Musings on the Afterlife, as in -- Is there one and how shall I pack?

Do I know more dead people now than alive?  Is that what it eventually comes to?  Is there a café up there where all my relatives and friends who’ve died before me gather to read whatever they damn well please, now – no pressure to finish House of Mirth.

Are you transformed when you die to your best-looking, neatest appearance?

Will anybody whisper, “why doesn’t she do something with her hair?’  Or will I suddenly have a discernable part?  When you die, does your hair revert to its original color? Or is there a way-station where I can get a touch up for my roots?

Is there a desk to check in?  Is everything included?  Are some extras – like a harp –

part of the basic plan?  Can I use miles?

Will the Sunnis and Shiites still be fighting?  What about the Palestinians and the Jews? Or will we all finally get along? 

What about people who were no longer speaking to me on earth?  What’s the etiquette on that? 

Does my Curves membership automatically transfer up?  What about my magazine subscriptions that renew until you notify them otherwise.  How long until they stop badgering my heirs?

Are couples still married in heaven?  The vows say, “Until Death do you Part.”  Should I assume that this will make my marriage null and void and that if my dear husband precedes me that I shouldn’t get all huffy if he’s met someone new?  And in that case, do I still have a chance with Paul Newman/

When people say, “you can’t take it with you,” will we learn that Republicans have a actually found a way? And does take it with you refer as well to opinions, beliefs, superstitions and prejudices?  Is evolution accepted?  Or from day one, is creationism all that heaven allows?

Are there calories in heaven?

Adventures in Driving at Home in Connecticut.

I back out of my drive.

My armpits gush like twin faucets so old and broken they can no longer be turned off.   My hands clutch the steering wheel – the palms thick with swamp life. The overpowering fear I have of driving a car again makes me a breeding ground for bacteria. 

If penicillin hadn’t already been discovered, I’m sure I ooze the microbes that made Fleming famous, if only he swabbed me first. 

I have traveled around the world and back. And yet, before I even journey out of sight of my house, I am a gibbering, whimpering petrie dish.  

Yes! Without a map or a guidebook,  I’ve found a Dunkin’ Donut!  

Oh, it's easy to be a fearless traveler in Burma or Nepal.  Who could lose sight of  the Shwedagon Pagoda or Mt. Everest?   On the other hand, how does anyone find a landmark in Milford, Connecticut?  Every block has a mall, a donut shop, a gas station and a deli! It all looks the same to me.

My over-size polka-dot drink glass is too large for the car's cup holder, so I lodge my iced decaf between my thighs and head for the highway. 

Now stealthily onto I-95.  My heart hides in my stomach -- I can feel it beating against the steering wheel.   It hopes that even if I have a heart attack, somehow secluded and cushioned by my belly, it will survive.

All the people on the road this morning are unaware that I am driving again.   Worse,  if I am not super alert, I can upend the futures of generations of strangers with one bad lane change.  

It is not just that I am living in a new town -- even an unfamiliar new state.   The Audi is also a new for me. Besides, except for a couple of practice forays I have not driven any car for eight months.  

Partly it's that I'm mending a  badly broken wrist from a fall in Mexico.  In fact, I am on my way to hand therapy now.   Jed, my husband, who has driven me twice a week for months is away for two days.

Gaining confidence, I speed up,  passing exit  25  -- ready to turn swiftly onto 25A.  What?  There is no 25A.  I am at exit 24.  I've passed my exit.  Not to worry, I will simply get off at the next exit, zip around and re-enter I-95 North,  get off at  25A and figure out where I am from there.

First part executed perfectly.  I am off I-95 and ready to turn left.   Except instead of the turn signal I touch the windshield wipers and suddenly they are all going at once, front and back.   

I manage to quiet the front wipers --  the back wipers keep up a noisy Charleston as I drive.

Up the North ramp, windshield wipers dancing on my back window as I look for 25A, but there is no 25A exit.   When I exit, I recognize nothing.  

My tuchas is on fire!

Oh, no!  I must have accidentally switched on the seat warmer because my ass is burning and I am shifting around in my seat like a fried egg on a griddle.  The good news is I can grab my iced coffee and reach around to chill my backside.

Then just as I am about to give up forever I spot the turn in next door to Hand Therapy!

Despite detailed directions home,  the 25 minute drive takes me slightly less than two hours.  I am tempted to say that only Lewis and Clark in surveying their territory may have covered more of an expanse of land than I did that afternoon.   As a byproduct, I can probably provide a fairly accurate census of three counties by adding up every man, woman, and child I stopped for directions.  When I arrive home I re-read my direction and realize I was supposed to take exit 27A not 25A. 

The next morning, after an hour’s drive to meet my friends Linda and Judy in a town or two over from me,  Judy finds the switch to turn off the seat warmer. No wonder I am burning up, she says.  During this week’s  2-day 94 degree heat wave,  I have somehow set the heat on high instead of turning on the air--conditioner.

Funny!  The heat never bothered me in India.

.

What happens when the traveler decides to stay home?

This blog had a simple premise.

I like to travel and I like to eat.

Combining the two in one blog seemed the perfect combo a few

back when I started this blog..

But then something happened I never anticipated.

My husband and I fell in love with a house!

So instead of packing our bags and leaving for the airport,

we packed our stuff in boxes and moved to Connecticut!

A house!  A basement!  A yard!  A garden!  Two driveways!

Ours.  All ours!  And no passports!  Well, there is the mortgage.

So just as I used to pore over travel magazines and Kayak for deals,

I am poring over garden brochures and wall color swatches.

Of course,  I’m still taking trips – but mostly now it’s traipsing to Loew’s and Home Depot.

Who can fathom the human mind and why it changes direction?

Ah!  But tasting!  That hasn't changed. Only right now it's mostly produce we grow ourselves

in our Straw Bale garden.  But, that's for another post!

Soon After I Moved to New York...

Soon after I moved to New York after graduation I found myself in an upper balcony of Grand Central station with a professorial looking man, probably somewhere in his 50’s. who was licking the bottom of my shoe.

This was not what I had set out to do that evening.  My goal was much more commonplace – only to type 50 words or more with less than two errors at the shorthand and typing class I attended most nights, since learning my BA in English from a prestigious University meant bupkes to potential employers.

I was waiting in Grand Central for my roommate Francine to finish her classes so we could go home to our walkup together.  I was wearing, what I can only say was an extremely sophisticated blue wool cape with black piping that I’d taken from my mother.  It was, I believed, an unusually charming garment, as well as jaunty,  that would set me apart from the other newbee New York girls and would grant me that je ne sais quoi mystery that eluded me back  home in Detroit.

As I waited for Fran, a large man wearing a raincoat and glasses approached me.  Noticing me carrying my books, he said, he realized I was a student.  What a coincidence!  He was a professor at Columbia, he explained.  Did I want to make some extra money by taking part in an experiment he was conducting with young graduates like me?

“I’m waiting for my roommate,” I said.  “Oh, it will only take a few minutes he said, to fill out a research form.   He was all set up with some other young woman on the balcony above us.  He gestured upward.  How much money had he said the experiment paid?  Was it $20?  I can’t remember now.  But as he said it would only take a few minutes to fill out the questionnaire and by then Fran would surely have arrived.  What did I have to lose?

If he said straight out that he was a nut job or a lunatic, I’m sure I wouldn’t have followed him.  But he said he was a professor.  He looked like a professor. I had learned at the University of Michigan that professors were much, much, much smarter than I was and this made me think that my cape, my books, and the fact that I’d graduated from the University of Michigan had probably erroneously made him think that I was much much smarter than I was.  To tell the truth, I was flattered. And since Fran still hadn’t shown up yet, well, why not?

Up on the balcony I looked around for the table with the questionnaires, the other young women graduates, the sign that said Columbia University and seeing none of that became suspicious.  “Where’s everybody,” I asked. “Show me your ID.”

With that he lay down on the floor on his back, grabbed my foot, and started licking the sole of my shoe.
 “Walk on me, step on me,” he pleaded!

“Let go of my shoe,” I screamed.  I think I kicked him.
“Come back, come back, you don’t understand,” he said, as I ran.
Whatever else he added, I was click, clacking down the stairs and away from him.  I rushed across the lobby and saw Fran.

“There’s a man up there who said he was a professor and he grabbed my shoe and asked me to walk on him.”

“We have to tell a policeman,” Fran said.  We had only been in New York a few weeks.  We knew New York was not Detroit.  But was this a common occurrence?  Did experiences like this happen a lot?  Was this man really a professor from Columbia?  Were professors from Columbia now and again deranged?  Could living in New York do that to you? Should we call our parents and go home?

The policeman listened and took the information. I told him that this man was a Professor at Columbia.  He told me he doubted that.   He told us to be careful and not hang around Grand Central.  He may have told me to wear another coat for a while.  I decided not to chance it ever and threw it and the shoes away.

On Retiring

After 48 years as an employee for hire, I am not aggressively looking for a new career path when I retire at the end of December. 

No more W2s for me, no siree.  Instead I’m looking ahead to a clearing of the decks, emptying the old belfry, and dismantling of the fine-oiled machine I have become over the decades.

But that doesn’t mean I am giving up the world of business entirely.  In fact, I plan to devote myself full throttle to an endeavor that I just thought up the other day.

As soon as it occurred to me, I shared it with Jed. With any luck, it will never falter, always prosper, and offer a spectacular ROI.   It’s called “The Business of Us.”

The Challenge is nothing less than keeping the two of us healthy and afloat for a period of years not so excessive that  we dribble and our kids no longer let us visit, nor so ridiculously short that we miss the season finale of “Mad Men.”

The Business of Us will never be traded on the New York Stock Exchange.  Still, for my money, it’s looking like a much better investment than, well,  Facebook.

The Justices Okay Strip Searches. Oy Vey!

I don't have washboard abs. Mine have slid downward like crumpled laundry down a laundry chute and have settled in a lumpy clump at my bottom. Sure, at times it's bothered me, but honestly, I've never been as concerned as I am right now. It seems that The Supreme Court has ruled that police can strip search people they arrest -- even when there are no grounds for suspicion. It's true that I tend be law abiding, and should not have too much to fear. Still, I find it disconcerting that my private body -- which at worst is a fashion sin but in no way illegal -- can be inspected by a stranger, at will. No disrespect, to be sure, but what's with these Justices? Even my gynecologist lends me a sheet. Just what is happening in America? Strip searching ruled legal for innocent-before-proven-guilty citizens! Plus, gun laws in Florida that protect both shooters' rights and concealed weapons and have led to the death of 17 year-old Trayvon Martin. I brood, until I have an epiphany. There is a vital and perhaps even beneficial connection hidden within these decrees. If everyone were to undress in common cause with the newly arrested there would no longer be the possibility of concealed weapons. As a result, the reflexive kill-rate would drop faster than my hips. What's more, if everyone disrobes, conservatives and liberals might find although they look at the world differently, to the world they look the same. This gives new meaning to the phrase, "Citizens United." Maybe the Supreme Court has done something really farseeing after all. In support, I've joined a gym.

My mother, Hurricane Irene, comes back.

My mother swooped into town a few weeks ago, all the force of her quotidien personality flooding the northeast corridor with torrential anxiety, incapacitation and finally relief at her retreat.

Yes. Hurricane Irene, as we in the family have long referred to her, revealed her robust charm to the rest of the earth,almost seven months after we thought she had left it. As it turns out, death may stop Houdini and others who at heart accept the basic rules of life, death and logic, whatever else they may profess.

While, my mother, before whom I'm sure even Zeus hides under the bed, defies physics and returns.

As I said before, when my mother reincarnated as a hurricane, I was tickled to hear from her. In the months since her departure, I'd missed our weekly chats about this and that. Our history had not always been smooth. My mother felt a mater's role was to dominate her offspring. In this way she felt she'd stave off bad behavior before it had a chance to root. But lately, in the last few years, we'd come to a softening. She had been a good woman, I could see that now. Perhaps, I'd misjudged the reasons she had acted as she had.

For example, there was the time, when I was about 12 and she pulled the Detroit city bus over that I was on, honking, honking, chasing the bus and honking and screaming out the window like a crazy lady until the bus driver finally slowed down and pulled over. That's when my girlfriend Hedy looked out the bus window and said, "I think that's your mother in the car!" And my stomach turned over because it was my mother and she was mad, really mad because I hadn't minded and now the whole bus watched as the bus driver opened the bus doors and I slunk off the bus, Hedy too, and then we were in the car with my mother and all the time she was screaming and yelling I was gonna get it!

Well, it was like this, I'd asked her a little while earlier if I could have $5 to go shopping with Hedy at the Northland Mall and she'd said, "no I could not." So, I found my father in the basement and asked him if I could go shopping with Hedy to Northland and he said "sure," and gave me $5. Then I guess my mother asked my father where I was and he said I'd gone to meet Hedy at the bus stop on Curtis. And well, you know the rest. As I said my mother was a force of nature. And she also could not remember all sorts of things that had been important in my life and when I reminded her in later years about the bus and Northland she said emphatically that it had never happened and I was making it up.

But back to 2011 and Hurricane Irene. I must say I was proud of my mother. If in her living incarnation she could make a Detroit bus driver abandon his route, it was not a surprise to me and others in my family that she could bend the laws of nature to her stubborn will and stop by to say "hello." Mostly, it was a friendly visit. There was some damage -- blackouts, trees felled, plans changed, and even, I am sad to say, lives lost. But for her part, my mother, Hurricane Irene, mellowed her bluster, behaved admirably for a hurricane, resulting in for many, simply a rare day off.

As she passed over our apartment, we lost power for a day and a half, and had some mild water damage. It seemed a small price to pay. You see, it felt like a real good bye this time and that we wouldn't be hearing from her again.

On Breaking Habits

What is it in the mind that rebels against a vow?

What is it in me that repulses my best efforts to do this or that,
after only a teeny tiny time of trying? Why do I seem to want something when I wake at 9:00 am that I've forgotten about by noon?

Am I alone in my aborted-starts? And if not -- even if this is the human condition -- what good does knowing a fact like this do for me?

For example, these are some of things I promise myself I will do each day:
Write in my journal every morning. Not eat between meals. Walk up the 5 flights to my apartment at least once a day. And remember this is my list.

I could play shrink with myself. Unfortunately, even when it's me that's "asking nicely," my haughty, I-know-better contrariness around authority figures insanely boycotts myself!

Conjecture! Conjecture! "I strongly object to this hack, this mediocre shrink with her low-brow ideas, opining on my actions or lack thereof, unconscious though they may be, or even intentionally detestable.

That felt good! I love putting my super ego in its place.

I'm off to California...

No banjo on my knee.

But, plenty of luncheon tidbits that I've gathered over the past few days.
This I've done, despite my two, probably broken toes that protrude out of my strappy, Merrell sandals. Poor purple, puffy appendages still throbbing from the 15 lb. metal weight that fell heavily onto my right foot a couple days before -- an infirmity that made traipsing about for provisions tricky.

I recently read that French women stay thin because they don't eat between meals.
In my house, it's the other way around.
We put out meals to punctuate and give order to sequential eating.
But since the airlines have declined to feed me in Coach,
I must tote my own pumpkin seeds, and so forth. I've packed
jumbo-sized wraps for the husband and me, fresh fruit, dried fruit,
cashews and almonds, and chocolate yogurt from Trader Joe's. My theory being, since we will be passing through a scraggle of different time zones, we need courses for each.

Now these four containers of yogurt are my special obsession. I usually have no less than eight in the refrigerator at a time. I'm thrilled to have found something I like that I can pretend is health food. Cool, chocolatey. Rich but light. Just the comfort I yearn for since the 15 lb. weight that was propping up a large fan in our hot-as-hades apartment fell on my right foot a few days before, probably breaking, as my doctor says, two toes.
What never occurred to me is that yogurt is a gel. And as all of us
must know since the shoe bomber, gels as well as liquids are on the bad, bad list.

I've handed over water. I've left home the ivory-handled fruit knife, and other must-have accoutrements of elegant eating. But, my yogurt?

Nevertheless, we're off for 10 days in Northern California. This
all came about when I clicked on a Living Social coupon
for two nights at an inn in Carmel. I've always wanted to hang out
in Carmel. This charming town is 45 minutes or so from where
we'll be staying, while the relatives who normally live there, visit
back East.

I like California. There's something about it that's not New York, that appeals to me. In fact, it's one of the few things that's not New York
that I really like. For example, I know that Toledo is not New York --
and that doesn't pull me at all. I am one of those people who prefers coast to inland. And I like the rhythm that is Northern California. It's a different dance step. A Big Sur Martha Graham with a dip. A dip made up of chunky, avocado, a touch of jalapeno and smooth Meyer lemons, with a side of crunchy pistachios.

We settle into our seats. I practice forgiving the security agent who confiscated the yogurts and is probably eating them now. Four of them! I also work on appreciating Jed for the ingenious, but ultimately toe-destroying cooling system throughout our apartment he strung together to fight the 90+ degree heat.

You see, that 15 lb. weight propped up a large fan, and this, along with another dozen fans my husband spread about our rooms -- created "flow" -- as he often said proudly. Unfortunately, I couldn't walk more than a few steps, open a closet, or get in or out the front door, without knocking one over. And now, as I contain myself from reminding him, I can barely walk at all. Also, there is no chocolate yogurt.

It is the kind of lament that would sound particularly heart-breaking on a banjo.

My Mother's Macy's Card

The summer I graduated from the University of Michigan, I moved to Manhattan with my college roommate and "just for emergencies"
my mother's Macy's charge card.

A few weeks later, my mother called, "Where's my Macy's charge," she demanded.
"In my purse," I replied.
"I don't think so," she shouted across the telephone line from the midwest.

Someone had charged $4,500 worth of men's clothing to her charge. "Call this man at Macy's immediately," she said, and hung up on me.

The man -- I'll call him Mr. Scary -- loomed over me in the tiny office. He'd spoken at length with my mother and the two of them agreed that I was witless, irresponsible, and lacking in the maturity that goes along with a charge card to the "World's Largest Store."

He shook his head sadly. He'd expected more from a University of Michigan graduate!

"Don't you ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever apply for a Macy's charge," he said. "Never. Never. Never."

And so I did not.

Then last week, a woman in my exercise class passed out 25% off Macy's Friends and Family cards to a few of us.

I quickly ran over to Macy's and scooped up a summer palette of shirts for my husband.

"If you open a Macy's charge today, you'll get an extra 20% off," my salesperson said.
I quickly calculated -- that's 25% + 20% off already reduced prices!

What's the statute of limitations in cases like this? I'm married with a career; I even have a grown son with his own charge cards.

"Okay," I said.
How far back did Macy's keep records?

"You're approved," he said.

My mother -- who always loved a bargain -- died in February.
I'd been waiting for a sign from her.

Did this mean she's forgiven me?

For Mama

(In Honor of what would have been my mother's 90th birthday,
July 3, 2011.)

At the intersection of fear and love,
at the edge of sadness and the moment of new life,
as guilt dissolves into wholeness,
and this year spins away from what came before,
pain subsides --
leaving behind only her chocolate-covered coconut patties,
her gym shoes, a silky pink robe.

For Marlene, Who is Allergic to Pepper.

Oh, please, please, don’t sit by me, Marlene,
Although of your company I’m keen.
I had a wee disaster,
And it happened so much faster than
I could stop it, alas I’m no Paula Deen.

Marlene, Marlene, please don’t fret,
If by your side I refuse to set.
You’ll understand in a second,
why I do not beckon,
for us to sit tete a tete.

Marlene, trust me, my pet.
You’re safe no where near me, I bet.
I’m more lethal, Marlene.
Than arsenic or gasoline.
And for that I deeply regret.

I was tossing a salad for deux,
When suddenly, mon Dieu!
My peppermill burst wide –
Shooting out what’s inside
onto me, which stuck like glue.

Oh, please don’t sit next to me, Marlene.
My Dear Friend, you won’t be amused.
In my nostrils and hair,
In the very air,
With this substance I’m thoroughly suffused.

Oh, Marlene, flop next to Roz or Linnie B.
Jed or Bill, I’m beggin’, down on one knee,
Or else you’ll be itchin’
And that’s not what I’m wishin’,
That’s the truth, don’t you agree?

"Good Night, Irene."

A few days before my mother died, my friend Anne Hamilton had a vision that my Dad was patiently waiting at the Gates of Heaven for her holding her purse. “Patiently or impatiently,” I asked. “Patiently,” she said. “It’s up to her.

Anne went on to say that she saw my mother ascending to heaven, meeting my father and that they were both young and radiant as they were when they met.

Irene was just 16 and Arnold was 19. On their first date they went dancing on the boat to Bob-lo. Their song was “Harbor Lights.”

It’s hard to talk about my mother without talking about my father too. They were one of those inseparable couples. If my father went to a Lions Club meeting, my mother went along. Yet, they had absolutely separate domains.

My mother’s, as everyone knows, was the kitchen. My mother never met a recipe she didn’t think could be improved by adding a lb. of butter and a carton of sour cream. Her sucker cookies are famous. When she visited us in New York, she’d always bring with her a box of cookies carefully layered in wax paper and tin foil and usually a very large brisket, and a package of marrow bones for her pea soup. If you ever tasted her pea soup you know why she was a better cook than most Top Chefs.

My mother had a career – wife, mother, Bobe.

She took these responsibilities very seriously. When Michael, my son, was a small boy and I was a Single Mother trying to balance making a living with making a home, Mike suddenly spiked a fever. I needed to work in the morning. I called my mother.

This woman who had never traveled anywhere without my father -- took a plane from Detroit to La Guardia, a bus from the airport to Grand Central, found the train to Larchmont, and then a taxi to my house. Within hours she was standing on my doorstep, ringing my bell – naturally she brought cookies.

When I needed a car for my new job, my mother volunteered to bring one. This was long before cell phones. The idea was my father would drive their car and my mother would follow him to New York in a little gray Escort for me. Except my father pulled out of the drive and zoomed off and my mother, so she says, didn’t see “that meshugenah” again, until she parked behind him in my driveway.
Once my husband Jed and I were driving down to North Carolina at the same time that there was a hurricane on the Coast. We got a message from my mother on my cell phone, “Oy vey, Turn Back! Turn Back!”’

Two years ago I published a book. I ordered a copy for my mother. In one of those strange unexplainable flukes in life, the copy for my mother and the copy for my cousin Allee were printed incorrectly. None of the sentences made sense. I didn’t believe my mother when she told me this over the phone. “Okay, I humored her, mark the pages and send it back to me, I said. She did. She stayed up until 3:30 in the morning and hand wrote 88 little white slips of paper meticulously detailing errors she had found. I wish I had saved them.

When I visited my mother in the hospital a few weeks before she died, I asked her what she was was proudest of in her life. She answered “My 3 children. The lives they lead.”

“I had a good life with Daddy,” she added. “We never had much money, but we did a lot. We traveled, we had good friends.”

On Sunday, February 13, Jed and I flew in to see my mother. The next day was Valentine’s Day, my father’s birthday. I was terrified. I thought if she could choose, she would want to pass that day so she could be with him. We arrived about 2:00. My mother was already on a morphine drip. I’ve been told even though someone isn’t responding they can still hear you. I held my mother and told her how much I loved her and what a good mother she had been. I got to sing “Good Night, Irene” to her. Her face was slack. She had been breathing erratically for about 25 minutes. At about 4:00 pm, there was a moment when her face suddenly got radiant, suffused with joy. I teased her, “Irene, do you see Arnold right now? She did not take another breath.

I spent the next few days emptying her apartment – my Dad’s tuxedo and black tie, the beaded purses, the clocks and Royal Doultons, the bags of cashews and pecans, the funny hats and magic tricks, the hundred-thousand pictures of the grand children and great-grandchildren, and an almost full jar of Saunders Hot Fudge.

As for last words, my sister-in-law tells me she turned over once the day before and clearly said, “kishka.”

I don’t know anyone else like my mother. She was a presence in my life. I don't know if there will ever be a time when I don't think of calling her at least once a day "Good Night, Irene."

My mother

My mother is dying. I cannot stop it. Have I asked her everything I want to know?

For example, why did she say I had to be home by an 11:30 pm curfew even though it meant I’d miss the last 1/2 hour of Gone With the Wind? (What happened? Did Scarlett and Rhett get back together again?)

And if you forget to put the chicken-in-the-pot in the refrigerator before you go to bed, is it still safe to eat in the morning?

First a little background: My mother was young when I was born. Only 21. Times were difficult then. She’d been very sick and I was a preemie and my Dad was away getting ready for the war.

(Does it matter if you put the cocoa powder or the warm milk in the cup first?)

(How many books of S & H green stamps did it take for our corn popper?)

Why didn’t we talk more?

What’s a bunion anyway? And why should I care if get one?

Did she do all the things she wanted to do? Is she afraid of death? Does she think my Dad is waiting for her in the beyond?


Soon both my mother and be father will be gone – along with all the knickknacks, the bags of cashews, and the Belefonte LP’s and the photos and magic tricks, and the dish drainer and candy dishes and the clocks, and the little kitchen table and the coat rack with hats and scarves -- all dispersed, like their ashes.


I stroke my mother’s hair. But, it is not my mother’s hair. My mother had black, black shiny black hair. But now this failing woman lying in the bed is strawberry blonde with large gray roots. She doesn’t even remember about Gone with the Wind.
“I never did that," she says, 'you’re making it up”. In truth, my mother, the one I remember from when I was a little girl, -- the look of her, the laugh, my mother with the mambo, cha cha hips -- started fading a long, long time ago -- and I have wondered where she’s gone for years.

Jed says, “It’s like trying to catch a piece of paper blowing away in the wind.”

That doesn’t make it hurt less.

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.