gotta find it first another Sherer bites the dust at least that’s what my dad said before I promised that I’d keep it as a middle name but not hyphenate because once you do that you’re locked into using both names until you’re wearing a toe tag which I’m not sure I want to do well I definitely don’t want to wear a toe tag at least not yet anyway that way if the earth moves and my knees thin out and Elvis shows up on The View and I publish a book I’d love to be Jill Sherer Murray which will be my last name and it’s a good one especially considering my friend Jen’s sister had to change her name from Payne to like Kotlowzowski but I guess there is karma and that’s her penance for being young and able to eat whatever she wants and look great in bubble skirts can't believe they're wearing them again they should be banned with cigarettes I hope to God I can get a good night’s sleep before the wedding since my brain won’t shut off and I’m going to do shoulder lifts every night from now until the wedding so I have some definition in my shoulders to deflect the guests from my overabundant arms even though I may not be able to toss my bouquet (or hug) but that part of the ceremony is overrated anyway why don’t designers make wedding dresses with sleeves thank you hormones I swear my boobs are squished in my dress which I’m now calling my costume because really that’s what it is and why can’t it be black I hope everybody likes where they’re seated for the reception but I’m counting on being too liquored up to care on the day which for me requires three sips of cheap Merlot just deep breathe Jill you’ll be fine just remember to enjoy this time because it’s going to go by really fast SO BE HAPPY DAMMIT BE HAPPPPPYYYYY and then you’ll miss it and be depressed and miss all the attention lavished on a bride which just amazes me since any ‘mo can get married although I guess not since it took me 43 years but still I’ve had a great many other accomplishments that nobody even belched at so yes I’m enjoying the attention NOW that it’s almost over (figures) wonder if that’s how life goes and then what? normal life with Dan which is actually what I’m going for and will be great but still I don’t want to wish it away and gosh these shoes hurt I think I’m having a panic attack heart palps? throbbing headache? tingly hair? and who will tell me if I have a pimple on my back the day of the wedding since the dress is all open and I hate when people go backless and then they have like one big red dot on their backs ooh it looks so awful (you know what I'm talking about) I hate being dependent on everybody else what if I trip going down the aisle or forget my lines or drop like a football player with full body cramps and roll into the canal while Wayne and the Untouchables play Feelings or a reasonable facsimile thereof why do people get married to such depressing music I’m getting married to the Beatles at first Wayne said it was too upbeat but that just seemed counter to the whole damn experience besides if I want to get married to the Macarena it’s my day I’M THE FRIGGIN ASS BRIDE (focus) which reminds me that I need to prepare myself for the fact that anything could happen (my mother/Dan’s ex) I need to be prepared (valium) and oh dear I’m losing it already (valium now) but that’s okay I was warned by Leeann who does my nails that two weeks before the wedding I’d want to kill everybody and Rhiann the wedding planner confirmed it but then said that one week out we’d start sailing and smiling and be happy HAPPY but I’m not sure I believe it …â€
So how are all of you? This blogging is such a selfish act. I mean, it’s all about me all the time. I never stop to ask how you are. And I want to know, really. I care. Because I’ve had enough of myself, frankly. But that’s not the only reason. I mean, I think all people are fascinating. It’s the job of a good writer to observe, right? And who would make the best subject but YOU. So tell me some of your stories. Give me your best stuff. I probably can’t make up if I try. Or, just ask me a question. I’m smart. I bet I can answer it.
Hey, I have an idea. If you’re reading and liking things and coming back to read again, well first, thank you, but second, let me know. You don’t have to say much. Talk to me in code. Just hit comment below and write something like, “The chicken is fully grilled†or “Pizza can’t fly†or “Those pants are very slimming†or "Greetings from Jenny Craig." I’ll know EXACTLY what you mean.
I know, I’m stalling. The thing is that I have lots to say it’s just that I’ve burdened you all enough with this wedding stuff and it’s pretty much playing on my radio station at this point 24/7. I really couldn’t articulate myself well right now about say, Mel Gibson or JonBenet Ramsey, nuclear arms in North Korea, or the Middle East Peace process. Or even the state of my novel or writing because that state is like Nebraska: Not very interesting. (Sorry Nebraskans, nothing personal. DON’T SEND ME MAIL. Oh, wait, go ahead!) Nothing’s happening because of, you guessed it, the WEDDING. So I’m trying to cool it.
But I don’t want you to think I’ve forgotten about you. Yet, again, there are no bombs blasting in my neighborhood or pleading for life (unless you consider me on my knees begging Helga the dressmaker to put a bra in my dress). See, if you’re a person with perspective (and I like to think that I am), my piddly diddly life pales in comparison to the wars raging in the desert. (I have to admit, I first spelled that word like “dessert.†Accident? I think not.)
Okay, enough rambling. I think I’m the only blogger on earth who can write about absolutely nothing for as long as I have here. My editor is going to string me up by my elbows. I apologize in advance, Joy, for saying nothing. Please don’t fire me.
Until next time! (I hope.)
How can I compete with Hezbollah? Fidel Castro? The bombing in Beirut? I mean, our other bloggers are blowing me in the dust with their relevance. (And I salute them, really, I do.)
Yet here I sit, worrying about finding a bra for my wedding dress and where I’m going to sit my fiance’s ex-in-laws during the reception. Seems stupid by comparison. Although, I guess that all depends on how you look at things. I mean, too much war and not enough play does make for a very dull and whiny America, don’t you think?
So here’s what I want to say on the first below-3000-degree day in too many months: Let’s take a moment to embrace the things in life that are not about Ketusha rockets, illusive terrorists, and a dying dictator.
If anything they should remind us to celebrate the fact that, somewhere, someone is having a baby after being told they couldn’t. Winning the lottery. Getting a long-deserved promotion. That medical technology is so advanced it can separate four-year-olds joined at the liver and kidney and offer them a life filled with love, joy, and health.
That a 43-year-old woman, once thought to have a better shot at being killed by the terrorists now hogging our consciousness, is finally getting married. Voluntarily. She is not pregnant, being forced into it by her culture, or trapped at gunpoint. Love really made her do it.
Talk about relevant. But I am also trying to make a statement: Life is short. Yes, there’s a lot of turmoil—always will be, if you ask me. And we should never forget it. But we also shouldn’t discount what makes every day special.
For me, that’s looking into the face of my soon-to-be-husband as the sides of his lips curl up after I do something weird. Getting a long hug from my almost stepdaughters. Listening to my nieces make fun of how I put on my lipstick. Watching my father, one-year after surgery for lung cancer, walk the dog around the park and then leave to play six hours of golf.
So what, I couldn't sell my novel. It’s all good. Every last drop of it. Even the day-old coffee that I leave in a pitcher in the fridge for when days run long and my deadlines are short. It has never tasted better. I know that, as sure as Israel knows it will always have to defend itself.
So people, please. Watch CNN, Fox or whatever streaming ticker runs across your televisions. But make sure you also catch the Saturday morning cartoons. Okay?
---------------------------------------------------------------
Last Wednesday night, Dan and I went to apply for our marriage license at the Bucks County Courthouse. When we told the security guards why we were there after hours, they seemed a little surprised, like “aren’t you a little old to be doing this?†Then, we head to the third floor office, where government workers interview you to make sure you’re not insane or first cousins. There, we found 20 or so other couples ahead of us.
I had to laugh. We were the oldest people in the room—with the most wrinkes and, surely, having the most fun. The other couples, ranging from their mid 20s to early 30s, looked taxed and bored. It was clear to us that they hadn’t had all the life we had. And, maybe just maybe, don't appreciate quite as intensely the miracle of finding the right person to share your life.
But then again, maybe I’m just biased. That when I’m with Dan, I can’t imagine anybody being as happy as we are.
This is a sappy blog, isn’t it? I don’t know why. (Hormones?) Hey, I slept well, maybe that's it? Still, catch me tomorrow, when the PMS train leaves the gate and the caterer tells us they can’t do gazpacho and my client pushes up a deadline and the writing goes poorly and my mother tells me I only have two weeks left to lose 400 pounds.
In the meantime, I’m going to take my moment. I’m going to let the world turn around me, like a tree full of leaves in September, and feel good about it. Let the wedding countdown commence!
(And pray for peace in the world.)
Until next time!
I logged on to my email yesterday and scanned the subject lines:
“We’d love to come to brunch.â€
“Are you getting excited?â€
“Fwd: Notes for Chapter.â€
“Jill, do you want to drop 12 pounds by Friday.â€
The last one gave me pause. Damn my mother, she’ll try anything. So I promptly called her cell phone and when she said hello, without breathing, I said, “NO, I DO NOT WANT TO DROP 12 POUNDS BY FRIDAY, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I’M JUST FINE THE WAY I AM! GEEZ!â€
“O-kay…†She sounds tenuous, always good when it comes to the subject of my weight.
“That’s it?â€
“That’s it, sweetie. I really have no idea what you’re talking about.â€
“Didn’t you send me an email about losing 12 pounds? It’s got all your markings. It’s direct, abrasive and expertly passive aggressive.â€
“No, in fact, daddy just called Bruce to come and fix our computer. Our email is broken.â€
“You mean it’s down.â€
“Whatever.â€
Wait a minute, I’m supposed to be saying that, whatever. What’s going on here? Suddenly, I feel like Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
“Hold on.†I click on the email now in question, beckoning to me like a spinach pizza and a fountain soda.
“Revolutionary new Hoodia can help you lose weight. Click here.†The “click here†is flashing in red, while an unsubscribe clause sits quietly in .1 type at the bottom.
Shit. “Sorry mom.â€
“Wait, can I get that on tape?â€
“Ha ha. Oops, there’s my other line.†Not really, but I hang up anyway. I can’t worry about her right now. I’ve got bigger fish to fry. Like the fact that my brain is no longer able to process the obvious. Does being a month away from a wedding do this to everybody? Or is it just me and my raging mid-life hormones? (Then again, I blame the Fed’s rise in interest rates on my hormones.)
Then it dawns on me. I’m simply under-caffeinated. I rush to the bathroom where I find a practically full cup of coffee next to the sink. Must’ve forgotten about it after brushing my teeth. Whew! I go downstairs and brew up some hazelnut. Soon enough, I’ll be just fine. I just know it.
--------------------------------
So my friend Jonathan wants to revive my dead fish of a novel. In a nutshell, I expelled a great deal of blood and sweat working a harrowing full-time job in Chicago while simultaneously maintaining a life and writing an entire novel. Three hundred and fifty pages, if you must know (okay, double spaced, get off me).
It’s about an overweight woman and her overbearing mother (not the slightest bit autobiographical) and the editors who told me my book “wasn’t right for their house†felt that these characters were too “pathetic†and “mean.†I don’t know, to me, they were simply real.
Anyway, my agent couldn’t sell the puppy so I shoved it in a drawer and drank myself silly (four sips of cheap Merlot and a McDonald’s milkshake a day) to forget about it. Since then, I’ve accepted its demise and moved on to start a second novel and, frankly, a whole new life.
Until, that is, my very skilled and publishing-savvy friend Jonathan suggested he’d read it, provide input, and help me refine it so it’d appeal to his high-powered New York agent—a woman with, apparently, all the right editorial contacts. Not to mention a great sales record and a clear eye for talent.
With Jonathan behind me, it’s clear I’m on the road to a three-book deal, a large advance, great prosperity, thin knees, an entirely new handbag collection, apologies from all those who’ve scorned me, and worldwide acclaim. Even though all he said was, “Give it to me. I’ll see what I can do.†But hey, this writer’s imagination is vivid by necessity.
So now that “Fat Girl in a Poncho†is out of the bag, and intention is floating around the stratosphere like the chub around my biceps, neurosis has begun to set in. I don’t want to be disappointed again. Yet, I am, at the same time, intrigued to see how it will all turn out. (Will I rewrite to commercial success or won’t I? Will I receive a Pulitzer or won’t I?) Along with worrying about looking like an irridescent whale on my wedding day, I now vacillate between horror and excitement over the book.
As if yanking a dusty manuscript out of the antique pie hutch that doubles for Dan’s closet isn’t enough. I got an email the day, after Jonathan and I spoke, from an editor at Shape Magazine. Her name is Sarah. Nice girl. No, I’m not next month’s cover subject. (But good question—and yes, it would have been nice to been asked.)
Back in 2002, I was Shape’s Weight Loss Diarist (see “http://www.findarticles.com/p/search?tb=art&qt=%22Jill+Sherer%22 for some samples), where I took six million readers on my journey to get fit in a monthly column. Yep, six million people across the globe know how much I weigh. (Thank goodness, there’s no life to speak of at the International Space Station.)
And now, Sarah is working on an article for Shape’s December issue that catches up with the four Weight Loss Diarists they’ve featured in the long history of their magazine—me being one of them. The oldest and the wisest, I suspect. Well, okay, the oldest.
“Readers are always writing in asking what happened to you guys!†she says on the telephone. “So we finally decided to tell them.â€
What did happen to us? I mean, my experience with Shape Magazine was magical. Even though I thought upon taking the gig that it’d be the end of my already shaky esteem, since part of the job was putting my weight in print. At that point, I didn’t even know what that number was. I was blissfully ignorant.
Surprisingly, ignorance turned out to be overrated and the experience healing. To be able to share the very core of my insecurities with a nation. To vent in 700 words each month about the one thing that’s dogged me for the bulk of my life. To get the most glorious feedback from readers that I wasn’t the only one struggling with my body. And that I was okay.
Now, talking to Sarah has brought it all back to me. The healing revival is loud and colorful and a little bit frightening. After, I am dreaming about looking like a circus elephant at my wedding these days. Does the vividness of memory come at the worst time or the best time? Do I really need the added the pressure of being thin for a Shape photo shoot? Or do I need the solace?
Then again, maybe I’m just overthinking it—being too hard on myself. As I share with Sarah the saga of all that’s happened since I wrote the column—the new job, city, dog, fiancé, family, perspective, demographic category, chemical composition, life—I decide I am.
It dawns on me as I speak to this friendly stranger that I can choose to be raw—what with Shape wanting to expose me to six million expectations, my rejected novel being resuscitated, and my pending and public rites of passage. Or I could choose to be exhilarated. To let all the crazy, messy, carnival-ride chaos that comes with living rest on a couple of open veins. And smile.
I’ll think I’ll go with that. After all, it is up to me, now, isn’t it?
-------------------------------
Last week, I went for my first fitting and my best friend Lorrie came with me for moral support. (What if the dress, after all these months, was too small? Looked bad? Wasn’t as I remembered it? Then what?) The good news is the dress was too big. The bad news is it made me look like a participant in a picnic race.
I went into the dressing room to put it on, shouting through the curtain at Lorrie, “Don’t look.â€
“I’m not looking."
“Wait until I have it all on.†Putting on a wedding dress is a little like putting on community theater. It takes some time and, typically, an amateur is running things. “Are you ready?â€
“Been waitin’ for 40 years. C’mon out.â€
I waddle out, lifting the skirts up over my ankles and standing on my tippy toes to slip into my Baby Phat silver crystal wedgie sandals. (Yep, I’m wearin ‘em for the wedding.) “Well?†I’m holding back tears.
She is silent.
“It looks bad, right? Like where’s my partner and the potatoes, right?â€
“It’s bad.â€
“I know. Shit. Dammit.â€
“Okay, but Jill, that’s why you’re here. To meet with the seamstress.â€
“Is she a miracle worker?â€
“Let’s hope so.â€
We walk into the back room where Anna is waiting for us. She takes one look at me and shakes her head. “Okay, well, you lost weight, that I can see.â€
“Yes, but look.†I am frowning. One of my glorious bridal moments, ruined by a surplus of fabric.
“Okay, okay,†she says in a thick Eastern European accent, beckoning for me to stand on a platform in front of a three-way mirror. “Don’t look ahead, don’t look up, don’t look down, don’t look to the right or to the left. Close your eyes and don’t move until I tell you to.â€
“O-kay. Please don’t hurt me.†I’m thinking pin pricks. Lorrie bursts out laughing.
“What’s she gonna do to you that that dress isn’t already doing?†she asks, between guffaws.
“Okay, honey, relax,†Anna says. Her voice is soothing, like finding the perfect white tee shirt.
I stand still with my eyes closed for 10 minutes while Anna performs her magic. And when I open my eyes, I am transformed from bag lady to blushing bride, a combination of silk and taffeta clinging to my body like a newborn child.
The room is silent. I start to cry. Anna smiles. Lorrie tells me I look like a model. But I am lost in my own image. Something I never thought I’d get to see--me in a wedding dress--at least while I was hyperconscious.
-------------------------------
My wedding dress is halter style with a deep plunging neckline. So deep, that finding a bra that won’t show at the cleavage is becoming a problem. I started with a strapless.
“You can see this,†says Anna, pointing to the piece that connects the right side of the bra to the left.
“Can you sew in a bra?â€
“No.†She says it in a way that indicates I should never ask again.
“Get tape.â€
As if tape is going to hold up these middle-aged 38Ds. (Sorry to be so blunt, but hey, this blog is all about honesty.)
Yet, Lorrie concurs and, with that, I proceed to purchase a pair of bra adhesives from the Victoria Secret web site. They arrive six days later in a box that’s flat like a thin notebook. This is my bra?
I go upstairs and take two oversized bandaids out of the box, which comes with instructions. Instructions for a bra? They tell me to make sure I’m completely dry and apply from the middle of the boob outward, pressing the tape down at the upper sides (just by the armpit). I try to do this standing up when I realize that gravity is not my favor and I'm virtually blind. So I go to the bedroom and lie down on my back in an attempt to get a better shot of getting under my generous endowment.
Of course, now I really can’t see a damn thing I’m doing and the adhesive is starting to wrinkle around my flesh. The dog, now curious, has decided to start sniffing around to see what these things are all about. Her hair is flying.
“Off Winnie, OFF.†Now I’m sweating. It must’ve been quite a picture (and not one for the brochure). Suffice to say, after about 20 minutes and several positions that now require the help of a chiropractor, I decide this is a two-man job. And I know just the person help.
“Ooh, pick me,†Dan says.
“NO. Not you.â€
“But honey, if you don’t put those things on properly, well, I don’t like it.â€
“What do you think is going to happen? My boobs are gonna fly out the sides of my dress like wings?â€
“Well YES. In front of everybody. And then you’ll take off and we’ll never see you again.â€
Why are men so obsessed with boobs? Really, they’re just two inconvenient pieces of extra flesh.
So I figure Lorrie is gonna have to go above and beyond on the day and tape up my breasts. And, knowing her sense of silliness and play, she’s not leave me with any dignity in the process. I can see her now, giggling, wacking them to and fro, calling in the junior bridesmaids (my nieces) for a good laugh at my expense, before deciding it’s time to get down to business.
You’d think they’d have come up with something for us larger-chested women to wear with a plunging dress, especially for our WEDDINGS. I tell ya, if we were men and we had to cradle those you-know-what’s in something for a special occasion, there’d be more options than there are digital cameras. But for us? We get tape. That’s it. TAPE. A step above duct tape, although, I’m starting to think duct tape would work better.
So now, I’m looking for a low plunging bra. And I mean low (think bellybutton). I’m taking any and all suggestions on it. So write and fast. Never have your comments been more critical.
Until next time.
Where has the time gone? Since I last wrote, several things have happened. I’ve been on and off Weight Watchers, my hometown suffered its annual flood, and I finally hammered out the first chapter of my new novel. (It’s about time, huh?)
First things first: Weight Watchers. So let me tell you how tired I am of all this diet stuff. Weight Watchers is the best, yeah, blah, blah, blah. They have the best program, the best tools, the best meetings and support system, the best and most successful members. Whatever. Tell me: when my fiancé Dan waves an eight-ounce hamburger smothered in cheddar cheese, bacon and fried onions in my face (well, not really, usually he’s just taking a bite), where are they all then?
I think Weight Watchers should follow the Alcoholics Anonymous model and give us all sponsors. Because, gee, it’d be nice to have somebody to call at that moment, when I want to throw a fork at Dan as a distraction, grab his burger, and swallow it whole. And it should be a total stranger, somebody with no investment other than to help a fellow American who, like them, happens to love food and have crappy genes.
Now my mother’s a Weight Watcher, so I could technically call her. But only if I want to have that burger rubbed in both of my eyes, crumbs of meat shoved up my nose, and the sides of my head slapped with it whole. Figuratively, that is.
See, she’s a Weight Watcher’s Weight Watcher. The drill sergeant kind. She lost 30 pounds six years ago and now, she’s absolutely militant about it. They should friggin send her a weekend pass and a stipend.
“Did you go to Weight Watchers this morning?†she asks me yesterday.
“No, mom. I couldn’t get there. I’m just so tired.†(Never mind that I’ve got four deadlines for work, a wedding in six weeks, two stepchildren, a fiancé who works 14 hours a day, a new dog who needs to be exercised, laundry, cleaning, cooking, grocery shopping, phone calls to return, fittings to attend, flowers to pick, bandleaders to meet with, and friends on several coasts to keep up with).
“Well, okay, but you’ve already lost four weeks.â€
“Okay, what does that mean? Was I in a coma for those four weeks and I didn’t know it?â€
“No, fresh mouth, it means that if losing weight was really important to you, you’d make time for it. I mean, you have to make time for the things in life that count.â€
“Right, that’s what I’m trying to do.†Sleep. Pee. Love. Live. Stay clear of traffic.
“I’m just saying that you’re getting married, you’d think you’d want to look good.â€
Okay, what’s that therapist’s phone number again? “So if I don’t go to Weight Watchers, I won’t look good?â€
“I’m just saying you have to go to the meetings. That’s how I’ve managed to keep my weight off for all these years.â€
Here we go. I hear Reverie.
“Weight Watchers works but you have to do it. You have to go to the meetings, otherwise, forget it. But that’s up to you. If it’s important, you’ll do it. I go and get weighed all the time. That’s because I care about myself.â€
“Mazel Tov.†Shoot me now.
“Listen, it’s not my body. If you want to be big at your wedding, that’s your choice.â€
Use a silencer so you don’t wake the neighbors. They’re nice people. Let them sleep.
“It’s just that I don’t know what you’re doing.â€
I’m living. I’m trying to get a good night’s sleep. I have dreams every night that I look like a cross between Mama Cass and Rosemary’s Baby walking down the aisle. Doesn’t every bride to be? I’ve gone to the hair salon 14 times for a new hairdo for the wedding. They tell me they are plum out of ideas. You know it’s bad when your hair salon bans you, claiming you’ve exhausted them.
“Are you watching what you eat?â€
No, I want to say. Every day I have chocolate ice cream for breakfast, cake for lunch, and a pizza and a box of cookies for dessert. Then, if I see someone walking down the street with something sugary and sweet, I’ll run up behind them, pull their hair, knee them in the lower back or the mid-groin, depending on how I’m positioned, grab their food and shove whatever they were eating down my throat. Whatever it is. Could be covered ants. Doesn’t matter.
She’s still talking. “I mean, it’s up to you, but I have to go now. Barbara is waiting for me.â€
Lucky Barbara. The sad thing is my mother has no idea how healthy I am. How I walk at least two hours a day, lift weights three times a week, watch. I haven’t been to a fast food restaurant since Nixon was in office. But genes are genes. And I’m 43. And this is it. This size 10, sometimes 12, voluptuous body is just fine. The boys seem to like it. Well, I’m trying to make it fine. Why can’t she? Why do I even care what she thinks? I’m perimenopausal and premenstrual, and I need a bikini wax. Again. Isn’t that enough cruelty for one woman?
“Okay, talk to you later.†Bu-bye MOTHER. I hang up, wondering what tonight’s dream will look like. Just as Dan goes to say “I do,†the skin from my expanding body will suddenly explode like a bomb through the seams of my wedding dress. The audience will first gasp in horror and then try to stifle their laughing. Dan will wave me away like I’m a serial killer and he’s my next victim. The officiate, a gentle woman who does energy work in her spare time, will start to shake and scream, as if we all suddenly turned into ingénues from the Dawn of the Dead.
And there will be my mother, standing next to her favorite Weight Watcher lecturer, the five-pounds-away-from-anorexic Andy. They’ll be shaking their heads in disgust, as if I just told the whole room they had boogers. Rolls of fat will start pouring down the sides of my body like flesh-colored lava. I can just see it now.
Of course, it doesn’t help that my best friend is now on Weight Watchers and has lost like 3,000 pounds (that she didn’t need to lose) in five minutes, sans exercise. My mother is going to rub that in my face like the hamburger.
I want to scream. Honestly, I do. In these situations, I try hard to remember that my body is not a thing to be hated, but something that, despite its desire to cling to every morsel of fat it can find, carries me around on this earth. I can stand up every morning and lie down every night. My legs move me from one place to the other. And my functioning brain lets me problem solve so I can get through life and, yes, even sometimes enjoy it.
Yes, it’s okay. I’m okay. I will be a beautiful bride and I don’t need my mother to tell me that. I need only look in the mirror and know myself.
Right?
----------------
I am getting a good glimpse of what small town life in a looks like when the stores are full of rising river waters instead of customers. Poor New Hope.
See, the darling little resort town sandwiched between Philadelphia and New York I call home sits on the scenic and lush Delaware River. And, after the three floods in two years, there’s a new reality here. And it comes with a high price. One the quaint inns, craft shops, art galleries, antique shops, and the restaurants seem willing to pay, but for how long?
How much will they be willing and ABLE to respond when the next flood hits—to evacuate, toss hundreds even thousands of dollars of damaged inventory into overloaded trash bins. And to recover from financial AND emotional losses, and rebuild? How much longer will they work to survive the rains when few come to support them in the aftermath?
They cleaned up quickly this last time, in the hopes that people would come quickly to support them. I’m not talking about the Red Cross trucks that lined the street once the clouds stopped crying, or the humanity among townsfolk that surfaced when flood waters temporarily dampened their spirits.
I’m talking about the fair weather friends—literally and figuratively—who love New Hope when the sun is high in the sky, the temps soar, and the deals are for the offering. When the outdoor cafes offer homemade lemonades and cold beer. And when a diversity of people fill the streets, coloring the already vibrant landscape that defines them.
Now I live on a hill, so didn’t suffer any damage. But what goes up must come down and, when I do, I don’t see what I used to. It makes me sad that, when rough times ride into town like a band of motorcycles on a beautiful spring day, too many forget about us.
Where are you all? The press only reported the damage, so let me give you the rest of the story: New Hope is up and running, still gorgeous, and open for business. Come. Eat. Shop. Spend.
We’re counting on you.
Until next time!
Saturday, I had a bridal shower. It was one of the most surreal experiences of my life.
I mean, c’mon. I’m 3,000 years old. Never been married, I’ve sat through more bridal showers than I care to count and I know what kind of torturous Hades they can be for guests, especially those who are single.
See, I was one of them for more than four long decades, three years, six months, 17 days and 12 hours. And I often found them to be as painful as a four-hour pap smear. That’s because I could never relate to the bride-to-be, or even the ritual. In some ways, the whole experience just felt rude. But then again, that’s its design.
Think about it: The bridal shower is all about asking people to buy you a gift, sacrifice a Saturday (when they surely have to buy groceries, pick up shirts from the cleaners, or watch cable) and endure two hours of opening presents—none of which are for them.
My guests had the added bonus of enjoying it all from the comfort of my best friend’s lavish backyard—heated to a temperature of a humid 95 degrees. (I haven’t seen so much sweat since the concert “Live Aid†back in the 80s, when it was so hot, 10,000 people at JFK stadium had to be hosed down.)
So, with all this in mind, I tried to make my bridal shower as painless as possible for all who came. If I could have air-conditioned nature, I would have. I tried to throw in a few jokes and engage the audience while I fumbled with too much crumpled tissue paper, tape, and ribbon. I even toyed with the idea of picking a public fight with my mother, my self-appointed wedding planner, just to keep things interesting.
But then I looked at my best friend, Lorrie, and my other two friends, Paula and Mindy, who worked so hard to make such a lovely day, and couldn’t do it. They had done too much to create a bridal shower that would have sent any Knot-loving 22-year-old to Clouds 9, 10 and 11.
So I’m just an ingrate.
Or maybe it’s that I can’t suspend decades of conditioning as a single woman. If I lost 30 pounds, I might be thin on the outside, but I’d still be a chubby woman on the inside. And just because I’m finally getting married, doesn’t mean I’m suddenly and naturally a “Mrs.†I suspect it’s going to take a while for me to let go of that single girl—the one sitting to the side at a bridal shower, faking a smile, and wondering why she was never lucky enough (or maybe deserving enough) to find love.
Until now, that is.
-------------------------------------------
It was a good 20 minutes since I opened the last gift and many of the guests were saying their goodbyes. As they did, I took a mental assessment of how I made out in the first of what will likely be several rituals celebrating mine and Dan’s pending nuptials. A nickel platter, a silver figurine, two crystal painted candlesticks, a coffeemaker, and a pair or two of inappropriate undergarments. I also got several gift certificates to my favorite hair salon and spa, to which I say “yipppeeeee!†It’s the perfect gift for a middle-aged bride-to-be (along with a gift cheque to Verizon Wireless for added cell phone minutes, a donation to PECO on behalf of our account, or this month's payment to Blue Cross/Blue Shield), who already has all the bowls, towels, and serving platters she knows what to do with or needs.
Ironically, I had been to the salon the day before to get my roots dyed for the shower and had wondered why the owner, Zanya, was all smiles when I got there. Here I thought she was just happy to see me. I had no idea that, because of my friends and family, she could now order new sofas for the waiting area or take a cruise to the Bahamas.
Well good for her, I say. Her gain is my gain and I’m thrilled to start redeeming those suckers. Hello facials, massages, and butter cream pedicures. Why, come to mama, little girls. She’s ready for you! Speaking of which, I sat down with my mother and some of the “ladies†(her fancy friends) after the main event to recap the afternoon.
“I can’t believe you got all those Zanya gift certificates,†says Marilyn, a petite blonde who looks like an exotic Sienna Miller and lives two doors from my parents. (I should only look so good at 60.) I close my eyes and think about the boilerplate I’ll use on all the thank you notes. “What a perfect gift…I’ll think of you while Sven from Norway is rubbing my sciatica…†Well, maybe not.
“I know, isn’t it grand.†I smile and sigh. I feel wistful.
“You and Dan will really enjoy those,†says Annie, a woman who believes in creating her own alternative hairstyle and drinking vodka on the rocks as often as possible.
Huh? Dan? Who said anything about Dan?
I sit up and look at Annie like she just told me she saw him at a gay bar. “Dan?†I say. “What about Dan?†Isn’t it enough that he can eat all the Russian dressing he wants without worrying about fitting into his Levis?
“Well, sweetie, I bought the gift certificate as a gift for the both of you, for say a couples’ massage.†She glares at me and smiles.
“You are going to share, aren’t you honey?†My mother speaks. There’s a palpable silence in the room and the girls on the sofa suddenly look frightened. They’re holding their breath, like I’m Clint Eastwood and they’re the local cowfolk.
I think hard about my answer. And then I posit this:
“Do you think Dan has ever had a thick foreign woman with an accent pour hot molten wax all over his groin and rip the hair out from the root with crepe paper?â€
They look, at first, confused, then at each other, and then at me. The air lightens a bit. The mood returns to being jovial. Everyone breathes. Some even titter. Annie speaks and the others nod in agreement. “You enjoy those certificates, sweetie. You deserve it.â€
You bet I do. And I will. Why, I can smell the essential oils already.
---------------------------------------------------
I’m on Weight Watchers doing fairly well. Lost four pounds in 100 weeks. Not bad. Even though it’s like watching paint chip, but at least it’s chipping. Because I go for my first fitting in a few weeks and if Helga, the edgy seamstress at the bridal shop who I'm sure doesn't like me, is not pleased with my progress, I’m afraid she’ll give me a round of amateur acupuncture I’ll never forget.
Getting married sure is something.
-------------------------------------------------
So, what about my writing, you ask, since this is a blog about a writer in mid-life crisis? Well, believe it or not, I am actually making some progress there. I have finally fully outlined a new novel, which is nice. Although I’m not sure how much of it I’ll stick to, at least I have something tangible on paper which, we all know, doubles for permission to really get started writing. Hello Chapter 1.
I wish I had more time to write, but I guess that’s a good thing. It tells me that the desire to be a writer is still alive and kicking, underneath all this new wife, mother, and life stuff. I’m looking forward to the wedding. But I’m also looking forward to the post-game, where I can get back to the real writer’s life, put my fingers to keyboard, and generate a page count.
In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy all of it. Every last minute. If nothing else, it's great fodder for a bestseller.
Hey to all my faithful readers. I’m sorry it’s taken me a while to post a new blog, but I’ve been SUPER busy managing my now almost-married life. Talk about packing 20 pounds of cellulite into a two-pound surgical bag.
I’m exhausted. I’m so busy that I’ve been comparison shopping catheters so I can cut back the time I need to spend in the bathroom. (Sorry to be so graphic, but it’s that bad.) Add kids, a new dog, a new man, a whole new set of family obligations, the seasonal need for regular manicures, pedicures and waxing, and an accelerated desire for more space to an already packed house and life and what have you got?
Baggy eyes, an overworked and failing memory, the beginnings of OCD, too many run on sentences and too few blog entries. (Sorry.) Anyway ...
The other day, my friend Cherie (one of the two single women who live next door, and who we lovingly call “the wild girls†since they’re dating machines) came in to borrow some Gatorade after a long night spent nursing a recent breakup. After an extensive conversation—during which we examined her roommate Maure’s latest adventure with a “cute chiropractor†and damned Cherie’s ex to a life of bad relationships, hair loss and ongoing constipation—we finally got to a topic that I care deeply about: Lifetime Television.
“Some Sundays,†Cherie says, “all [Maure and I] do is lie on the sofa and watch Lifetime. It’s so lonely.â€
I start to drool.
“Are you okay?†She looks concerned.
“NO. I am NOT okay. I used to watch Lifetime all the time when I was single. That was how I spent my Sundays. I used to know EVERY MOVIE.†Boy, those were the days.
“Really.â€
“I miss it. Those girls were all so courageous.†I’m feeling wistful.
“Which girls?â€
“The girls in the movies.â€
“They’re not real, you know.â€
“Oh yes they are! They’re everywoman. I mean, scorned and hurt. Battered by life and men. On the lamb from the law.â€
“When were you last on the lamb?â€
“Well, I did hit a parked car last week.â€
“If you miss it that much, why don’t you just watch it again?â€
“Hello? It’s not that easy? Now, I have to actually DO things with other people on Sundays. ALL THE TIME. We need groceries. Dan wants to play in town. The girls [nieces, stepdaughters] want to paint pottery. My parents want us for dinner. The dog needs a long walk on the towpath. I need to write something creative.†My eyes get misty.
“How horrible.†She rolls her eyes.
“Life.†I sigh. “It never stops.â€
“Hello?†she says. “I’m 41, have a roommate, a bed and a car. Instead of kids, I have a dog with bad knees. My family lives two hours away. I’m always scratching for cash, even though all I do is work. I’ve just been dumped, again, and have no immediate dating prospects. You don’t have anything to complain about.â€
My mother warned me about these kinds of girls—you know, the ones where it's always "about them." Sad. “I’m sorry, Cher. But sometimes, it’s painful without Lifetime.†The dog starts humping her leg. “Hey, maybe I can watch it with you girls sometime.â€
“That'd be fine.†She flings Winnie off her knee.
“Really? Do you mean it? I mean, could I? I won’t be a bother. Honest, I’ll just be real quiet. Hey, I’ll make some lemonade!†I look at the dog, all fours now wrapped around Cherie’s calf. “Sit Winnie. SIT.†So disobedient. It’s times like this I miss my dying Sophie.
“You can speak if you want.†She laughs. “And you don’t have to bring anything. It’s not a graduation party. It’s CABLE.â€
“I know.†I feel myself smile and glaze over.
Cherie stands. “Well, I gotta go. Thanks for the Gatorade.†She holds up a half-empty bottle of Fierce Grape. The dog growls and moans.
“No prob. Hey, SEE YOU SUNDAY.â€
***
So I’m unofficially part of three writing groups and applying to another. Seems I’m great at hooking up with groups, but lousy at writing.
I mean, what’s the deal with me? It’s like I can’t stop joining writers groups. It’s like, if I join, then a book will naturally get written. But somewhere along the way, I’ve forgotten that I’m the one who has to write it. So I can join all the groups I want—from here to Nairobi. It won’t matter if I don’t write a lick of copy. I’ll just look like a stalker, a wannabe, a writer with plenty of camaraderie but very little written. And that’s just stupid. Maybe, just maybe, if I stopped distracting myself with all these groups, I’d actually write something.
So today, I’m vowing to stop. Well, try. Because, and on the other hand, groups are good. They are motivating. Can’t show up to a group without something to share. Then, you’d get kicked out. So they’re good for keeping you accountable. Unless you’re part of so many groups, you can’t possibly keep up.
Hey, maybe that’s what I want. Maybe I want the humiliation of being kicked out of a group—which would be the equivalent of an alcoholic hitting bottom, I suspect, for a writer, although I don’t know because I can barely get through one glass of wine. Then, I’ll write. I'm sure of it. Just positive.
You know, I think this has been very cathartic for me. Thanks for listening.
And now, I’m going to walk the dog, defrost some chicken, call my mother, and see what’s happening at the Solebury Library near my house. Sometimes, they have good book discussions. And I like to go listen.
*******
So this week it finally dawned on me that I’m getting married. Since my wedding is only two months away, I have decided to completely start milking it. Today, my mother and I went to look at flowers for the reception. I scowled several times and complained that I wanted things my way, just like a REAL bride would do. It felt good, actually, even though, in the end, we did what my mother wanted. But hey, I got to pick the groom! And that's something, right?
Tomorrow, I’m going to see if I have better luck exerting my bridal desires at the hair salon, where I’ve got a 4:30 “bridal trial†appointment. When I first heard that phrase, I thought that was some sort of legal issue that had to be sorted out and wondered why I’d do it at the hair salon. But over the past few weeks, I’ve learned that it involves a hairstylist testing out a variety of hairstyles so that, on the day of my wedding, she can just get right to it. She doesn’t have to figure it out then, only duplicate it.
At first, I was resistant to the idea. After all, I’m a spontaneous woman. Besides, I’ve been doing my hair by myself for 43 years and, although it admittedly took me a while, I still managed to nab a groom and do okay for myself. But now I’m starting to think that everybody in “wedding world†should have the chance to please me. So I’m going. And I’ll be wearing my critical eyeglasses, because I’m becoming a REAL BRIDE.
It’s all very exciting.
Next week is my bridal shower. The first and only in more than four decades of life. I’m super juiced about it (although, I hope I don’t get a juicer because I’ll never use it—gosh, just writing that felt good). I don’t know what I’m going to wear but I suspect everyone will tell me I look fabulous because I’M THE BRIDE!
I’M THE BRIDE! I’M THE BRIDE! I’M THE BRIDE!
Okay, I’m done now. Until next time.
Her name is Winnie.
She’s the canine Prozac, the doggie upper, the pill designed to heal at least part of our suffering over Sophie. A 40-pound bundle of hyperactivity, cuddly as a well-worn pair of blue jeans. Irresistibly healthy. A two-year old mix of Golden Retriever and Border Collie. A rescue dog who now spends the bulk of her day representing the best of her genetics, chasing tennis balls and herding anything and anybody—including the pieces of our broken hearts that, for the past two weeks, have been floating aimlessly about in our bloodstreams.
We got Winnie last weekend, after realizing that it’s easier to “get a gun†(according to Dan), than to rescue a dog from death row. You’d think once we showed even a slight interest, we’d get a dog by DHL the next day. But no. It doesn’t work that way.
First, we had to fall in love with 800 dogs on petfinder.com, only to find out they’ve been adopted and to keep looking. Then, we had to fill out a bazillion applications on shelter and rescue web sites—a full time job on some days—and wait for our vet to give us a stellar reference. Then, we had to submit to several telephone evaluations and home visits to prove that a) we weren’t crazy or unfit to own a dog b) we wouldn’t give the dog up at the first sign of trouble and c) we had a fence with the appropriate measurements.
Between each step of the process, we cried over Sophie’s ashes, returned to us by the vet in a small cedar box to remind us she wasn’t a dream or one of my stories.
Then, finally, after a great deal of time, energy and lost fluids, the folks from the Golden Retriever Adoption, Placement and Education organization (www.graperescue.com) decided we were worthy enough to adopt one of their babies. So we did.
We got Winnie.
And while it hurts to think of Sophie as no longer being here, it does help to know that life goes on with our new girl. An oversized hairball of cuddly puddly doodle snoop. (Sorry.)
That even though we couldn’t save Sophie’s life, we could save hers.
“Babe, why are you crying?†Dan asks me, as we get into bed on the night we got her.
“Because I LOVE HER,†I say. She’s sniffing around the bedroom rug, like she’s looking for a good place to do her business.
“Oh.†He looks confused.
“I miss So-So-Sophieeeeeeeee….†More tears. “He-ere Wi-wi-winnie.†She looks up at me, tilts her head, and leaps up onto the bed. I pull her onto my lap and kiss her head. “You’re a go-go-good gir-r-r-rll.†She looks bored.
“Babe?†He looks concerned.
“Yes.†Full sob. I hope the dog doesn’t pee on me. Or worse yet.
“Are you okay?â€
“I’m gr-gr-great.†I take a deep breath and then bury my face in Winnie’s furry neck. Pet dander be damned. Thanks to Oak, Maple and every-other-genre-of-tree pollen, I’m already on one Claritin and Zyrtec-D, four shots of Nasonex, half an Allegra, a Singulair sample AND two Benedryl. I got nothin’ to lose here.
She lets out a doggie belch.
“Good girl,†I say. “YOUâ€RE A GOOD GIRL LIKE SOPHIE WAAA-AAASSSSS.†I proceed to cry like Lucille Ball in the old “I Love Lucy Reruns,†when she was trying to elicit Ricky’s sympathy. My mouth wide open for maximum sound quality, I expose the anchor to a long lost set of tonsils. (The operation to have them removed the ONLY time my thin-obsessed mother ever let me eat ice cream, which is why I remember it so vividly.)
Dan walks out of the room and returns quickly with a beer. He sits down on the bed, looks at me cuddling the dog like Mary cradling the baby Jesus, and turns on the television. The Action News theme sings loudly from its speakers.
“Do you remember when we used to watch Action News with Sophie?†I try to compose myself. “She really liked Monica Malpass and Dave Murp-phy. But she always barked at that Adam Josephs, remember?†I pace my breathing and try to laugh at the memory. Winnie is desperately trying to get free from me, but I clutch her face to my chest. “No, no, Winnie. Not yet. Mama’s not done giving LOVEYS.†She tries to puppy nip my hand. “No bites, Winnie. No bites, baby. No friggin’ bites.†She stops. “GOOD GIRL.â€
Dan looks at me like my head is a complex array of strings and several are on the verge of snapping.
“It was good, wasn’t it? I mean, she enjoyed that, don’t you think?†I hang on his answer as if it will determine my very future.
“Do I think she enjoyed the weather?†He’s starting to look frightened.
“Well, yeah? You know. The people and everything. The show.â€
“Babe.†He puts his arms around me and Winnie. “It’s okay to cry over Sophie. Winnie won’t be offended.â€
“She’s mad that we got another dog, isn’t she? Sophie. It’s too soon.â€
“Is that what you think?†He takes a long swig from the bottle.
“Good girl, Winnie.†I pet her little head. Long pause. “No. I don’t. I don’t think that. Well, maybe.â€
“Sophie wouldn’t want us to be unhappy. Maybe she sent Winnie to us to help us heal.â€
A Geico commercial comes on. That little frog is funny. Those commercials often make me want to call Geico just to tell them that I like their ads, but then I get busy with other stuff and forget to do it. “Do you notice how cuddly Winnie is? Sophie was NEVER this cuddly. I mean, it’s great. Don’t you think?†My eyes start to water. “I LOVE IT. LOVE LOVE LOVE IT! GOOD GIRL, WINNIE.â€
“It’s nice.†He gives me a squeeze. “Do you want a beer?â€
I ignore him. “Winnie doesn’t run through our legs either. Sophie used to love to run through our legs. Remember?†Winnie tries to break free of me again, but I push her head back down to my chest. “No, no, baby. We LOVE you. WE DO.â€
“Babe, you’re shouting. And she looks uncomfortable.â€
“Sorry, my ears are clogged.†I look down at her. “I think she looks so peaceful and calm.†The dog is wincing, rubbing a paw over her eye.
“No dog will ever replace Sophie. You do know that.†He chugs the beer like it’s Gatorade and he’s just completed a triathlon.
“Of COURSE not.†I sneeze and the dog gives a little squeal.
“We’re gonna love Winnie just as much as we loved Sophie. It’s just gonna take some time.†He’s talking to me slow and steady, like I’m a mental patient.
“Of course we are. Right baby?†I look down at her. She’s wiggling like David Blaine trying to get free from a locked coffin. Finally, I let her loose. “Baby,†I explain to her, “you have to let mommy go pee.†Exhilerated to be free, she settles in at the edge of the bed. I stand up and look at her and then at Dan.
“I know,†he says, “that’s where Sophie used to sit.â€
I lean over to kiss him. “I love you, babe.â€
“I love you too.â€
So this is what our lives look like for right now. I’m sure it’ll get easier. And we are growing to love Winnie, even though she crapped in the house twice and sometimes growls at Dan and jumps on every single person who comes in the house, clinging to them like a pack of leeches. Or, even worse, a single forty-something.
She also hunkers down with us every night, lays on our chests, licks our faces, wags her tail, and catches a Frisbee like I’ve never seen. She’s smarter than most of the men I’ve dated. And far more limber. The other night, we took her for a drive, while she balanced her back two legs on my lap, the front two on the sill and her head halfway out the open window. I bet Rt. 202 South looked a lot different from that perspective. I’m thinking about trying it myself.
She also grins a lot which is contagious. That part of it all feels good.
In a magnanimous gesture to repay her for these momentary pleasures, we gave her Sophie’s old doggie bed, covered with a few of our t-shirts and the smelly blanket she loves that the rescue gave us. And we told her to go ahead and think of Sophie as her guardian angel, because we know she’s ours.
What I don’t know is what my next crisis or excuse will be for not getting to work on novel number two. I could always use the whole wedding thing. Or, we can move. Yeah, that’s it. I’ll start looking for a new house! That’ll REALLY stress me out and divert my attention.
Whew! Another problem averted.
In the meantime, the other night I had dinner with my best friend Lorrie, my ex-sister-in-law Paula and her sister Mindy. By the way, we all grew up together, so it’s cool. We’re all cool.
We were at Havana’s in New Hope, eating fried food and drinking diet soda and beer, when we got into this conversation about the perils of being a parent. Paula and Lorrie, who have children, told Mindy and I, who don’t, that we have no idea what it’s like to be a parent.
Mindy said they had no idea what it’s like to be single and 40 without children. Or, what it was like to be an aunt, for that matter.
I told them they had no idea what it’s like to be engaged, 43, childless and, soon, a stepparent.
We chose teams. Mindy was on mine. We told the other team—let’s call them the “fish taco†team—that they were condescending and belittling. That we weren’t children, even though we didn’t have any.
The fish tacos told us we were clueless. We wouldn’t know what to DO with children. We couldn’t even imagine what it’s like to raise them.
Ironically, what I remember most are the onion rings.
It was fun. Gosh, life is good.
Okay, that’s it. I’m done. Hopefully, by my next blog, I’ll have actually written at least a chapter. As always, I ask that you pray for me. Oh, and Winnie too. She’ll need it.
Until then.
This morning, we woke up like any other morning, and coerced the dog down the stairs using a tennis ball as bait. She came down, like all other mornings, slowly. With a look of sadness and agony in her face. We were getting used to that look. It didn’ t move us the way it did when we first saw it, just a few days ago. We knew that the time was coming closer, but always figured it was still an hour, a day, a week away.
So we endured the look. Made pretend we were all in a movie and she was the star — a young victim who had been stricken with disease. The plot was her journey to beat it. And in the movie, she did. But in reality, Sophie’ s story would end differently. She wouldn’ t come back. While we’ d always figured that was an inevitable outcome of the future, we didn’ t think it’ d ever be now. Not today. Not this moment.
“Your sign is when she stops eating,” our friends would say.
But she didn’ t stop. To the contrary, her appetite remained voracious up until the very last second. Until now.
We put food in her bowl and encouraged her to eat. “Go ahead, Sophie, eat. Eat baby. Eat.” She looked at us. “You can do it.” She looked at us. “We’ ll help you.” And we’ d push the bowl closer to her. She’ d look at us. Eat, dammit!” We got stern. She looked at us. “So-PHIE.” She looked at us. “Baby girl, c’ mon, you can do it.” She looked at us. We changed our approach what felt like a hundred times. But still, she did nothing.
“Maybe she has to ‘go’ first,” I say to Dan. Never the case before, but what the heck. She’ s never been terminally ill with cancer before either.
So he took her out to poop. She did. Twice. Surely, she’ s still okay. Surely, she’ ll come back in and wolf down the kibble and the cheese I laid on top of it like a football player in pre-season.
But she walked right past the food to one of her favorite spots in the living room, by the back doors to the deck and gently lied down. She wasn’ t interested in the food. She wasn’ t interested in the ball. She wasn’ t interested in anything but sleep.
I looked at Dan. He handed me the phone. I dialed seven numbers and left a teary message for our vets, who weren’ t open yet. “It’ s time.”
Then, we waited the 20 longer-than-life minutes for them to call us back. “Come in at 9,” Sara, the familiar receptionist said as if she’ d been waiting to hear from us.
When we got there, we were ushered into the treatment room, where our vet, a wonderful woman who looks like the quintessential country doctor, had laid down a soft white cotton blanket. She motioned for us to sit and try to lay Sophie down on it.
“Have you ever done this before,” she asks, playing with her long grey braid, her compassion, one of the things I appreciate most about her, as finely tuned as usual.
“No.”
She explains what we can expect. A long needle, an overdose of a gentle drug they use during surgery, perhaps some “paddling” or “twitching” of Sophie’ s limbs (but subtle enough so only she would recognize it), and then a quiet and gentle passing into sleep. All very painless, she reassures us. For the pet, that is.
We held Sophie’ s face while the doctor and her assistant shaved a portion of her back leg. Dan and I pet her head and whispered how much we loved her and what a good girl she has been. How she’ ll see all the dogs the world has lost — those of friends, family members, even strangers. Like Quincy and Babe and Radar.
How she’ ll be able to run far again. And eat with joy. Stop scratching from allergies. And sleep without feeling like a tractor is running slowly and methodically over her body, like a parasite is crawling up her spine, sucking out the marrow.
We tried to distract her from the fact that Dr. Klosser was feeding her a breakfast that would literally take her breath away.
I don’ t think I’ ve ever cried so hard in my life. Not even when I first felt the mass that would eventually take her life. (And I had a feeling.) It was a cry that took me out of my body along with Sophie. I forgot, at some point, other people were in the room. That somewhere, someone was eating breakfast. Driving to work. Fighting with a friend. Going bankrupt. Taking a bite of a really good sandwich. That, at some point, I’ d have to go home and finish a project for a client.
Everything just stood there — the air, the dog, the time and space of the universe. I felt the life leave the most precious thing ever bestowed upon me: My version of child. One symbol of the bridge that connected this life — here in Bucks County, close to creative inspiration, love and romance, where I’ m living the life I’ ve always wanted — and the life I left behind in Chicago. There, it wasn’ t awful. But it wasn’ t right, either. I was a square peg in a round hole. I desperately needed my edges sanded.
I guess she knew it was okay to go, since the sides of my life are no longer sharp like rose thorns. My world is less solitary. But I’ m going to miss her. That feeling cuts just as deep as ever.
“Is she gone,” I ask, remembering I’ m not alone, hyperventilating. The vet comes over and gives me a hug. “Yes.” She whispers in my ear. I start to sob. “You did the right thing,” she says. “Did I?” “Yes. Too many people wait too long. Sophie wasn’ t going to get better.” “I know.” (Did I?) “You just did what you’ d have to do in a few days.” “I know.” “She’ s at peace.” “I know.” “She was a good girl.” “I know.” More sobs. More hugs. “Are you okay?” “Uh huh.” She disengages. I thank her for being so kind and gentle.
I look over at Dan, who’ s clutching my hand so tightly, I think he may have broken a knuckle. He tries to muster a smile, tears pouring down his face. “You okay?"
“Did we do the right thing?”
“Yes,” he says. “Absolutely. Yes.”
But do we ever really know?
There was a dog in the office when we got there named “Sarge.” He ran around the back desk with a book in his mouth. He seemed happy and flamboyant. Full of life. Funny, we had forgotten what that looked like.
Sarge was big news around here for a while. A bit of a celebrity. A beautiful and strong black lab, he was one of the rescue dogs during 9/11. He had gone missing about a week earlier and his owners, who live in Lambertville, had made several desperate pleas on the evening news for help finding him. They said he was a “hero.” We felt honored, actually, to be in his presence.
But Sophie was a “hero” too. And not just to me, but to all the people who had the privilege of picking up her poop, taking her for a walk, watching her overnight, feeding her their leftovers, throwing her a tennis ball — experiencing all of her beauty.
I’ m going to miss her so much there is a physical pain in my chest. My sweet baby.
Sleep well, Sophie. You deserve it. You were a precious gift. A force of energy that eminated love and light. Thanks to you, I am forever different.
People, are you out there? No, I’m serious. You can talk back to me now! Look at the bottom of the page, no lower, lower, to the right, THERE. RIGHT THERE. Click on Comments. Now, YOU can tell ME what YOU think. This is the beauty of technology — not hackers or viruses or the fact that it cost me $500 to have one of “the Geeks” (as my mother calls them) get rid of Spyware or my friend Brian $150 to fix a sticky key. No, it’s to COMMUNICATE. So let’s try it.
Does anybody else have a dying dog? A skin tag? A theory on the meaning of life?
I don’t want to seem like I’m desperate for contact or anything, but writing can be a lonely craft. So TALK TO ME. Tell me anything you want, except that I look fat in these pants because I haven’t had sugar in SIX WEEKS and, well, I’m a little sensitive.
Okay, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, this week has been its usual insanity. Although, there have been no more nudists in the mix. I feel bad because Marilyn the nudist called me the day after we had our first conversation and I accidentally deleted her number. Well, okay, it wasn’t an accident. So shoot me. I’m going to burn in the fires of hell.
Although, tell me you never “accidentally” deleted somebody’s phone number. Listen, if I had all the time in the world, I’d be having tea with her right now and tomorrow and the day after. Helping her pack for her cruise (which okay, might not take too long) and maybe even driving her to the airport to get to her naked flight. But I don’t have time for new friends. Not right now. That sounds really bad too, doesn’t it, especially since I’m practically begging you to talk to me? But this is business. That’s well just being practical.
I mean, I can barely keep my eyebrows from looking like Tom Selleck’s and my body showered every day. It’s just that I’ve got this here a blog, a whole book to write, several articles to develop and classes to teach. That’s not to mention that fact that I’m getting married, caring for a dying animal, tending to family, managing friends in two time zones, and trying to keep the size of my ass to a reasonable low and toilet paper on the rolls at home. And let us not forget how time-consuming it can be to have a brain that never shuts down.
In fact, I was laying awake the other night wondering why my comforter is always scrunched up at the bottom of my very-expensive duvet, when I was compelled to contemplate some very important issues.
Like the fact that it’s already April and I’m getting married in five months. That I’m already 43 and, in no time, I’ll be 80, widowed, and living in the hopes that my taste buds will return. I can’t believe that there are only seven contestants left in the American Idol competition. (Go Chris.) Sheesh, it was just yesterday we were in auditions.
I mean, life is just whizzing by and I don’t know how to stop it. So, that night, I tried strategizing all options. By 3 a.m., all I could come up with was the desire for a pizza. So I finally took a big swig of Nyquil and allowed myself to fall into a dream state. Until the dog barked and I was up again, this time thinking about word combinations.
And how we’re all so busy that we have to actually combine words to shorten the amount of time we need to take to actually speak to one another. It seems that, in the new millennium, we simply need every extra second we can get.
For example, we no longer have time to say “web log” or “Brad and Angelina.” No, now it’s “blog” and “Brangelina.” “TomKat” instead of Tom and Katie. We must stop and smell the roses (or “smoses") less than ever in the history of man because we’re using this technique to shave milliseconds off the time we spend doing what technology is supposed to make easier: Communicate.
And frankly, it’s starting to bother me because I want to slow down. I NEED to slow down. I have a headache. My house is TOO clean, my calendar is TOO organized, there’s not enough good old fashioned disarray in my life. I’m keeping up TOO WELL with friends. It makes me jittery to think it’s all so, well, together. If it gets any more together, I"m going to have a brain explosion one of these nights and die.
I mean, responding to medical emergencies and having your new jeans hemmed QUICKLY is one thing. That’s IMPORTANT. But condensing words? C’mon.
Yet, it doesn’t seem like anything that’s going away soon. Like a bad infection, it’s permeating all parts of, okay, at least my life. For example, Dan (my fiance) and I were driving past a house for sale when he shouts out like a crazed killer on the run, “FIZZBO.” Then, he blazes through a red light.
“Oh my GOD. ARE YOU OKAY?!” I can’t imagine why he’s shouting for no reason so I immediately attribute it to stroke or brain aneurysm and wonder how far we are from the nearest hospital.
“No, I just said FIZZBO. You know, ’for sale by owner’ like the sign back there said. FSBO.”
“How is it that you’re too busy to say ’for sale by owner’.” I wonder if no phrase, word or idea is, at this point, immune to condensation. “All we’re doing is sitting in the car. Are you that busy?”
He looks at me like I just threw up on the dashboard.
So I go on. “Is it too much energy to say, ’Oh look, there’s a for sale by owner sign AND turn the steering wheel at the same time. We’ve got the time, you know? We’ve got another good 15 minutes before we get to our destination.” Which, by the way, was Sam’s Club for some frozen salmon and tooth whitener.
“What’s wrong with you.” He looks concerned.
“What’s wrong with me is I’m a writer and it’s my fiduciary responsibility to be the caretaker of words. So, you’re under literary arrest.”
“You haven’t gotten very far on your novel, have you?"
“Don’t change the subject.”
“I’m not, we’re talking words and you’re late on your assignment.”
“I’m not late. It’s just not done yet.” The offspring of Satan, who runs my novel in nine months class, charged us with writing a novel outline, synopsis, sublist, and a bio in four minutes (well, weeks). DOES HE THINK WE HAVE NOTHING ELSE TO DO?
“Well, have you started it? You haven’t said anything and I haven’t seen you at the computer much."
“What are you, the novel police? My mother? Are you going to tell me I shouldn’t eat anything with white flour next?”
“Babe, take a breath.”
So I do. And think of the mountains. (The ocean makes me have to pee.)
“I am breathing. I just think we’re all moving too fast for our own good. I mean, time me, how long does it take to say, “for sale by owner’. Ready, go.” I look at my watch.
“I think you need to start writing.” He stops at a light and turns down the radio. National Public Radio. Or “Natio.†(Easier to say than NPR. Requires less lip conformation.)
I hate when he’s right. So I’m going to really hunker down on my novel — the outline, the synopsis, the whole shebang. But you must promise me that, no matter how much it sucks, when it’s finished, you’ll buy it. I BEG YOU.
And so, I give in and let the whole “FSBO†thing drop and the subject of wordinations (word combinations) altogether. In the scheme of things, it’s really not that important. I mean, it’s not the war in Iraq or Dick Cheney’s pellets or a 70 percent off sale at DSW. It’s just that if people like us, writers, don’t at least talk about it, who will?
Clearly, I need to be motivated.
It’s just that I keep coming up with book ideas but then, when it comes time to outline and synopsize and sublistize and shost (share and post on our Yahoo group site) and get it all down on the page, I’m suddenly inspired to cloilet (clean the toilet). Do the laundry. Walk the dog. Google a few old boyfriends. (Called “goyfriending.”)
I spent two hours goyfriending the other day. Such a waste. Precious moments of my life I’ll never get back. And I didn’t even come up with anything. So much for my detective skills¦
I better stick to writing. If only I could get started, but now it’s Spring, and allergy season. A runny nose can be time consuming. You know?
So yesterday, I’m walking the dog around the five-acre circle that is the park just about 10 yards from our townhouse. I’m out for about three minutes when the woman I’ve been watching walk the circle all winter long decides it’s time for us to finally meet.
“Hello there,” she calls to me, looking like her usual Inuit ready to dive for fresh seal — even though, today, it’s sixty plus degrees. She introduces herself as Marilyn. “Boy, he looks like he’s not walking too well.” She points to Sophie, who’s limping her way eagerly towards a pile of deer excrement.
“Yes, well, she’s got a bad hip.” I lie. What’s the point of getting into it?
“That’s why I walk. To keep in good shape.”
“Oh, well, good for you.” I smile. I have no idea what shape Marilyn’s in because she’s been hidden under a purple down coat since last September. It looks like something that threw up in the back room of Old Navy five years ago. She pulls off her hood and exposes a head of large black frizzy hair. I tug at my tank top.
“I’m 74 you know.”
“Wow,” I say. She looks 74.
“I have a 55 year old boyfriend.”
“Really?” If I weren’t engaged, I’d be depressed and on my way out for chocolate.
“Yep. We’re going on a cruise next month. So I have to look good, if you know what I mean.” She winks and snickers.
Oh dear lord, please erase that mental picture. PLEASE. “Well, again, good for you.”
“Oh honey, and that’s not the half of it.”
I smile, tend to the glamorous chore of picking up Sophie’s poop, and think, “Please don’t tell me the other half. I’m tired. I’m having a bad hair day. My butt hurts after an especially hard workout yesterday. The dog is eating droppings from other species. And I’ve got a bazillion uninteresting phone calls to return — the bank about my refinance, the cleaning woman about switching days, the cable company to figure out why they didn’t get last month’s check and who did, Overstock.com on how I can get a now 3,000 pound fully inflated and defective mattress pad back into the tiny box they sent it in. That’s not to mention the ENTIRE NEW BOOK I’ve got to outline by, like, next Monday.” (I’m taking a Novel in Nine Months Class. Pray for me.)
“See, it’s not just any cruise.” She’s still talking. The fact that I have my back to her has not lessened her momentum.
I turn around. “I’m sure it’s very special.” I yank at the dog’s leash to move her back towards the house.
“It’s a cruise for nudists.” She smiles.
I realize, at that moment, that I live in an alternate universe, where younger people manage cancer and older people strip down for far away adventures.
“Don’t look so surprised. Old people get naked too, you know.”
“Oh, well, of course.” Ha! Of course? What do I know about nudists? Who do I think I am? One of Hef’s gals? I don’t even like to get naked for a shower, which, by the way, I do purely out of necessity.
“I’ve been a nudist for years,” she says, on a roll.
I don’t even know how to respond. So my rule is, when you don’t know how to respond, say something either really dumb or make a statement of the obvious. “So you’re going to be, you know, naked?”
“Well, that’s the dress code for nudists, sweetie.” The dog pees.
“So it’s a naked ship?” Like, she’s gonna get naked on the Promenade Deck with Doc and Isaac and Julie McCoy and Captain Stubing? Now that’s freaky.
“Well, yes. But we’ll be dressed on the plane.” She unzips her parka.
“Will the captain and his crew be naked?” She laughs. But I’m serious about an answer. Instead, she unzips her parka. Good GOD she’s not going to get naked right here, is she? I prepare to shield my eyes.
“How do you know the captain isn’t a woman?”
Listen, I want to say, I didn’t ask for this. I just came out here to walk to the dying dog.
“Well,” I say, “that certainly must eliminate any temptation to overpack.”
“It does a lot more than that, honey. You ought to try it.” Her eyes twinkle.
I smile and look down at the gut jutting out from under my spandex. “Maybe I will some day.” But I doubt it.
The other day, I was shaving my underarms when I noticed a piece of red skin the size of a rice grain hanging from one of them. When I told my friend Joy about it, she told me it was a “skin tag.”
“Like a price tag you find on the sweaters at Nordstroms?” I ask.
“Yep, except it’s skin and it’s hanging from your armpit. It’s a sign of aging.”
“Great,” I say. “Thanks for clarifying.”
Paranoid that I’m the only person I know with an aging skin tag, I call my friend Linda in Chicago since she’s just about the vainest person I know (well, not arrogantly so, just concerned with her own appearance). This, I believe, qualifies her to outline my best treatment options because, if she’d ever gotten one, she’d surely know how to get rid of it. And fast.
“If I were there,” she says, “I’d sterilize it with alcohol and cut it off with a scissors for you.”
“What a friend.” I mean, that’s above and beyond the call of duty.
“It’d only take a second.”
Thoroughly disgusted, I change the subject to her recent trip to Florida, her father’s new girlfriend and how short-legged women (like myself) shouldn’t wear Capri pants. Twenty minutes later, we hang up and I call the dermatologist to set up an appointment to remove the now all-consuming “skin tag” that I cannot live with for one more day.
“Is this an emergency,” the receptionist asks, after first making sure to get my insurance information.
“Uh YEAH. Hello? I’m getting married in five months for the first time in 43 years and I AIN’T doin it with no skin tag.” Then, I take in short deep breaths and think about the ocean.
So, I get an appointment for the next day. After 45 minutes, the nurse ushers me into a treatment room, takes my blood pressure and leaves me to wait for the doctor. About 10 minutes later, he comes in, swabs my tag with alcohol, snips it off with a scissors (about as much fun for me as a root canal), and thanks me for my business.
Which leads me to conclude this: Sometimes, the best solutions are the most obvious.
So tomorrow, when I want to angst and overthink my book — and tell myself I’m a loser for doing both and how I’ll never amount to anything and how I should just think about getting a full-time job at Starbucks — I’m just going to calmly start outlining a long story on a page and then, I’ll use that as a guide to write. If all goes poorly, I’ve have a shitty first draft in no time. Then, I’ll revise. And, in the end, eventually, I’ll have authored a book.
We’ll see where it goes from there.
I have come to a few groundbreaking revelations since my last post:
THE FIRST Weddings are supposed to be a time of great joy. Two lovers find their way to a lifetime commitment. “Worlds collide,” to quote Jerry and George in that great episode of Seinfeld. My mom and dad become his mom and dad, his kids become mine. Brothers find allies in new brothers and blah, blah, blah. Together, we bond around the joy of picking colors and flowers and food and invitations and just the right dresses — and in knowing that we’re all healthy and happy and celebrating a joyous rites of passage for the two ingénues. Yet, in the end, all I can say is this:
My mother is trying to kill me. And, if I don’t stay on my toes, she just may do it. I’m serious. She’s either going to starve me, control me, guilt me, or “it’s no big deal” me to death. So if you don’t hear from me for a while, please call the Solebury Police Department. I think they have an 800 number.
I’m just saying. THE SECOND The meaning of life is structure and good credit. Don’t let anyone tell you anything different. It’s not love and personal fulfillment, like they tell you in all the self help books. That ain’t gonna get you a new car, a better mortgage or a Target credit card when you need it. (Which Dan and I did in a BIG way this weekend, when we went to Target to get socks and clip on sunglasses and came out four hours later with new sheets, a light for the back deck, too many tools, and some $500 plus worth of merchandise that did not include socks or clip-on’s.)
It’s not like the 67-year-old cashier at Macy’s, for example, is going to say, “We’d like to give you a credit card and 15 percent off on all the purchases you make today and through the end of time if you can prove to us that you are loved and personally fulfilled.” No. They want to know if you’re good for it.
And, I’m sorry, but the criteria for writing a bestseller is not to show that you’re loved and personally fulfilled. No, a good book, one people want to read and spend their precious money on starts with a good structure. As does a good life. And folks, it ain’t any more complicated than that.
Trust me.
Until next time.
I went to hear Kurt Vonnegut speak on a panel a few weeks ago, and when the moderator asked him how it feels to give a final manuscript to his agent, he replied, “It’s like getting rid of a malignant tumor.”
I can relate (save the fact that I’m not anywhere close to being as legendary as Kurt, at least not yet... see last post, re: psychic prediction). At least Kurt is eventually rewarded for his pain and agony. I’ve written 3,000 versions of my first novel and all I’ve gotten for it is several pleasant rejections and a disappointing prognosis.
“There’s nothing much more we can do at this point,” my agent says.
“Well, uh, but...” I stammer. It’s ugly.
“You can try a book doctor. See if they can tell you how to fix it and then let’s see,” He says. “I hate to give up.”
Sure, easy for you to say. I don’t know why I think it’s easy for him to say, I just do. So I go to the book doctor, which cracks me up because he doesn’t have a stethoscope or a waiting room or a pad for writing scrips or anything. Weird.
Anyway, in the end, he tells me that I’ve got all the talent of a best-selling novelist — and a novel that needs a complete makeover. Of course, this came over 80 pages of boilerplate on how to craft a plot and develop characters.
It’s like telling somebody they have a great figure, if only they’d lose 150 pounds.
So I listen and decide to be a method actor, channeling a character who’s just been told she’s really talented but her book sucks and needs to be rewritten. This character, let’s call her “Tony,” is very strong and defiant and resilient and beautiful and men want her and women hate her and she can’t gain weight for all the tea in china — and she just won’t let anything get in the way of her success. (Kind of like Linda Hamilton in The Terminator, although I never saw that movie, so I’m just guessing.)
So, with a very inspiring soundtrack in the background (like Peter Gabriel “Don’t Give Up” or Shaun Calvin’s “Whole New You” or even the Barney song), Tony revamps the characters, the plot, and the chapter outline. She turns her brooding and despondent protagonist into a confident woman, like herself.
She gives her new hair, new boobs, a whole new shoe collection, a new guy, a new job and a new purpose. (Because who doesn’t want those things.) Tony gets 153 pages in and then, as if divined, suddenly loses her motivation. She morphs back into me, who drops at page 154 like a fat man just past base camp on his climb up Everest.
And I’m tired. And, even worse, I’m bored. Can you imagine if I’m bored, how my readers might feel?
So I say to my writer friends, “I’m bored.” And they say, separately, but unananimously, “Put it away for a while, start something new.” I know they are saying this to appeal to my best interests, but I have to hold my middle finger down when I hear it.
Oh sure, easy for you to say. And I truly believe that, in this situation, it is truly easy for them to say. I don’t know how else I imagined they’d respond anyway. “Oh, no, Jill, this is the great American novel,” and “we always knew you would be the one to do it.” And then, some audience applause track would come on in the background of wherever we were with cheering. Maybe that’s what I expected and got disappointed when they didn’t deliver.
In any case, with great angst and too much stock in the predictions of a card reader from New Jersey, I push the old book to the side and prepare to start a new one. Don’t hate me or think less of me, please, because if you’re a writer reading this, you know I am you, was you or will someday be you. So there. NEXT SUBJECT I’m crabby. I’m on a diet. Again. In the past year, I’ve been on Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, Atkins, South Beach, and now, the Sonoma Diet. Let’s see. I make no promises. (MOM, DO YOU HEAR ME? I MAKE NO PROMISES.)
So a few weeks ago I went to Chicago to see my friend Katie who’s getting married like me. She’s 28 and I’m 43. If you were a fly on the wall, you would have had a good chuckle over how age-different we are when it comes to planning.
For example, she’s got 10 bridesmaids — sorority friends, probably with names like Jenny and Colby and Madeline. I’ve got one — my peri-menopausal best friend of 35 years who’s already bitching about what she has to wear even though I haven’t picked it yet. (May she be reminded of the hideous frock I was forced to wear at her wedding — and she knows who she is.) Also standing up will be my two hormonal teenage nieces who see their participation as a chance to get their hair done professionally and shop for makeup.
Katie’s having 400 people at her wedding, I’m having 125 because my parents are obligated to invite half of Heritage Creek — a retirement community in Bucks County. I’m starting to think we should have a medical tent, along with the open bar and the dance floor, at the reception.
Katie’s having a large church wedding, officiated by a priest. I’m getting married, literally, on the side of a short cliff overlooking the shallow canal that runs through the artists’ town where I live. Our officiate works at one of the local boutiques. She’s a Jewish ordained minister who does energy healing and spends her free time trolling Match.com for dates.
Just perfect.
The one thing Katie and I do have in common is our mothers’ obsession with our weight and how we’ll fit into our wedding dresses — mine an overpriced Nichole Miller that looks like something you’d find on a well-dressed Bedouin.
“Joyce could barely fit into a size 12,” my mother says over the phone, from her six-week stint in “Boca.” There, she and her petite sixty-something neighbor took a break from the beach to “re-approve” my choice at the Nichole Miller store in Florida, where they were vacationing.
“That’s nice.” I look at the dog, lying on her side on the hardwood floor, breathing heavy, eyes closed and I wonder how quickly her now two lung tumors grow while she sleeps.
“Are you listening? You better go on a diet or else you won’t fit into your dress. Joyce is much smaller than you.”
“My dress is in Mom and it fits fine.”
“Really? You didn’t tell me. When did it come in? When did you try it? Does it look good?”
“I did tell you. Last week.” THE DOG IS DYING. That’s really what I want to say.
“Okay, you’re in a mood. We’ll talk later.” Click. * I really wish I could get the fact that the dog is sick out of my mind for just five minutes, but it’s like having a piece of orange stuck in your back tooth that you can’t pick out with a barbecue skewer — or a hair in your eye that you just can’t find. It’s irritating and painful and never goes away until, well, it does.
My father told me today to stop talking about it. Nobody cares. Well, it’s not that nobody cares. It’s just that people can only have so much sympathy for a dying dog. I guess there’s some truth to that. Whatever.
So, I’ll try not to be so depressing on the next post. And, really, I’m happy. I’m very happy! I’m super duper happy! I love my family, my fiancé Dan (who is so HOT), my new stepfamily, the whole new gaucho trend that’s coming in for summer, and the fact that I was able to find the platform flip flops I LIVED in last year at the mall. So, it’s not all doom and gloom. I mean, if new flippers can’t make me happy, well, just shoot me now. Right?
Until next time.
Well, the cancer’s back. My poor puppy, thought she was cancer free. And last month, after two operations and five rounds of chemo, she was. But now, a trip to the clinic for a restaging and a chest x-ray tells a different story.
Even though the doctors removed the three tumors between her shoulder blades, they say there’s something ugly now brewing in her lungs. You wouldn’t know it to look at her, though. Especially last weekend, when 20 inches of snow fell and my fiancé and I watched her hop through them like a rabbit on amphetamines.
The neighbors commented: “She’s so fast.” “Such a beautiful dog.” “The best you could ask for,” Dan says, every night, while I cry into her neck, kiss the top of her long fuzzy nose, and whine like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. “Nobody will ever take my Sophie — NOBODY.”
Even now, the snow melted along with parts of my heart, we run her in the field just 20 or so yards from our townhouse. “How do you keep her coat so shiny?” My neighbor Colleen asks.
“Flax seed oil,” I say, “Hydroxizine for allergies, a power vitamin, something called ‘Transfer Factor’ for dogs with cancer, and the occasional dose of actinomycin-D. Oh, and Clavamel if she crashes.”
You ought to try the flax seed, I tell her.
She looks at me like I just told I her was the real Unibomber. “Well, she sure does have a nice coat.” She smiles and walks back towards her house. I wonder what it will be like to talk to the neighbors when Sophie’s coat is no longer relevant.
Another neighbor approaches. Andy, and his little dog, Yeungling, named for the beer. I don’t drink beer, since I’m a Jewish girl and the ones like me would rather get their calories in chocolate, but Dan does. And he likes Yeungling.
Anyway, “Yeung the dog” is a blackish mutt the size of two stacked Webster’s hardcover dictionaries (the updated and revised versions, of course) and Sophie’s friend. He runs up to smell her butt. If you don’t have a dog, you might not know that all the dogs do this. I wonder what Andy would do if I ran up and smelled his butt.
These are the hypotheses I use to distract myself from the fact that the closest thing I’ll ever have to a real child has the big “C.”
I bend down to rub Yeung’s cheek. “You little buttercup, you little snorky dorky snoopy doopy, peanut chew, are you having fun with your daddy today in the snow? Yeah? Are you?” Hearing me coo, Sophie runs over to lick my ear. It feels good, which makes me think I might need some counseling. But then again, it makes sense since I like when Dan licks my ear too. (But, really, that’s none of your business.)
“How’s Sophie doing?” Andy asks. He knows the situation, since Yeung and Sophie are pals and we see them often in the field.
I want to answer by taking my hand and, palm down, sliding it across my neck. But I refrain. “Okay, yeah, considering.” I mean, why go into the whole lung thing at this point? What’s he going to do about it?
He looks at me like I’M terminal, and says, “Oh, yeah, sure.” Then he sees my eyes tear up. “I gotta run. Hey Soph.” He waves at her, like she’s a taxi. “C’mon Yeung.” It’s obvious he wants to get his baby away from mine before she gives him a tumor. I can’t say I blame him.
I look down at Sophie, now on her belly by my feet, pulling the lime green skin off a crusty old tennis ball with her teeth. I tell her to stop and she wags her tail. “I love you, even when you yell at me.” That’s what she’s saying. I’m sure of it.
Cancer is scary. For people yes AND for dogs. And our dogs, well, for people like me and Andy, they’re everything.
That’s because we love our dogs. A blanket statement of the obvious, perhaps. But Sophie has been with me through every breakup, flu outbreak, snowstorm, Lifetime Television Movie, pizza, dinner party, job, boyfriend, apartment, houseguest, hormonal shift, and what have you over the past six-and-a-half years.
She has loved me when my jeans didn’t fit, my haircut sucked, my nerves were frazzled, nobody else did (or at least it felt that way), my temper was short, my crying was loud, my laughter was louder, my mother was being judgmental, my girlfriends were being catty, my house was dirty, and my cable was out.
She has endured 78 separate incidences of my PMS, which alone qualifies her for canine sainthood. And still, every morning, jumps up on my side of the bed, tail wagging, smiling and ready to dispense her love by giving me her alternating paws some 20 times before she grows tired of it — along with several wet slobbery kisses.
This is why we love them. It’s certainly not because they have to crap outside in the dead of winter or shed all over our new Oriental rugs. No, it’s because they wrap themselves around us so tightly with their unconditional acceptance and love that we can’t help but live for them. If we’ve got any common sense, that is. And I surely do.
So, last month, I went to see a card reader named Rebecca. Guess I just needed some sort of a heads up about life since things have been going so well — I’m getting married, Sophie was doing better, I actually dropped five or so pounds, we paid the mortgage this month, I’m blogging for the Wild River, blah, blah, blah. Forty five dollars seemed a small price to pay for a few prized insights.
Rebecca makes a few mild predictions, including the fact that she sees “fame and fortune for you in four years and the death of somebody close to you in a few months.”
Alarmed, I ask, “Could it be a dog?”
“Absolutely.” She puts her eyes on mine and holds. I feel like she’s trying to convey something to me from beyond, like she knows something nobody else does, her stare is THAT hard.
I wanted to call her a big fat liar right then and there, but I refrained. (I was mostly mad because she wouldn’t let me use her bathroom. Can you believe that? I drove 45 minutes to see her and she wouldn’t let me use her bathroom, which was in a different part of the house than her office. She didn’t want me “bother her family.” What was I going to do? Pee on them? Should I instead just pee on the floor?)
I don’t know what to do with Rebecca’s predictions, other than wish they were the other way around — I would be rich and famous by April and somebody close to me will die in four years. Now that would be more palatable. But her wording makes me wonder: Should I be sad that that the death might be my beloved puppy? Or happy that, if Sophie does go and the psychic was right, I’m just a mere 48 months away from the Oprah show?
In the end, I decide never to go to another card reader. (Now palm readers, well, they’re not out of the question...)
Dan, my fiancé who also loves Sophie, always tells me to think positive. Sophie only has eyes for him when we’re all together. In fact, I have decided that if Dan and I and a bag of beef bones filled with cheese were sinking on a sailboat and Sophie could only save one of us, she’d save Dan.
“You don’t know what’s going to happen,” he says. “Plan her funeral and she’ll sense it.”
Then why doesn’t can’t she sense when I need her to fetch me a cup of coffee? Seems like a legitimate question. He ignores it, telling me instead how she could live for years — that I should be more optimistic. It’s at that point that I usually engage in some potato-chip therapy — or whatever-I-can-find-in-the-kitchen therapy — or turn on CNN.
Back at the park, I look up at the sky. It’s clear as a bell. Wish Sophie’s chest x-ray were the same. I grab the partially eaten tennis ball from her mouth and throw its drool-covered remains towards some trees. Sophie takes off like an Olympic sprinter.
“Look at her go,” says my other neighbor, oh, what is his name. I always forget.
“If you only knew,” I say.
I never forget the dog’s names. I know his furry little boutiquey dog’s name is “Fatty.” Seems abusive to me, but hey, I don’t have to answer to it.
While the neighbors come out, one by one, and marvel at how Sophie will fetch the ball and bring it back every time, I think of how noncommittal the vets have been about how much life she has left. They remind me of my ex-boyfriends, the bastards. (Well, not all of them.)
They say they don’t know, but I don’t believe them. They know, they’re just not telling me because who wants a middle-aged Jewish woman with allergies wailing in their office? It’s just not good for business.
Last weekend, I went with Dan and his adorable eight-year-old daughter Cody to see the movie “Eight Below.” It was about eight sled dogs who were inadvertently left by a team of researchers in the Antarctica to survive for several months. For two hours, we watched the researchers try to find a way back to the tundra in the dead of winter to get them” and the eight sled dogs try not to die in the snow until they were rescued. (If you want to see this movie, stop reading now and skip directly to the next paragraph.) Two of the dogs didn’t make it. The whole goddamn experience was excruciating. I cried through the entire film and for about an hour after. At one point, I had to go to the bathroom to get more tissues.
That’s not to say the movie was bad — it was excellent. But I don’t recommend seeing it if your dog is dying.
Course, none of this is doing anything good for my writing. Sure, the dog HAD to get cancer while I’m in the middle of a rewrite. I hate to say it, but that’s pretty selfish. In fact, I’m going to remember that tonight when I start my ritual of crying and grasping my chest over her condition. And maybe, just maybe, she’ll get the hint and get better. Then, maybe I can get some work done.
If one more person asks me how my book is coming along, I’m going to eat an entire Giuseppe’s pizza and toss myself from the top of Bowman’s Tower not far from where Washington crossed the Delaware, and where I might cross the line from writer to tax accountant.
That’s right, I’m cranky. Although, I have only myself to blame, given that when I finally landed an agent eighteen months ago (after a rejection fest as imaginative as Mardi Gras), I blabbed. To my friends. To the woman who took my dirty sweaters at the cleaners. To the nice man at the park begging for bourbon and spare change.
Back then, I figured it was a mere sneeze and a cough to an author’s tour, a movie deal, and a well-deserved stint on the Oprah show.
Well, here I am, 72 weeks, four hours, 20 minutes, three minor and one major revision later, listening to my friends and family heckle me on how long it’s taking me to revise, sell, and publish my first novel.
“How’s the book coming,” my dad says one morning, over an egg white omelet and hash browns at Old Country Buffet.
”Yeah, okay, slow but steady.” I take a sip of my orange juice and find a hair.
“Uh huh.” Pause. “You know Aunt Betsy’s cousin’s nephew’s uncle’s, by marriage, son’s step-sister just wrote a book about the mating life of moles. You know, moles?”
“I know moles, Dad.”
“Well, I think she got an agent, a publisher, and a two-book deal? No, wait, a three-book deal.” Pause. “I also think the Discovery Channel is interested. But who knows, Aunt Betsy can be pathological.” He winks at me.
“Well good for her.” Tramp.
“Hey,” he says, using his own mouth as a diagram, “you’ve got a piece of spinach on your tooth.”
Last week, I was shopping with my best friend Lorrie. We were standing at the cash register at Chicos, where I was preparing to spend $320 dollars I don’t have, when she says “You’ve been working on that darn novel for six months now. When are you going to be finished? My friends want to read it.”
“You wrote a novel?” the salesgirl asks. “I’m a huge reader. What’s it about?” Beats me, I want to respond.
“When will it be out?” She fires off the questions like she’s at target practice.
“Soon.”
“She’s been saying that for, like, ever.” Lorrie turns to me. “Why is it taking so long?”
Oh because writing a novel is EASY. It’s like baking cake from a mix. “Well, my new goal is to have a revised version to my agent by the end of the year.”
“I thought it was to get him a version by the end of the summer?”
The salesgirl’s head moves back and forth like a fan, oscillating.
“Yeah, well, it’s taking me longer than I thought it would.”
Translation: Have you ever written a novel before? Do you know how long it takes to readjust a vision? Renegotiate a dream? To realize that writing fiction is a business and not just about the artist in your belly talking to you day and night until you can’t take it anymore about how much you suck and how much you’re never gonna sell this shit and how, just when you finally get it, the agent it took you a lifetime to lure is going to get hit in the head with a golf ball and drop dead or be accosted by some trigger happy mugger desperate to buy an Egg Nog Latte at Starbucks?
Hello, my name is Jill Sherer and I’m a writer in crisis. A woman who, just one year ago, reached mid life and panicked like somebody glued to New Jersey Transit, train track 11. I chucked a corporate job, a city (Chicago, where I lived for 20 years), an 11-year boyfriend, and a steady paycheck — all to be closer to my family who lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania (big mistake, the time suckers) and become the literary JLo.
Yet here I sit. Alone in a room with my computer, my Golden Retriever Sophie, and unfinished business. Thing is I wrote the first draft of this manuscript three years ago and I have much different ideas today. I’m sour about having to rewrite an entire novel since I’m not done reveling in the fact that I wrote the first one. And I’m less than pleased about having to now accommodate the tastes of the public. I mean, what do READERS have to do with anything anyway?
I think about these things every day, when I stare into the abyss of my novel and page 153. 153. 153. I can’t write my way to 154 or 157, heaven forbid, for all the tea in Variete (My favorite gourmet shop in New Hope, Pennsylvania where I now live.).
Sometimes these thoughts paralyze me. Other times it’s just life that gets in the way. Like the fact that my dog and father just had cancer simultaneously. My robust rump is like an infant that needs constant attention like exercise. I need food in the refrigerator and toilet paper on the roll, unless I want to wipe myself with Advil. I need to maintain relationships with friends, now in two states. I fell in love, FINALLY, and am about to plan a wedding for the first time at the ripe old age of 43. AND I have to work for a living because being creative, as a concept, just doesn’t pay the mortgage.
At least not yet.
So, that’s this story. There are others. My hope is that, by my next column, I can get to page 173 and counting. After all, I’m hoping that my Aunt Betsy’s cousin’s nephew’s uncle’s by marriage son’s stepsister will ask me to present with her at Barnes and Noble someday.
And when she does, well, I better be ready.
Until next time...
Jill Sherer
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Jill Sherer Murray, WRR Contributing Editor
Jill Sherer Murray is an award-winning journalist, whose work has appeared in a variety of business- and
health-related media. In addition to writing feature articles, scripts, books and other marketing, corporate
and creative communications for more than 18 years, she designs and facilitates corporate communication
workshops and seminars for clients like Gatorade, PepsiCo, Tellerx, and Quaker Oats (to name a few). A
former “Weight Loss Diary” columnist for Shape Magazine, she took six million readers
(who now know how much she weighs) on her journey to get fit each month through a series of personal essays
and live chats. Currently, Jill is working on her second novel and rewriting her first — again — so she can get
it to her agent before he dies or retires. You can read about her writing and other pursuits (i.e., dating
and marriage) in her blog
“Diary of a Writer in Mid-Life Crisis,”
which is featured on the Wild River Review. She lives in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, with her husband Dan, her
rescue dog Winnie, too many houseguests, and a lot of chocolate and over-the-counter pain medication.
EMAIL: jsherer@wildriverreview.com
JILL SHERER MURRAY IN THIS EDITION:
BLOG: Diary of a Writer in Midlife Crisis
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