Sentimental Journey On the Way to Buy Cat Food
May 4, 2014
I was driving to the grocery store this evening and went right by a playground. It was just after 7, dusk here in New England, windy and cloudy and warm. It was crowded; spring has been a long time coming and some of us are not quite convinced it’s here to stay.
And a thought came to me- My kids don’t go the playground with me anymore. Colin is 13, Katy is 10. They go to the park these days, all by themselves or in packs with other kids from the neighborhood.
I hadn’t even noticed the passing of playground days, and they are gone, along with mornings of helping them pick out their clothes for school and the Thursday night phone calls in search of a sitter.
I remembered our trips to Andrews Park. Katy would clutch my hand, which would then smell like peanut butter until I got home. Colin would race ahead, clutching a frisbee or a football or a backpack with snacks. I would juggle my phone and my iced coffee and a book, all while one of my hands was clenched inside Katy’s warm, smudgy grip.
When we got there, I swear, it took us twenty minutes at least, and Andrews is three blocks away, I’d find a bench and settle down with the book and the drink and the phone. I’d make nervous conversations with other mothers, who all seemed to know each other, while eyeing my kids to make sure they didn’t hijack the swings. I’d wish I’d brought wipes, or bottled water. I’d look at my phone and calculate how much longer we’d have to stay until I could safely give them the five minute warning. I’d wonder what was underneath all the sand in the sandbox, if that was even sand in the sandbox. I’d call someone, anyone at all who might pick up the phone, and wouldn’t mind helping me kill some time until I could safely check the time again. Finally, Katy would make me push her on the swing. Then Colin would make me throw him a ball, or shoot baskets, or teach him how to make a frisbee sail thru the air. And I’d wish I was just a little bit better at doing any of those things while looking around to make sure no one was watching. And they weren’t. Until whatever I was throwing hit someone in the head.
Today, I took Katy to SOWA, an open air market with food trucks and art galleries and one stand that had an entire display of 19 different kinds of cheese. Colin went with me last week to the Y, and we worked on the new Keiser equipment. I can’t get a basket, well I can, but it’s not that often, but I can work with him on strength training to help his jump shot. Next month, I’m going to take them to see Lion King, The Musical, which is a helluva lot more fun than watching the Disney video four times in the same afternoon, (not that we ever spent that much time in front of the tv.)
So tonight I was sad for a bit that the playground days are gone until I thought about it. Now, I’m mostly relieved. Though I’m thinking that for Mother’s Day, I might request a sentimental journey over to the swing set on Castle Island. And I will let Colin and Katy take turns pushing me.
Tonight, sitting in Ayeesha’s kitchen for the first time, it occurred to me. I’d made a new friend. She and her husband had books, good books, familiar books. They had board games and a cat. Her cat is not allowed on the kitchen counter, and her cat doesn’t go on the kitchen counter. They have big conversations about the world and not about car pools or the finale of How I Met Your Mother. Though she did make me want to watch The Walking Dead.
She got me cookies, made me coffee, and gave me the sweet spot on the sofa. It was a magical moment, when I glanced at her face and realized, I hope I see more of that face. And it wasn’t because of the cookies, though I am a sucker for cookies.
As I get older, the moments are fewer and farther between when I look at a face that isn’t related to me, and want to see it on a regular basis. There is so much stuff to do. Recitals, basketball games, work, more work, working out so I don’t look like an idiot at work. (I work at a gym.) I’m glad I met her, and I’m glad I was smart enough to get to know her. Oh, gosh, I hope she likes me too. When she comes to my house, I will bake her a pie and try to talk about something political, or at least current, or at least not about my kids.
When I got home, probably inspired by Ayeesha’s kitchen, I went on a bit of a bender. A cleaning bender. Did you know dirt gets under the knobs on the stove? When I lifted up the stove top, there were drips of indeterminate animal fat, and candle wax, (I think,) and matches, and hair elastics. I swept under the stove and found 4 milk caps, one broken glass that someone didn’t feel like picking up, 97 broken crayons, primarily in pastel shades, and an earring. It’s like mining, deep cleaning my house. There are layers and layers of stuff, and they all tell a story. We really like milk, eat too much meat, sometimes are a little lazy, do most our sketches in primary shades and are constantly looking for hair elastics.
We are a messy family, and I am a work in progress. Tomorrow I will tackle the dining room and next week, I will invite my new friend and her man over for dinner. After I teach my cats not to spend most of their time napping on the kitchen counter.
Maybe I will wait until it’s a little warmer and they spend most of their time outside.
Here I am.
March 2, 2014
I have finally came to the conclusion that my body is a pretty nice place to live. This after a troubling bout with a never ending chest cold, the onset of my fifties, and a life long wish that I was just a little taller.
All my life I’ve been plagued, not only by height envy, (and look at all of the woman lurching around in high heels, I’m not the only one,) but by the vague idea that I would look so much better if my lips were just a little plumper, my belly a little less so, my hair straighter, my feet daintier… The list goes on and on and on.
And then, while I was on the phone with my mom, listening to her tell me about the latest cruise she’s booked, a thousand pounds of envy crashed down on me. Not only did I want to be taller, with a voluptuous smile, a taut tummy, a sleek mane, held up by a delicate instep, I wanted to be all of that and lounging on a deck chair in the sun. On a boat. With a cocktail, a cabana boy, a slew of really good books and a crowd of fascinating people waiting to hear my latest bon mots.
I pulled in my driveway and looked out the window at the dirty snow, the basketball hoop, slightly crooked, perched at the end of the driveway, and the dog poop in the front yard.
My short legs carried me out of the car and into the house. My face was greeted by the most wonderful of dogs, the smiling Sophie. My daughter gave me a hug. My son smiled and asked if I’d remembered to pick up milk.
I didn’t know what we were going to do about dinner. Pizza three nights a week is a little much. And if I was ever going to do anything about this waistline, it probably wasn’t the best option.
It turns out Katy had made macaroni and cheese, and she explained to me she didn’t even use butter, just low fat milk. And Colin offered that we could round the meal off with the grapes in the fridge I’d bought them to bring to school for snacks, (since they never, ever brought them to school for snacks- “see mom, sometimes it works out we don’t listen to you).
And I decided right then, right there, that this body of mine wasn’t such a bad place to live. With a little help from my husband, it had delivered me these two amazing, surly, sweet, funny people. It has carried me thru a life of heartbreak and bliss.
I have not always been kind to this body of mine. Mostly I’ve actually been pretty cruel. Too much sleep, or sulking on sofas. A long love affair with cigarettes, and some serious time indulging in too much wine or dangerous trips to the ladies room. Bacon. Macaroons. Not enough fiber. Not enough water, too much water.
These days, I’m all about Greek yogurt, time at the YMCA and long walks in the woods with the dogs. I love spinach, I don’t eat red meat much. But that’s only been for a little while.
So all things considered, this body of mine has been pretty generous and forgiving. So I think the nicest thing I can do is stop fretting about the lounge chair that doesn’t have my name on it, and the fact that there isn’t a lip stick that is going to make me look like Ms Jolie.
I can still wear high heels, and dream a little. But at the end of the day, this day any way, this body of mine is right where I want to be.
I’m a terribly, busy, and important person, and still I make time for the dogs. (So you have time to read this.)
January 15, 2014
My life is busy right now. Three jobs, two kids belonging to a total of four teams with a side of flute lessons.
I don’t have time to meander thru Sunday’s paper, I toss out the coupons, and the business and real estate, and get right down to Dinner With Cupid. I make food, and then we eat lots and lots of leftovers. I exchange quick texts to really good friends that go back and forth and back and forth while we attempt to find a mutual time we can both make it for coffee. I’m hoping they are reading the same subtexts I am- “I really love you and look forward to when we can spend time in the same room and I can see your face when I ask if you think this dress makes me legs look short or I can reach over and hug you when you talk about spending three weeks searching for just the right senior center for your mom.”
So, I have no time. The other morning, my daughter had created a beautiful picture to go along with a book report. I typed the report for her, it was much quicker than proof reading the damn thing, and I glanced at the outline she showed me. When she was walking out the door, I called out- “Make sure you bring that report home. I need to see the your beautiful illustration.” I’m pretty sure it is a “beautiful illustration”, but I still haven’t seen the finished product. She did mention she got an A.
But inside this life of mine, there is one luxury that is a necessity. Every day that the temperature isn’t below 15 degrees fahrenheit, and there aren’t sheets of rain racing down in my general direction, or snowflakes floating and sticking to the sheets of black ice all over the road- I take the dogs for a walk.
I carry Sophie and Coco to the car. I stuff them inside. I grab a coat, my headphones, my IPhone, and a cup of coffee from hours before placed in a really tall plastic water glass so it won’t spill.
We drive to Cunningham Woods, about a mile and a half away from our house.
When we pull into my parking spot, always the same spot, if the dogs got turned around by a particularly amorous, intact, black lab they’d be able to find it, the car of course. None of us like the lab much. I slide open the side door to the mini van and they spill out of their seats the way that Katy and Colin did right after they first figured out how to get out of their car seats without any help.
I sit behind the steering wheel, iphone in my lap, speaker cords tangled in the steering wheel. I open up Spotify, the magical spot that holds all of my songs. I pick a play list, I look for a song. I find what I need on that particular day, I place the headphones over my ears, I untangle the cords from the wheel and the gear shift and my foot. I put my keys in my pocket. I think about locking the car. I don’t.
I hop out of the car, carrying nothing more than phone, wearing nothing but my coat with deep pockets,(and clothes of course. This isn’t going there). Inside my coat are my keys, and maybe a piece of gum I seized in the most recent “you can’t have gum in this house until you learn to put it in the trash when your’e done.”
We all start our journey. Sophie is the slowest. She sniffs. She peers out at other dogs from behind trees. Coco dances, hops, races, skids, he’s a pinball mini doberman pinscher on crack.
I follow along behind. I’m not really following them. I’m just moving along a path we’ve taken a million times before.
Some days, I’m listening to old hip hop- “Get down with OPP, yah you know me…”, TLC, Mary J Blige. Sometimes I’m checking out the latest rap song I heard when Colin had radio control. Often, I’m dipping to old songs I’ve heard a million times before. One day I listened to five different versions of “Romeo and Juliet” originally by Dire Straits, but did you know the Indigo Girls did a cover? Another afternoon, I checked out Richard Thompson’s “One Thousand Years of Popular Music,” the highlight of which was his cover of Britney Spear’s classic “Oops, I did it again.”
These walks take anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour and a half. I take as much time as I can, or as much time as I need. I tell people that I have no choice, the dogs need their walks.
And they do. But I really need my ramble, and a little bit of time singing along to silly pop music, gritty rock and roll, ballads, and anthems. I’m taking moments to visit the person I was when that music was probably a pretty crucial way I defined myself. I remember as early as junior high. First week of school, first time someone new sat next to me at the lunch table, one of my first questions, or one of their first questions, would be- “who do you listen to?”
These days, I get a chance listen to a little bit of everything. But you know, it’s only because the dogs really need their walk.
About a Week Before Christmas
December 18, 2013
The snow started about 2 pm today. By three I was on the phone with my boss checking to see if the Christmas party had been cancelled. It wasn’t. By four, I was trying to talk Sophie, the Dog that Would Really Like to Live In Miami, into going outside. By 5, both kids were with friends and I decided to have peanuts for dinner in honor of the party I was missing.
And at 7:30, under a snowy sky, I was standing on top of a very small hill wishing that I had mittens. Night sledding. The kids came home, and when they tripped over the snowboards left piled up by the back door, a brilliant idea was born. Night sledding.
I’ve never taken a ride on virgin snow. It’s puffy, not very slick, it kind of felt like the sled had had a little to much eggnog on the ride down.
We had only four of them, and there were five of us, so there was a certain amount of negotiation. Between the kids. I didn’t have to negotiate. I drove the car, and, they assumed, would make the hot chocolate when we got home. That gives a woman a few privileges.
“Katy, do you want to make snow angels?” Tue had spilled from the sled onto her back and was inspired.
“No, I didn’t come here to make snow angels,” Katy said, then snatched the sled from Tue. “But you can make snow angels,” she said sweetly.
“Mom, put your feed on the sled. Stop dragging them. There you go… Wasn’t that fun? You want to ride down with me?” Colin offered right before smashing me in the face with a snowball.
He then pummeled Kate, who responded by falling over and mewling like a kitten. An angry, wet kitten.
We slid down, we staggered up. Enough times that I didn’t even have to mention hot chocolate when I said it was time to head home.
In the car, in the quiet of heavy breath and windshields wiping “Ol Fifty Five” by Tom Waits came on the radio.
“As I pulled away slowly, feeling so holy, oh Lord, I was feeling alive.”
Merry Christmas and to all A Good Night.
Thanksgiving in Mountain Lakes, NJ (No, we aren’t going to be hanging out with Snookie)
November 27, 2013
Every year the kids and I make the journey from Massachusetts to Mountain Lakes, NJ for Thanksgiving. We go to visit my friend Amy, and her family.
Amy was one of my best friends growing up. She did her homework. She could always find her shoes. She went to college and then she finished college. She was, and is, very different from me.
Amy is now a high school math teacher at our old high school. Her husband, John is a lawyer, and her two kids are a little older than Colin and Kate. Taylor is a senior in high school and James is at college.
Somehow, and I have no idea how I pulled this one off, we have become part of the Amy and John’s extended family. She is the only grown up in the world capable of buying Colin a present he actually likes, and will spend hours on the phone discussing important matters of the day- is Katy old enough to trick or treat with three of her friends, no adult hiding behind bushes or lamp posts. The week of Thanksgiving is the only time, some years, we get to be friends face to face.
This year, we got in late Monday night. I thought the route from my house to her house was 84 to 684 to the Tappanzee to 287.* (That’s wrong, don’t try to take 684 to the Tappanzee Bridge. Unless you want to go on an adventure.) We spent about an hour driving around the Bronx while the navigation system told us to get on, and then off, 95 South).
So when we finally got to Amy’s house, I was a little wired. The kids fell into their beds, I hugged Amy good night, and I took Sophia, the Most Patient of Dogs, for a long over due walk.
It was 12:30 at night. I listened to David Gray on the headphones. The streets were shiny with rain, but the rain stopped right after we got outside. My thoughts turned to people I knew that I would not see this time home, or at any reunions down the road.
I didn’t know her well, but the first person I missed was Suzie Stanfield. She was the little sister of a good friend of mine. Her sentences always ended in exclamation points. She was indiscriminately kind to everyone and everything, from the idiot 4th grader that pulled her hair to the spider she found in the bathroom. I don’t think people always shared her enthusiasms. I don’t think people, in high school anyway, were always kind to her. She had a million freckles, a crooked smile and I am reminded of her voice when I listen to my daughter open gifts on Christmas morning. That was Suzie, a Christmas morning kind of girl.
I walk by Lloyd’s house. He lived there alone. He was a few years older than me. When I was in high school I spent a lot of time walking around the “Big Lake”. Most of the time, I would end up stopping by Lloyd’s for a drink. He always had the tv on, and he was always watching Mash. I must have a crush on him because I really can’t remember why I was always walking around the lake and I had already seen every episode of Mash. A lot of girls had crushes on him, he was a blonde surfer late 70’s Gary Cooper.
I still tell my kids about the bone marrow on toast Mrs Houlihan used to give my friend Onk for breakfast when she was little. Mrs. Houlihan. Maybe it’s strange, in this sentimental journey my thoughts would turn to one of best friend’s mothers’. But I would given anything last night to find myself inside Mrs. Houlihans’ kitchen. She looked like a little bird, small and quick. She would make us snacks, flutter her hands when she talked about her daughter, and she spoke with an Easter European accent that made her words sound sweet as pancakes. I was lucky to visit her kitchen and sit at her table.
Remembering people that I loved could have been a lonely business, but Sophia, my beautiful companion, kept me warm. And she would have served as the perfect alibi, I was wandering around wearing leopard flannel pants and a Patriot sweatshirt. It is an established code, dog walkers can wear anything, and all people will think is “what a nice woman, walking her dog when it’s clear she is so tired she is incapable of dressing herself.”
I would never go out for a late walk in my pajama bottoms back home.
But here I was in a strange place, that in some ways, I knew better than home, and it turned into a long, long walk.
I am a New Jersey girl, A Milton Mom, and a Complicated Woman with a Past. I had a lot to think about.
Happy Thanksgiving. And a huge thank you to the Harrington/Eveleth family. Thank you for inviting me home.
*84 to 287 to the Tappanzee Bridge, in case you’re wondering what the right sequence would have been. But don’t try it without confirming this information with a reliable navigation system.
The Inevitable Return to Vertical (and the ride downhill right after).
November 24, 2013
The other night, Colin was sprawled on my bed, watching basketball. He looked up at me. He smiled. He spoke- “mom, come here. I want to watch basketball with you.”
I swooned.
These are interesting times in our house. With Colin, I am often the source of great amusement, for what I wear, what I know and don’t know, (who is Kendrick Lamar?) and how I text.
Then he wants me to listen to a song he loves, or offers to lend me his basketball sneakers to go to zumba class.*
My daughter is 10. She went to see a teacher got married and needed to ask the next door neighbor for eyeshadow, my selection wasn’t flattering to her skin tone. And while I was making dinner tonight, she marched up to me in the kitchen, in front of the stove, thru her arms around me and declared it was time to snuggle.
I packed up all of Colin’s boy clothes last week. A thousand hats, he never wore one. Fifteen different teeshirts from basketball camp and summer camp and football practice. Little boy pajamas with dinosaurs and fire trucks and skulls.
In the midst of all these changes I’ve been on a bit of a cleaning bender. The hard thing is, Colin is thirteen. Katy is nine. They are used to my bi monthly half hearted attempts to get the house in order. They listened to the speech. They made their beds. They put the clean towels into the linen closet instead of on the floor in front of the linen closet. This all lasted about three days, every couple of months. Before.
When Back To School struck this year, I decided we were going to get the house in order. And that meant all of us. I regard clean clothes perched on the stairs the way I used see Sophie’s poop when she’d been left home too long. Socks in the hallway send me into a frenzy. And stuffing all of the offending articles into the closet and then closing the door doesn’t work anymore either. In the old days, I wouldn’t open the door. Now I do.
And of course, along with Back To School, the New Leaf Cleaning Policies, there are all of the Back to School Activities- swim team, football, youth group, flute lessons. And there is my job. And my other job. And two classes at Quincy college. And dinner, and friends, and the gym.
I have to go to the gym. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been struggling with asthma. Mostly at night. My lungs wheeze, it sounds like I have a choir of Who’s from Whoville singing in my chest. I can’t catch my breath. Yoga seems to help. And an extended time spent in the sauna after yoga helps even more.
It’s not surprising, I guess. My family has started careening forward towards the next part, the part where I have to learn to let them go. I can clean, watch basketball, burn dinner while I cuddle on the couch, zumba till the teacher throws me out, and it’s not going to slow down. And when I do slow down, when I lay me down to sleep, I lose my breath.
It returns. And I go back to sleep, and wake up to the most charismatic of canines, Sophie. Sophie groans when I first reach down to say good morning. And then she wags, not just her tail, her whole body. And she shivers, and sighs, and wedges closer to my body. I know she really, really needs to get outside. Even so she will stay in bed in bliss right next to me until I have to pry myself away and return to vertical.
That’s how things are right now in our house.
*Don’t ever wear basketball sneakers to zumba. Ever. They are incredibly hard to dance in, and more important, they look really, really stupid.
It’s been a long time (Sometimes I go to yoga twice a day.)
November 8, 2013
Since school started, my world has been gobbled by too much stuff. That’s always been the case, or at it’s always been the case since I started writing on Word press. But this season, there were two new additions that have left me little room to breathe, much less ruminate between breathes and create entire meaningful sentences to those outside my immediate family. (My immediate family might tell you that I don’t create meaningful sentences for them either.)
I’ve become, um, hooked on yoga. It’s not the same as hooked on Phonics, or hooked on drugs, or even the off and on addiction to caffeine I’ve had since I was twelve. I joined a gym right next to my house. There are all different kinds of yoga classes offered right before work, just after I drop Katy for swim team, classes in the pre dinner hour, (while it roasts, I bake in warm yoga at 95 degrees.)
I even bought a mat. Every time I enter the room, filled with all of these beautiful, long limbed, gumbyesque women, all ages, shapes, ethnicities, I find a spot in the middle of them. I roll out my mat, I go the closet for a block and a strap, I sip water from the fountain, I run to the ladies room to pee, and then I find my way back. I find my way back in a sea of gumbyesque long limbed rainbow of x chromosomes, and there is always room left in their midst. Of course, there is always room left. Like I said, I reserve a spot, as soon as I drop my mat.
I am learning from yoga. I’ve only been going a little more than a month, so I’m probably not qualified to share it with you, but let me just say, it’s a good place to find myself six times a week. When I am in the room, on an island of blue fabric, listening to my own breath, matching my breath to everyone else’s, absorbing the teacher’s measured instructions, and reminders, and gentle suggestions, I am an island. I choose what to feel, how to move, what to hear, how to place my body, and then how to move my body. The beginning of a love affair with yoga is selfish, it requires for me to listen hardest to what I am telling myself and it doesn’t lend itself to quick posts on facebook, or ruminations on word press.
And that has been the perfect place for me to be right now in the midst of the other addition to this little life of mine. My son is now thirteen. Since school started, since the first hairs sprouted on his upper lip, and so far, I’m the only one that’s seen them, things have gotten complicated. The other day, I mentioned a song to him. It was by eminem, a song he’d written about missing Dr. Dre. For those of you not familiar with the midwestern rapper, Mr. Em wasn’t bemoaning a missed appointment at the health clinic.
Regardless, my son, my son who once declared I was the coolest mom ever just for knowing how to spell me Em’s name, looked at me with utmost scorn.
“Mom, that songs been out since, like, 2004. You call yourself an eminem fan?”
No, I never called myself an eminem fan. I like some of his music and I know how to spell his name. For the record.
Next day, he called me on the phone. I was on my way home from driving Katy to swim team, after working out, after working. I was hungry. And he said the words:
“Mom, dinners on the table.”
Dinner was on the table. Colin had reheated the turkey taco meat from the night before. He had sliced a tomato in half and put a head of lettuce in a bowl. He had heated some taco shells he found behind the microwave for forty minutes in the oven until they were as solid as a cookie sheet.
I ate the turkey tacos. And then I ate the pizza that my friend brought over out of the blue. Unsolicited. I sort of swear.
He is the coolest son ever. He is capable of making me a card that would make a dead mom weep, (get that hip reference to the rolling stones. Probably not. I guess Colin’s right. I try too hard.)
Things are complicated right now. I go to yoga, where I’m just starting to figure out where my butt should be in downward dog, and have just accepted I’m probably never going to be able to hold my body up on my elbows.
I come home to my son. One minute, he smiles and I swoon. Before the minutes over, he tells me he was smiling because his friend on the phone just offered him the chance to by a used pair of sneakers for only $125 dollars, “I mean, mom, why would I smile at you. You gave me crap when I MADE YOU DINNER! I mean, it might take time before I recover from that…” And he’s joking with me again, and smiling. Nope, that smile was for his sister. She just said she would do the art work on the front of his book report.
Sometimes I go to yoga twice a day.
Weighty Matters
September 22, 2013
In a world where everything is becoming open for discussion, there are still a few topics that make most people uncomfortable. The first three that come to mind are death, lice, and weight.
Of course, there are the brief conversations about who died when and how bad everyone feels. And whose kid came home with lice (and how glad we are it wasn’t ours.) And weight? I’m are always comparing notes on the latest diets, and what I ate or didn’t eat on any given day. But these tend to be brief forays that lead into the serious stuff- “adolescence, doesn’t it suck having teenagers”, “I wanted to kill my husband when…” and “what the hell should we do about Syria,” (I am not a total idiot, and neither are my friends. Between us, we have actually come up with a solution to most of the worlds problems. That’s another post.)
And when it comes to weight? I read the magazines. I watch the talk shows. Our weight is a subject that consumes a lot of us. I know that I can wear a smile for an hour after hopping on the scale and discovering I’ve lost a pound. I might kick a kitten if the reading is a few pounds heavier than the day before. Yet I don’t think I’ve ever had a real conversation with anyone about the actual number.(And doctors offices and health clubs don’t count. Though there is’t really a conversation. Just a statement.”You weigh —.” “oh.”)
I weigh 162 pounds. When I was pregnant I reached what I think was my all time high- but I don’t know because when I’m really heavy I don’t weigh myself- of 220 pounds. I would like to weigh 145 pounds, which according to those statistics in the fitness magazines, is kind of high. But I work out. And I like lunch.
Ok, it’s 168.
When I look in the mirror I see a pretty woman. I like my face. I have a waist line. My breasts are small, so there isn’t much gravity can do with them. I’ve got field hockey player thighs, but they could be defensive line football player thighs. And my belly is just a tiny heart shaped curve, it actually looks kind of cute.
And then, I’m walking in the mall. I catch a glimpse in a mirror. Staring back at me, is a chunky, middle aged women who really should hire a personal shopper to help her buy blue jeans because the ones I’m wearing make my rear end look the size of the Kardashian’s garage.
Maybe the mirrors in the mall are trick mirrors designed to make shoppers head screeching into the local department stores in search of Spanx.
Weight matters, but not nearly as much as we think it does. My life isn’t going to magically improve when I weigh 142 pounds. Shopping will be nicer. But I don’t think my friends are going to like me more, my kids aren’t going to start cleaning their rooms without 97 gentle reminders when I weigh a little less.
Lice doesn’t really matter at all, and death matters a lot. I use it as a cattle prod when I am tempted to spend the day at home eating chocolate instead taking my dogs out for a long walk. Not because I’m afraid of the damn calories. Because life is short, and I’d like to spend as much of it as I can walking in the woods with Sophie the Magnificent Wonderpup.
At the end of the day, I guess it’s not what we talk about or don’t talk about with the people we love. It’s how we live our lives when we aren’t busy comparing notes with our neighbors.
Places I Have Been To
September 10, 2013
I went to church last Sunday. It was the first Sunday of the church year. Everyone came early for a pancake breakfast hosted by the youth group. I’d actually been at the church since Saturday night since I had been one of the chaperones for the pre-pancake breakfast youth sleepover. (I am either a very brave or a very stupid woman.) As I moved around the halls, directed guests to the bathroom, and found a sugar bowl for somebody in the kitchen, it occurred to me- I feel at home here. I am a member of the club.
You know the feeling I’m talking about? When all the sudden you look around whatever space you are in and realize- you know where stuff is. You know the names of people around you, you even know if they are people worth knowing, and you move thru hallways and rooms with ease.
The church is the latest in a long series of places I made my own. I’m sure for many, school is the first thing that comes to mind. Not for me. As a matter of fact, for all the time I spent in school, my memories are mostly of feeling lost. Literally. I have a lousy sense of direction, every year classrooms are different, they were usually located on different floors. Kids in classes changed, and every few years, buildings changed. To make matters really difficult, when I was 12 my family moved from Pennsylvania to New Jersey.
I suppose, on a much smaller level, I got a sense of it over at friends houses. Going over to Leslie’s and being able to drink from the water jug in the fridge reserved for family members. Over at my first boyfriend’s house, I was entrusted with the location of spare key, and knew the names of all of his cousins. He only had three cousins, but I’m not that good with names. And of course, the Stanfields. Their home became the back up home to many teenagers in Mountain Lakes. I knew where to find the corn nuts, and what bedroom was likely to be unoccupied, or mostly unoccupied. Of course, so did about seventy five other kids between the ages of 15 and 18. But it was nice, knowing my home wasn’t my only home. Especially since things weren’t always so easy in my home growing up.
Skip forward quite a few years. My first true sense of belonging to a group, and knowing where I fit in, was when I settled in Boston, and discovered the club scene. And the bands. (And the members of bands. Whole nother story.) And the drugs, and the right ratio of drugs and alcohol for just the right buzz. I remember how it felt to saunter up to the front a line, nod at the bouncer and walk in a front door. How I felt so damn special to be granted entrance into a dark, crowded smoky room, with minimal bathrooms, insane lines- to buy a drink, pee, even to grab a seat. I became familiar with the bartenders, did my research and sought out the johns no one else knew about, and became particularly skilled at lurking behind someone getting ready to leave, then swooping in for their spot at the bar before they’d even picked up their keys. I knew where the stairs were, where the elevators were, where the back doors were, who bartended on which night, and who might be willing to pay for my drinks.
And the best part… Everybody knew me. By name. After years of feeling pretty damn anonymous, I had circles and circles of friends. I had friends to go out to dinner with, friends to sleep with, friends to stay up all night with, friends to play scrabble with… I had lots and lots and lots of friends. I spent piles of money, had, from what I remember a damn good time, and woke up from it all when I was pregnant with my first child.
Then I went back to feeling like I had in school, a little bit lost.
When I sat down to write this, I was going to list all of the places in my life that weren’t my home, but that felt like home.
And this is what I found out- there were the clubs in Boston and Cambridge in the 90’s, there is the space between my two kids anywhere in the whole world, and there is my church. My church is a place that practices something called “radical hospitality”, and I guess they really, truly do. At least in my case. My church is a place where we have twenty minute conversations about which class will work for a nine year old who is more mature than most, but needs to make more friends in his grade. It is a place where there is always coffee, though I often have to make it, or find the filters. Where the minister is my friend, and I swim with the Youth Advisor most mornings, (not at the church, it’s not that nice.) And where when the conversation turns to Social Justice, and it often does, it is not in the abstract.
I’m glad I finally found my way there.
julierichmond 