The New Year's Thing

[copied from dland]

**In 12 days I will be 50 years old**

The mystique of Happy New Year has always escaped me.

I remember when I was a kid and I would be babysitting on New Year’s Eve, and I would get all excited as I watched the ball drop in Times Square and then I would realize that it was a minute later than it was before, and the clock turns over past midnight every night, and really, why all the fuss? There I would be, sitting alone in somebody else’s house watching TV and thinking, Okay, now what?

I did spend one semi-raucous New Year’s Eve freshman year of college, so that would be 1971-1972. Oddly, I found myself with my two best buddies from college (Maryland) in a house in New Jersey, which belonged to my guy buddy’s best high school friend, except his parents were away and there was no one in the house but the three of us and we got majorly stoned and then laughed at the TV news. For me, this was raucous. We laughed a lot and then fell asleep.

So, whatever. I guess this has some flavor of new beginnings and bad times behind us. I’m all for that. I just don’t get why the clock turning over past midnight tonight is any different from any other midnight. Each day is a new beginning, if that’s what you want to do with it.


ENTRY #36

The Universal Sign for Moron

[copied from dland]

**In 15 days I will be 50 years old**

Sometimes I think I really am turning into an old curmudgeon, like Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes. Or as my kids would say, I'm turning into an old fart.

Here's the thing today's rant is about. Now, I understand that there are styles and there are fashions, and no one should expect kids -- teenagers -- to look or dress like adults do. I completely endorse the rights of teenagers to look and dress however they want to.

Unless they look like idiots. Or like common thugs or sluts.

The one that really got me for a long time is the baseball caps. This year, students in my high school are banned from wearing caps or any hats in school (except for religious reasons, or with a medical note, which I won't go into now), and I really didn't care if they wore hats or not. It's a style, who cares. But when they wear baseball caps backwards, or worse, sideways, they look like they don't even know that their clothes are on wrong.

When I was a kid (i.e., when dinosaurs roamed the suburbs), wearing a cap sideways was the universal sign that the wearer was a moron. Literally. Anyone and everyone knew that someone with his hat on wrong didn't know how to dress himself, and had somehow gotten lost from the caretaker he had to have to tell him when to inhale and swallow.

Even worse than the caps backward is when they wear those visors on upside down or backwards. And they wonder why they're not getting into Ivy League schools.

And then, my god, the thongs. Listen, girls, these things are called underwear for a reason. They're supposed to be worn UNDER the other clothes that you are WEARing. Seeing someone else's underwear is supposed to be a rare privilege for those near and dear, not for your chemistry teacher (not to mention the 750 teenage boys roaming through the school corridors.)

Not only do the top of the thongs show in the back (because their pants are so incredibly low cut), so many of them are wearing these obscene little items of lingerie under pants that are so snug they look like tattoos. And they're showing three inches of belly between the bottom of the top and the top of the bottom, and no matter what rules the schools make and what rules they enforce, short of requiring big baggy uniforms for all, there just isn't much you can do.

So it's official: I'm an old fart. And I really couldn't care less what they wear or how they look. What I really want to know is how there can be so many people between 12 and 21 who are walking around with absolutely no sense of self-respect or values. Girls think that if they look like sluts they will attract boys, and they will, but what boys are these? Boys think that if they look trendy everyone will think they are cool, but what they don't look like is men with brains; they just look stupid.

It's the universal sign for going to hell in a handbasket. It's just so much easier to see when you've got years and years of perspective.


ENTRY #35

With Remote Firmly in Hand

[copied from dland]

**In 16 days I will be 50 years old**

I admit it: I am the keeper of the remote control in this house.

I know this is generally considered a male thing, but since my Husband likes to think of himself as anti-technology, he prides himself on never touching the remote. He doesn't like it when I keep flipping though the channels either, but since we rarely watch TV in the same room, it doesn't matter. I watch by myself and I keep a firm finger on the remote. I have no attention span anymore, and I can't stand to watch commercials.

So a few weeks ago, I was flipping around and I came across Touched By an Angel, a rerun. I rarely watch the show because I rarely watch hour long shows, but I have seen it from time to time. Here's the scene that caught my attention:

A young man (the young doctor on Dick Van Dyke's doctor show) seems to be clearing away the possessions of his deceased wealthy father, and he asks the butler, an older man, if he too has lost both his parents. The butler assures him that both his parents are long gone. And the young man asks "Do you get over it?" meaning the loss of one's parents. And the butler says, "Oh no, sir, you never get over it. But you get past it."

I was driving around yesterday morning, running last minute errands for Christmas eve, when I began to feel something I can only describe as a heavy heart. So what is it exactly about Shirl dying that I still need to get past?

The last 8 years, not to mince words, sucked. I felt miserable for her -- she was the one dying -- but she made life miserable for everyone around her. Not intentionally, I like to hope, but she was not above manipulation and guilt to get people to do things for her, not even before. Sister and I made a pact that, once she was gone, we would not glorify her in our memories in death. We would want to remember everything, bad along with the good, and not sugarcoat honest feelings.

Yet I miss her - what is it that I miss? She drove me crazy, no question.

Maybe I miss my childhood, not unlike the way my daughter at 18 is now confronting that her childhood is over. Maybe this is the struggle that never ends: growing up. Getting past all of it.

The adventure continues.

ENTRY #34

Can You Go Home Again?

[copied from dland]

**In 17 days I will be 50 years old**

Younger Daughter says that since she left for college this past September, all our family traditions have changed. This is as much as she can currently understand of that same thing we all go through: we grow up, we are no longer children, our parents can no longer fix everything, and the home of our childhood becomes a memory. Even if we still live there, it feels different.

Our house is different; a few days after she went away, we had vinyl siding put up, new windows put in, the vestibule-front porch demolished and rebuilt without the vestibule, and took out the dead shrubs. So the house does look different. But that's not what she said. She said that our family traditions are gone.

True, we didn't have our annual "Birthday Sunday" in September, when my in-laws celebrate the birthdays of their two children and one son-in-law. (My birthday, as we all know, is in January.) With three of the four grandchildren away at college this year, there was no day in September available. We agreed that starting next year, Birthday Sunday would become Anniversary Sunday, celebrated in July. One tradition down.

We've never missed a Christmas with the in-laws, until today. Now that they're an hour and a half drive away, snow matters, and boy did it snow today. We're nearing a foot, and my sister-in-law, almost an hour north of us, has got to have lots more. So, for my kids, even though they're grown up, it's the first Christmas without Nannie and Gramps. Second tradition down.

What else could she have meant? We had Thanksgiving at my father's, just like we did last year. We ate all the same food, and welcomed the addition of my nephew's wonderful girlfriend to the dinner table. Young Daughter didn't even mention Thanksgiving; she just said "all our family traditions." So she must have meant Thanksgiving, too.

We didn't lose our Thanksgiving tradition, it just changed. No Shirl this year. So it was her first Thanksgiving without Grandma.

I know she was cranky today because she feels like her childhood is slipping away. It is. They do that. They're supposed to.

She'll get over it. I just wish she didn't have to go back to school for the spring semester three days before my birthday.


ENTRY #33

A Christmas Story of Us: Jack and Shirl

[copied from dland]

Christmas, 2002 will be the first day in almost 60 years that my father will not be celebrating – or at least, taking note of – his wedding anniversary. Jack and Shirl were married on Christmas Day, 1943, and Shirl died in May, just four days before Jack’s 83rd birthday. And so, for them, a Christmas “Story of Us.”

They didn’t meet on a Christmas, but close. In 1941, Jack, a college graduate since the previous June and unable to get the job this should have gotten him because of a low draft number, was coming to New York for the New Year’s weekend for a fraternity convention. He would be with all of his friends again, and all their girlfriends, his included, and they would have a great weekend in a hotel in New York City. There was only one problem: his girlfriend’s mother thought this sounded as fishy as it sounds now to you and me, and said she couldn’t go. So here’s Jack, a really good-looking, smart, nice-Jewish-boy college graduate with no date for the fraternity weekend. What to do?

His sister suggested that he write a letter to a cousin who lived in New York, about their own age, whom he had never met, and ask her if she could fix him up with a date for the weekend. No dummy, this pretty and popular girl seizes a golden opportunity and tells her plainer cousin from the other side of the family that she’s got to go. This guy is great. (Remember, she’s never met him.) So Shirl decides to go, and her mother is easily convinced since she’s actually met Jack’s parents in years past, in fact, before Jack and Shirl were ever born, since Jack’s father’s first cousin is Shirley’s mother’s sister-in-law. (Got that? Here, it’s easier like this: Edith had a first cousin on her father’s side named Shirl and a second cousin on her mother’s side named Jack. When we draw a family tree, it only works if we roll it into a tube, since both sides meet at Edith.)

I digress. Edith takes Shirl shopping at Klein’s, where they pick out a fabulous weekend wardrobe that probably cost a total of $10.00. And Shirl gets packed off to the hotel. She told me years later that there was one room for the guys and one room for the girls, but several of the girls were not exactly … behaving. There was certainly drinking, but they were all 21 or over. That very first night, Jack got so drunk that he was sick for hours and hours. This, by the way, is the last time Jack has ever had a drop of alcohol, New Year’s Eve, 1941. It is also the last time he danced.

Weekend over, he went back home to Massachusetts, waited to be drafted (he had already taken his physical on December 8), broke up with his girlfriend, and started writing to Shirl, who started writing back. When he got leave from the Army, he visited. Mostly they wrote. They actually told us only a few years ago that from the time they met to the time they got married, they only saw each other about ten times, although each of those was a weekend.

They got engaged on March 25, 1942. Jack had finished basic training by this time, had been stationed in a variety of places around the country, learning to shoot German planes out of the skies with anti-aircraft artillery, and was still writing, writing. And then, he got stationed in Fort Dix, New Jersey, near Trenton, only a couple of hours by train from New York City.

It was 1943 and Christmas was coming. Jack was an officer, a second lieutenant, and, not surprisingly, the only Jewish guy in his outfit. So when his commanding officer said something about there being no passes for Christmas, except for unusual circumstances, he probably never expected Jack to step up. He asked if he could have a 24 hour pass on Christmas so he could get married. After he got it, he called Shirl and told her that if she could plan a wedding in one week, they could get married before he was shipped overseas.

It was a gamble, sort of. Jack wanted to marry Shirl, but thought it would be better to wait until after the war, so she wouldn’t end up a widow, or married to someone crippled, or worse. She said she would marry him anyway, regardless of injury, so why not marry him before? Whatever happened, she would love him anyway and they would be married. So he gave her one chance, one day, and she ran with it.

She planned a small wedding, in a rabbi’s study (which is to say, a religious ceremony, but not a big fancy one.) There were only about a dozen people at the ceremony, their two families, and then a few dozen went out for lunch afterwards. Jack’s family came down by train.

Here’s the honeymoon: they went out for dinner to some Hungarian restaurant (we have a picture taken by the roving photographer) and then to a hotel. But remember, it was a 24 hour pass. So Jack had to leave at midnight to get the train to get back to Fort Dix on time, I guess by 6 AM. So here’s Shirl, on her honeymoon, alone in the hotel room in the middle of the night. After an hour or so, there’s a knock on the door, and to her amazement, there stands one of her new sisters-in-law, telling her that, since there’s a shortage of hotel rooms in New York, due to the war and the holiday, and she’s knows that Jack’s just left, can she spend the night here? Really. My mother spent more of her honeymoon night with her husband’s sister than she did with her husband.

Jack spent their first anniversary sleeping in the barn in France, surrounded by potatoes, soldiers, and shellfire. He spent the next 56 of them with her.

We didn’t celebrate Christmas as such when I was growing up, no tree or anything, but each year we would go out to dinner, or into the city to see a show. Maybe that’s why I felt Christmas was still a special day, even though it wasn’t really a holiday for us. It was the day we celebrated Shirl and Jack. Since I’ve been married (and for a couple of years before, so now that’s 27 years) I celebrate Christmas with my in-laws, although I would stop by to see Shirl and Jack in the morning to wish them a happy anniversary. Since my in-laws moved a couple of hours away, I haven’t had time to fit in both. Don’t know what I’ll do tomorrow. It may snow hard, eliminating the drive to south Jersey all together. I could spend the day with Jack, if I wanted to.

What will it be for him, Christmas 2002? Does he miss her? Is he glad her suffering is over? Does he wish that his was, too? Will he even stop and notice the day, or mention it to anyone? This is the generation that won the war, remember. They don’t let those pesky emotions get in their way. They just do what they’ve got to do.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Jack is the best, and he is my hero. Let the day be whatever he wants it to be, and let it be easy for him. He’s earned it.

Merry Christmas to all. Happy Anniversary to one.


ENTRY #32

They're Back

[copied from dland]

**In 21 days I will be 50 years old**

I haven’t written for a few days, and the reason is clear: they’re back. And, as I noted once before, they suck up your life.

Younger Daughter came home by train Tuesday afternoon, after which I dashed to my therapist appointment and came home, fell asleep, and got up the next day at 5:30 to go to work. But the true adventure of the week is with Older Daughter, who, last Saturday, went ice skating at college and fell and did something or other to her arm. Her right arm, of course, where the shoulder hasn’t been good since a minor car accident four years ago. Her right arm, of course, which she had to use to take finals all week. A visit to the emergency room in Poughkeepsie last Sunday night was not much help. So here was my week:

I spent Monday morning on the phone trying to track down an orthopedist a) who would see her when she got home, and, b) that she would be willing to see, since, after her original shoulder problem wasn’t diagnosed for a few years, she does not have a high opinion of them as a group. Got one.

Tuesday was spent mostly in the car, as described. And now the fun begins.

Because Older Daughter had a final Thursday night and had to be out of her dorm Friday morning and had a useless arm, on Wednesday after work, Younger Daughter and I made the drive up into New York State, filled up the car with all her stuff, and drove it home. Where was Husband in all of this? At the mandatory Christmas party for his new job, which I only escaped because I was spending the evening as a temporary teamster. So we loaded the car, unloaded the car, drove about 65 miles each way, and, in the middle there somewhere, took both my girls and two of Older Daughter’s friends out for dinner. Okay, this was my idea. They were taking finals all week, after all.

Thursday, at work. Older gives a call and gives me her decision: her arm is too painful for her to drive home. We thought it might be, would be, but now she’s up at school with her car. So, for the second night in a row, we drive up there, this time Husband and I, after her final. She comes home in my car, he drives home in hers.

Friday. No work for me today, having called in sick. Older to the orthopedist at 9, from there to get an MRI of her shoulder. And then, an unexpected hour all for me! (I finished my Christmas shopping.)

Saturday – a good one. Older is also having a bone scan, which means she gets an injection of something or other at 10 and then we go back for the scan at 2:30. Which effectively sucks up the day.

Sunday morning. Nothing to do today but decorate the tree and go visit Jack, first stopping to pick up the jar of herring he asked for. Really.

Will I read, will I write? Will I have a moment to call my own until they go back to school? Will I ever get to sit on the couch again, or use the DVD player? All these questions and more will be answered in the upcoming weeks. Same time, same station.

ENTRY #31

A Very Merry Re-Birthday to Me

[copied from dland]

**In 26 days I will be 50 years old**

A short happy entry today: it is my re-birthday, and I am 11 years old.

Not to be confused with the real birthday, the BIG one, coming up in just 26 days. (See above.) The re-birthday is the day I celebrate that I had a brain tumor cut out of my head and lived to tell the tale.

Eleven years ago. Holy cow. More than half out of the lives of either of my children. They have no clear memories of me before hearing with both ears and being able to walk a straight line. But really, why would they?

Enough, enough. It is really very cool that I get to celebrate this one each year, and that as a result I get to celebrate the other one, too. That's all!


ENTRY #30

Happy Birthday, Grandpa Sam

[copied from dland]

**In 27 days I will be 50 years old**

Okay, I know it's time for me to stop doing this, but today would have been Grandpa's birthday. Let's see, it's 2002, so if he were still alive, he would be ... 110.

Perhaps I'm being a little unrealistic here. When he died 31 years ago, I was 18, and his presence in my life was so strong that I couldn't imagine going on without him. So every year I would imagine what it would be like if he hadn't died. For a while it seemed realistic enough. When I was 21 he would have been 81, celebrating my birthday; that was possible. He would only have been 85 at my wedding; people live to be 85 all the time. He would have been 92 when my first daughter was born. Hey, didn't his own brother live to 92, and their mother to 96? It could have happened!

I'm not sure when it got to be weird, I guess ten years ago when he would have been 100. Not so many people make it to 100. And now I've got to make peace with it: he's not coming back. I mean, I knew of course that he wasn't coming back.

But he never would have seen me reach 50, not under any circumstances, not under the best possible health, and here's 50 coming up fast. What would it have been like for him, to see his grandchildren all grown now, and one of them a grandmother herself? It would have been some ride.

But no transfer at the end of the line, not even for a guy who spent half his life riding the New York City subways.

What the hell. Happy Birthday, Grandpa. Love you.


ENTRY #29

The Story of Us: The Real Thing

[copied from dland]

**In 29 days I will be 50 years old**

So it was the summer after high school, and we went to the movies every Saturday night and then out to a diner somewhere for cheesecake. The first movie we saw was The Andromeda Strain, a scifi flick about an alien virus that threatens life as we know it. A real date movie.

It was a pleasant way to spend a summer, but it was a relationship – if you can call it that – that was going nowhere. Never once did he kiss me, or try to. I never could figure out what was going on, but since we were both going off to college in September, I didn’t have to work very hard at it. We would go to college and it would be over.

What I didn’t count on was that he would be at school in DC, I would be at the University of Maryland, just ten miles away, and I would be homesick for a familiar face. So after a few weeks at school, I got in touch with him and we started dating again. I think he came out twice by bus and picked me up and we went into Georgetown, and when we were home, we went to the movies. This went on for a month or two, by which time I wasn’t homesick anymore, and I had had it. I decided that it was over, and then on our last date, after he brought me all the way back to Maryland from DC and had to turn around and run to catch the last bus back, he kissed me. Wow. It was great. And then he was gone.

But I had already decided. I sat down and actually wrote him a “Dear John” letter, and sent it. I justified this to myself somehow, probably by saying “Well, I’ll never see him again anyway,” and let it go. I started seeing someone, went with him for about three years, and fully expected to marry him. The fact that he wasn’t Jewish was absolutely irrelevant; the fact that he turned out to be from Mars was not. Once I realized that this was not the guy I ever wanted to be the father of my children, I got it that this meant I didn’t want to marry him after all. Right around Christmas of my senior year of college, I broke up with him, perhaps one of the smartest things I had ever done.

So here I was, unattached. My few friends made it their project to take me to bars and teach me to drink, so that if I ever got to go on any kind of date again, I wouldn’t look like a four-year-old. I was living at home now, my senior year of college at a local state school. I knew I needed to go to graduate school in September, but I missed the application deadline. So I got a job, and planned to in January.

Summer passed. I should say here that although I had no idea where John was, I figured he was somewhere in town, at least for the summer, and I always had it in the back of my mind that I would run into him somewhere. A year or two earlier, driving around town with the soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend, I saw John out running. If I had to go someplace, the drugstore, the library, I always made sure I was at least presentable looking. You never know.

It was late August, the 25th, I think, maybe around 7:00. I wanted to go out and buy myself a cassette recorder, but when Jack asked where I was going, I knew that I would get an argument about saving my money if I told him the truth. So I grabbed a couple of books to return and said “To the library.” I bought the cassette recorder, but then I had to get the books out of the car, so I went to the library. When I parked in the car, I saw John’s car there, an adorable and very distinctive red Firebird with a black vinyl top. He was not the sports car type, and it had always seemed an odd car for him. I hoped that maybe his sister was at the library, although I knew it was him.

I looked like crap. Torn cut-offs, stained t-shirt, sandals, probably legs not too recently shaven, no make-up, hair a mess. All I needed to do was step inside the library, drop off the books, and be off. No way I would run into John here, now. I went up the steps and reached to open the door. But before I could, it opened and he came out, and stood right there in front of grungy old me.

We talked for a minute or two, how was school, what are you doing now, etc. I wanted to get away and at least brush my hair, but I was fascinated. And then, after a minute or two of silence, he said “Would you like to go out for a drink later?” Muttering a casual “Sure, okay,” I raced inside, dropped off my books, waited until I was sure he was out of the parking lot, and then beat it back home, showering, dressing, all of it. By the time he came an hour or so later, I was calm, collected, casual. No big deal.

We went to a bar/restaurant he knew of, and had to wait for a table. While we stood there, he reached into a pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes, and offered me one. Wow. I had just quit in June, but I took one. Wow, I thought, he smokes, he drinks. He grew up. What next?

We sat over drinks for a few hours. The conversation was easy and fun. He took me home and we sat on my front steps for maybe another hour, mostly kissing. Turns out he was really really good at that.

He said goodnight, after making plans to see each other the next night. I stood inside my door, watching him get into his car. As he pulled away from the curb, I actually said out loud to no one but me: “Oh my god. I’m going to marry John.” I just knew.

Yada, yada, yada. Within two weeks he had ditched a girlfriend, started graduate school locally, and that was it. He never once in all these years has brought up the “Dear John” letter, and I apologized for it right away. We got engaged the next summer, and married the summer after that. That was 25 years ago this last June.

Here I am, a librarian, and when I tell people that John and I found each other on the front steps of the public library, then this is the part that’s all how romantic, how sweet. And it really was.

Life is not always a picnic, and it is certainly not always what you think it’s going to be. But when I remember how it felt to stand just inside the door that night and watch him pull away and know I was going to marry him, him of all people, I know how great a feeling that was and how right it was, then and now.

P.S. As I may have mentioned elsewhere, I’ve also been teaching for the last 25 years in the same high school both John and I (and our sisters, children, etc.) went to. Over the years, I have warned many girls to be careful what they say about the geeky boys in their classes, because you never know who you’ll end up with. And dear Mr. Buckley, our speech teacher, before he retired, was fond of telling the girls in his classes that if they were good students, he would do for them what he had done for me. When they asked what that was, he said that he had gotten me a husband. He took credit for the whole thing.


ENTRY #28

The Story of Us: High School, Part 1

[copied from dland]

**In 32 days I will be 50 years old**

One of the diaries I most enjoy, that of wifemotherme, recently wrote her Story of Us, and wanted to see others’ stories of us (them?). So here goes.

As you can all see by the countdown at the top of the page, I’m old, man. Half a fucking century, can’t believe it. I still feel like a kid inside. (Not the bones and muscles, they feel like 95. But I feel like the same person I always was.) Here’s a quotation I especially love, by an author named Jill Ciment, whose books I have never read. I just saw this somewhere:

“The anomaly of childhood is that despite its brevity, childhood takes up a lot of square footage in memory’s tight quarters.”

Here goes.

Back in the day, junior high school consisted of grades 7, 8, and 9, and then we moved up to the big school for three years of high school. Here in my little suburb, there were two junior high schools, one for the east side of town and one for the west. Most of us (about 675 kids) never met each other until the first day of 10th grade. That first day of 10th grade is the day I met John.

Doesn’t that sound sweet and romantic, that we met on the first day of high school? Keep reading.

I was very shy, couldn’t talk to boys at all. If a boy said hello, I couldn’t think of an answer, let alone say it out loud. The thought of speaking in public really terrified me. So of course, like everyone else in the 10th grade, I was taking a class in public speaking. Since the only alternative was a class in acting, it was the safer choice.

The teacher, as it turned out, was a very special guy, the school character, but in a good way. He looked like a leprechaun and had more energy than any kid in the school. He was funny and wonderful. No one was allowed to remain shy in Mr. Buckley’s class. He made everyone feel important. I guess he must have gone around the room and made us introduce ourselves. When it was John’s turn, I recognized his last name at once; his father was in charge of the school system at the time and his name appeared at the bottom of practically every notice we took home. So it was like he was the principal’s kid, only more so.

I didn’t think much of him. He had short short dark hair, was maybe a little plump, and was dressed like it was 1958 instead of 1968. And then I saw it: an American flag pin on his shirt collar. Uh-oh. This meant he was a hawk, pro-war, maybe even – GASP! – a Republican!

1968, remember? Lots going on in the world, Viet Nam, recent demonstrations at the Democratic convention in Chicago, and a big election for president in just two months. True, Hubert Humphrey was running against Richard Nixon, but, dove as I was, I still had the McCarthy button on my bag. That’s Senator Eugene, not Senator Joseph of the 1950s. This was the Senator who ran on a Peace Now ticket for the Democratic nomination. I was a supporter.

And here was this kid wearing an American flag pin? What was he, 50 years old? What kid wasn’t against the war in Viet Nam? I got closer. He had bumper stickers on his notebook, one on the front and one on the back. Here’s what they said:

“Reagan for President.” Remember, this was 1968. And “Better Dead Than Red.”

So when class was over, I went up to him and said something like “What’s wrong with you? Anything is better than dead.” And so it began.

We baited each other daily over political issues that were extremely important. When it was time to give our persuasive speeches, I gave mine on the topic “Why we should pull out of Viet Nam unconditionally now.” His was “Why we should end the war in Viet Nam by dropping a nuclear bomb on Peking.” Hmmm.

The teacher kept us apart. Our friends would watch down the halls to make sure we wouldn’t accidentally encounter each other. I hated this kid.

More to follow.


ENTRY #26

TV Guide

[copied from dland]

**In 33 days I will be 50 years old**

And another milestone reached in life. It has finally happened.

I didn’t renew my subscription to TV Guide.

I have never lived anywhere where there wasn’t a subscription to TV Guide. My parents were charter subscribers, and the magazine made its first appearance the week after I was born, so it was there when I came home from the hospital. From the time I could read, I would read each issue cover to cover every week. I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to. I mean, it was a magazine, right? Isn’t that what you do with magazines, read them?

It was a magazine about TV; could there be anything better than that? I read TV Guide while I watched TV, while I watched in amazement as Jim Anderson came home in a jacket and tie, kissed Princess and Kitten and mussed Bud’s hair, and changed into a sweater with patches on the sleeves. That was so cool. My dad just went to work in a sport shirt. He didn’t even wear a hat like all the other men on TV did.

All summer long I would wait for the Fall Premiere issue, the one that had that neat grid in it that said when all the new shows would be on, and it had pictures from the new shows, too. I couldn’t wait to see Lost in Space and Gilligan’s Island, what great shows they sounded like. Okay, even I caught on right away when I saw them, but I still watched.

I never saw Dynasty, not once, or Knot’s Landing, but I always knew what was going on in their plotlines. I read it in TV Guide. I had a subscription in my name when I lived in the dorm away at college. Sometimes there was overlap, like I would get the holiday issue at school even though I was home for the holiday break, but that was okay. As long as there was TV Guide someplace, I was okay.

I always knew what was on, always. When I was a kid, nobody else in my house even looked at TV Guide. They just asked me what was on.

But after 50 years (almost), I’m thinking: maybe it’s enough already.

Too many articles about movies and music. Too many articles about how wonderful TV Guide is. And the cable people just keep adding channels, and poor old TV Guide just can’t keep up.

Time to go, TV Guide. Time for me to move on.


ENTRY #25

Who Am I, Anyway?

[copied from dland]

**In 40 days I will be 50 years old**

So I’m sitting there with my therapist last night and I’m telling her about my sucky day in the hospital and how nobody in my family came to see what I was doing there in the Emergency Room for hours and hours, and the first thing is that my cell phone rings. Since it seems like the height of rudeness to answer your cell phone while in therapy, I didn’t. (I only keep it on all the time because I don’t wear a watch anymore since the Purple Chai came into my life.) My issue of last night’s session seemed to be my sense of myself as unimportant and insignificant and have I trained my family to think that I can handle everything and they never need to worry about me. Lots to ponder on. And then the phone rings again on my way home and it’s the Older Daughter, totally panicked. About an hour and a half away at college out of state, she saw on TV that there was a terrible car accident in our town and she couldn’t move on until she knew I was okay and not involved. When I didn’t answer her first call she freaked out, called my Sister, and on and on.

So what was I saying again?

So I’m thinking about this being a speck of dust in the universe and no more meaningful in the grand scheme than a worm or a stereo speaker, and thinking, I ought to write this down. It’s good grist for the Purple Chai mill. I’m thinking, I’m thinking. Still working on it.

But another conversation I had today with my Colleague at work leads me off at a slightly skewed angle. Somehow we got onto the topic of what I was like as a kid, I’m not sure why. I think I said something about being the baby of the family and that I was very indulged, not with things, but with attention. I remarked that I was a little kid who demanded a lot of attention and got it.

She looked stunned. “No,” she said, “that can’t be. They all depended on you, always.”

“I mean when I was three, four, five.”

“No,” she said. “Not possible.”

I tell her that I was a whiny kid, and that they would give in to me just to make me shut up. If I didn’t get my way I would stamp my feet, maybe throw something. (Yes, I was sent to my room here or properly spanked. It was the 1950s, after all.) I tell her that when I was playing games with Grandpa and he had to go to the bathroom that if I didn’t want to stop playing I told him not to go, and he didn’t.

She’s looking at me like I just dropped in from Mars, not knowing what to say now that I have insisted that I am not making this up and she can call Jack at the old people’s place and have him verify it all for her. So finally she says:

“When did you change and become the total opposite?”

Whoa. Who the hell am I, anyway?

I’m the doer who sucks up every negative feeling and hasn’t gotten angry at anyone in about 20 years. I’m the turner of the other cheek. I’m the handler of all bad things, therefore the dumpee of all the crap no one else does or want to do. But I’m still the little whiner inside, it’s just that I learned in my life that other people don’t so much like to be around little whiners, so it’s best to keep that to yourself. I learned that lesson real, real well.

No answers here, except that I am all of it, and I can’t get a handle on it at all. Not at all.


ENTRY #24

Christmas, and the Jewish Thing

[copied from dland]

**In 39 days I will be 50 years old**

One of my family rituals each year around Christmastime was taking a ride one evening, in and out of all the streets in the town we lived in and neighboring towns, oohing and aahing at all the pretty, lit-up houses. One year my mother and I went into the city to shop at Macy’s, where the real Santa was. I never did think Santa was real, though, I always knew it was a man in a suit, pretending to be someone that other kids thought was real. But I remember the crowds, and the Macy’s toy department, and the excitement. I guess this was around 1958.

At home, we lit the candles on a Menorah, a plain, chrome-plated, ordinary thing. Sister and I got several presents, not one each night, but all at once. We never got anything fancy or expensive, since that was out of the family’s budget range, and anyway, Chanukah wasn’t really a big deal holiday. We didn’t celebrate the really big deal holidays at all, in our Jewish-by-culture-but-not-by-religion family. And all of that was totally okay. I never felt cheated, I never felt that I missed anything. I was grateful for what I got. (Especially the Quick-Draw McGraw doll I got when I was 7, that was the BEST! Thanks, Mom!)

Since religion wasn’t a big deal, marrying someone who wasn’t Jewish wasn’t a big deal either. When we got married, my grandmother gave me a Menorah that someone had brought her from Israel as a gift, but she had never used. (She never used anything anyone gave her – that’s another story.) I didn’t like it much, but I liked that she had given it to me, and when Chanukah rolled around in early December that year, I fired it up.

And then, a week later, we got a Christmas tree.

I GOT A CHRISTMAS TREE!!!! How cool is that?

So here I am, 25 years later, and I still just love this whole Christmas thing. We’ve got more ornaments than we know what to do with, because I’ve made a whole lot of them and I collect all kinds of others. We’ve got traditions, man, real American traditions. It all makes me feel like I finally put a foot in that candy store doorway.

I’m not belittling the religious aspects of Christmas, not at all. My girls have always been free to join their grandparents at church, and to make the most of their mixed heritage. But Christmas is many things, and different things to different people.

We light the Menorah still, the beautiful one I bought myself a few years ago, and the ugly Israeli one Grandma gave me, because the girls insist on using that one. When they were little, I gave them a present each night for 8 nights: one night a book, one night a video, one night the “big” gift, etc. They got to pick which one they wanted each night. Once in while Chanukah would start on December 26, and they felt like they hit the jackpot: the Christmas that didn’t end.

Christmas, of course, was spent with my husband’s family. I loved that I had children who believed in Santa Claus, and when they asked me if I thought he was real, I would think seriously and answer honestly, “Yes, I do.” Words mean different things to different people.

I asked Jack just a few years ago why we had always driven around town looking at the lit-up houses, and he admitted that he had just always gotten a kick out of Christmas, all his life. He grew up as one of just a half-dozen Jewish kids in a town near Boston. And Shirl told me that when she was a kid growing up in the Bronx, her father, her Orthodox Jewish father, would take her to Macy’s each year to sit on Santa’s lap, because all children deserve to believe in magic things, and to know that if they are good boys and girls, Santa is there for them. Even if they have a Menorah at home, and not a Christmas tree.


ENTRY #23

And Then I Went to the Hospital

[copied from dland]

It's not that I ate all that much on Thanksgiving. I never really do. I had about a mouthful of turkey -- never my favorite -- and Husband's vegan stuffing, which is always such a big hit with everyone, has always tasted just a little weird to me. Sister made the wonderful family cole slaw, Shirl's recipe, and I do like that. So I ate the cole slaw, and damn, it was good. Even so, I don't eat that much of anything, even that which I love.

Did not feel so good Friday morning, and took an hour or more to get up. I had planned to hit Target first thing in the a.m., to return a couple of things and pick up a few more Christmas gifts, but I stayed in bed for a while instead. Within the hour, the gut began to hurt.

I spent most of the day popping Advil while doing a minor errand or two

And getting a haircut I really didn't need. By six p.m. I was in bed trying to find a comfortable position where I wouldn't be in agony. I was sure I knew just what it was: diverticulitis rearing its ugly head -- um, colon -- again. It was the raisins in the rice pudding. It was the sesame seeds ion the Whopper I had on Tuesday. No doubt, diverticulitis. Or maybe -osis. Diverticulosis goes away in a day or two, but -itis needs antibiotics. Either way, gut pain, gut pain, gut pain.

Nasty night, Friday. All I wanted to do was (excuse me) get rid of whatever was going on in there, which seemed to have found a home in my pocket-filled system. More Advil, and more, and an ice pack on my belly.

Woke up about 8:15 am, saw the note from Husband that he had gone out for a few things. (Because Home Depot is always open.) My doctor was off (it was Saturday, after all) and the gut doctor I had seen a few years ago for a previous bout of the same was already at the hospital working, so he said to come on in, get the CAT scan, and he would see me at two. Girls both still sleeping, I left a note and headed off to Emergency. My main fear at this point was that they would put me in the same cubicle where Shirl died.

I was settled into a cubicle (not that one) by 10, and my day began. Curiously, about this time, my pain disappeared. It's amazing what getting rid of all that stuff can do for you.

The Emergency Room is never a good place to be. Either you are really sick, which certainly sucks, or you're not sick enough to warrant much attention. Hmm. I was definitely in the second category.

They gave me the delightful contrast drink to drink and there I was. I read four magazines. By about noon, I began to wonder where my wonderful family was. The girls, true, might still be asleep. Husband not home yet? A sale on leaf suckers, was there? Did he see the note? Did he not read the word HOSPITAL? Where the fuck was he?

I thought about calling home to tell them I was still alive, but screw it. Someone could be making the ten minute ride to the hospital to see if I was living or dead, right?

Started crying about 1:00. Not big time weeping, mostly sniffling and tears rolling down the old cheeks. And I'm thinking:

"They all think I'm fucking supermom and I can handle it. To them I'm just a competent doer of things that need doing. Needs, I don't have needs. I don't mind being alone in the fucking hospital. I'm just a zero to them, nothing. I'm invisible."

You get the picture.

I finally went for the damn CAT scan at 1:30 and was back in my cubicle by 2:15. Oh wait, someone else was in my cubicle now. They parked my bed in the hall, where I sat crying until about three. At which time I started asking them to take out my IV because I was going home.

Not that I wanted to go home. I didn't want to see them at all. I thought, if only I had remembered to bring a credit card, I could go to a hotel. They'll be sorry. Everybody hatesmenobodylikesmeI'mgoingtogoeatworms.

They kept putting me off, and my doctor finally showed up at 3:45. Seems like the guy who reads the CAT scans had already gone home. But wait, the pain's gone. Why am I here again?

I begged them to let me go, and told them that my family sucked. The doctor said that I was okay (duh) and let me go.

I'd been thinking all along, don't lose the anger, you never get angry but you're right this time, don't lose it. I got in the car and lit a cigarette and got about three blocks away from the hospital and suddenly realized that I wasn't angry anymore. I was okay.

Got home about 4:30. Husband looked worried and relieved. "Why didn't you call?" he asked. "Why didn't you come?" I asked. So know we know: both of us are jerks. It was very nice that he insisted that he was the bigger jerk, since I was the one in the hospital. It didn't matter anymore. I was okay.

Then I found out that Sister found out where I was all day, and as I was about to call her and tell her I was home she called me and yelled at me and made me swear never never never to do anything stupid like that again, going to the hospital by myself and not calling anyone. I said it wasn't a big deal. She said, if she had gone to the hospital, would I have come right way? And we knew that I would, so she said she would too. And she was right.

And then talked to Jack, and he yelled at me too. He said he would have been there if he knew. Like I would have let him, all 83 years of hardly walking him. But he would have been there.

How do you like that. They love me.


ENTRY #22

The Story of Us: High School, Part 2

[copied from dland]

The year goes by, and in 11th grade I find myself in a history class that turns out to be just a great class, great teacher, and of course, John is in it. We sat in a circle around the room in alphabetical order, so I sat directly across from him, where we never really had to speak. He was in my English class, too, but I didn’t even remember that until he told me years later.

Come spring, the teacher suggested that some in the class might want to go on a weekend trip with her, to a high school in south Jersey that was holding a Model Congress Convention. We would write bills, work in committees, argue before the assembly, and so on. Sounded good. I was one of about eight people who signed up, as did John. The funny thing was, the teacher wasn’t sure she could get the school van until the last minute, and so she asked for volunteer daddies to show up and drive us down there if needed, and the two who signed up were his and mine, although the van showed up and Jack (my daddy) got to go home.

So we head on down to wherever this was, and when we got there, we saw that other schools actually had political parties for school government elections, and they were all promoting them, all of them liberal and pretty much the same. Our school didn’t have that, but we knew that half the fun of this convention was going to be creating conflict and then trying to solve it, so on the spot we created a conservative political party and rallied around John as our leader. He wasn’t too crazy about all of us being insincere on the issues, but we went for it and it was great. Turns out I didn’t hate him after all. He really was bright and funny and cared a lot about all of his causes, horrible as I thought they were.

Senior year, and we are together again in a history seminar class taught by the same teacher. There are only about 12 kids in the class, and we find, to our amazement, that we can have normal conversations with each other. By this time, I have a boyfriend (since early Junior year, actually), and had no thoughts of anyone else, especially John. But we went to the Model Congress again, and it was great. And we also both went on a trip with the same teacher and a busful of kids to spend a week in Washington DC in March. By the time we got back, we were friends. We even played tennis together once a week or two later, not that I can do that. And then, just before graduation, the boyfriend and I called it quits.

One week after graduation, John called and asked if I wanted to go with him to see the Fourth of July fireworks. First date.

Sweet? Romantic? I’m not done yet.


ENTRY #27

They Suck Your Life Right Up

[copied from dland]

It's been a while, and here's why.

They came home from college, both of them. It was wonderful having them here, and I love them so much. Yet ...

They are so incredibly disruptive to the quiet little life we so naturally settled into about five minutes after they both left in August. For all of you out there getting edgy about sending off your youngest to college and falling into that empty nest thing, I am here to tell you that sending both -- or all, whatever -- of your kids away is the most relaxed you will have felt since you got pregnant. When they are gone:

there are no dishes in the sink.

there are clean towels in the bathroom.

there is hardly any garbage to take out.

you can watch whatever you want to on tv.

the phone almost never rings.

no one is coming and going at odd hours.

This one amuses me. Okay, we're hardly late-night-type folks, but when someone is sitting around in her pajamas at nine o'clock on a Saturday night and then leaves for a minute and comes back fully dressed, telling me she's going to a movie and someone's picking her up at 11, I've got to wonder. Their evenings BEGIN at 11:00? By 11, I've usually already slept for an hour or two and am just coming alive for my first bout of insomnia/eating-everything-in-the-kitchen for the night.

But no complaints, really. They came, they went. Aside from their bizarre random moments of sibling rivalry, they got along great, as they always do, and were most pleasant to be with. I made a point last night of telling Older Daughter (while waiting for her 11:00 pickup) that I am proud to be her mother, and that I am proud of the person she has become. Younger Daughter has grown so much while away at school, and I am proud of her too.

And I am proud of me. Thanksgiving is to our family what Christmas is to others: our ultimate coming together, the holiday that means the most to us. Nephews flew in from California, drove down from Boston. It was a wonderful Thanksgiving, all of us there. Except, of course, Shirl. Our first Thanksgiving without Grandma.

We made it.


ENTRY #21