My Body Talks Back

I want to tell you about my body. My body and I act like a long-time, unhappily married couple -- too tired, too entangled to get a divorce. What we have between us are mostly confrontations, complaints and painful incidents. There's rarely a moment of tranquility or appreciation. I have gripes: For example, there's a feeling in my chest like a garlic bagel is stuck.

Other times my body behaves like a petulant ex-lover who continues to send annoying e-mails long after the passion has passed -- tart remember-me's, like sinuses stuffed with Elmer's glue, or a food-trap in my molars that aggravates my gums.

The latest is my foot! My foot!

My left foot stepped down funny, collapsed on itself and fractured! "Notice me, notice me, notice me," the body says.

Okay, I get the picture.

Then, after a few days in a big black shoe boot and a noxious mood, I chanced upon a You Tube video that seemed to be talking to me.

It's a black and white undulating odalisque in graceful silhouette. The gist of the copy explains that as long as you're at war with your body you'll never have peace. I realized, "that's it!"

These aren't isolated ailments that plague me. I'm at war with my whole body! A war with

more animosity than Palestine and Israel.

For instance, I want to lose weight. It spots FatWich chocolate brownie samples at Whole Foods market and swallows three.

"Just talk to your body," the video coos. "Ask it what it needs."

So yesterday I invited my body for a sit-down and tried not to complain about the size of my ass.

"So what do you want, body," I asked.

"You're always picking on me," my body said. "Pick, pick, pick. You pick my eyebrows. You bite your lip. You pull at your cuticles. You scratch. Can't you ever just leave me alone?"

I have to say I was taken aback! But, I also have to admit my body is right about the picking.

"And you never, never ever give me compliments! Or green leafy vegetables. You hate exercise!" My body was right about that too.

Me and my body! Decades of disappointment and hurt. Drab hair. Weak eyes. Biceps the texture of brioche. Besides all that, it's painful to look at my body and not be angry that it is no longer 19, perky and taut.

But then again my body has never betrayed me either, with anaphylactic shock, persistent dandruff, or gout. And just look at the amazing job I did with pregnancy -- it was an absolutely perfect delivery with no meds and little gas.

Body! If I can just beg forgiveness and start again. I'll buy a WII. We'll go back to yoga.

Maybe, oh maybe I can make it up to my body, my dear old, lifelong friend.

Cockroach in my iced coffee.

Despite a rich travel history in second-rate motels and third-world countries, I cannot get used to four, six or eight-legged creatures of any genus in my drinks. This aversion also includes larvae or worms with indeterminate appendages that occasionally show up in bottles of tequilla. But, in this instance, the culprit was a city slicker known to many New Yorkers, the common cockroach.

Now that most of my travel is closer to home than in the reckless days of my youth, you'd think that I would not have to be as vigilant as in times past. And perhaps the thought that I can drink the water or eat the lettuce was a naive expectation in today's world. Still, I was shocked, yes shocked at what transpired the other morning.

I stopped in my favorite coffee shop in town. I often eat here. In fact, I am a regular, with all rights and priviliges, such as extra straws and napkins, welcome by first name, and so on. I purchased what I always order on sultry summer days -- "a large iced decaf with milk to go."

Now this is one of my great. great pleasures. Not just because I enjoy the icy coldness in my hand and th rich milky-coffee taste in my mouth. Not just because after two or three years, practically everyone behind the counter almost always remembers me and that I don't take sweetener. Or, even that here I can afford to truly be a sport and leave an extra large .35 cent tip -- sometimes more! It just is! For no reason! So when one of these peak moments in life, particularly one that is repeatable is torn away, it hurts! It does!

Here's what happened. I took my coffee and my "New York Times" and caught the 7:13 am train to Grand Central Terminal. I found a seat and curled up next to the window. The person next to me was absorbed in their "Wall Street Journal." While I slowly, contentedly read my paper and sipped my coffee, looking up just once, to flash my ticket at the conductor.

As the train pulled into the station, I tipped the glass up and slurped the last bit of liquid out of the ice. That is when I saw it -- a dark mass -- clearly not an ice cube -- not my imagination -- and not on the outside of the glass!

I had drank the entire iced coffee with the creature swimming in the liquid.

There are no words to console me. It happened. I cannot pretend it didn't. Has it permanently changed me? Yes, somehow it has. Something untoward has soiled my palate. All the gold-wrapped Godiva chocolate in the world can't erase that fact. Maybe sometime in the future I will be a regular somewhere else again. If I can only trust.

My Pelican Profile

I have begun to read about pelicans. I've suddenly grown very fond of the creatures that I believe that I most resemble. It's the under-the-chin pouch that would most probably alert you to our uncanny resemblance. Of course, I am aware this condition has already been covered and very well, by Nora Ephron in I Hate My Neck. But, at least she doesn't look like a pelican.

I ponder sending a swab of cheek saliva to ancestry.com to see if at some time in the long, long ago a male pelican passed on its DNA to one of my Russian-Jewish grandmothers. These things happen. It's not without precedent. Think "Leda and the Swan." Look, anyone who follows nature shows knows that unusual genetic modifications on otherwise stable chromosomes are no surprise to anthropologists. Nor are unsuitable couplings. Ask most children about their parents!

Another persuasive detail. Pelicans, I believe, are fond of herring. A nice piece of silvery herring is also a delicacy among the Russian-Jewish Babushkas from whose wombs I have descended and whose taste buds influence my table.

Anyway, back to my chin/neck. Perhaps I would not mind it so much if (unlike an appendix which is purely vestigal), science discovered an over-large, under-the-chin served a functional purpose. For example, if it stored extra brains.

Or, if over a series of severe Siberia winters this protuberance of protoplasm has evolved into and provided a survival advantage, as a kind of permanent neck wrap, or organically derived insulation.

As an aside, I am aware that pelicans are not usually found in polar regions. However, birds do fall out of formation, flocks go astray, there are exceptions.

To tell the truth, as an anatomic feature, my neck/chin uses a lot of body mass that might have more rightly gone into biceps. But, that's the quagmire of evolution. It's frustratingly slow. Ask me again in a hundred million years.

But, like me chin, I digress.

In a fit of passion, I once asked my husband if my chin turned him on, sort of like a third breast. Knowing he will say most anything to get me supine, I don't quite know how to interpret his choked answer. By the way, this was not an entirely ridiculous question, because as you may remember, pelicans are part of the order pelecaniformes, which also includes cormorants and boobies.

All these thoughts help explain this piece of flesh that has come unbidden to roost beneath my jaw, refuses to migrate or molt, or turn into a swan, or take wing, no matter how much I squawk.

Short Fuse

What do I mean by Short Fuse?
I'm not sure I want to say. Yesterday I couldn't
think of the phrase. Today it tickled me awake.
For a long time, most of my adult life,
it's been there simmering in the back of my heart --
a threat to peace and quietude.
When I was a child, it waited behind
each door I opened in our house. Great Balls of Fire --
hovering over daily life like
Jerry Lee Lewis about to leap on stage.
Sometimes it seeps into my life here --
in the amount of time it takes me
to become angry at my husband when he says
something in a tone I don't like.
And how quickly I forget I can get the
same haughty tone in my voice, yet dismiss
it as just me being me.
What about the distance that it creates between us?
Or how quickly I can travel from good mood to
to hateful.
Yet, as I travel deeper into our marriage I glimpse something surprisingly
hopeful. It's that these days when I pass from good will to glower
how fast I can return to stasis.
He can too. Is the reason the more
good times we share together, the less willing we are to spoil
what lies ahead?
Coming from a family that can nurture grudges like
African violets, this is a revelation about relationships.

It's nice to know that this sweet state is attainable
despite not knowing it existed.

I always believed the deepest connection one could
have with another was during sex. Was I wrong?
Maybe aging hormones are a precursor
to true contentment.

I am one of the lucky ones. I love my husband.
And our apartment (if I forget about the elevator)
is a a fifth floor walk-up. Lately, we've started taking
the stairs.

Walking five flights is not on a short list of what
I like to do. Yet, as I pant my way up, I wonder
what other loving miracles there are to discover --
if we manage to stretch the next 20 or so more years
together to 30?

For my Birthday, I had Prune Juice.

Prune juice in a champagne flute, actually. A lovely glass -- it's stem like a twisted-vine --
I poured and then swirled it slowly to aerate.
The dark amber liquid suggested a fine port or aged sherry.
After all, prunes are a fruit! Are they inherently less aristocratic than grapes or pears or cherries -- some of the other similar essences so prized by connoisseurs?

Who cares if Sunsweet's Best hasn't spent years luxuriating
in a wooden cask?

What the dif if it doesn't bubble with effervesence? Does true effervesence arise from fermentation or from the person who drinks it?

Can't a person who sips liquer of dried plums be as charming as one who drinks dry champagne?

Advanced Age may not have many social perks. But, one of them surely has to be an ability to stare down embarrassment until it's transformed into what looks indubitably like wisdom, refinement, and yes, style.

At least that's what I tell myself.

Haiti

Haiti. I've never been to Haiti.
The closest I've even been is a painting that
someone gave me as a gift decades ago.
Coincidentally, it's only after all this time that
I've gotten around to framing it. It's in the shop now.
Jed and I picked a bright coral frame as exuberant as the
painting.
Maybe when we pick it up and hang it on the wall, it will remind
us to keep tithing for Haiti, and other causes, in $10 increments.
Jed gave earlier today.
$10.
The same amount as my favorite Sephora apricot lip gloss.
This morning I was looking at Groupon. There was an offer for
four glycolic peels for $50. It seemed like a pretty good deal.
But, spending so much on myself -- even with the feeling of entitlement that comes with an impending birthday -- didn't feel right.
Yesterday the Surpreme Court ruled it denies First Amendment rights of free speech to limit corporate political contributions. As a result, I've resolved to limit my spending
on corporate products.
It really is time to support small, local businesses. I can do that.
And as for $10 a week as tzedakah, or charity.
Surely I can do that, too.