Why This Blog Post is Late (or, The Nelson Sisters Wrap Up 2010 with a U.S. Tour)

THURSDAY DECEMBER 23
6:05pm – H twists her ankle five minutes into her pre-holiday workout. Next hour spent icing and elevating ankle in gym manager’s office who regales her with tales of his Greek heritage, his four sisters’ affinity for high heels, and how his being a part-time bouncer at a nightclub in Queens led to his recent breakup.

FRIDAY DECEMBER 24
6:30am – S, H & O head for the airport to celebrate Christmas with family in Atlanta much later than S would have liked who flies out earlier than H&O on a different airline (*this fact will play an important role later on). When O wants to go back upstairs for his forgotten newspaper, S threatens to take her own cab.

12:00pm - S, H & O pick up rental car at Atlanta airport (*this fact will play an important role later on).

5:00pm - H’s ankle has taken on the features of a ham hock.

9:00pm - Christmas Eve celebration in full swing, H starts feeling sick.

SATURDAY DECEMBER 25

6:00am - H wakes to full blown chest cold. Adds hack to hobble.

12:00pm - S, H & O consider impending snow storm in NYC and opt to reschedule flights out for earlier options. Trip to Atlanta foreshortened, but all feeling quite self-congratulatory for taking matters into their own hands before it’s too late.

3:00pm - H’s automated flight notification alert assures her that the flight she is no longer on will depart on time.

7:00pm - H’s automated flight notification alert says the flight she is no longer on will depart 11 minutes late.

9:05pm - H’s automated flight notification alert tells her the flight she actually is on has been canceled. The only way to fly home is on Monday through Chicago. Flight rebooked again.

SUNDAY DECEMBER 26

Blizzard hits NYC
All NYC airports close

MONDAY DECEMBER 27
9:00am - H wakes to S yelling back at Delta’s automated message.

1:00pm - S sends H pictures from the Atlanta airport of the Delta terminal chaos to forward to local Atlanta TV station. Someone should do something!

1:30pm - local Atlanta TV station replies to H’s email with a “Wow. Thanks!” H wonders if they are being sarcastic.

2:30pm - H gets email notifying her that while she can still get to Chicago without any problems, it is no longer possible to get from Chicago to New York. Big surprise. American Airlines agent tells H & O he can get them home on Saturday, maybe Friday. H & O decide they will drive to New York.

3:00pm - Rental car company informs O of the $600 penalty if rental car does not first get returned to the airport so a new one-way contract for the same car can be issued.

4:00pm - O & H drive the hour south to the airport in order to get the paper that lets them drive the car north.

6:00pm - Road trip! H’s cough & cold meds are keeping her bleary eyed and foggy headed. O drives the whole way.

11:00pm - It is surprisingly cold in North Carolina. O & H stop for dinner.

TUESDAY DECEMBER 27

12:30am - O & H drive through mountain ranges with wind that threatens to pitch the car off the road. While wrestling with the wheel, O laments it is not day time so we could see what he is confident is a beautiful view.

2:00am - O & H check into Roanoke Days Inn. The heat that manager swears will kick in doesn’t.

7:00am - O feels insufficiently compensated by grumpy front desk employee who refunds him a measly $10 for our troubles.

11:00am - the Shenandoah Valley is as pretty as the songs say. The Dunkin Donuts where we stop for coffee is less pretty.

2:00pm - what’s a road trip without a stop at Cracker Barrel? H discovers O’s liking for peanut brittle.

5:30pm - O & H make it home to find S in armchair reading newspaper. Scene belies her recent travails.

WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 28

Someone observes we haven’t posted a blog entry in a while.

FRIDAY DECEMBER 31

H begins working on blog post, ankle wrapped and cough at bay, all the while keeping in mind David Sedaris’ comment about how travel woes are uninteresting to anyone but the traveler. Oh well.

The Year of Being the Annoying Eater

I realized today that I have not yet conveyed my love for food. This is the equivalent to my forgetting to mention that I’m female.

It is impossible for me to speak of my identity without including how happy eating good food makes me. On the list of things that make me happy, I’d say eating good food is in the top five…maybe even top three. (Struggling with my weight has made me equally unhappy, which has caused quite a dilemma for me in my lifetime, but that’s another story.)

When I turned three, my friend’s father held my birthday cake hostage until I could properly pronounce the “th” sound of my new age. (What an asshole.) I would do whatever it took - nothing was going to get between me and my cake.

At milk-and-cookie time in kindergarten, I would swipe more than my allotted share of butter cookie to savor at a later date. I would be crestfallen when it prematurely crumbled in my pocket.

In fifth grade I would opt out of running around the playground during lunch recess in order to carefully lay out my thermos and sandwich to better enjoy a proper, civilized meal.

Under the special skills section of my acting resume, I used to include “orders well.” When I read a menu, I can mentally taste the combination of ingredients in the dish and measure that effect against my mood. My selections are usually spot on. Not infrequently have my dinner companions sampled my entrée and conceded that mine was better than theirs. I know, I think to myself smugly.

If I were to have a credo, it would be that there is a food for every occasion. And a drink to go with it.

It’s no surprise, then, that my fiancé seduced me with food. In the early months of our dating, I would take note of the meals he cooked for me, reporting back to my sister and friends. When he baked halibut on a bed of ramps and served the side salad with a topping of edible flowers, I was done for.

Imagine my distress last year when I was diagnosed a Non-Celiac Gluten Intolerant. It was hard to ignore my internist’s caution that if I did nothing I might be looking at an auto-immune disease in ten years. Giving up all things gluten meant no more wheat, barley or rye. No more thin crust margarita pizza, no more tagliatelle with duck ragu, no more red velvet cake, no more fresh baked bread, no more almond croissants … and so on. I anguished over the decision. Were all these delectable delights really worth my health?

And so, beginning on January 1st, I became That Person. I gave up gluten. I reminded hostesses of my needs before dinner parties. I turned down O’s nephew’s birthday cake. When I went to Chinatown for dim sum I printed out Google’s Chinese translation of “please show me on the menu what does not contain wheat.” I became the special requester.

In return, I have discovered rice crust pizza. It’s not anywhere close to the Neapolitan deliciousness at Luzzo’s on First Avenue, mind you, but it scratches my gastronomic itch. I have found addictively delicious cookies in the health food stores and paid a small fortune for gluten-free beer. I have incorporated my new lifestyle to the point where, this Christmas, I’m bringing the gluten-free breadcrumbs with me to Atlanta so my sister can make H-friendly Swedish meatballs.

Today my doctor gave me the results of my annual check-up. My numbers are now below the alert level. The year’s efforts have restored my GI health. It was a lot of work, but it was worth it. I can’t go back to a gluten-filled life, but I survived the year without it. And if that doesn’t call for a gluten-free treat, I don’t know what does.

What I Do Know

There is more that I don’t know about my father than I do know.

Growing up, I knew he worked for an American company as their European representative. I know that he drank coffee out of a green, ceramic mug that stood on feet. He made little sailboats out of orange peels and sailed them across the dinner table, much to my mother’s chagrin. Daddy had a big and distinct laugh. If I was on stage for a school play, I could always pinpoint his location by his bold, explosive HA! If I close my eyes and don’t think too hard, sometimes I can still hear it for just the shortest of moments. I know he loved to write, and wrote poetry and a play about Edgar Allen Poe. I know he loved our summer vacations at the beach, but hated the sunburns and those nasty Cape Cod greenhead flies. I have a vivid memory of him standing shin-deep in the ocean in his swim trunks, hat and sunglasses, his face slathered in thick, white sunscreen. In one hand, he holds the book he is trying to read, and in the other, a bottle of OFF that he is spraying ferociously at the buzzing, incoming attackers.

I know my father traveled frequently and that we never called him; he always called us. I know he often excused himself from the dinner table so he could head down to the local train station to check the train schedule. I often fell asleep to the sound of him typing on his typewriter, pecking away at the keys with his pointer fingers. One evening, I walked into his home office without knocking. As he quickly pushed a stack of papers out of sight, I caught a glance at the cover page. Typed in all caps was one word: SECRET. I never asked him about it; I didn’t even think to.

At eighteen, I found out what he really did for a living. He didn’t mean for me to find out; a dinner guest let it slip. I was so unsuspecting that I couldn’t make sense of the information until Daddy cleared his throat and announced, “I work for the Central Intelligence Agency.” Just like that. It turns out that he had been working undercover my entire life. It turns out that all those visits to check the train schedule were actually trips to use the pay phone. Three short years after I found out the truth, he died.

There is so much more that I don’t know about him than what I do know. I don’t know if he believed in God. I don’t know who he voted for. I don’t know why he originally joined the then Office of Secret Services. I don't know much about his work. I don’t know what it was like for him to lead a secret life.

Wherever I move, I always pack my box of Christmas decorations. In it, a sandwich bag holds ornaments I’ve had since childhood. This weekend, I decorated our tree. I pulled out a tiny, gold angel I've had for some twenty-five years. She’s made from a baby pine cone. Daddy brought it back for me one late fall after a business trip to Austria.

I don’t know what he was doing there. I don’t know if he traveled there under his own name. But I do know that he was thinking of me.

Time After Time

Today I have officially have been 41 for two weeks.

It was quite a relief to not be turning 40 again, what with all the build-up and hoopla. The hoopla was lovely, by the way. But this birthday came with fewer expectations; no one really asks what it feels like to be turning 41. For this I'm grateful.

My fortieth year began at a waterfall in Maui. H & O were visiting to help me bring in the forth decade. The three of us were lounging about on rocks amid the bamboo when O. clambered up the waterfall, jumped off the cliff and plunged into the waters. H. hemmed and hawed wanting to follow suit but feeling nervous. She gathered her courage and she, too, took the leap. I completely chickened out. As I chided myself later, O. gently offered these wise words, “Well, next time you really want to do something, you will.” So simple. On day one of turning 40, I set the goal to do just that.

So I've been thinking, how did I do with that 40th year of mine? Here’s a quick summary:

1. I became the proud owner of two (count ‘em, two!) aprons, and I’ve even worn them. (Yes, for cooking.).
2. I have baked and cooked with some amount of success, finally.
3. I moved in with D. (And Petey the dog moved in with Kitty the cat.)
4. I learned to meditate…for at least a few minutes.
5. H & I kicked-off Heffalumps.
6. I finally made it to Africa, one small, red-dirt, rural corner of Africa.

But now I’m 41, and I can’t help but notice that many of the Big Questions I had at 40 still nag at me and I’m tired of the “I don’t know” that bounces back. I still don’t know if I will start a family. Or if I'm really okay with not doing so. I still don’t know what would come next after teaching. I still don't know how to do the Crow yoga pose. And it's okay. I'm just saying...

I live next door to two little girls aged 5 and 3, or thereabouts. These little girls run and skip and meander about their yard in ribbons and ruffles, long skirts, bright-colored dresses with striped socks, and decked out in full princess ballerina sparkles and pouf. The other day, as I looked out my window, I caught them in a quiet moment. The youngest one was sitting in a little red chair - wearing a full white tulle concoction - holding onto a pink balloon. Her older sister was lying in the shaded grass beside her in her own fairytale dress. She was gazing up at her balloon as it danced on its string above her head. If Tinkerbell had flitted into the scene scattering fairydust, I would not have been surprised.

As I looked out on the girls, I remembered childhood; how my to-do list was much simpler, and how time felt so different, slower, more expansive. I don’t know what this year has in store for me, or rather, what I have in store for it. But I here’s what I’ve proudly accomplished so far:

1. Yesterday, for a few glorious minutes, I lay in the grass of my backyard looking up at the blue, blue sky.

Winter Wish

My office desk is piled with toys and wrapping paper. My boss and I are doing Winter Wishes again (read: I am doing Winter Wishes again). This is a local charity organization that distributes underserved children’s letters to Santa and companies like mine sign up to be on the receiving end. Each year, an office-wide email announcement invites all willing participants to stop by the Human Resources department to choose a letter. There are never enough letters to go round: the response is like a land grab. There is a minor stampede to get in line for the chance to answer a child’s Christmas wish.

Of course it makes me feel good. This year, a 7 year-old boy is getting the Batman Wii game he wants, thanks to me. Last year, an 8 year-old girl got sparkly in-line skates that I would have wanted if they had existed when I was her age.

I don’t fool myself; these are but tiny drops of help for a city filled with children who need so much more, and other than enabling their belief in Santa for another year (I hope), how much does a game of Kerplunk really enhance their lives?

I am the product of a privileged upbringing. I had it all: a top notch education, a childhood filled with ballet and piano lessons, friends, travel, and to top it off, a family that loved, supported and encouraged me. I had it good. We opened presents on Christmas Eve, Swedish-style. Thinking back to those Christmases past, I remember sitting near the fireplace with a full stomach and a house filled with people I loved, eagerly eyeing all the wrapped presents with my name on it. I’m pretty confident I was also eyeing the chocolates.

By the time I was a teenager my mother’s drinking had become an extra presence. The holidays were something to get through. After my father died, I dreaded the choking sadness that filled the home. My mother’s happiness had evaporated. Her valiant efforts to rally for her children’s return to the fold for this supposedly happy occasion were torture to witness and achingly futile. Once she was gone, each successive December 24 drove home the disparate reality of the life I once had and the one I now lived.

Over the past few years, however, a new tradition has evolved. I now spend Christmas with all my siblings - whole and half - and my niece and nephews. This brings out the happily sentimental side of me. I eat too much food, and drink too much coffee, and we catch up on the past year as best we can with the little time allotted. And at Christmas Eve, I look around the room and know that my parents would be so glad we are all together.

On Monday, when I wrap the Play-Doh Ice Cream Shoppe for my Winter Wishes child, I’ll include my own wish for her. I know what we all want for Christmas, and it’s nothing we can wrap up with a bow.

Being my sister’s sister

When people ask me what it was like to grow up in Europe, I point out how the family albums might differ from those of my friends born and raised in the Midwest, but our memories can be similar: Our back yards, our make-believe games, the songs that made all the difference at that school dance.

Nobody asks me what it was like to grow up with my big sister. They should. I might not have realized it at the time, but now I know how fantastically special she is.

For large stretches of time, S and I were each other’s only companions. And that was a very good thing.

A summer’s day was incomplete if it didn’t include long explorations of the fields behind our house, playing tennis in the yard with our plastic rackets and sponge balls until it grew so dark we could no longer see, choreographing synchronized swim dances at our neighbor’s pool, and eating hot, buttered popcorn in front of the TV, watching our favorite Fred Astaire movies.

Long car trips to visit grandparents meant snuggling into the back seat with lots of pillows, snacks and giggling until we drove our mother to distraction and were silenced by the threat of her reaching behind the seat to get a hold of whichever one of us was within reach.

As children, eating at restaurants meant coming stocked with paper and pens. We would draw to our hearts’ content: ladies in fancy dresses were a favorite subject, but often we’d play “spaghetti” where the one would draw a squiggly line and the other would have to make something out of it. (These times invariably trained us to be indefeatable when we got older and teamed up to play Pictionary).

There was a solidarity we shared that I didn’t realize was rare.

It is thanks to my sister that we are as close as we are. As the older one, she set the tone for how we were going to relate. It wasn’t only that she let me join her sleepover with her friends (where they terrified me with the notion of piranhas in my sleeping bag), but that she allowed for our alliance. She included me. She was on my team.

When my mother was drinking to excess, she was the one I called at college for emotional support. When I got duped out of hundreds of dollars by a shady boyfriend, she loaned me the money to get back in the black and never once got impatient with my lengthy - and paltry - payback efforts. When we had planted roots in different cities, she was the one to initiate an annual Sisters’ Weekend in Miami. And yes, when I had to buy something to wear to my mother’s funeral, she was the one comforting both me and the sales lady as I wept in the dressing room.

My sister is the other side of me. She’s the sea glass to my storm. My sister has taught me about dignity, strength, grace and beauty. She has shown me about love, respect and facing fears. She has displayed courage and vulnerability in the same moment. She has lived in the moment and shared it with me.

I know all these things so inherently that to put it into words makes me all the more aware of all that I have omitted from this tribute. It also explains why, until my sister showed up on my doorstep - having flown to New York from Hawaii for a long weekend - I didn’t have any desire to try on a wedding dress. I had been engaged four months. How could I take this first step towards such a big day without her being in on it from the first moment? Without realizing it, I was waiting for her.

I understand why she lives in Hawaii. I understand why we are no longer roommates. I also understand that it’s healthy for us to not be quite so attached at the hip as we were. But that doesn’t change how much I rely on her to be in my life. So on the occasion that we get to be in the same place at the same time, we fall immediately back into our groove, as if nary a moment had passed. As soon as we get back to our lives, I have to readjust to her being gone all over again and I’m blue for days.

This time, it’s easier, knowing that she’s coming back for Christmas.

I can handle a month.

The Dressing Room

I have flown four thousand miles to spend a long weekend with H. in the city and to celebrate her engagement to O. First thing Friday morning finds us in a wedding dress shop off lower Fifth Avenue. The reality of the situation doesn’t hit either one of us until we are standing in the hushed room with attendants gliding past in stocking feet courtesy of the No Shoe policy. (The irony is not lost on me; living in Maui, local culture dictates that I most often have to leave my shoes at the door, no matter how perfect or necessary they are to my ensemble. Now, in Manhattan for a weekend, I have on my November in the City Outfit: dress, tights…and the perfect boots that I am required to remove at this very moment. The attendant offers me white, cloth slippers; I decline.) We are surrounded by dresses in white and champagne and ivory. Faux white roses spill out of bowls on coffee tables. Brides-to-be rustle about in their confections. H. breaks into a panicked sweat about how Traditional Wedding it all feels. I dutifully have a sympathetic anxiety attack and swear that an itchy hive is appearing on my neck. But we have an appointment and before H. can change her mind, Marni sits us down to find out what H is looking for. She isn’t really sure, but somehow Marni extracts the necessary Can’ts and Won’ts and Could’s and then H. is whisked away. I sit on the cream-colored couch and wait.

As sisters, H and I have done a fair amount of shopping together, and quite frankly, the experience has often been a daunting one. For many years, H., of 1940s movie star beauty, has been her body’s worst critic, and The Dressing Room has brought out the worst of it…not to mention her running commentary on the abuse of sizing guidelines in This Country. But of all the bad shopping trips, the worst bar none was the one at Banana Republic in March of 2002. Nothing adds more sting to a skirt not fitting quite right than the fact that the skirt in question is be worn to your own mother’s funeral; a funeral that two weeks earlier you did not see coming. Oh, poor Kimberly, lovely sales girl, so pretty and upbeat - how could she have known? As I handed yet another dark skirt to H. to try on, Kimberley bounced in suggesting a bright, pink blouse to compliment the skirt. H. declined. Kimberley persisted, and before I could run interference, H. fell apart, utterly and completely, on the stool in the dressing room corner. My sister was racked with grief in a retail shop. I could not make her pain go away, so I did the only thing I could; I stayed beside her. Kimberley backed out slowly through the curtained doorway.

Over eight years have passed since that day, and now I am sitting outside a dressing room with a stomach full of happy, fluttering butterflies. I want H. to love this moment and to feel absolutely fabulous. And then, there she is, standing in front of me in a dress so perfect for her that I think my mother must have swooped in from heaven and placed it in H’s dressing room, kind of as a do-over for that last fiasco, but more so, I believe, because she wants to be here for this, too. H. is beaming and beautiful and literally lit-up from the inside out. And me, I’m a lucky sister. Two dressing rooms. Two significant moments. Both of them immense, indelible, Life. So what do I do? I cry. But I cry happy tears, tears made so much sweeter for having lived all this together.

Halloween

The other night I found myself enjoying a spectacular view on one of the three rooftop decks of the Tribeca triplex apartment owned by the President and CEO of the company where I work.

As far as office parties go, this one was pretty stellar. The fact that it was a Halloween party really pushed it into the realm of actual fun, which is not typical of how I feel on the subject of “employee morale” efforts. While I’m not a water-cooler gossiper, and I prefer not to partake in the inevitable kvetching that is ubiquitous in any work environment, I'm also not big on the Team Spirit hoo-ha. In general, I’d really rather not talk about my job, period.

But there I was at 9pm on an unseasonably warm Tuesday, wearing butterfly wings, covered in gold glitter, and feeling the love for my fellow co-workers, for their willingness to also dress up and let loose. The Capitol One Viking and I bonded over the amusement of taking the subway in full costume. The Queen of Hearts and I waxed poetic over the pumpkin cheesecake. Mozart and I raised our arms to the sky and sang along as the DJ played the Black Eyed Peas “I got a feeling”

… that tonight’s gonna be a good night,
That tonight’s gonna be a good, good night,
Woo hoo…

Emboldened by my mask, I felt sassier, more courageous. I joked with the Senior Executives. I made small talk with industry colleagues about non-work matters and felt more like myself than I ever do in my “work-appropriate attire.” And then I patted myself on the back for knowing it was better to leave early while still having fun.

I hailed a cab, and as he slowed down to meet me at the curb, the driver looked at my wings and grinned. “But you can fly home!” he exclaimed.

The bells on my butterfly antennas jingled all the way home as we hit each pothole. As I climbed out of the taxi, glitter dusted off me and settled on the seat. I envisioned a golden, telltale trail drawing a magical line across Manhattan, like TinkerBell’s stars.

Indeed, it was a good, good night.

Hallow's Eve. Ready or Not.

It is a dark and stormy night. Really. I understand that Maui may not ring synonymous with 'dark and stormy' but on the north shore (a.k.a the windward side), the rains do come. And at 1600 ft., so does the below 70 degree weather. Quite frankly, the weather seems just right for the upcoming Halloween ritual.

I did not grow up with Halloween. Growing up in Europe in the 70s and 80s with a Swedish mother (no Halloweens in Sweden) and a father who did not live in the U.S. for 20 consecutive years, Halloween is not a particular childhood memory of mine. (Ask me about dressing up for Santa Lucia on December 13th with candles in my hair and carrying warm, saffron buns...now we're talking.)

Well, okay, I do recall my mother handmaking me a ladybug costume for an "American" party in some countryside; I wore tentacles made of black stockings on my head. When I was 9 and living in Rome, I dressed as a princesss - of course! - and trick-or-treated at a friend's apartment building...we went to two apartments, maybe. The Italians weren't willing to playing along; I think someone gave us an apple. Brussels was much more Amercanized by the time we got there, but I still only recall one trick-or-treat eve in the so-called American ghetto, which was far from a ghetto, full of beautiful, old houses on tree-lined streets.

I actually didn't get into the swing of things until college, at which point the local homeowners frowned suspiciously at us, four college-aged girls dressed as Crayolas, and wondered why we were usurping the young ones' night.

As an adult, I lived mostly in NYC where children trick-or-treat in apartment buildings. But, and this I love, apartment dwellers sign a list in the lobby letting it be known whether or not you want to be tricked, or treated. (Personally, I find it very civilized.) My sister and I did not sign up, but headed instead to a nearby haunt of our own for martinis. Treat!

But I've now moved to Makawao which is apparently Halloween central. A dear friend drove up to my house tonight and gently suggested that maybe I decorate the front door area...at least a little. And my next-door-neighbors are pint-sized and sure to expect treats when they come a' knockin'. I don't want to disappoint.

I do like to dress up. I do! I do! I have had a respectable collection of wigs over the last decade and even hosted a party or two in the day. But as holiday-oriented as I am, I fear I may have been a bit of a Hallow's Eve slacker when it comes to the children.

So I pledge to go find some pumpkins or lights to string up and a big, bag of bad candy, and maybe I'll dress up my little Petey dog up as a cat. Or a bumblebee. Why not?

Actually, the whole idea of it feels kind of cozy, like Charlie Brown and apple pie. I'm glad it's dark and stormy. It's perfect.

Letting Go, Just a Little

My little sister is engaged.

O. proposed just days after I left for Rwanda this summer, and so H. spent 3 weeks holding the news in, wanting to tell me first, in person, when I got back. But I knew. I knew the moment she told me over the phone that she'd need 30 minutes alone with me upon my arrival back in NYC, en route to Maui. She came straight from work to where I was staying, and I met her at the lobby elevator. As we rode up all of 3 stories, I bubbled over with excitement insisting she tell me her news. H. looked at me and said, "Really? Really you want me to tell you here? In the elevator? When I'm hot and sweaty? And carrying groceries?" Apparently, she had envisioned the sharing of news somewhat differently. But she quickly acquiesced, gleefully exploding with, "I'm engaged!" and we jumped up and down in the elevator in celebration. Honestly, in the elevator, sweaty, carrying groceries and me, fully jet-lagged, was perfect.

I have a memory of being four or five. I am running as fast as my little legs will carry me down our grassy, sloping lawn, pushing (well, charging with) my little sister in her carriage. That is all I remember, other than the fact that I was trying to get rid of her. I'm not sure what my plan was, or who saved her, but I was not too happy to be sharing my mother's attention. A year or so later, I was sitting in our living room waiting for the school bus. Toddler H. waited beside me. It seemed the perfect time to coax her into pushing little pebbles from our indoor flower pots up her nose; they became lodged. I got on the school bus in a hurry.

Then the tides changed and she has been my comfort ever since. When I was in my early teens, my bedroom was in a part of the house that was separate from the rest. I'd wake in the middle of the night afraid of noises I was hearing, or thought I might hear, and tiptoed down to H.'s room with my comforter in hand. I would curl up on the floor beside her bed and be soothed back to sleep knowing that she was nearby. I only just discovered that H. also sometimes woke up scared, and would crawl into my parents' room to sleep on the floor next to them! So, most likely, I was sleeping next to an empty bed.

As adults, H and I often lived in different cities until one day, when I was thirty-two and she was twenty-eight, we found ourselves both single and living in New York City. And then, for three years, we lived together. We were attached at the hip. We went for morning runs in Central Park, met up with friends in the evenings for drinks, and ate tea and toast off trays while watching When Harry Met Sally for Thanksgiving. We even went away on vacations together. Don't be fooled; we had some incredible fights. Ooh, they were bad. Stand-on-opposite-sides-of-the-train-with-fume-coming-out-of-our-ears bad. Once, I was so angry, something popped in my neck. (H. saw it pop, at which point we collapsed on the floor laughing.)

But the rest was so much fun. When I moved to Maui, we had our last supper at a favorite Indian restaurant and sobbed uncontrollably into our chicken masalas.

And then H. met O. And now she's engaged.

I know I have to give up a bit of her since she has someone else now to consider for holidays and trips and Big Decisions - and she should consider him; I know that. Still, I'll say it: I'm not happy about giving up even a teensy bit. But my little sister is marrying a good man who loves her. She arrives home most nights to a home-cooked meal and a wine bottle just uncorked. And his vocabulary makes her swoon.

So I'll give up that little bit, because she deserves him. I also know that O. knows that H. is my Most Important Person. And he's probably giving up a little bit of her for me, too.

The Lamp

Last year, I was on the hunt for a floor lamp that O and I could agree on. This may not seem like a tricky task for some couples, but we have a small apartment; every piece of furniture matters. Never mind that we both have very clear notions of what we do and do not like, and finding the overlap in our tastes in décor has its challenges.

We had spent several hours researching every lamp imaginable on lamps.com over the course of a number of weeks. This had led to an online purchase that brought into our home a lampshade so large it could have doubled for a ferris wheel. As soon as we slapped the return sticker on the box and sent it back from whence it came, I decided to stop wasting my time gauging dimensions remotely. On a sunny Saturday afternoon, I headed to the Bowery, where lamp stores are lined up by the handful.

The plan was to take pictures with my cell phone of any prospective candidates, and send them to O’s cell phone for his review while he was out running errands. He would yay or nay them until we had a winner.

I browsed through store after store. I looked at hundreds of lamps. By the time I could no longer bring myself to look at one more lamp, I had found a maximum of two, maybe three lamps that I could see myself living with. One was alarmingly cheap. The other cost a fortune.

O called to tell me he couldn’t make out any of the lamps from my poor quality pictures and to go ahead and get whatever I liked. This was not going to work for me, if only for the fact that I dreaded dealing with the returning of it.

I deemed Operation: Buy Lamp a failure and decided to go home, tired and crabby.

As I stood on the corner of Delancey waiting for the light to turn, I suddenly caught sight of a man in a red dress running towards me. As he got closer, he tore around the corner and took off down the street. I stared. I looked back from whence he’d come. Another two dozen men in red dresses were following behind him. To be clear, they were not wearing the same red dress. There were prom dresses, flamenco dresses, short ones, fluffy ones, sequinned ones. But there was definitely a Red Dress Race for Men taking place, and I was standing smack dab in the middle of the course.

Somewhere between runner #1 and the rest of them, I reached for my shitty phone and frantically tried to snap a picture of what I was witnessing.

I don’t think I have to tell you that my poor quality photos of a group of transvestite runners failed to adequately convey the moment. One snapshot after another, I got a handful of bad angles, fuzzy red blotches in motion, and the errant limb disappearing out of frame.

As quickly as they appeared, so did they vanish, and with them my bad mood.

There I was, still standing on the street corner, but everything had shifted. The unexpectedness of their arrival in my space, the strange light-heartedness of the atmosphere they had swept into my corner had completely brought me out of my mundane fixation. Why on earth was I feeling out of sorts about a floor lamp? There was fun to be had! Life to be lived!

I felt the urge to soak in the remains of the day with a sense of frivolity and whimsy. I poked my head into vintage thrift shops, I bought cheap bangles from a street vendor and made a point of passing the dog park in Thompson Square to get a jolt of the warm fuzzies watching the puppies wrestling with one another.

The next day, without consulting O, I ordered a lamp from Crate and Barrel – or was it Pottery Barn? – and it showed up two days later. It’s innocuous and functional, and I don’t want to spend another minute writing about it.

The Ugly Truth

I've been trying not to write about my parents. This means that I now have a nice collection of unedited pieces in my Drafts file about them. So, as opposed to sweeping yet another piece under the proverbial rug, let's just get to it.

Confession: Sometimes, I have parent envy.

Years and years ago, when I was barely 24 and working in an office in Cambridge, MA., with an unfortunate view of Massachusetts General Hospital where I had recently spent five months sitting by my father, a colleague's father stopped by the office to visit her. He had a middle-aged belly, a tinge of grey hair and a big laugh; he took her to lunch. I closed my office door and cried.

Last fall, at a dear friend's wedding reception, father and mother of the bride gave tearful speeches. I cried. I swear that the first tears were happy tears for her, but they suddenly turned to sad tears for me. It happens at most weddings. I don't mean it to. I just does.

I've gotten used to them being gone. Sometimes, weeks go by without my consciously thinking about them, and for the most part, I've learned to live with that, too.

Maybe it's the season. The air is cold and rainy and it feels like the holidays are right around the corner. Quite frankly, holidays are a bitch when you are feeling parent envy.

Sometimes, I have family envy. I'll observe the parents sitting at dinner, laughing with friends or in-laws and drinking wine while the small ones play in the magic that is a restaurant courtyard lit up at night. While they play, the adults tell family stories of holiday mishaps and potty-trainings and Remember Whens.

I miss having someone tell the stories of before I was born, of when I was young. And there you have it: story envy.

I'm not proud about any of this, by the way. I'm just telling it like it is.

When I turned twenty-one, my parents threw me a surprise sit-down dinner party. As surprised as I was, I think my college friends were even more surprised by the formality, the wine in crystal glasses, the toasts my parents gave. I was in heaven. My mother cooked and served us a magnificent multi-course meal. I have no idea what it was, but I'd bet money that it included shrimp cocktail and possibly a baked Alaska for dessert. And after dinner, Daddy and I danced in the front hallway. For real. It's been 19 years since that dance and I could dance it for you now.

I haven't thought about that in a long time. I'm glad I did today. No envy. Just happy.

Barry Manilow and Junior High

I'm subbing. To be exact, I'm subbing for 7th and 8th graders and after just the first hour of adolescent angst, attempts at coolness and nonchalance, the experience is wearing on me. I feel the time-travel tug pulling me back to my own middle school days, three years of my life that I would never want to revisit. But here I am, revisiting. True, today I'm subbing in a pinch to help the school. But by my own choosing, after ten some years of being a head teacher, I’m now a part-timer teaching writing to the 6th, 7th and 8th grades. That translates to an hour and a half a week with each group, in which time I need to engage them enough so that they listen, hopefully learn, and of course, write. I needed a new challenge; I got one.

Thirteen years ago, when deciding whether to take the leap away from business and go to graduate school for education, I went to a college open house. Advisors talked to us in small groups about, among other things, teaching adolescents. One advisor said, and here I quote for I've never forgotten these words, "You either teach middle school because you had a wonderful experience, or because you had a horrible experience and want to make it better for everyone else." I ended up by narrow circumstance focusing on upper elementary rather than pre-adolescence. Until now. And now that I'm here, I realize that I could not have handled this age group until I reached 40 and was confident enough in who I am.

Allow me a quick recap of my own junior high experience. In middle school, I showed up at the dance wearing a dress with flowers only to realize everyone else was in jeans. In middle school, I asked a boy to Sadie Hawkins and after too many days of deliberation, he said no. In middle school, I made the fashion forward choice to wear grey leather pumps to school one day. That morning, I tripped on the steps, broke off one heel, and spent the rest of the day hobbling around, one shoe intact, the other not. In middle school, my favorite outfit included brown corduroys and, the piece de resistance, a caramel colored, faux sheepskin vest. Toss in a mean girl who targeted me as her prey, as well as braces that included the night mouth guard. (This looked especially lovely on my 8th grade sleep away ski trip.) You get the idea. It wasn't until my junior year of high school that I was finally able to climb out of that pit of misery, and it took more years still until I was finally at peace with Me.

And here we cue Barry Manilow crooning, "I made it through the rain, and found myself protected/ by the others who/ got rained on too/ and made it throooogggggh." (Yes, I listened to Barry Manilow. And Barbara Streisand. And Liza Minelli.)

But here's the thing. During that long rainy season, I had a friend who belted out Barry's tunes with me, and another with whom I choreographed water ballet routines. My mother had a pot of tea waiting for me when I got home from school each day. And it was with H. that I played Barbie after I was “too old” to do so, and explored the nearby fields, looking for adventures and creating imaginary worlds.

If I can make it through middle school, I can certainly make it through a year of teaching it. And if even one student is excited about a story I share or a poem they write, or if one student knows that I see them, whether they are gleefully bouncing through the puddles or feeling a bit splattered by it all, then I think I'll be okay. Because as teachers, no matter the hours we log, we get to hold really big umbrellas for those needing respite from the drizzle, or the braces, or the sheepskin vests.

Septembers

September always brings out the nostalgia in me. As soon as the sun starts to set in that decidedly not-August way, I begin seeking opportunities for solitude. It is at this time of year that I especially enjoy spending time with my thoughts. I do so all year long, but the nature of my thoughts goes in cycles.
In December, I gear up for the New Year. I set goals, resolving to fix those parts about me and my life that, once again, didn’t fit quite right the previous twelve months.
In July, around my birthday, I invariably tally up my life’s successes versus my – well, maybe not failures, but let’s call them disappointments. I focus on the benefits of being older and wiser.
But when September rolls around, my thoughts free-fall back in time to my teenage years.
I think of the crushes I had on those boys who didn’t call, and the ones who did. I think of the hopefulness of the school year just beginning, and the promise it still held. I think of the adventures I had with my friends, how naïve we were to get into those messes and how lucky we were to survive them. I think of the focus and determination I had then, how the endless possibilities drove me to be prepared for whatever may come my way. I had absolutely no vision of what adulthood looked like, but I was pretty sure it involved me driving a car and owning a purse. Even so, I was unswayed by all that I did not know.
And I love that about the me I used to be. Looking back at the younger me, I feel protective towards her, how the Me Then didn’t know that things were going to get a lot harder. I want to hug her for braving it all, for lurching forward into the future thinking she would figure it out, by golly! That’s the spirit!, I think.
Maybe that’s one of the reasons I like to spend time thinking about those years, to remind myself of my own spirit. I don’t have as much of it now. I fear it won’t come back.
Yesterday I listened to a woman sing a song about looking back at her younger self and thinking of the what-might-have-beens. Shine on me, sweet seventeen, she sang. I knew exactly what she meant.
As I neared my apartment the other night, I saw the lights were on. I came out of my reverie happy to be living in the present. I don’t have to worry about the guy I like not calling me. He’s making me dinner and waiting for me to come home.

The Commute: Maui Style (City Life vs Island Life)

I missed New York today, and I miss H. She said today had the first chill of autumn; she even donned a trench coat to mosey over to a local wine bar for a glass of red. This is when living in the middle of the Pacific poses a challenge. I am just far enough away to not be able to jet back for a weekend, or more specifically, a lazy, Sunday lunch with H., followed by a stroll along lower Fifth, or maybe through Central Park to see whatever is on exhibit at the Met.

But as much as I miss New York, I'm constantly amused by the differences between my two loves, that urban isle and this tropical one. The New Yorker in me truly loves the grit of the city, the taxi drivers swearing profusely, the jockeying for position on a crowded subway car, and - ahem, H. - casually reading over the shoulder of the person in front of me. And make no mistake, I'm a fast walker capable of making solid speed down a city sidewalk with minimal eye contact. A block a minute, no two ways about it. Oddly, however, City Me has little effect on Maui Me.

Here in Maui, I barely last 15 minutes in "downtown" Kahului's rush hour traffic. I make it through two errands before hightailing back to my little town on the grassy slopes of a volcano. Here in Maui, I came home the other day to find a pineapple on my front stoop. And I wasn't afraid to eat it. I didn't even think to be skeptical. And here, no one honks other than the ubiquitous quick toot-toot "Hello!" to a friend one sees driving by. In fact, I so infrequently hear honking that not long ago, as I sat at a light with someone honking gently, albeit persistently, behind me, I just gazed blissfully out my window, all warm and fuzzy with the aloha spirit. Until my patient passenger nudged me and pointed to the traffic light that had apparently turned green a while back. It turns out they were honking at me, after all. Go figure.

There is a slight chill this evening in Makawao, this rodeo town positioned at 1600 ft, which makes me feel a touch closer to fall in Manhattan. I think I'll grab a sweater and meander into town for a margarita.

The Commute

City commuters know how it goes: we need something to read. On the days when I’m in between a book or my trusty New Yorker, I grab the free daily paper handed out at the station entrances. If there is any reason why I find myself without anything at all, I feel an initial moment of anxiety. How to occupy myself for the duration of my commute?? Even the best subway billboards only get me through a minute or two! When applicable, I will practice reading upside down as I stand over the lucky commuter who secured both the seat AND reading material. The degree of my disappointment when the material is not in English depends on how much time I can kill by trying to guess what the headline says. “Strajk dzieci we Wrześni” can be a jumping off point for all kinds of things to consider. (Does strajk mean strike? Could it be that easy? Who’s striking? I wonder how one might pronounce ‘dzieci?’) Before I know it, I’m almost at my destination. Ta! Da!

Last week, I found myself crammed into a subway train car on my way home from work. With one hand, I kept myself balanced while the other held my purse. The amount of people sharing the same, tight space rendered impossible my intention to lift my free arm up in order to read the magazine I was carrying. I was on the express train: I had several minutes to stand in this discomfort, with no chance of distracting myself from my present experience.

A woman with her back to me stood so close that her dark, curly hair came uncomfortably close to being in my mouth. I shifted my face to the left, and noticed over her shoulder that she was holding a print out of an email. Ooh! Something to read! I glanced at the text. My eyebrows shot up in surprise. The writer was in great appreciation of her, ahem, grooming habits and how it bettered their love life. A dirty email! On the #4 train! And then – I admit it was wrong – I kept reading.

After the parts that made me blush, he shifted to his total enamoration of her. He wrote of their children and his admiration of her mothering skills. He was so lucky to have her for his wife. He missed her tremendously.

This woman was completely oblivious to her surroundings, devouring this love letter.

For all the living on top of one another that we Manhattanites do, there is an unspoken way of giving each other our space. I have sat beside a couple breaking up at a restaurant where their table was mere inches from mine, and I did all I could not to listen. My neighbors have seen me doing my laundry in my pajamas, and they pretend not to notice that I’m not really dressed. We understand that personal space is not about the physical distance between us but the perceived distance we allow one another. And I had invaded this woman’s privacy because I couldn’t spend six minutes in my own thoughts.

But here I am a week later, still thinking about them, wondering when her husband is coming home, and hoping for their sakes it will be soon. Boy, that will be one hot reunion.

On Bubble Yum & Shamans (aka, Living this Life)

You see, I want a lot. Perhaps I want everything. -Rilke-

The fleas are gone. The geraniums have new blossoms. Two of my friends each had a beautiful, baby girl in the last week. And yesterday, I was fitted for reading glasses. These are all signs that time is moving right along. And, truth be told, I’m feeling a bit of pressure.

Last night, I stopped at the local general store to pick up a bottle of wine for dinner (and a big slice of red velvet cake just because). As she rang up the wine, the cashier looked at me and said, “You’re over 21, right?” to which I replied, “Times two.” Not exactly, but it sounded pithy and I was making a point. Then, I told her about the reading glasses. Across the cash register, we bonded over aging; this led to her reflection on the choices she has made. She told me that people often tut-tut about her being forty-something without ever having been married or having had kids. Actually, the term she used for married was “dodged that bullet” while literally swinging her head low to demonstrate the “dodging.” I bid her a kind farewell and left, wine and cake in hand, pondering my own choices.

A shaman once told me that I am currently living my last life. I have apparently had many previous lives, one being as a fantastic landscaper -funny that- but according to her, this life is it. (H. and I were walking down a New York street a couple of years ago when I shared this fact with her. She immediately burst into angry tears at the thought that I wasn't going to be in her future lives and had choice words to say about the shaman.) I don't know if it's true, but I can’t help but feel that I’m supposed to do something utterly fabulous before I leave this planet, and I don’t even know what it is.

To add more pressure, I also tend toward indecisiveness. This used to drive my mom batty when she offered to buy me Bubble Yum and I had to choose a flavor. Grape or cherry? Grape or cherry? GRAPE OR CHERRY?!?! The weight I feel when making decisions has carried over to my adult life. Deciding whether or not to stay in my marriage took a couple of years. Whether to stay in Manhattan or move to Maui? Three years. Now, it’s true that these life-impacting decisions deserved some thoughtful reflection. Still, overall, Me + Pressure = Agony. And now that I’ve become acutely aware of time rolling merrily along…Good grief!

Like Rilke, I really do want a lot. Perhaps, everything. But what does that look like? I want Big Laughter and Big Joy and Big Love. Sometimes, I realize, big joy comes in small packages, like standing at my kitchen counter eating cake. This I know. When I'm old and gray, wearing even stronger reading glasses, I want to sit back and think, "There. Look at what you lived."

On Merc(ur)y

I realized in spin class on Saturday morning that I’m pissed off. The instructor warned us we’d be riding hills – the best way to transform instantly into a panting, sweating mess – and advised us to think of something that made us angry, adding “I find that when I’m angry, it’s much easier to push through the hardest parts.”

It turns out I’m angry about a few things these days. The debate around the proposed Islamic community center near the World Trade Center sets me off but good. I’m usually pretty adept at expressing myself, but I turn into a sputtering version of Elmer Fudd when I try to clearly express all the reasons for why this debate shouldn’t exist at all.

I got through the first hill without even realizing it. I snapped out of my internal rant midway through the recovery period.

Hill number two.

I’m also pretty damn hot under the collar about my dying cat. Mercury’s my step-cat, but we’ve spent over two years together. O and I came home from vacation and found her on the brink of death with sudden renal failure. She’s hanging in there, but it’s been shocking, depressing and just plain sad. Our little family has been thrown for a loop, and our other cat, Z, has not escaped unscathed from the trauma. Instead of booting her out of the way when the food bowl gets filled, he’s taken to sitting back, as if he knows she needs it more. On the worst nights, when we don’t know if she’ll make it to morning, he holds vigil beside her, waking us up with his crying. O’s dedication and care with them breaks my heart a little. If Mercury’s time didn’t seem foreshortened, I’d be doing better with this, I think. But she’s only nine. I wasn’t prepared to watch my loved ones hurt, furry or not. First I get sad, then I get mad.

After the second hill, I realized this anger business was really doing the job. On the third hill, simmering over the fury I’d whipped up, I realized I need to find a way to keep my negative stewing at bay when I’m not working it out at the gym. To dissipate my bitterness, I am going to focus on O’s kindness and Z’s compassion. I am going to pay more attention to Mercury’s grace in her new, transitional place. I will continue to surround myself with people who make sense to me and remain thankful for the people in this world who stand up for tolerance and acceptance.

Forty five minutes had passed and all that anger had been poured into my workout. I felt so good I signed up for five personal training sessions. If I keep this up, I should be the embodiment of Zen by October.

Fleas and the Universe.

My dog has fleas. Not only does Petey, aforementioned dog, have fleas, but my sweet man just fractured his collarbone. And the house that I rent and - I should mention - moved into a just a few months ago is being foreclosed on, so I quite likely have to move out. There's actually more, but you get the idea. As I was moaning and groaning about my current plight during my daily call to H., she offered the following, "I wonder why all this is happening to you at once?” which I interpreted as “The Universe is trying to tell you something.” I should add here that I wasn't, in that moment, all that open to H.'s thoughtful comment because I don’t know what the Universe is trying to say. It’s all mixed-up smoke signals and flea bomb clouds to me right now.

Back in the summer of 1991, right before my father became ill, he was feeling blue. I didn't know this at the time because he was a private person who didn’t want to burden his daughters with the ickiness of life. I have since learned that that summer, he carried around a list in his shirt pocket of the all the things that were bothering him; they included financial stress, something to do with work, and finally, the fact that our dog, Riley, had fleas. It’s true. Riley’s fleas were on the list.

I sometimes wonder if all that sadness being literally placed near his heart was the impetus for the cancer to bloom. Within days of feeling shaky on his left side, my father was paralyzed by a tumor from the neck down and rushed from our little seaside town to a reputable hospital two hours way. My sister had just begun college in Illinois, so it was my mom and I who sent the dog to the kennel and headed up to Boston for what was to be the better part of five months. During that time, Riley’s fleas, at loss without a host, populated like gremlins in our three-story, wall-to-wall carpeted home. It was a nightmare situation, times two. Not only was I watching my father rapidly disappear, but during the respites from the hospital I had to walk around my house with plastic bags tied around my legs. To top it off, I also had to disrobe in friends’ garages, plopping clothes in the washing machine, before being allowed into their homes. My mom and I waged war on the fleas over and over again until we won. It took a while. We saved our house, but we could not save my father.

I had forgotten all about his list until this morning after days of bombing and vacuuming every inch of house, washing as much as I could in the hottest of water, trying to entice the cat to eat anti-flea pills by hiding them in cat treats only to discover that Petey has been eating them (he is currently way over-medicated), sprinkling and watering kill'em kernels all over the lawn, etcetera, etcertera, etcetera. I have been a crazed woman.

But here’s the thing. I can’t fix my man’s collarbone and I can’t control the foreclosure. I haven’t decided what to do about those eggs hanging out in my ovaries, and I don’t know if teaching is the career for me for the rest of my life…or what else I would do. I do know that I don’t want to keep a list of my fears and worries next to my heart, so I'm writing them down and sending them off. I know and appreciate that my own collarbone is intact and I'm while I have to move, I'm not losing my investment in a house. And dammit, I’m not going to let these fleas get the best of me, or of Petey.

There’s a lot I can’t control in this life despite my greatest of attempts, but there are few that I can. The rest, I get to choose how to handle, imperfect as my approach may be. Is that message, Universe? Okay, then. Just...easy on the fleas, please.

Recipe for a Snit

I have never been one to apply my creative instincts towards cooking. In my lifetime I have made a decent dish or two, but no one who has ever known me will argue with me when I say that my talents do not lend themselves to the culinary arts. I am, however, a whiz at whipping up a spectacular snit.

It’s important to differentiate here between a snit, a tizzy and a huff. The variations between the three are subtle but distinct. A huff is more of a mild snit, whereas a tizzy is not as refined or directed. To be sure, it takes skill and finesse to navigate your way around the perfect snit.

You’ll need:
Involuntary Audience Participation. This is key! There is absolutely no point to working up a snit if one is alone. The ideal audience is one who refuses to engage yet knows to ride it out. This approach feeds the snit wonderfully. Stay alert to verbal and physical cues from your audience. If you cross their tolerance limits, you will be forced to abort or dilute your masterpiece-in-the-making and will leave you unsatisfied.

Hunger and/or fatigue. Being both hungry and tired works best, but one or the other will do in a pinch. If you have neither, experiment with skipping to the next step. Snits are very individual art forms – find what works for you.

Indignation. This element acts as a fuel. Without it, you may accidentally snuff out your snit due to a lack of momentum. If you find that it is not already present at the start of your snit, one can easily be created by lightly tapping a hot-button issue with said audience. Caution: broach this step delicately, lest you bypass your snit and move directly to an argument.

Righteousness. Most times, you will know deep within that you are wrong to incite a snit and are doing so primarily for selfish reasons. A pinch of righteousness will help keep the snit active even when your conscience prompts you to stop.

Mix the ingredients together, sampling as you go until it feels just right. Serves 2 to 4.

Note: For dessert, always plan on a big slice of humble pie. A good snit dissipates quickly, and there is simply no better way to rid oneself of the admittedly bitter aftertaste than a sincere apology to those subjected to the snit and an earnest thanks for putting up with you.

Intro, Part II: The Storyless Story

In my first post, my Blog Motivation Bullet Point #3 notes: “We had been living in the shadow of our parents for too long.”

This merits elaboration.

When I was a teenager, my parents revealed to me that my father was a spy. As in, a real-life CIA undercover agent. The reason for my being informed of this had to do with my father coming out of retirement to do some part-time work, and I was now of an age when I would start asking questions. It was decided that I was ready to know the truth about my father’s occupation, and that I had the maturity to keep it a secret from everyone.

Needless to say, there is more to this story, but for the sake of this particular post, the point is that my dad was pretty fucking cool. I was extraordinarily proud to be the child of a man whose remarkable career I imagined to be right out of the movies.

More to the point, however, is that it was virtually all in my imagination.

In fact, I know very little of my father’s work. I can speak in sweeping hyperbole about ideology, his fight to bring down the Iron Curtain, his dedication to democracy. I can tell an anecdote or two about an ill-fitting disguise and a harrowing escape from a drunk defector. But that’s pretty much all I can share.

And it’s a tough act to follow.

When I took a Solo-Performance writing class to work on a one-woman show, my theme of Secrets caught the attention of my teacher, but the material proved thin. When my sister and I sought feedback from a book draft about our parallel experiences following the death of our mother, our adviser asked us to flesh out the background on our father. When a film documentary about children of spies was looking for participants, I didn’t make the cut.

In comparison to the imagined life of my father, my real life has felt lacking in excitement. I have spent the better part of my adult life afraid to live and die in obscurity. Being labeled “ordinary” was my biggest fear. Surely I had something to say! Surely I was as special as my father? Didn’t I have something to give the world? Anything?

I may not. But I may, just maybe, have something to contribute to the greater good in my own, little way.

And that hope is precisely what makes me ordinary; little in this world is more human – and more common – than one’s aim to make a difference. While the Peace Corps volunteer may impact a village, and the doctor a community, my impact may not reach beyond my immediate circle of loved ones. But I have one hell of a circle, and I will do everything I can to make a positive impact in it.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit feeling a twinge of envy walking past a black-tie event on my way home to do laundry, but I wouldn’t trade the people in my life for glamor and recognition. Beating myself up over Where I’m Not is a waste of my time and energy, and Where I Am is pretty great, after all.

Game On

As Julie Andrews wisely advised in The Sound of Music, let's start at the very beginning.

One night after work last month, I went to see The Solitary Man. Michael Douglas plays an aging man who is not growing old gracefully. I chose to see this movie because I had read a review lauding Douglas' performance and was intrigued. That, and my boyfriend, O, who was disinclined to see it anyway, was playing poker. The night was mine, all mine, and so I happily headed to the Angelika for a date with myself.

I had not expected to leave the movie theatre intent on changing the course of my life, but there I was, minutes after the credits rolled, calling my sister and declaring the following:

1) We were getting old
2) We were not making the most of our creative lives
3) We had been living in the shadow of our parents for too long
4) It was time to do something about it

I was in no position to walk the mile and a half home, having just gotten stitches in my leg from a(nother) mole-removal. And yet, there I was, so completely focused on my newly-enlightened sense of purpose, that by the time I limped into my apartment, my right lateral thigh throbbing*, I felt completely energized.

*(Digression: In dermatology speak, "lateral thigh" means outer thigh. I asked them what they call the inner thigh. They said, "inner thigh." I followed this up with what seemed to me the next logical question. "Then why not call the outer thigh "the outer thigh?" They had no answer for me.)

I was ready to discover the Woman I Was Meant To Be. Then I spent weeks thinking about it. And then I spent ten days on vacation occasionally thinking about it. And then my sister posted two pieces about getting closer to the Woman She Was Meant To Be. And I knew it was time for me to step up to the plate.

So this is my introduction. My goal is to inform, to amuse (when the mood suits), to entertain (see preceding parentheses), and most of all to be courageous enough to share this journey of pointed self-discovery with you, the reader. Stay tuned. I'm already thinking about my next post.

The Third World Blues

And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?

And have you changed your life?

- Excerpt from Mary Oliver’s The Swan

A couple of weeks ago, I returned from a trip to Rwanda. It was my first visit to Africa. I spent almost the entire three weeks in the rural village of Musha, staying in an orphanage and training teachers at a nearby public school. The area was incredibly poor without electricity or running water, except for where I was staying. Villagers, no matter their age, spend their days laboring in fields and filling yellow, plastic jugs with water in order to cook and clean. No matter their plight, the young and old smiled each day, greeting me as I passed them in the mornings and again on my way home in the evenings.

One of the first things I did when I arrived back home was head to Home Depot for some flowers to plant. Now, I don’t like indoor plants at all, the possible outcome of a bad fourth grade experience that included a teacher who smelled of mothballs and a classroom full of hanging plants. Also, I have no green thumb; the tidbits of greenery that I've planted outdoors over the years die sad, dry, forgotten deaths. Honestly, I've never given gardens too much thought. Living in Manhattan, it was simpler to pick up a bouquet of tulips or lilacs at the corner deli, plop them in a vase, and that was that. And yet, fresh off the plane in Maui, there I was filling my shopping cart with purple and pink blossoms.

Since my return from Rwanda, people have asked me how I’m processing the experience, and how I’ve changed. My brother, having traveled extensively in Southeast Asia, called to see if I was falling into the Third World Blues. Did I feel guilty for Western riches? Irritated? Angry? Depressed? I’m not sure yet.

Now and then, the faces of those I met in Musha pop up in my mind. I think of Mattias, the elderly man who cooked for us with a swollen wrist and shuffled home in the evenings. Each morning, he’d take my hands in his and greet me, “Ste-pha-nee! Maramuze.” And Placide, sixteen years old, who lives at the orphanage. He was just a baby when his parents were killed in the genocide. Despite his age, he is still in fifth grade. He’ll age out of the orphanage in two years. Then what? He has a smile that outshines misfortune. And Jean Paul, Florence and Sam, all teachers at the school. Everyday, I’d arrive at the school feeling grimy in wrinkled pants, the hems covered in red dirt, and my hair barely clean after a quick, cold shower. And everyday, they’d arrive at school from homes without running water and wearing the same clothes as the day before, but they looked sharp and utterly spotless. And the little girl who kept her one notebook safe by stuffing it down the front of her tattered, blue dress.

After spending three weeks witness to people living hard lives in a country where the average life expectancy is fifty-seven, my deepest fear is that I haven’t changed at all, that I won’t “do” the right thing with the experience, that I won’t live my life any differently, won’t be more productive, won’t complain less over the trivial, won’t be able to decide what to do about children and a family and the rest of my life.

How have I changed? I don’t know yet. But I planted some flowers outside and I’m trying to keep them alive.

I'm 40. Now what?

I turned 40 this year. H. turned 37 yesterday. As shocking as my own age is to me, it is somehow even more surprising to wish my little sister happy 37th. Isn't she supposed to be, I don't know, 8? Forever? Age is constantly catching me by surprise. One day I'm 21 with all of life in front of me. (I can be a vet! Or, a serious business woman in a suit and hose and pumps! Hard to believe, but that was a dream once.) The next, I'm forty and sitting in the Ob-Gyn's office with an ultra sound up my yes-that's-where to see if I have any viable eggs left. Turns out that as of this morning, I had two eggs in one ovary and six in the other. This may be more than you wished to know, but there you have it. To quote my doctor, I'm apparently "still in the game." I'm not sure how I feel about the game, but it's good to know I'm not sidelined quite yet. There is more to say on the topic of withering eggs and the like, but I'll save that for later.

The point is that H. and I are starting to "get on in years" and are currently both childless. We both happen to be uncertain about how we got here, 'here' being without families of our own. We also both find ourselves unclear or unsatisfied, depending on which sister you are talking to, about our career choices. Now, while I'm writing as though we two sisters are one and the same, we are, of course, different in many ways. And yet, our lives have often run parallel courses and sometimes, as is the current case, meet at particular crossroads.

All of which led us to the How Did We Get Here? Q & A that we found ourselves having last month over wine in a downtown Manhattan bistro on a sultry, hot evening. H. had recently seen A Solitary Man and was determined to have her life end with more meaning than Michael Douglas' character. Suddenly, she expounded, "What are we waiting for? We need to get on with our lives! We can no longer live in the shadow of our parents!"

Almost immediately, having grown up on bedtime stories of Winnie-the-Pooh, it dawned on us that maybe we'd gotten lost along the way while searching for our very own Heffalumps, and, possibly, Woozles as well. As we all know, it is a tricky feat to find something when you don't know what it is that you're looking for, or when what you are looking for isn't at all what you want to find.

So here we are, one sister in Manhattan and the other in Maui. Together, we're ready to honor our detours, side-step some shadows, climb the path that looks just right, and leave the Heffalumps be.

"Hallo!" said Piglet, "what are you doing?"
"Tracking something, " said Winnie-the-Pooh very mysteriously.
"Tracking what?" said Piglet, coming closer.
"That's just what I ask myself. I ask myself, "What?"
"What do you think you'll answer?"
"I shall have to wait until I catch up with it," said Winnie-the-Pooh.