And I tell myself that I really haven't done so, that this is not really a gym but more of a um...okay...a rehabilitation facility.
Bing found it. Her back is still not healing well and she misses her workouts. Mostly, she misses running and swimming. So, she has decided that her goal is to swim again for now. She is only able to water walk.
So, she found this place. A sort of re-hab gym for people who are healing. Or as she calls it: the home for broken humans. She came home with a brochure and was intrigued. We looked at it together. Decided to take a tour. In order to join, you must have a doctor's note saying that you have an infirmity. For me that's easy, as in TAKE YOUR PICK:
1) rheumatoid arthritis
2) Meniere's syndrome
3) back with a herniated disc
4) type 1 diabetes
We took a tour together and I had to admit that I liked the place. I've always resisted gyms before because 1) they seem to be overrun with fitness nazis 2) the dressing rooms/showers are dirty and 3) I'm lazy. This place was a bonanza of misfit toys people who had infirmities. A lot of older people and okay, is it WRONG that I smiled because they were a lot flabbier and out of shape than me? It wasn't crowded. And above all...it was sparkling clean. Plus...you didn't have to bring your own towels, they provided thick, cushy towels and even shampoo, conditioner, body lotion, you name it...it was there. The people at the front desk were kind and helpful but not hovering.
50 bucks a month. Or if we joined as a couple, 80$. I also liked the fact that when Bing inquired about us joining as a couple, not one eye was batted. Sure, that was fine. So, we took the plunge. And she made me smile when she kept saying, "I can't believe you are carrying a gym bag and we are going to the gym together!"
It wasn't a "real" gym bag, though. It's a pink bag that I received free when I did the Susan Komen walk/race for breast cancer.
And this is my swim suit:
And no, that is not ME modeling it and my breasts are nowhere near that um....bouncy. Oh...and I have cottage cheese thighs, not sleek ones like the model and ok...varicose veins on the backs of my knees. But, otherwise, we're twins.
We've been going to the gym together nearly every day and I am astonished to say this....but I actually like it. So far, we haven't done the second floor, which is where the treadmills, walking/running ramps, recumbent bikes, free weights and all that jazz is. We have a routine. We walk the pool. Bing likes the regular pool. I prefer the warm water one but so do a lot of others, so if it's crowded, I go to the regular one. I do my marching exercises and arm weights and a few really lame kicks. And I swim a few laps.
Then....it is partay time as I allow myself to sit in the whirlpool for 15 minutes. I was amazed that it is almost always empty but an attendant told me that people with heart conditions are not supposed to use it, and since about 75% of the people at the gym are heart patients, it is almost always empty. I sit in there with a hard jet on my back and another one on my...um...okay...I'll just admit it....my HAMMER toes and bunions. And it is bliss. Sheer bliss. Sometimes Bing gets in with me and we talk about how perfect this pool would be to make love in. But...of course...no...we don't do that. We do hold hands a lot and I run my toes up her leg now and then. And we talk. For some reason, our best talks occur in that 15 minute time frame. I never figured a whirlpool as couples therapy, but this one works for us.
And then...even better...I go to the hot dry sauna and she goes to the steam one. She says it reminds her of home, which in her case, is Louisiana. I tried it once and agreed. It was freakin' humid and stiiiiiicccckkky in there. I felt like every single pore on my body was wide open and gasping for air. I went back to my hot dry Finnish sauna and enjoy every moment of it. I am almost always alone in there and I sit on the hot dry wooden bench and feel every single bone and joint in my body relax. So soothing. I close my eyes and run my list through my head. You know what the list is. You probably have one too. It is an ongoing list of troubles. And for some reason, my mind is clear and open in that hot dry heat and I problem solve like nobody's business.
I feel so good in there and my life seems to be easier, sleeker, happier.
I swear to baby hey zeus, this is the best therapy I have ever had.
But, that isn't all. Our membership entitles us to one free massage a month and we've decided to make it the first Saturday of each month and go together. We also get one free family/friend pass per week, so Liv has been joining us and it's like family night. We go to the gym and then go to a nearby Brazilian cafe that we found afterwards. Since Liv is on a swim team already and they practice daily, she skips the pool and goes right to the punching bags. She has charmed one of the attendants, Bill, into teaching her some boxing techniques and he has informed Bing that "your daughter is pretty skinny, but she's a fierce little boxer...she wants to learn kick boxing too if it's okay with you..."
It is. I like knowing that if some randy boy decides to get fresh her, she can kick box him good and hard. Or if some deadbeat tries to jump her some night, he'll be so fucking sorry.....
Maybe we should look into changing our couples membership into a family one....
At any rate, I am now sort of a gym rat. Or I guess the proper term for this is a rehab rat. I never thought that would be me.
I am getting muscles, people. Like...noticeable muscles in my arms and diaphragm. Bing says that it looks like a beginning little six pack and claims that it is sexy.
At any rate, I am liking it. And now that I am getting more of a workout than just walking the dog every day, I sleep better too.
Maybe soon I will stop thinking Lucky Charms for supper is bad and a salad is good.
Who am I kidding? I will never be one of those people.
But, I like seeing my calves tone up. Or as an elderly British woman who happened to be sitting next to me as we dressed afterwards said: "You hahve lovely cahlves, dear."
That brings me to the one downside of the gym: there are lots and lots of naked people there and I have somehow become one of them. At first, I pretty much undressed while holding a towel against my breasts and dressed the same way. Now, I just strip off my wet bathing suit and barely notice the people around me. Which is good, because we are all pretty much damaged in some way or elderly. No fitness nazis here. Just us on the rehab island of misfit toys.
I've never been to a gym where the towels are heated. Where there are big bottles of shampoo, conditioner, body wash and shaving cream in every shower and it is the good stuff, not cheapo. Where there is a spinner to take excess water out of your suit before you put it in your gym bag. Complimentary hair gel.
Free tampons or sanitary pads. It almost makes me wish that I wasn't through menopause already. I would totally stock up on those suckers.
Free razors. I never have to buy razors again or worry about cleaning every bit of body hair out of the bathtub. Nope. I do my weekly shaving of legs in the gym shower. Let it clog their drains instead of mine.
I feel pampered. And healthier. Damn it. I feel healthier. And I LIKE it. What the hell is wrong with this picture?
There are also pilates and yoga classes. While I am not limber enough for pilates, I just might try yoga.
I didn't know her. Would never have known her if she hadn't died.
I was tooling around the internet this weekend and found an article about her. She was 22, a new Yale graduate. She wrote and wrote well. And died in a car crash on Saturday.
I saw the small article of hers called The Opposite of Loneliness and I read it. Wept. How does one so young write so well?
But, think back. When we were 22, we were wise asses, yes. We thought we knew everything. I felt for sure that I understood Walt Whitman. Hemingway. And I saw myself sort of kind of saving the world someday with the rest of my generation.
We didn't. But we aspired. And felt certain that it was in our reach.
I had not yet fallen in love. Not yet. Yet, I felt I understood it innately. And looking back, okay...I didn't really, but I was close, you know? And love is one of those slippery slopes that is different for everyone. Some of us feel like we are falling off a cliff. Others feel as if everything that was topsy turvy finally balanced. Still others just felt buoyant, like a balloon. Love is relative.
But, the truth is that I felt things so much more passionately than I do now. With wisdom has also come complacency and a sort of sad knowledge. When I was 22, I hadn't yet learned most of the big lessons in my life.
I hadn't learned what it felt like when people you loved profoundly disappointed you.
I hadn't learned that one small fist in one small hand could wrap around my heart and hold it so tightly and yet so gently that just the sight of her lips puckering in sleep could make me duck my head and weep.
I didn't know what making money felt like. Or not making it.
I hadn't had any big health scares.
I didn't know what commitment entailed or how it would change me profoundly.
About the only thing that I was wise about was the knowledge that I could survive the loss of a loved one and endure.
Well, and most of my classes. I pretty much aced all of them. So, well...I could produce results on paper that were graded well by professors. So, what I had learned really was hoop jumping. Still. It was not to be sneezed at. It was something.
But, at 22...I felt a profound kinship with the world. I felt part of something great and good. And I trusted that I would add to it. I was, like most 22 year olds....a little vain. A little heady about my talents. And sure that I was pretty much right all the time.
Now, I am 54. And I look back fondly on that 22 year old. But, truly? She was a bit delusional. I am smarter now, savvier about almost everything.
But more jaded too. I don't find myself falling into poetry as maddeningly as I did when I was 22. And Whitman? Now I read Whitman and I know that when I was 22 years old, I didn't really understand him. How could I understand what he meant by grass being the "beautiful uncut hair of graves.".....or that Hemingway wasn't just a master of run on sentences, but also a sort of political genius? I hadn't lived enough to know.
Like Thornton Wilder's heroine, Emily, in Our Town, speaking about the world being too wonderful for mere humans to ever really understand it?
When you are 54, you are closer to that edge and it makes sense. Beautiful sense, but still...sense.
I am so sad for Marina Keegan because I imagine she would have had this really interesting life. Just like I ended up having, or you or that guy who sat next to you in algebra.
But, she never got to feel it, to complete it, to know the world intimately because you have felt all the fear and pain and love and craziness and solitude and joy and peace and wantonness.
She was going to live in New York and write for The New Yorker. I would have liked to watch her progress from a funny, smart 22 year old to an older, wiser, but....more interesting self.
When you are young, you think you are without limits. When you are older, you know that there are limits, but you also know how to circumvent them too. And rise above and sink way down deep and then touch the bottom lightly and push off and slide up to the top again. And the realization that hearts mend and that it can be a horrible process, but a joyful one too.
Marina will never know what it is like to be a mother, a working writer, a soccer mom or a gin soaked mess of one. She was just at the beginning, you know? That place where all is possible and you haven't fallen hard enough to realize later that the getting up part? It was awful, but it was educational and brought wisdom and joy in the mending.
She will never get a chance to look back on her 22 year old self and sort of smile and shake her head. And that is what haunts me.
I never knew Marina Keegan. And now I never will. Not really. I just see what she looked like at the beginning of that journey.
And I like her so much. Just think what she could have been.
If you get a chance...read her last work: The Opposite of Loneliness.
I'm betting that you will miss her too. Even though you never met her.
I'll go into a long diatribe about bad boys later on...
But...for now. Look at Tom Hiddleston's face and tell me that you could resist him.
Granted...it's from Thor, not The Avengers...but god, he's like...perfect in every way.
The hair. The eyes. The expression. The laugh.
Uh huh. Eat him up with spoon.
And it just makes it more compelling that he plays Loki, the god of mischief...a bad boy.
Can never resist those bad boys......or girls.
Any ideas why? Do you share this affliction too or are you into good guys (Captain America?) and good women (Wonder Woman?)....I'm curious...
WHY do you think that is and why are you attracted to a certain kind of man or woman?
I have my own ideas about why I tend to fall hardest for bad boys and girls, but then...tend to pick the good ones in the end.
But...what is it that attracted you to someone you love or loved so very much?
I really want to hear your stories. And tell us the truth. Not the tried and true:
I love a man who makes me laugh (Okay...but in what way?)
or
I like tall, dark and handsome (Okay, but what else?)
or
I have always liked quiet men (How quiet and in every way?)
or
She had a great laugh (What kind? Impish? Broad? Coquettish? Bawdy?)
And then, I'll tell you mine.
I just asked Bing why she was attracted to me and she said it was honestly for my brains and not my looks, although she has no problems with my looks. (Admittedly this was said after I answered, "So...is this a roundabout way of saying that I'm ugly?") She said, "You used big words, but didn't throw them around like a showoff. And okay...I was driving Molly (Liv's pal) home last night and she was telling Liv that she had been a late talker, hadn't talked until she was three, that her parents used to constantly beg her to use her words and then Liv said, When I was little, my mother never had to beg me to use my words, she did say Use your grammar! a lot, though. Okay...that is exactly why I fell in love with you. Plus, you were a chameleon. I dug that. Still do."
This message was on my work answering machine this afternoon:
Hi, sweetheart. I wanted to tell you that I sprayed the garage for ants this afternoon. They were everywhere. But...do me a favor and when you pull in the garage, just hold your breath until you get outside again because I don't want you breathing those fumes, okay? They've dissipated quite a bit, but just....I don't want your lungs hurt. I love you. See you tonight.
I had dinner with my bff last night, Harriet. We met at our favorite restaurant which is not some great little bistro or a diner with a gum snapping waitress with a heart.
Nope.
We like Spaghetti Works.
A chain. Yes. We both like it because we both adore angel hair spaghetti (I refuse to say pasta) and our spouses refuse to eat noodles of any kind. So when we meet for dinner, we go there. I have the same thing EVERY TIME: Angel hair with half beer cheese and half hot naked. She has plain spaghetti with a giant meatball that she splits with me.
She has beer, I have wine. We both gorge ourselves on garlic bread.
And we talk. Long gone are the days when we used to see each other nearly every day. It's how we met, actually. We both had children in the same Montessori school and in that school, parents had to perform sweat equity as part of admittance. Some parent (the hoity toity ones...and yes we had a fair share of those) picked the easier jobs of buying milk for the school for a year at a time or supplying a bus on field trips.
Harriet and I both chose to work the toddler lunch on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. There were about 50 three and four year olds. Our jobs were to set out paper plates and fill everyone's glass with milk. And then just...help. We opened yogurt cups, pudding cups, jello cups and cup of soups. We had certain parents who we hated because they were idiots...like the one who sent a can of Campbells soup with her child every day and we were expected to open it, add the water and heat it up and then serve it. Try doing that when four kids need you to peel their tangerines, 5 need their bananas peeled, one has just spilled their milk and three peed (or worse) their pants.
And keep the place down to a dull roar.
It was a hard job but we became instant friends and have retained that friendship even though her kids now go to public school (her sister died and Harriet and her husband took in her sister's two children and they could no longer afford to send all their kids to Montessori) and she had a surprise baby three years ago and so instead of going back to work as she planned, she decided to prolong the stay-at-home mommy role.
We text daily, gab on the phone weekly and go out to dinner monthly.
So, we had news to catch up on. We talked about softball (her kids suck at it, mine excels), drama club (her son is a natural, the only thing that would be worse than a dancing class, in Liv's opinion, would be a drama one) and spouses (her husband is a workaholic who worries constantly about money, mine has a touch of OCD and has recently had back ailments, so has been crabbier than hell)...
And then I told her my news:
Maria: Bing got another Fulbright.
Harriet: You are fucking shitting me.
I shook my head.
H: When does she leave?
M: January.
H: You are fucking SHITTING me!
Nope. Not fucking shitting you.
I confessed that Bing had mentioned to me back in December that she was applying for the Fulbright that would go from January 2013 through April 2013 and I had smiled vaguely and said that sounded fun and that I hoped she would get it.
But...the thing is...I NEVER thought she would get it. She applies for LOTS of things and rarely gets them. And what are the odds of winning two Fulbrights in 3 years? So, now I have to be all adult about this and be happy for her when I really want to smash her teeth out.
Well, sort of. I don't really want to do that...I just wish she wasn't so freakin' smart. And I wish that back in December I had said, "ARE YOU NUTS? No way, Ray. You can't leave in January. And losing a salary for 4 months? That is about 16 thousand bucks, sugar. NO. N O spells NO."
Harriet sat back and took a long pull on her beer.
"If Ken did that, I would kill him."
I told her that it would be worse if he did it. She has FIVE kids. One is a toddler. She needs a helper. I don't.
Harriet looked at me hard for a second.
"This is really upsetting you, isn't it?"
I nodded blearily.
"Why? I mean...EXACTLY what upsets you?"
I thought about it. And when I realized my answer I was ashamed.
Maria: I don't want to be alone in the winter. I want someone to be snowed in with. Someone to make hot soup for me. Rub my back."
I sat in silence for a second and then looked across the table at her.
"I'm an asshole, yes? Oh, and can I have my half meatball now?"
Harriet cut her meatball neatly in half and speared my half on my plate.
"You aren't really an asshole, Maria," she said, thoughtfully. "More like a weenie. And that surprises me because you aren't the weenie type. You have always said that having a lid for your pot has been hard for you and now...well...you get four months of no lid and you're acting all scaredy cat. What is the deal, chicken butt?"
I started throwing my hands in the air like a dramatic weenie.
"I DON'T KNOW!" I sputtered. "I just...HATE the idea of her not being here for four months. What if she meets some Indian woman and falls in love and decides that living with me kind of sucks the big one?"
Harriet burst out laughing and some spaghetti spilled on her tee shirt. She swore lightly and dabbed at it.
"Maria, she is not going to fall in love with a woman who looks like that gorgeous Indian woman in Slumdog Millionaire. Bing still looks at you like she wants to eat you. Ken stopped looking at me with that sort of hunger years ago. Honey...," she started and then seeing that I was dead serious, she reached across the table and took my hand.
"Stop trying to flirt with me, perv," I said. She took my hand and kissed it and then bit my index finger. This made me laugh just like she knew I would.
I tried to verbalize.
Which I am not the best at....
"I know it doesn't sound like me and it scares me too. I mean, I used to be this freewheeling woman, loved my freedom, liked to be loosey goosey and not tied down. And then...I turned 50. And therin lies the rub. I started having....infirmities like rheumatoid arthritis. I got really, really sick and almost died..."
Harriet interrupted me. "I KNOW. I was there. PLEASE don't pull that shit again. I LOVE you. If you aren't on the planet, I can't stand it. I lost my sister. I refuse to lose my best friend. Don't you fucking dare get sick again, promise?"
I said I promised.
She made me pinky swear and I accused her of trying to hold hands with me again.
"Harriet? This obsession you have with me is really cute, but I'm taken. So lay off with the trying to feel me up, okay? Jaysus, what's next? Are you going to try to honk my boob?"
We laughed and took bites. There is nothing better than angel hair with beer cheese. Yum.
I continued.
"Anyway, I've gotten sappy in my old age and it's scaring the shit out of me. Pretty soon, I'll be checking Bing's shirts for lipstick or demanding to know why it took her two hours to go to Target and get paper for the printer. Something weird has happened, bestie. I've been.....domesticated! I LIKE cuddling on the sofa and watching True Blood together. I like it that we have couple talk, that when we're at a party, she'll lift up her shirt and flash me her boob when no one is looking. And we will laugh quietly because, as my heroine Taylor Swift says, "this love is ours" and all that shit. And now she's leaving. Why the hell does she have this need to travel all of a sudden in the past few years? And no...it can't be to Maryland or Tennessee or Florida. It has to be to Africa and Japan and now...India. I feel like she should want to come home to me each and every night. And it KILLS me to see me going...soft. Pretty soon I'll be wearing an apron and chilling martini glasses for us to have a little nightcap when she gets home from work. I'll even be taking off her jacket and hanging it up and telling her I'll press it for her in a jiff! UGH."
Harriet smiled and took another bite of her spaghetti. She pointed to the untouched meatball on my plate. "Are you gonna eat that? Because I'm still hungry."
I sat it on her plate.
She asked me if I wanted her opinion. I said sure.
Because I can count on her to be honest at all times. That's why I sort of love her face off.
"You're still in there. That wildflower. It's just that my bff, Calamity Jane, has now stopped courting calamity with her suitors. You are committed, Maria. It happens. And Bing is having a minor mid life crisis. She is terrified about her back. She's always been in tip top shape. You've said it yourself. She doesn't even get headaches. And she's so athletic. So, she wants to see the world. Before she can't. What is kind of weird is that you are moving in opposite directions at the same time. You are settling in and she's feeling her oats. Four months will go wicked fast. And you will be FINE. Remember when she went to Africa? You were all sad for about ten days and then BAM! you perked up BIG TIME. And when it was time for her to come back home? You were all god, I don't know if I can stand to listen to her playing jazz ALL THE TIME anymore..it's been so quiet and nice around here, reading my books. We'll have fun. And honey? It's okay to feel unsettled. I'd be unsettled if Ken wanted to do that. It's normal. Wow...never thought I'd say YOU were normal, kitty cat. You'll be fine. And we'll do lots of fun things. Promise. Okay?"
I nodded. And because I truly love this woman, I reached out and took her hand. She squeezed it.
"Now," she finished. "Don't be such a weenie. Let's get dessert. I'm fucking starving."
So we did. And as I drove her home afterwards....we sang every word of Supermassive Black Hole right along with my Muse tape. She is the only person I know who is completely fearless about singing wildly in a car with me. A little off tune, but what the fuck.
I'm feeling better about things. And, to be perfectly honest...I did think about all the things that I can do without guilt when she is gone:
Long hot showers.
Dinners of cold cereal.
Sit on the computer for more than one hour increments without her standing in the doorway, looking at me and sighing.
Listen to music I like while I drive.
And its not like we can't communicate. I learned that when she went to Africa. We can text. Skype. I can flash her my boob over the internet.
And when she comes home, there will be so many good stories. I don't want her to be 85 years old and regret not going to India.
Last night I was being very quiet because Bing was watching the last offering of her favorite show: House. There I sat, innocently reading my book.
During a commercial, Bing got up to sit next to me. I thought she wanted to cuddle a little bit.
"I have something to tell you!" she said.
I smiled. Waited.
"I found out today that I got another Fulbright," she said, her voice almost squeaking with excitement.
"Oh, my GOD!" I exclaimed. "That is wonderful? When? Next summer?"
"No," she said, a little nervously. "I will leave for India in January and be gone until April. Oh..wait. House is back on. I'll share more later."
I sat there stunned. IN THE WINTER? She was leaving me in the WINTER?
I don't mind spending summers alone. Like the song says, in the summertime...the livin' is easy.
But...WINTER? And what about school?
During the next commercial, she said (in what I thought was a very cavalier manner) that she would have to take a four month leave of absence from school.
"Without pay?" I gulped.
She nodded.
And then the commercial was over.
I was sort of shocked and sort of steaming. I was SO MAD that she picked THIS time to tell me. We kept having to stop talking so that she could watch television.
So..yes...no pay for four months. That will take a huge bite out of our income. Will have to dip into savings. And what will she do for health insurance?
India is cheap, she told me.
WHAT?
NO health insurance?
What about her back?
Well, she was smiling. This just gave her LOTS of incentive to work hard to get better.
In the end, I just smiled and told her to go for it.
I don't get this obsession that she has with traveling. But, it is her life and her decision.
But India is so far away and she will be gone for so long and it will be IN THE WINTER.
I finally had to have a long talk with myself in the bathtub. I've lived alone before and did just fine. A LOT of women live on their own. I will be fine.
And this is such an honor for her, it truly is. I am really proud of her.
But...god...all the way to India for FOUR months in the WINTER.
You should me. I am actually....sunkissed. This is rare. I am of Irish stock, I burn in the sun, peel and then burn again. I don't tan much.
So, I was startled this morning when I glanced at myself in the mirror after my shower and I looked really...sunkissed, not burnt to a crisp. I've been gardening and going to Liv's softball games (a double header on Saturday) and I almost always forget to put on sunscreen, so I expected to look...reddish...not sweetly pinkish.
But, mother nature smiled on me for once and I look...okay. I will never be like Bing or Liv. They never burn, just bronze beautifully. They both have olive colored skin that turns nicely in the sun, never sizzles like mine does.
You should see Liv on that ball field. Her coach is very feel good, so believes that instead of having the best play and the others get a chance occasionally...everyone gets a turn doing everything. Well, Liv didn't join the team until late in the year, she wasn't sure she wanted to play softball, hadn't played since first grade. She thought that maybe being on a swim team would be enough for this year. But...my totally-not-like-me-when-it-comes-to-sports child kept hearing the softball siren call, so she finally made up her mind to join. Somehow I produced an athlete and yes, I'm as surprised as anyone who knows me.
And then most of the teams were filled. We finally found a team that had room for her and can I just admit right here, right now that although they are called "the pinks"...it would not be unfair to call them the "bad news bears."
Not a lot of real talent. A feel good coach, who doesn't so much coach as constantly praises for every single caught ball (because it is....um...RARE that they catch it) and he is about as talented a coach as I would be. Bing (who played on softball teams until college graduation and then coached for several years) is convinced that this man ("Call me Phil") has no idea how the game is played at all. Her hands are usually in balls of fists during the whole game as she grits her teeth and tries not to leap up and throttle the coach.
So...when Liv decided that she wanted to try out for pitcher, that door was wide open and her coach was just fine with giving her a chance. Bing, Liv, Socks and I spent many, many nights at the park where Bing taught her how to do the "wind up" and somehow got this tall, gangly, very skinny girl to produce a mean fast ball. I usually sat on a picnic table and watched or was constantly yanked around by Socks, who could not get it into his head that he was not to chase the ball. And then...a light went over my head and I started letting him go when Liv batted, so that he could retrieve the ball and proudly bring it back to drop at Bing's feet.
This weekend, Liv was allowed to pitch.
And as Hey Zeus as my witness, I was AMAZED at how good she was. Her poise. Her way of smiling sweetly at the batter and then slamming the ball at home base like she meant business. One batter after another went down and towards the end, their knees were shaking and they were quaking as they peered nervously at that tall girl who looked like a stiff wind would knock her over sent that ball slamming towards them at 100 miles an hour. Bing was almost crying, she was so proud. Socks had to be kept at home because he can't stand not to be a part of the team and chase those balls.
Unfortunately, Liv has to take turns with three other wannabe pitchers on her team. Intellectually, I understand this perfectly. There is a sweet girl on the team named Spencer (and you would think with a name like that, she would be good at sports, yes?) who is so hopelessly bad at this game that you wince when you see her try to do anything. If the ball comes at her, she cowers. When she bats, she drags the bat behind her to the plate and looks like she can barely lift it. When she is playing in the back field and a ball soars her way, she doesn't really run after it, she sort of....lopes. And then she has no idea where to throw it when she finally picks it up. This doesn't usually matter since the batter who should have made it to second base TOPS is usually rounding home by this time. Once she managed to throw the ball at the first base player's head. Spencer's mother often sits next to me on the bleachers and she has high praise for the coach. She knows that without his good grace, Spencer would be on that bench. So, yeah...I get it. And I also tend to think that, at this age, they need to be learning the nuances of the game and not be overly competitive about things.
Of course, it does make it hard to watch when "Call me Phil" lets Ashley pitch instead of Liv. Ashley throws the ball slow and steadily reasonably close to home plate. She is a batter's dream. They scored 10 runs in one inning. Liv played third base and didn't get to touch the ball once since no matter where the other players were, everyone threw the ball to first base. I thought that Bing was going to blow a gasket.
"I get it. Every child needs to experience being on a team. BUT, for pete sake's, Maria, they do need to learn the basics of the game, don't you think?
Yes, I agree. It is painful to watch your child not get to strut their stuff. But, a good lesson, I suppose. And, you know...this whole thing is harder for me and Bing to watch than for Liv. She seems happy when she pitches but not upset when she doesn't. I'm wondering if this lesson is more for us than for her.....
So, we will all be good sports.
And today, we all decided to treat ourselves to a movie. But which one? Liv wanted Dark Shadows. I wanted The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Bing wanted The Avengers.
We considered. While Bing had no real interest in Dark Shadows, I will watch anything with Johnny Depp. And neither Bing nor Liv thought that The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel looked interesting, we all thought we could sit through The Avengers.
And it was a lot of fun. As in Thor, I fell madly in love with Tom Hiddleston all over again. And really, bad guys are SO much more interesting than the good ones, although Robert Downey, Jr. has that good-guy-who-is sort-of-a-smarty-pants-bad-guy-at-heart thing going on. We got up early to go to the morning showing and it was nearly sold out. And we did what we always do when we go to morning movies: we got egg mcmuffins on the way and ate them when the movie started. So..yes..breakfast and a movie!
Seriously, go see this man:
Now, it is time to prepare for another work week. Bing and Liv are both done with school for the summer on Wednesday, so they are both in great moods.
It will be a slow summer, the kind we haven't had in a while. Liv will finish up soft ball and then go on to swim team. Bing has no travel plans this summer, will teach a summer school course at the local university. There will plenty of time for us to weed the garden and sing to the vegetables and herbs. I am still trying hard to talk Bing into going to Branson with me for some couples time this summer. Oh, and did I mention that Lee DeWyze just happens to be playing down there? So, if Bing won't go with me, anyone want to meet up with me to go see Lee? No coupling of course, just good ole fashioned Amurikan fun.
Liv has announced that she is finally ready to change her bedroom from the little girl's room it is now. Although she has teened it up a bit, she still has a big round rug with the alphabet circling it and some borders around the wall that seemed a good idea when she was a baby. (A cow jumps over the moon while dishes run away with spoons.) Now, she wants some wallpaper with tiny primroses on it and a soft Lakota rug made by her paternal grandmother. It's well past time for her Zippy Monkey quilt to be replaced with an Lakota quilt that will look much more like her. She has a painting of our family up now that she did when she was 5. She wants to do a new one now to replace it. Her baseball bat will sit in the corner while her bathing suit hangs on her doorknob all summer long.
I will hate to see those dishes running away with spoons go....but...it's time. It's time.
Next weekend is Memorial Day weekend, the official beginning of Summertime. But, it's already here in our house now. Everything feels sun splashed.
A magical summer is coming. I can feel it in my bones.....
It was February 15, 2002. Liv was 2 and a half years old. We were at the grocery store. Liv was sitting in the grocery cart while we grocery shopped. I was paused, a bottle of Dorothy Lynch salad dressing in my hand. I was looking at the calorie content, something I rarely did but had recently decided to start doing after I happened to see my butt in a mirror and was startled at how enormous large it looked.
I didn't notice that Liv had reached for a bottle of salad dressing too and when it slipped from her drooly baby fingers and bounced off the cart and hit the floor, smashing into smithereens....well, we were both startled.
Liv looked into my eyes and kind of shook her head like....Well, now...that's just GREAT, isn't it?
And then she said, clear as a bell.
"Well....fuck."
I froze, not knowing how to react. Should I ignore her or what? I mean what was Mommy protocol here? And, stupidly, I actually wondered where she had learned THAT word.
Me, of course. The one she spent every single waking hour of the day with when she wasn't sleeping.
And that was when I realized that about five other very judgmental mommies were staring at us.
Did that woman's child just say the "f" word?
And, seriously...I totally hate it when people say "the f word" instead of "fuck." Obviously, I do because instead of saying, "Well...the f word" my daughter chose to say the other.
I could feel them staring, waiting to see what I would do.
I didn't do anything. Instead, I pulled my cart over the mess and announced loudly that I would go find someone to clean this up and please, be careful now...
And then I did that. I slid Liv from the cart, put her on my hip and went and found someone with a name tag and soon it was announced over the loudspeaker that there needed to be a clean up in aisle 4, please. I returned to the cart and waited until someone showed up and then I apologized in a heartfelt manner and continued shopping.
Liv didn't say anything else. I didn't yell at her because it was MY fault, not hers that the salad dressing dropped. If I had been watching her like a good mother (and I can't tell you how often I fail at achieving that status), she would not have been curious and reached out to touch that brightly colored bottle.
As we stood in the waiting line to be checked out, I saw one of the narrow eyed, judgmental mommies ahead of us with her perfectly coiffed hair and her perfectly coiffed and dressed toddler in the cart. She had that look on her face that said, "Good lord, she can't even dress herself or her child properly, why am I surprised that her child has a dirty mouth? That's probably what she does all day, swears, smokes cigarettes and dresses like she doesn't care that she has a spaghettio stain on her shirt."
Truth is that I rarely dressed up for grocery shopping back then or now. I often had my hair pulled back in a clippee and wore jeans with rips (not fashionable back then) and a man's shirt or tee shirt that usually had some sort of stain on it. In fact, no matter how much I changed her, Liv almost always battled diaper rash so we both reeked of Desitin almost daily. To this day, I wax nostalgic at the odor of that nasty white cream. And Liv battled me daily by insisting on picking out her own clothes and I usually just let her wear whatever she chose (I've learned to pick my mother battles) and it was often purple overalls with a lime green tee shirt with Elmo on it and bright blue socks with her favorite pair of white sandals that she wore no matter what the weather...or her red snow boots with the white fur on them, even in July. And while I brushed her hair faithfully, she had the kind of hair that always looked like someone just rubbed a balloon on her head.
I didn't say anything until we were in the car. And then before I turned the ignition on, I said, "Liv, it is not cool to say the word fuck okay? I know I say it, but it is an unacceptable word and we both need to quit with that word, okay?"
Liv looked at me thoughtfully for a moment and then said okay. But this made her curious, this no-nooing of words, so we spent the rest of the drive home talking about words that were okay and words that weren't.
"How about popsicle? Is that an acceptable word?"
Yes, honey.
"And trash can?"
Yes.
"Goat?"
Yes.
"French fries?"
Yes. (Well, let's try not to say it too often...have you seen my butt?)
"Swing set?"
Fine, a fine word.
"Nap?"
Not a fun word, I agree. But a VERY good word.
"Door bell?"
YES, Liv.
"Knee cap?"
Um...do you even know what a knee cap is?
"Television?"
After 3 hours reading Goodnight, Moon or The Cat In The Hat, I'm good with the word television.
Finally, she tired of quizzing me and did what she always did: fell asleep in the car seat so that she would not be tired AT ALL at nap time. In fact, it was not uncommon for me to engage her in singing the Alphabet Song or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star or Oh Susanna as loudly as I could just to keep her awake in the car. But, this time...I was thankful for the break.
So, we went home and I cut up some apple slices for her and let her watch this show that she loved called Caillou. I never understood the appeal. The child whose name was Caillou looked like a little cancer survivor and he was a bit smarmy for my taste. He also had parents who were sickeningly hip, like green hippies in soft colors. They weren't ever so tired of parenting that they sat on the floor and let their child put every single hair clip in the house in their hair (not that Caillou could even wear them since he was bald as a billiard ball even at the age of 4...and remarkably, the parents seemed not to notice) and then when the child was napping, well....FORGOT that they had 324 little butterfly and bow hot pink clippees in their hair and ended up startling the UPS guy when he came to deliver a package.
Yes, this did happen to me and if something similar never happened to you...then I don't want to be friends with you.
And, remarkably...I didn't put together why the UPS guy looked like he wanted to turn and run back to his truck until an hour later when I reached up to scratch my head and my hand caught on a little plastic unicorn hair clip.
So..I suppose it just figures that I have a child who said the word fuck in a grocery store, huh?
At any rate...I did write this down in my diary, so that is how I always remember the date and one day I will regale Liv's prom date with this story and she will want to fall through the floor and die.
Suffice it to say that after that day, I cleaned up my mouth and have only sworn in front of her a handful of times and then apologized profusely.
Because, underneath my ripped jeans and stained tee shirts, I really tried to be a good parent.
We were just joking about this yesterday in my office.
On Monday, everyone in my building was called to a meeting to talk about the rash of break ins that were occurring in our parking lot. We work in an area of the city that is known as high risk, although I have never had any problems walking to and from my car. Apparently some others have had problems and one person had her car broken into and her cell phone stolen.
When she stood to tell this story, it was like she was getting an oscar or something. I mean, she dressed for the occasion. Take my word for it, I've seen this woman in the hall and she doesn't usually dress so smartly. This time, she looked nicely dressed all right...if this was 1982. She had on a business suit with shoulder pads and she wore a bow around the neck of her blouse. Even her hair was cut in a page boy. Wow. Retro baby.
But, she stood up and spoke breathlessly about how she worked a bit late last night, her boss had given her some last minute work to do (at this remark, all the building secretaries looked at each other and rolled their eyes, obviously understanding this tactic well...ok...not the secretaries in OUR office because neither I nor my two cohorts pull that sort of shit...it's quittin' time at 4:30 for the secretaries come hell or high water) and well, she is a diligent, hard worker so she was working late.
This story was taking WAY too long, folks. I was getting bored. We all were, but I could see that she had probably practiced this at home and badly needed the attention so I did not yawn. I FELT like yawning, but I didn't succumb. So, she is finally at the end of the long story about how she changed out of her high heels to her sneakers because she doesn't want to scuff her expensive work heels on the asphalt and yes, she actually used the word asphalt so now I KNEW she had practiced in front of her mirror.
Well, she gets to her car and the passenger side window had been broken and her cell phone which she left on the FRONT SEAT of her car had been stolen.
Now, the question floated in my head (and probably many other heads too) about why on earth she would leave her pricey iphone on the front seat of her car where anyone passing by could see it. She didn't address this idiocy and I didn't question her on it. Frankly, I just wanted to see if there were any of those chocolate doughnuts left with sprinkles because I had seen them walking into the conference room and had bravely walked right on by, but now I was jonesin' for one.
So, after everyone had oohed and aahhhhed over her predicament properly and she had finally walked wobbling in her heels back to her seat, our two security officers announced that we would all be given a small vile of pepper spray that conveniently hooked right on to our key rings.
Now, the security guard told us, those little canisters were worth $9.99 apiece but we were getting them all free of charge because our building management cared a lot about our safety.
One of the building officers helpfully instructed us to BE CAREFUL with that spray and to please not blast ourselves in the face with it.
My co-workers and I guffawed and shook our heads. Who could be that stupid?
I nabbed a strawberry glazed doughnut on my way out as some piggish people had taken all the chocolate ones with sprinkles.
Back in the office, my co-workers and I carefully cut open the packaging...and hey..what the fuck IS it with the people who package these kinds of things? It's like they want you to cut your finger off while you try to pry that thing out of the hard plastic packaging.
Or...as our office manager suggested, we could give them to her two year old who would have those packages opened licketty split.
I went home that night and showed my pepper spray to Bing.
"Better be careful, Maria," she said sweetly. "Leave it to you to spray yourself with that shit."
I told her that I was armed and dangerous now, so she better just watch her mouth, missy.
And then as I got into the car this morning, I went to turn the key to start the car and managed to spray myself with yes......PEPPER SPRAY....half in my mouth and half up my nose.
Because I am just so smart like that.
Brilliant, really.
In between dealing with my streaming nose and burning mouth, I warned Liv, "DO NOT tell Bing about this or no allowance this week, kid."
She was laughing so hard that I don't think she heard me. After her initial horrified face as she asked me if I was all right, she quickly put up her hands to hide the fact that she was trying not to laugh and then she finally gave up hiding and just looked at me and roared with mirth.
So, yeah...it was a Maria day. I went to work, picked up the dry cleaning, stopped at the library to pick up some books on hold for us...and oh..yeah...
I'm bothered by many things about Mitt Romney. Like a lot of Americans, I read the Washington Post and caught the story about Mitt's bullying (or as my Republican family calls it: those silly hijinks that we all do in high school and college)...
Sorry?
I did a lot of things in high school, college, and adulthood that I'm not proud of. But I have never cut anyone's hair while they wept and begged me to stop and screamed out for help. I have never steered a blind person into a door and then giggled hysterically when they ran into it. I have never said, "Atta girl!" to a gay man when he commented in class. I've never done any college hazing. And as an adult, I have never counseled a woman who had a 50% chance of dying if she kept her baby to go through with her pregnancy.
I do realize that we are all sort of idiotic in high school but there is a difference between acting like a dumb ass and acting like a bully.
And I think that most of us are pretty much the people that we are going to be as adults when we are seniors in high school. Not fully formed, no. But...close. Most bullies that I knew in high school remained bullies as they went on in their lives.
Think back to yourself in high school. Have you changed that much? Ok. You are older, wiser. But, is your personality, are your morals much different? Mine aren't.
And I don't think Mitt's are either.
I think he's a bully. And anyone who says that they love firing people is just....someone to be avoided. I do not want this man to be president.
I'm so damn sick of defending Obama. The naysayers against him go glassy eyed when I remind them that it isn't like Dubya left him a spanking clean White House to move into. I compare it to buying a house, actually. Obama bought a house and, ok...was naive about how much fixing up it needed. But, how the hell was he supposed to get anything fixed when most of the plumbers, electricians, etc. (house of representatives, senate) refused to help him fix this house up because they were pouting that their choice of homeowner didn't land in that house?
Obama is not and has never been a failure, except in one area: I think he was too confident that he could right some wrongs and didn't realize how hard it would be to work with a house and senate who forced him to try with one hand tied behind his back. He could not have foreseen that happening. And really? Who could? Who would? Don't we elect our officials to work WITH each other? Isn't that the cornerstone of the Gettysburg address?
of the people, by the people, for the people....
People ask me (Republicans mostly): WHAT HAS OBAMA DONE FOR US?
Plenty.
He re-engaged talks on global warming.
He expanded the SCHIP program to cover health care for 4 billion more children.
He expanded vaccination programs.
He ended previous policy of offering tax benefits to corporations who outsource American jobs.
He instituted withdrawal of US troops in Iran.
He limited lobbyists access to the White House.
He removed restrictions on stem cell and bio medical research.
He ended the previous policy of awarding no-bid defense contracts.
He made more loans available to small businesses.
He attempted to reform the nation's health care system which is the priciest in the world yet leaves 50 million without insurance.
And let's see...
There was that small thing of implementing a US auto industry rescue plan....
And the US now has a no-torture policy and is FINALLY in compliance with Geneva Convention standards....
There is much more media access than in the previous administration...
OH...
And he quite possibly prevented a second Great Depression.
Plenty. And all with one arm tied behind his back. Imagine what he could have done if the pouty faces in the house and senate had worked with him instead of against him.
I tend to agree with James Carville when he was interviewed by Anderson Cooper. Mitt is either lying when he says he doesn't remember those incidents in high school or is a pretty shallow person to NOT remember them. I think that if I had my friends hold down a fellow student while I cut off his hair while he cried and screamed for help...I would REMEMBER IT and FEEL ASHAMED.
I would have had much more respect if he had simply said, "Yes, I do remember that and I feel terribly ashamed of myself. I am so very sorry for doing that."
I can forgive someone if they are sorry. But to have FIVE people remember the incident and not remember it at all? That is not someone I want for president. And lying about it? A lie is more forgivable if no one was hurt by it. Someone was hurt by Mitt's lie. Thus, the least he could do is make amends.
But, to pretty much say that it was such a small thing that he doesn't remember it and oh...well...he's sorry if he hurt anyone? What a small man.
Our country deserves a big man for president. Not a small bully.
And...I am good with debate on this one, but if it gets mean spirited, I won't publish your opinion either pro or con.
I got a lump in my throat when I read that you had died.
Your books have been a mainstay in my daughter's library from the day that she was born.
When I began the slippery slope of raising a child, I was not educated about children's books for her generation, so I just went into a book store and browsed.
Every single one of your books made it into my cart. Every. Single. One.
There were a lot of choices and some of them were just too gooey for me to stomach. I wasn't interested in the books that seemed to spend all of their time talking about how much a child was loved, how perfect a specimen that child was.
If I parented correctly, this should be ingrained into their spirit. I didn't want to get a toothache reading a book to my child. I wanted us to have some fun together.
Your books, along with Dr. Seuss did that for me. Personally, I wasn't all that crazy about the Dr. Seuss books but I could see their appeal to children and my daughter fell madly in love with The Cat In The Hat from day one, so they made it to our shelves too.
But your books amazed me. They were not only beautifully illustrated, but they were extremely interesting and did not insult a child's intelligence. They were beautifully written semantically. Reading them aloud was the key. The words came alive when spoken aloud.
I enjoyed the fact that you were gay and felt no need to make a big deal of it or hide it. You just were who you were. My favorite interview was the one you did with Jon Stewart where when asked if you loved children, you replied, "I like them few and far between." There was nothing fey or twinkly eyed about you. You just worked hard at writing and illustrating brilliant books.
My favorite, like most everyone I know, is Where The Wild Things Are. I can still see my daughter at four years old, sitting close to me on the sofa. She made claws with her stubby little fingers when the monsters showed their terrible claws. She threw back her head in a deep voiced baby girl roar when they roared their terrible roars. And my favorite: she would bare her perfect pearly white teeth (with a few missing) when they gnashed their terrible teeth.
I still have this book memorized and she is now almost 13.
My daughter's favorite book was a tie between The Sign On Rosie's Door and Outside Over There. She often made a sign for her bedroom door copying Rosie's If you want to know a secret, knock three times. I spent many hours knocking three times to find that my daughter could also be Alinda, a lovely singer.
But, we baked cakes to the songs from Chicken Soup With Rice, both of us shaking our heads over Pierre's cautionary tale and the one who was Johnny. And to this day, we sing Alligators All Around in the car together sometimes. I confess that I am partial to the letters h (having headaches), p (pushing people) and t (throwing tantrums)....
But, you know...we loved all of your books. We loved Kenny's Window and his dreams of a faraway land, Very Far Away (my daughter swore that if I gave her a sibling, she would behave, truly!) and especially In the Night Kitchen which I loved not only for the way that you refused to shy away from scary things, but also because you let the boy be naked.
We liked Some Swell Pigs, Seven Little Monsters and We Are All In The Dumps With Jack And Guy.
We are all in the dumps For diamonds are thumps The kittens have gone to St. Pauls! The baby is bit The Moon's in a fit And the houses are built Without walls.
One of my favorite times was when a friend of mine came over to our house to visit, bringing her toddler son and Liv, my daughter, carried him into her room to play and when I checked on them a half hour later, they were cuddled in the rocker that I used to sit and read to her in, and there she was....reading Bumble Ardy to that little boy.
The only book of yours that was not an instant hit at our house was your pop up book, Mommy? Liv could not abide pop up books, would strain at the bit to tear the pages or mash them down flat. But we still loved the story.
I feel like I want to call you Maurice, but should probably call you Mr. Sendak because I am so in awe of you, of your talent.
You were a big part of my daughter's childhood and my first (and to be only) time parenting.
I will miss you, but you live on in all of the books that are still in my daughter's book case. She can't bear to box them up as she did with her other childhood books. So, your books sit with all the different colored fairy books, with Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Charlotte's Web, Sarah, Plain And Tall, Where The Sidewalk Ends, all of Langston Hughes' poetry, The Diary Of Anne Frank, The Witch Of Blackbird Pond, Roll Of Thunder, Hear My Cry and the entire series of the All-Of-A-Kind-Family and the Little House books.
My daughter is a voracious reader like her mother and father and you helped bring her to that place.
Thank you for being such a lovely part of our life together.
Mr. Sendak? Maurice?
Bravo. And wherever you are, I hope you are making a wild rumpus.
I've been home for over a week now. Liv and I took a short trip to the small Iowa town where I grew up several days ago. Two of my sisters still live there with their families and this town is sort of the touch stone for everyone. Well, everyone but me.
I have never liked going there. I used to refer to it for many years as home and then finally it occurred to me this was not my home anymore. My family with Bing and my friends was my home.
I want Liv to know her Aunts, Uncles and Cousins, though. She is kind of stuck in the middle. The first group of cousins are in their teens, the rest are in grade school. She tends to hang with the older ones.
Going home just....stings. I feel my stomach tighten and ache as soon as we pass the sign with the WELCOME TO NAME on it. Suddenly, I feel like Ponyboy in The Outsiders, like Boo Radley hiding in the shadows. I feel like the bad seed who broke her mother's heart by loving a woman.
And it is ridiculous, really. I am in my fifties now. No one really remembers me. Most of my peers have either moved away or wouldn't recognize me. My mother is long dead. My sisters welcome us into their homes.
But the town sinks into my bones like lead poisoning when I am there for too long.
Too many hard memories, the worst being my mother's face as she ordered me out of her home, my childhood home and told me never to come back until I was ready to beg for forgiveness of the town priest. And her.
I went on with my life, lived for over a decade on my own. Made a good life for myself, became a professional. Found love, lost love. Made enough money to live well. But, there was always this voice in the back of my head that would not listen to my psychological reasoning. The voice that whispered, you broke your mother's heart...you hurt her....you are a bad person....a bad seed.
Crazy.
And I've never been the sort of person who believes in blaming one's mother. I see too many people who use that for a crutch, a way to not live fully.
"This is ALL Mommy's fault!"
I can't go there. In my heart, I believe that mother thought that she was doing the proper thing, the correct thing, driven by her intense religious beliefs.
Still, I know that I was collateral damage in that war in her heart and it stings. No way around it. I will go along thinking that I have dealt with this and then....WHAM....I go back to that little town and suddenly I am nauseated and scared and anxious. Suddenly, I am that 24 year old girl who in one misplaced dinner conversation lost her family and was completely alone.
When I was back in that town last week, I felt my stomach clench from the first sight of the town and the unsettled feeling never really went away. It threatened to jump up into my throat several times but I mentally battled it down, kept a light conversation with my sisters and their families.
Liv and I went to mass with my family while we were there and I sat in the pew with her, silently looking around at the signs of the cross while the priest droned on. So many memories. So many Sunday mornings spent in this place. Liv and I held hands, her thumb making windshield wiper passes over mine.
I went to school here with my sisters. Made friends. Had a boyfriend. Got all A's. Sat in the school lunchroom joining the laughter of my friends as they talked about who was dating who now, what teacher was just so mean.
And all the time, I felt distant, as if I were watching from afar as I sat right there.
I did my chores, worked in countless gardens with my mother. Had her wake me up at dawn every day in the summer to go out and weed the garden with her before it got too hot. I snapped beans, shelled peas, shucked corn and fed the chickens, the pigs, the outside dogs.
I tamped all those crazily butterflying feelings that kept slamming up against my rib cage when I would least expect it. We drove by the high school football field and I could hear the drum beats in my head, feel that lonely sadness in my heart, of being right there in the bleachers but being so different. The odd one out who everyone thought fit like a glove.
I was relieved when the time was over and we were driving home, freshly hugged and kissed by my family members. I returned their hugs but felt in my heart like I was acting a part. I love my sisters, but when I am in this small town, I feel as if some part of me is still screaming. And the pain flies around my temples and my hands, my heart, my soul.
Liv and I talked on the ride home. I asked her if she had fun with her cousins and she shrugged.
"You know, they are all just kind of...well....one dimensional. Does that sound snotty?" she asked.
I thought for a moment. Told her it depended. What did she mean, exactly?
"Well," she said, her voice quiet and careful. "I mean...there are NO black people in this town, Mama. And they make fun of the Mexicans who have to live in those awful houses. Talk about them like they are the socs and the Mexican families are the greasers, like in that S. E. Hinton book. And they all go to church and bow their heads but it's like...they have no diversity in their lives. There is so much gossip and well...okay...I just felt homesick for...for...US....for our family. You, Bing, Me. Dad. Our friends. It kind of feels creepy in that town. Like...Pleasantville or Stepford, you know? Does this make sense? I don't mean to be rude about your blood relatives. MY blood relatives. It's like...they look at me as if I am less than because I have a different life then theirs. And it's ....it's SAD, MAMA! They don't know any better, do they?"
I wanted to kiss her at that moment and told her so.
She went on.
"And, it bothers me that they were so mean to you for all those years. Mama, they DESERTED you...over...what? Some stupid thing like homosexuality? How can they all be so small? Do I sound snotty? I don't mean to be that way, truly. How could you ever forgive them for hurting you like that?"
So we had plenty to talk about the rest of the way home. But, as the miles stretched away from my little town, I felt my heart warm and my spine relax. We were almost home.
When we got home and I was safe in Bing's arms again, her nose in my hair, her whispering that she had missed me so damn much. But, now I was home, all was well, she said.
I soaked in her smell, her touch, her kisses. So did Liv. We were like puppies around her, laughing and vying for her hugs.
Later that night, after a meal together and after Liv and I had written our thank you notes to my sisters for their hospitality (my mother called these bread and butter notes), I was upstairs in the shower, the hot sweet water pouring over me.
It was then that I let myself break down. Cried hard. Silently. Holding on to the walls. Pressing my face up to the water spray, feeling baptized and saved by the life that was mine now...away from that town and those people that I love so much but feel so distanced from, so far away.
And I thought of a song that described this exactly. I had made it, hadn't broken down like some weak puppet in front of my daughter, had carried on nicely...but in the end, on the drive home, she had said the words that had been in my heart too.
So, I let all those tears run down my face, down the drain and away.
At first, I wasn't sure. I had decided to put the vegetable/herb garden in yesterday. I knew it would be difficult without Bing.
Her back is still aching so she is doing a lot of resting up. She is sleeping through the night now and can watch television without having to get up and walk every ten minutes, but no yard work yet. Every year, Liv and I set out our starter plants in tiny containers in the basement around mid March. We have a whole section of the basement that is used for this. Luckily, we have a basement door leading to the outside, so it isn't horribly hard to bring them up to the garden, but it's a task that generally has Bing's name on it. Liv and I start the seedlings and then in early May, Bing brings all the trays outside for us to start up in the garden. This time, Liv would be doing it.
And I have a big garden. So, lots of running up and down the steps from cellar door to garden.
Liv asked if her friend, Kai could help put the garden in with us, attend the steampunk play with us and spend the night.
Is it bad that I felt hurt at first? Liv and I have been putting our garden in together since she was 2. Just us. This would be the first time an outsider did it with us. But, I thought about it and realized that Liv is now 12, she is growing up and away and that this would be more fun for her with a friend along. I had always expected that her joy over putting a garden in with me would fade as she grew into a teenager. That could still be true. But, now...well...if she wanted a friend, so be it.
I'm a willow, I can bend.
And it was fine. It was fun.
Liv and Kai brought up all the lovely baby seedlings who were clamoring to get their little rootsy feet into the newly tilled up dirt.
I sat, waiting next to the garden as they brought up everything. I wore my gardening hat for the first time this year and had my gardening gloves in my pocket, although I knew I wouldn't use them. I enjoy putting my hands in the dirt. Bing worked on grading papers inside. I don't think she could bear watching something that she couldn't be a part of this year.
Once all the baby seedlings were sitting out in the sunshine, their necks craning towards the yellow sun, we got to work.
It will be a glorious garden. We planted the Spring vegetables first. The baby carrots, baby lettuces, scallions, sweet peas, radishes, a gardener's delight heirloom tomato plant. They will be ready in less than a month (the tomato plant a bit longer) and make for a delicious salad some balmy day in late June.
The other vegetables were next. We planted our old standards: pole beans, cucumbers, okra for Bing, sugar snap peas, summer squash (and I loved a comment in my mother's old gardening diary: give them plenty of room, they produce an embarrassment of fruit!)
We planted several varieties of sweet peppers, with a new one to try: chocolate pepper and one sturdy looking hot pepper plant that only Liv will be able to stomach.
And then, my favorite...my heirloom tomatoes. The ones that I cultivate each year from seeds from their predecessors: roma, beefsteak, black cherry and Arkansas traveler, and the late blooming brandywine pink which will be last to bloom in early September.
We staked the peas, peppers and tomatoes and then, with hesitation, put in just four pumpkin seeds. These will grow alarmingly huge and by Halloween, produce huge orange pumpkins to be made into jack o' lanterns and our first pumpkin pies in early November.
And then we moved to the herb garden. It is also large. We planted basil, sage, endive, peppermint, that leggy rosemary who will run ragged if not cut back regularly, lemon verbena, lavender, parsley, chicory (delicious in coffee), witch hazel, monkshood and cowslip. And lastly, some catnip planted all around the herbs (the bunnies will eat this and get full and leave the rest alone) and then marigold to round the vegetable garden (the bunnies hate this smell and it sometimes stops them from raiding the garden at night...sometimes...)
Kai proved to be a happy gardener. At Liv's request, I didn't sing this year as I usually do, in my quite terrible soprano. Instead, I let the girls pump their own music out of our boombox.We listened to music from Austra, Colleen Green, Craft Spells, The Deeep and one I particularly enjoyed: Exitmusic. I was educated. I'd never heard any of these people before. But, I was pleasantly surprised. Some of it was quite lovely, others...not so much, but not horrible.
The plants were quivering with excitement. At one point, Kai noted, "It's like I can feel how excited they are to be growing, stretching, you know?"
I really like Kai. A new member of my tribe, certainly.
Once everything was set and we had laid down the watering hoses, homemade by Bing years ago...these are regular garden hoses with tiny holes poked in them that snake through the garden. Instead of exhausting watering, I have only to turn the water on to the hose lightly and it gives the plants a slow steady drink of cool water for hours in small gulps. The plants thrive on this.
The hard part will come, I told Kai. There is the weeding. Since we don't use pesticides, we do all of weeding by hand and it can be back breaking. I try to do most of it during the cool of the day, in the soft summer evenings, just before dusk. Bing probably won't be able to help much this year, so Kai offered to come over twice a week in the mornings to weed. We made a deal. She would weed and I would send her home with baskets of vegetables.
"My mother will love this!" she said. "I think I will give her this as a mother's day gift."
I can't think of a better way to show your love for your mother.
I told her that she could pick flowers too, as many as she liked. We have so much. Bachelors buttons, lilies of the valley, bells of Ireland, buttercups, forget-me-nots, bleeding hearts, primroses, snapdragons, sweet briar, sweet william, larkspur and lastly...a tiny plant of snowdrops that Liv bought for me for an early mother's day gift. Hopefully, it will bloom and hold. I had to put it a bit too close to our rosebushes and I am not sure how they will tolerate this newcomer. Roses can be very, very persnickety and vain. They don't like to share their stage with anyone.
The calla lilies and peonies are already up in the front garden.
By June this will be breathtakingly gorgeous. I can't think of anything I love more than a garden, except, perhaps.....a really good book.
Gardening will now become my part time evening job. My blog will suffer. I will read less, but my soul will thrive. There will be little to no television watching. The long Winter nights of reading and watching my shows will be replaced by gardening until the light dims to where I can no longer see the weeds or my pruning sheers.
But, I will be almost unbearably happy on those long nights in my garden. I feel about gardening the way I feel about reading. Like...how can one dislike either? They are both just...gifts for the soul.
Well, so...the garden is in. Then it was time to prepare for......steampunk.
Bing had come home a few weeks ago with the news that her high school was putting on it's first steampunk play and we decided that it was a good opportunity to educate Liv about the brilliance of this play genre. So, Bing got us tickets (and a few spares for Liv to bring a friend or two, she is at the age where it is not always fun to hang with the 'grups) and we spent several weeks putting together our costumes to wear. For those of you who don't know steampunk...you need to see one. It's like...American Wild West, mixed with Victorian England, mixed with Mad Max, and then topped off with Alien. It's edgy, wild theater and the audience is allowed to be part of it, to dress up in outrageous costumes and be entertained before and after the performance with palm readings, card tricks, rhyming poems, traditional songs and vaudeville piano playing. If any of you are fans of the show, Firefly....that was close to steampunk in many ways.
So, we all dressed for the part: Bing, me, Liv and Kai.
I came out in my flouncy victorian skirt and mad max boots, with a large cloche hat with a big feather and there were Liv and Kai, looking like half punk, half Calamity Jane throwbacks. Bing was the least dressed of all of us, content to wear a long gunslingers coat over her jeans.
As we walked to the car, I heard Kai say to Liv in a hushed voice, "Your mom is so cool! I mean she is like this hippie woman gardening guru and then she turns into sort of a punk Florence Nightingale at night. Really cool!"
And then, of course...there was Liv, looking at her in humorous disbelief.
"My mom reads AARP magazine too, and she wears teal warm up suits in the Winter. She also snores and orders her shoes from this company who specializes in footwear for women with hammertoes....she's not THAT cool, Kai!"
So, down with a thud.
But, I get it. At Liv's age, the last thing she wants is a cool mom. OTHER moms are cool, not me. She's the one who sees me eating Activia yogurt every night to keep myself regular.
But, it was fun to go to the play, even though it was a high school production and I am not certain that the players fully understood all the pithy lines that they uttered. One of the characters, called Justice...had a line about not being blind and I felt certain that the actress who uttered it had no idea what she was saying. But, we had fun. About half of the audience dressed in steampunk and Liv, Kai and I had our palms read. According to the palm reader, I have an extremely long life line, have a very close family and when she told me that I had two lovely children and I corrected her and said that no, I just had the one child, she raised her eyebrow at me and said, "Um, are you sure? Because I see two kids here, ma'am."
Well, I'm 53. A bit long in the tooth to be raising another.
Liv's palm showed a very happy marriage and lots of money. Kai's palm showed that she will have a successful career in a healing profession and be a bit of a gadfly when it comes to settling down.
I suspect that the palm reader must have mixed up my palm and Kai's.
After the play, we all went home and Bing and I went right to bed (further proving that I am hardly a cool mom. I mean, I can't even stay up to watch SNL, for pete's sake) and the girls stayed up to watch movies and eat popcorn. When I woke up to a thunderstorm around 2 a.m., I found them both sound asleep on the living room sofa, oblivious to the pounding storm. Socks lay between them, a piece of popcorn resting gently on his nose.
Now, it's Sunday and Kai and Liv are at a movie starring Kai's crush, Zac Ephron, while I recuperate from planting a garden yesterday and Bing makes the grocery list for Whole Foods.
Tonight it the season finale of The Amazing Race. I want Rachel and her military man spouse to take it.
And I went out to check on my garden, my flowers, to make sure that they survived the thunderstorm last night. They look a little soaked with their wet leaves and stems tipping just a little bit in the rain drenched soil, but they look happy to be here.
I think you'll be surprised who was the most memorable.
I've met a few famous people in my lifetime. Not many, but a few. Six of them stand out for different reasons.
The first one...well....I never met her, but I am including her because she is the first, and thus...very important.
When I was 8 years old, I fell in love with a show called That Girl. Marlo Thomas starred in it and she wore clothes that I felt would be perfect for me when I grew up. I wanted to be Ann Marie so BADLY. I was crazy about her boyfriend, Don Hollinger and planned to find someone exactly like him to hook up with.
When I was nine, I discovered that Marlo Thomas was making an appearance at a JC Penney's in Omaha. Luckily, both of my older sisters loved her too and wanted to see her. I remember that her appearance was on a Saturday, so my mother arranged for us to spend the night with an Aunt who lived in the city and my oldest sister, Patrice, was allowed to drive us. I was so excited that I could barely sleep. What should we wear? Patrice was 17 and Celia, 13. We planned carefully. I still remember the dress that I wore. It was a bright yellow sundress and I wore white patent leather shoes with it. I carefully polished the shoes with Vaseline before we left. I wore curlers the night before in an attempt to make my straight-as-a-seal hair curl. Unfortunately, the left side of my curlers all fell out in the night, so I had one side of curls and the other side was straight. No matter. By noon, the curls were completely gone.
We arrived at my Aunt Dottie's home and prepared to go with our girl cousins to JC Penneys. We decided to leave an hour early and it was lucky that we did because, boy howdy, it was packed. We finally parked the car in the farthest reaches of the parking lot and trooped in. I held my sister Celia's hand tightly. My head revolved back and forth as we approached the room where Marlo Thomas was to judge a teen fashion show. I honestly thought that she would just be strolling around and I didn't want to miss her. We were discouraged to find that all the seats were already taken and we would have to stand. No matter. Patrice promised to pick me up when Marlo hit the stage so that I would be able to see her. And she did.
The room darkened and the familiar That Girl! music came blaring over the speakers. Everyone hushed and then suddenly Marlo Thomas came bouncing in wearing a yellow sundress that was remarkably like MINE. Her hair was perfectly bobbed into a flip and her eyelashes looked like they were standing about two inches off her face. I clapped and clapped so hard that my hands stung for hours.
It was over in a remarkably short time. Patrice held me for a while but soon I proved too heavy, so she set me down on a nearby display case where I was sorely tempted to stand up to see better, but could still hear my mother's admonishing voice in my ears, telling us to "Keep your manners on!" I suspected that standing on a display case would be bad manners, so instead, I balanced on my knees, straining to see Marlo. Once, she looked over my way and I could have sworn that she winked at me. My sisters thought so too. When we went home the next day, they reported to our mother that "Marlo winked at Maria! She did!"
I don't think she really did. But, it was nice to believe it for a while.
My next celebrity meeting would not take place until 13 years later. (I'm skipping the Osmond Brothers, my very first concert, because I didn't meet them. I just wore purple for Donny and sang along to my favorite song, which was called "Crazy Horses." Go to u-tube and listen...it is hilarious. I do remember thinking it was sooooo cool when they all pranced around like horses and even pretended to rear up when the horse sound...areerrr...areerrrr....came.)
Oh, what the fuck...you haven't lived until you hear "Crazy Horses"....
My next experience was when I was 19 years old and I went home with Bing, who was my dorm mate to New Orleans for spring break.
There, in a restaurant, sitting AT THE NEXT TABLE, was Michael Cole.
Please don't ask who Michael Cole is. Please. He was the stone cold fox who played Pete Cochran in the television series, "The Mod Squad."
I loved every hair on his head. Even after the show ran it's course and I no longer sat in front of the family television, riveted.
And there he was. SITTING right next to us. I nearly swallowed my freakin' gum, dudes.
I nudged Bing and whispered in her ear that MICHAEL COLE was sitting right next to us. She was puzzled, looked even when I expressly said, "DO NOT LOOK!"
And had no idea who he was. Probably because she had never seen the show.
I sat thinking hard, trying to figure out how to get him to LOOK AT ME.
He seemed intent on talking to an older dude, probably his agent. Bing's Aunt was at the table too and had heard my murmurings of awe. She told me that she thought he was in town with a traveling theater production of Arsenic and Old Lace.
I wanted to meet him SOOOO BADLY. And then...remarkably...my chance came. The older guy sitting with Michael got up and left and without thinking it through, I swiftly got up from my seat, made my way to Michael and babbled some nonsense about how I was his biggest fan. He smiled. It was a tired smile, but he made it sincere.
"So," he said. "Do you want an autograph?"
"Um...well...I didn't bring a pen and paper," I said stupidly. He smiled, clicked a Bic that he drew from his pocket and signed a paper napkin and handed it to me. I took it. And then, he looked at me with his cool blue eyes and said, "So, what's your name and do you want to go into show business?
I told him no, that I was planning a career in medicine. He nodded.
"Good plan," he said. "Fame is fleeting. Curing cancer will last forever."
He motioned me to sit down and I did. And then he spent ten minutes just talking to me, like a regular person. He asked a lot of questions. What was my favorite band? Was I enjoying college? Where did I see myself in ten years?
And then the old dude came back and our conversation ended. Michael introduced him to me as his manager and said to him, "I'd like you to meet my new friend, Maria. She is studying to be a doctor."
Michael smiled at me lazily, sweetly. The old dude made some comment about did I know how to treat erectile dysfunction because it was rearing it's ugly head. And then he laughed sleazily over his use of the word head.
Micheal looked at me and rolled his eyes. I thanked him for the conversation and got up to leave.
He stood up and gave me a hug. Whispered in my ear.
"Thanks for not asking me if I date Peggy Lipton," his hushed voice poured into my ear.
I floated back to my table. Michael and the old guy left soon after and when Michael passed by me, he gently squeezed my shoulder. I could hardly breathe.
I told Bing that I would never wash my shoulder again and she snickered.
I just asked her if she remembered this part of our history and she had the audacity to say, "Who the hell is Michael Cole?"
Sigh.
I would meet another celebrity within a year.
Steven Tyler. Yes. From Aerosmith and American Idol.
It was 1979. They were playing at an arena a few hours away from my college. I was 20, but I had an id that said I was 21. I was also unbelievably high, as were all of my friends, when we went to the Aerosmith concert. We rented rooms at a nearby hotel and decided to sleep four to a room.
As we trooped into the arena, I was wearing jeans and high heels. A long man's shirt with a tie hanging halfway down. I'd worn my long hair in tiny braids for days and took it out so that it kinked around my head like a halo.
I thought I looked incredible.
Did I mention that I was really, really high?
The concert was great. As we were leaving, one of the band's networking team asked some of us if we'd like to go backstage and meet the band. The chose only three of us out of a group of 12.
"Only the hot ones are invited," they said.
I guess I was one of the hot ones.
If I had been older and wiser, I would have told them where to shove it. I wasn't. So I went, along with two of my friends, both willowy blondes.
We agreed to remember everything and share with our friends when we got back to the hotel room, which was in walking distance of the auditorium.
We were led down a long hallway and asked to show id that we were 21. We did this. And then I was suddenly face to face with Joe Perry. Walking around shirtless with boxers shorts on and a top hat. And he was ripped. He smiled, tipped his beer at us and held his arms out in a welcoming gesture. Bowed slightly. Almost tipped over, righted himself.
He was gorgeous. He was also tripping out royally on something. Not sure what it was.
And then I heard that trademark cackle. And sitting on a sofa, with a girl under each arm, was Steven Tyler.
He was incredibly ugly in a terrifically sexy way. His black eye makeup had run in two rivulets down his face. His painted red mouth was wide and his teeth whiter than snow. He was taking turns fondling two girls who were perched like hungry kittens next to him, pawing him for attention.
He looked up at us and said, "Wow. More maids a milking?"
I had no idea how to reply to that so I stood silently as one of my friends said something totally dorky about loving his work.
He stood up then, tall and lean. Bare chested and as he came to hug us one by one, I realized that he stank. Badly. Really serious b.o.
He could have cared less.
As he tipped his bottle of something brown to his lips, I thought to myself that he was the sexiest ugly man that I had ever seen. There was something unsettling and dangerous about him, but also something else. I decided it was charisma. He had charisma.
He smiled into my eyes once and I thought that maybe he was the devil but I didn't care.
He started to sing an old Beach Boys song:
The midwest farmer's daughters really make you feel all right....
We just smiled, three common midwestern bugs caught in his flossy spider web. As he swirled around us, the girls that he'd left sitting on the sofa sat pouting, literally puffing out their bottom lips. It would have been hysterically funny if I wasn't so mesmerized, so tantalized, so bewitched by Steven Tyler. Half of me wanted to jump up and down in front of him screaming pick me! pick me! while the other half was absolutely terrified that he would pick me and then what the HELL would I do?
Without warning, he suddenly seized me with one arm and crushed me against him, giving me a smacky kiss on the cheek. I stiffened and he burst out laughing and released me. He looked over at Joe Perry and said something like, "Here, take this one. You like the Jackie Kennedy ones." No idea what he meant by that.
I looked down at my feet and when I looked up, it seemed that Joe Perry had taken Steven Tyler's advice. He put his arm around me and guided me to the door. I felt very young, very unsure and almost nauseated. But no worries. When we got to the door, he opened it and smiled, told me to go left and when I saw the red door to go through it and I would be back in the auditorium.
"You're too sweet and pretty to be in that hardcore room," he said. He waved congenially at me as I walked out the door and I admit to being very, very relieved. Hours later, when my two friends returned, they were unnaturally quiet, didn't share much. Many years later, one of them confessed to me that nothing happened, that the guys in the band left soon after with a girl apiece under their arms, not them. And that they partied a little with the roadies but none of them were Aerosmith and they would all be leaving in the morning for Cleveland, so what was the use of getting down with them?
So, yes. I met Steven Tyler. And yes, he was and is a rock god. Charisma and charm spilling every which way. But, I think that Joe Perry was the better man. He got me to the door unscathed. I think that the girl that Tyler ended up with was probably eaten neatly in one gulp.
After that, 13 years would pass before I met my next celebrity.
I was 34 years old when I met Bill Clinton in Council Bluffs, Iowa at a campaign stop. I was pretty well into my career by then, working at a hospice for AIDS patients. I was, and still am, a liberal Democrat, but at that time in my life, I was pretty much a mess. I had escaped from a destructive relationship, was making an excellent living, lived by myself in a gorgeous town home that I paid a professional to decorate in Danish Modern, but I was less me than I have ever been in my life. I spent my days working hard, counseling dying men and went out after hours with my colleagues, all men. We partied hard almost nightly, escaping from the puke green walls of the hospice and the sweet, cloying smell of death. I slept around and preferred it that way. Men. Women. Didn't matter. When I felt the crushing loneliness of being disowned by my family, I found someone to go to bed with. And better if they had mushrooms, weed or Jack Daniels. Or all three. I once spent Christmas with a man that I met at a party. He had some very good weed and we alternated fucking and watching White Christmas. We laughed a lot. I forgot his name soon after he left and then ended up crying alone as Bing Crosby sang "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know...."
I guess this is why I blanch when someone tells me that my life seems so...golden. It is beautiful now, but I have paid my dues, people. And then some.
You can only party like that when you are young. I could never get away with getting tight every single night now. But, I pretty much did it then.
It was close to the 1993 presidential election and Bill and Hilary Clinton were making the rounds of the heartland. I went with Luke, a fellow shrink, to some hotel in Council Bluffs to hear our next president speak. And he was incredibly good. Afterwards, there was a picnic themed supper in tents, complete with long tables heaped with corn on the cob, hot dogs, chili sauce, potato salad and baked beans. Hamburgers. Cold beers.
I sat down with Luke and we chowed down and then heads started turning and there came Bill and Hilary, Chinet plates in hand. Remarkably, they both sat down across the table from us and to our left. Luke and I looked at each other and laughed in amazement. I couldn't resist peeking at their plates. Bill's plate was heaped with a hot dog smothered in chili sauce with potato salad and baked beans and corn. An aide set down a slice of apple pie next to him. He wasn't drinking beer, but Pepsi. Hilary's plate, on the other hand, was dainty. She had a small scoop of potato salad and someone had sliced her hot dog into small doable bites. She had no dessert and was drinking iced tea. Someone asked her if it was "sweet tea" and she laughed nicely. "No!" she said. "Actually, I don't even like sweet tea!" Everyone thought that this was hilarious. Secret service agents hovered.
I can't remember what the conversation was about that night because I was too busy watching the Clinton's eat like regular people. I can tell you that Hilary was mostly silent, except to nod sweetly at her husband. She got up halfway through the meal and was escorted to another table to visit. Bill stayed with our table for the remainder of the meal. I suspect that he talked about soybean and corn prices, the stock market and how he would clean up the budget. I remember that he had a wonderful laugh and used it well. He made small talk with everyone at the table, even me. I remember that he asked me what I did for a living and when I told him, he smiled genuinely at me and said, "Bless your heart, darlin. Bless your giving heart."
Like almost everyone there, I wanted him to be our next president.
And he was.
Five years later, I went to a humdrum seminar in Miami, Florida. I had left the hospice by then and was now working as psych on call in a hospital emergency room. I worked the 3-11 shift and dealt mostly with intoxicated men and women, a few seriously ill people, but mostly it was relatively boring. The more interesting cases would appear after midnight usually. But, when I went to this seminar, I was a little more evolved than the woman who met Bill Clinton.
I had just made the decision to try to get pregnant. I had decided on a sperm bank since I was not meeting any guys who wanted to be my baby daddy. I was three months clean and sober. Just getting over the jittery GOD IS IT EVER GONNA STOP HURTING? HOW CAN I LIVE IN THIS FUCKED UP WORLD DRUG FREE AND SOBER????
I remember that the hotel was gorgeous and that everything was sun splashy and golden yellow. I had left the prairie on the tail end of a sudden late March blizzard and arrived in this land of warmth and sun. I felt baptized with heat and I was happy. I had not packed my diaphragm and actually considered maybe meeting a good looking, smart stranger and getting knocked up.
I can't remember what the seminar was about now but I do remember that there were a lot of new age products there, holistic ideas to go side by side with western medicine. During a dinner of shrimp on a weird looking barbie, I overheard someone mention that Jerry Lewis was staying in our hotel, that he was playing at some resort. I remember thinking that he was that telethon guy, wasn't he? And then forgetting all about him.
The next day, I decided to go shopping for a new purse to take home with me. And just as the elevator opened, a man looked out at me and said harshly, "You need to catch the next one. Sorry." I looked past him and saw this old looking other man sort of hovering in the back. He looked at me and then said, "No, Pete. Let her in. She looks harmless enough!" And then he smiled at me. And I thought to myself, Wow. That's Jerry Lewis!
I got on the elevator and the doors closed. I looked over at him and smiled but didn't try to start a conversation. Right before the doors opened, Jerry looked over at me and smiled. His teeth were yellowish and that surprised me. I thought movie stars all had very white teeth.
And then Jerry said, "Thanks for bringing your beauty to an old man's day. Enjoy!"
I was tongue tied. No idea why, but I was. We both got off the elevator. Jerry and his body guard, or whoever the hell he was, went left and I went right.
And that was my meet and greet with Jerry Lewis.
And now...the worst experience.
Let's see...this happened when Bing and I had just gotten back together for the second time. Liv had just turned five, so I was 46. Bing booked a gig to play percussion with the symphony when Judy Collins was giving a concert with them.
I have always adored Judy Collins' songs. That brilliant soprano. Those gorgeous eyes. Send in The Clowns always made me tear up. Also...another sort of obscure song of hers called Houses. I asked Bing to get me a ticket so that I could see her play percussion with Judy Collins. She was able to get me a back stage pass.
The day of her first and only rehearsal, I drove her to the Orpheum theater and we walked in. Bing reminded me that I was NOT to go up to Judy Collins and try to talk to her and I promised that I wouldn't. She had shown me a memo that she and all the other musicians had received. It said:
No one is to speak or look at Miss Collins. Keep within six feet of her at all times. No exceptions.
I figured that it was just a precaution. It wasn't. During the rehearsal, she came out and stood woodenly to the side. She spoke to the conductor a few times but that was it. Otherwise, she only spoke to another elderly woman who was with her, maybe an aide. The aide would then speak to the person that Judy Collins needed to know something. She completely ignored the musicians and they politely obeyed the rule, although I'm sure some of them snuck looks at her. I mean, even at her advanced age, she was gorgeous. Bing respectfully kept her eyes averted and stuck to her timpani playing.
It was absurd.
Later, as we were walking through the lobby to go out to our car, I happened to see a flash of pink emerge from a side door. It was Judy Collins and her friend. They had coats on and were heading towards the door at the same time that we were. Judy had on a sort of pillbox hat with a shimmery pink veil. Bing grabbed my elbow to stop me but I kept on walking. When we got to the door, I opened it for her. She glanced icily at me and said simply, "Thank you." I said, "It's my pleasure, Ms. Collins. I love your music."
She completely ignored my statement and walked away.
Bing was furious with me, worried that I had cost her the job and I felt terrible, but nothing was said when she arrived at the set that evening. I sat in the audience and saw Judy Collins looking elegant and lovely, warm and kind as she chatted sweetly with us in the seats. No trace of the frozen faced, glacially cold songstess who had been at the rehearsal, who had snubbed me as I held the door open for her. In retrospect, I suppose she was probably sick of being asked for her autograph, being gaped at, with people wanting to speak to her, touch her, be her friend for the hour. I guess I get it.
But, still. Well, I can never listen to her music now and think of her as this free flowing gorgeous hippie woman with the flowing silky hair and the soft soaring voice. Now, I think of her icy glare at me when I opened the door for her.
So...now it's YOUR turn. Who have you met? Were they nice? Not so much.
