My Mom, A Class Act

My mother was a class act. I’m not 100% sure all that goes in to that. I just know that she was.  

As soon as I thought it, I told her so. “Mom,  you are a class act.” She looked at me quizzically, as if to say, “What brought that on” and “Who, me?” all in the same thought.  I would tell her that again and again, whenever the overwhelming feeling welled up inside me. I told my sister and my daughter that I thought this way, too.

It wasn’t that my mom was perfect. She could be very stubborn. She was kind of a perfectionist. She could be a bit of a martyr.  Just a bit. She didn’t have a great sense of humor and she hated socializing.  She was not an intellectual and she was a teensy bit on the prudish side.   

My mother should have hated my father. She had every reason to do so.  My father was charming and talented, smart and hugely fun-loving. He was also seriously narcissistic, arrogant,  impulsive, and reckless. He was unfaithful to her again and again throughout their just-about thirty year-old marriage. The cheating started before I was born – of course I did not know this until I was an adult. The woman lived in the trailer park my parents owned – she cut my sister’s and my hair. He cheated again when I was in my teens. This time it was a woman from the Eastern Star – a Masonic lodge my parents were long active in. And he cheated when I was in my early twenties, newly married – this time with a woman who worked for him at his regional newspaper.  He would leave my mother for that woman, with whom he lived until she passed away from lung cancer. There could have been others – there probably were others. Those are the ones I know about.

My father wrecked my mother’s life financially. Never one to be fiscally responsible, he was less so without my mother to keep the checkbook balanced. A series of missteps combined with some bad luck and terrible timing after he left her resulted in my father losing his property which included the house I grew up in – the house in which my mother and brother still lived.  The house was to be sold by the bank. My mother was facing homelessness. My aunt and uncle kindly stepped in and bought the house. She would have to pay them back. She was already 60 years old. My mother squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and spent fifteen years letting college kids live in her upstairs in order to pay her debt back.  My mother. Class act.

My father, meanwhile, had no money of his own. Never one to let reality interfere with his plans, however, he moved in to an old decrepit mansion in our town. Why? He’d always wanted to live there and now he didn’t have my mother’s boring practicality to hold him back. It didn’t look run-down on the outside – but on the inside – holy cow. Plaster falling down, pipes exposed, holes in the floor, erratic electrical outlets, bare lights dangling from the ceiling.  But hey – he was living in a mansion – with his girlfriend and two of her four children, who were 12 and 14.    

My mother worried about those kids.  It was Christmas. It was western NY cold. She knew they didn’t have much heat and that there also wasn’t much food.  She went to the grocery store and bought bags full of groceries. “They can rot in hell,” said my mother, about the two supposed adults.  But she sent me with those bags full of groceries to that mansion so those kids wouldn’t suffer any more than she imagined they already had. “Don’t tell him I bought them,” she said. Like hell I won’t, I thought to myself.  My mother. Class act.

Many years later, the girlfriend passed away. By then, my father had pulled himself together. He was no longer living in the falling-apart mansion. He’d dusted off his engineering skills and went back to work. He was no longer living hand to mouth.  But now he was alone and very sad.  Christmas was coming.  “Tell your father he’s welcome to come for Christmas if he wants to,” my mother said to me.  I looked at her incredulously. “Really?” “I imagine he’s feeling lonely – and it’s Christmas,” she said. And just like that, my father was invited back in to her home – which was not yet fully paid for – given a seat at the table, and in front of the fire, and made to feel comfortable and welcomed. My mother. Class act.

More years passed. My father was dying of esophageal cancer. Now he was living with another woman – this one had insisted, however, that my father actually divorce my mother. So she was his wife. He was in hospice care at home and though his wife had promised the hospice administrators that someone would always be there when the nurses or aides were not, she disregarded that direction regularly and left my father alone in bed for hours. It did not matter that he was getting weaker by the day or that no one would be there to get him some food or help him to the bathroom.  My mother fretted. “He should NOT be alone,” she’d tell me.

My mother also had cancer at the time and was in the middle of her own four-year battle for life. She endured one round of chemo after another which brought on horrible mouth sores, incredible exhaustion, and some serious kidney problems. One gray and cold morning in January a few weeks before he died, my father called my mother.  It was just 7:30. “Are you doing anything?” he asked her. “Do you think you could come over?”  The last thing my mother wanted to do was dress, summon the energy to scrape her car of snow and ice, and drive the few miles to my father, who was lying alone on the couch in his house. But she did. She sat with him for hours until the hospice nurse came while he alternately dozed and roused. Later she would tell me that she thought he had been afraid he was going to die that morning and he was afraid to be alone. My mother. Class act.

During the last weeks of my father’s life, he asked for parsnips. My angel mother scoured the grocery stores in town for some to make him. He reminisced about the macaroni and tomato juice soup he used to love. She made that too.   I helped her with the oyster stew he asked for.   She wasn’t feeling well but she directed its making from her couch in the living room. I delivered it to him and watched him slurp it down, grateful to my mother for being who she was. Class act.

After he died, my sister and I arranged for the funeral that his wife said she could not afford. We could not let him leave without a proper send off. My mother offered to host a buffet lunch afterwards.  Of course his wife was welcome.  His wife, I might add, is not a class act. Most people aren’t.

I think it all comes down to this. My mother was a class act because she was full of humanity. She acted consistently from a position of kindness and compassion even if she had plenty to be angry about. My mother simply did the right thing. Always.

I miss you, mom, every day. But the things that you did, the example that you set, guide me every day.  Happy mother’s day to my mom, the class act.   

My Knees (K)Need a Facelift!

I am cursed to be very short-waisted. This is probably inherited from my grandmother, who I recall lamenting this fact of her body every now and then as long as I can remember. What that means in case you don’t know is that my midriff is short. Think about the last old man you saw with his belt buckled up around his chest.  That could be me if I’m not careful . (Goddess, forgive me for dissing old men here. However, the visual conjured up by this admittedly stereotypical reference does explain why I call this problem a curse.)   

Due to this curse, I rarely wear anything that cinches visibly at the waist.  I won’t tuck in shirts. I get rid of anything with a belt as a decorative accessory.  The fashions of the late sixties and early seventies were kind to my body type. Empire-waisted and dropped-waisted dresses were my styles of choice.  They moved my waistline up or down a few inches so no on-looker ever really knew where the real thing was in the equation.     

Empire waists have been making their way back to the fashion scene the last couple of seasons. I was thrilled about this until I tried on a top last year in Banana Republic.  I had two responses to the look. 1)Ugh.  I feel pregnant; 2) Ugh. I feel  15, and not in a good way.   Sooooo, I turned my hopes to a lower waist line and waited. Every few months, I’d google ‘drop waist’ to see if I got any hits that weren’t in some vintage clothing store/website.  Finally, I got a bite. First, they appeared on websites where the going price for a simple frock was upwards of $600. But I was patient. The rich always get first dibs on everything. Sooner or later, I believed that the trend would filter down to the other 98%.

Which brings me to a Saturday afternoon a few weeks ago.  I was in our local overwhelming mall where I ventured to return an impulsive on-line sale purchase that did not look as good in person as it had on my computer monitor. I returned my item and as I was leaving the store, I stopped dead in my tracks. There was the dress I’d been waiting for – a cute black and white knit DROP-WAIST dress.  There was no way I was going to leave the store without trying it on.  Inside the dressing room, I slipped it down over my head and let it fall. I was more excited than I like to admit over a piece of fabric, however, if you have an imperfect body part rendered tolerable by a particular fashion, you will understand.  I surveyed myself critically in the mirror, loving what I saw  -- until my eyes landed on my knees.  I looked down in alarm. What happened to my knees?? When did they turn so ugly? Is that what they call “knobby”?  Is that (gasp) fat above my knee cap?  I was not a happy camper.  Of all the body parts I have ever been obsessed over or even gave more than a second thought to, my knees were not one (or two) of them.

Several solutions flashed through my head…. If there was more of a hem, an inch or so would solve some of the problem. If I wore stockings with the dress, that would help. But alas, the hem was miniscule – and I had to acknowledge that this particular dress begged to be worn with sandals.  I could also hear my daughter saying, “Nobody wears stockings any more, mom!”  I reluctantly put the dress back on the rack and headed home to google “ugly knees”  and find out if there is a remedy.

It turns out there is quite the literature on ugly knees.  I found:

“Bad knees to sexy knees.”
“Knees are ugly.”
“I have ugly knees.”
“Extremely ugly knees.”
“Why are knees so ugly?”
“Ladies, do you have knees that, like, pop out?”
“Wrinkly, knobby, saggy….meet the celebs going weak at the knees.”
“Ugly knees and a cool summer breeze.”
“Ugly knees… the curse of the kninkles” (I think that means knee wrinkles)

I am not alone.  People actually do undergo surgery to make their knees look better.  One cosmetic surgeon reported about 10% of his clients are seeking knee-relief.  However, one writer warned that trying to get rid of the fatty tissue just above the knee cap is tricky – removal of too much of it will cause the thigh to sag. Great.  What a visual.

One blogger wrote that all women over 40 should send their knees under cover – permanently. This kind of made me mad.  Why should we be sentenced to a life of long pants in hot weather?  A contributor to  “Bad knees to sexy knees” countered this advice, however, suggesting a little bit of exercise (i.e. lunges) to strengthen the muscle around the knee, a beauty product called “Body Glow” which gives legs and knees a “healthy glow”, a powerful moisturizer like La Mer, and an occasional scrub. After that, he said, “flaunt your knees”, whatever their condition.  

I took a peak at the article about celebrity knees and came face to knee with photos of the ugly knees of Catherine Zeta-Jones, Angelina Jolie, Eva Longoria, Sharon Stone, Elle MacPherson, Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Aniston  – even Katie Holmes who hasn’t even hit 40 yet! The writer of this bare-all even suggested that Demi Moore, who reportedly had an expensive knee lift a few years ago, should ask for her money back!  As I gazed at their ugly knees, I felt my perspective shift gears. I reassessed my knee situation.  I could try some lunges – that could only help, and I usually do go for some self-tanner in the summer.  I still have a stash of LaMer from my daughter’s days at Estee Lauder.  I’ll do what I can but I will not obsess about my knees for one second more.  

 And I think I’ll go back for that dress.

You Don't Own Me

The girl waits patiently – though patience is not her virtue – while Carol, the short and stout old-timer divides up the day’s take and slides her share, $6.46 across the table.  She unties her burgundy apron – the required uniform – and pockets the money. The man – her husband – will not be happy. “Thanks,” she says, “for not much” she does not say. “Bye, guys,” she nods at the others -- Barb, the sharp-tongued hostess; Greta, wispy-gray-haired Austrian; Kay, divorced mother of two hellions; Tom, the busboy in love with Frankie Valle; and Lee, the pissed-off cook.  “See you tomorrow.” The girl deposits the apron down the laundry chute next to the short order serving kitchen and leaves the dining room.

Out in the lobby of the country club, to the left, the bar is almost empty.   That also means the man – her husband – is not making much either tending bar on the day shift.  The girl decides against poking her head in to say hello. The man was in a foul mood this morning. Another slow tip day will make matters worse.

An unknown man in a fedora chats over the front desk with Ralph, the general manager, who nods and smiles as she passes.  To the right in the sunken part of the members’ lounge, Victor is tugging at a vacuum cleaner.  Madeline scurries past, her arms filled with freshly laundered, burgundy table cloths and napkins, ready for the dinner crowd -- crowd being a relative concept.  The tall Christmas tree speckled in tiny colored lights glows in the lounge and makes the girl feel happy and sad at the same time.  

The girl enters the main prep kitchen through swinging doors. Lenny, the head chef, is arguing with the bread delivery guy about what was or wasn’t delivered yesterday. At the back of the kitchen, she pushes through a non-descript brown door into a back hallway and begins the climb to the third floor. The stairway is narrow. If she put out both elbows she would skin them. The walls are a shade of dull green, smudged and nicked.  

The girl reaches the top landing.  She is home.  There are four doors – the one on the left belongs to Victor, the porter. The one on the right belongs to Madeline, the laundress. They have both lived here for what might be decades. Straight ahead to the left is the bathroom, which they all share, and to the right is the room where the girl and the man have lived since September. She unlocks the small padlock that keeps the door closed and enters, praying this won’t last for decades.

The girl sits down on the bed in the attic room -- home. She unties her white waitress shoes. On this gray day in late November, there is little light coming through the tiny dormer windows.  She turns on the small bedside light. There are two hours before she has to be at her next job in the greeting card department at Sibley’s, two towns away. She turns the clock radio on and slowly unbuttons her white waitress uniform. “I want to be Bobby’s girl,” is playing. The girl loves this station but she can only listen to these oldies when the man is not around. The man hates this music. He hates the era from which it came.  But this music makes the girl happy. It fills her with something between wistfulness and eager anticipation. She remembers hearing the older kids on the school bus sing these songs while she yearned for entry into their world.  Even when the lyrics are of death and breaking up, they sound upbeat.

The girl feels sad and empty even as she looks around this crowded room – home.  Every inch of this room is full. There is the bedroom set she fought to buy with some of their wedding money, the table and chairs from her mother, a recliner from her grandmother which he has claimed, his crappy old television, her stereo and her records which he does not let her play. There is a 3 foot refrigerator with a tiny freezer (his), an electric frying pan (hers), and a two burner hot plate that looks dangerous (definitely his). This is the kitchen. There are her plates and her glasses and her silverware, her Revere Ware pots whose copper bottoms are still shiny even though he gets irritated and says it is a waste of time to shine them. There is no oven. There is no sink. Water is retrieved from and dishes are washed in the bathtub in the shared bathroom next door.

She is here because the man was dissatisfied. He is a grass-is-always-greener, rolling-stone-that-gathers-no-moss kind of man. The man is vaguely discontent wherever he is, whatever he’s doing, whomever he is with.  He has come back to this country club, where he worked at some point in his wandering past, questing for some unknown, unnamed “better.” A “better” that is not working for her father (nobody tells the man what to do), a “better” that has taken her from her family, her town, her job, her education.  The girl has begun to despair that this man’s “better” is not “better” at all – just different.

This life he’s insisted upon usually begins and ends with the man groping for her. This life spends weekends visiting the man’s aunts and uncles and cousins along with their ill-behaved children, in towns everyone with an education flees. She sits in their cluttered, dirty kitchens gazing at dusty, stained floors, and hopes the man will not say ‘yes’ to staying for dinner.  This life has no room for hope. This is not the life she wants. This life will never go to Europe or water ski, eat crème brulee or see a Broadway play.   

The girl and the man fought this morning about Christmas. The man has said “no” to the girl’s wish to erect her small Christmas tree in the room. The man has declared a vehement distaste for any holidays – especially this one.  The girl loves holidays – especially this one.   Sometimes she suspects that anything remotely festive makes this man miserable. 

The girl dons the skirt and blouse she will wear for her next job. She will leave before the man finishes his shift and if she is lucky, she will get home after he has fallen asleep. She can see snow has begun to fall and it is coating the roof. She should leave soon. Another song is playing -- one which she has never heard before. She stops to listen. "You don't own me. Don't try to change me in any way." Wha, wha, what?? She moves quickly toward the radio, not quite believing what she is hearing. She grabs a pencil, she must not let this song get away. "I'm free and I love to be free, to live my life the way I want, to say and do whatever I please." When the music ends, the girl's tears begin to fall. The announcer uncharacteristically gives the girl the information she needs to find this song, which she will play over and over again on her stereo when the man is not around. 

It is time for the girl to leave. For the first time in many  months, something close to hope hovers around her edges. She padlocks the door behind her. Tomorrow, she will decorate her Christmas tree.

We Have Forever Together

It was March 26, 1985, a Tuesday. I left my job on West 57th Street at lunch time and walked 19 blocks north.  All the way, my stomach did double flips. I found the building I sought and pressed the doorbell, 4D. I waited.  There came a voice. “Who is it?” I looked around before I answered, and then said my name. The door clicked in release and I dove for it. There is a short window of opportunity with those buzzers. Inside, I found the elevator and pressed 4. It moved very slowly. When the doors creaked open, I stepped out and looked to the door on the left.  4D.  Whew. Easy, I thought.  I pressed the buzzer. My stomach had moved on to triple flips. “Yes?” called the voice. Damn…. I’m going to be forced to announce myself again. I hated saying my name. The voice instructed me to go to the other door.  There was another entrance? Silently I cursed my friend – the one who’d referred me to this voice – she could have made this easier with better instructions.

The voice opened the other door.  Attached to the voice was a solid woman about my height with large brown eyes and short, straight blonde hair that hung not quite to her shoulders.   She led me a few steps to her office, and closed the door behind us. Inside the office on the left against a wall of book was a couch that looked like it might have belonged to Freud and a chair. Across the room on the opposite wall was another “normal” couch.  She headed for the chair at the head of Freud’s couch.  I made a beeline for the normal couch across the room. I sat probably 10 feet away from her with a wide expanse of rug between us.

 Now what?  “What brings you here?” asked the voice.  I took a deep breath and the words came tumbling out. “There’s this guy,” I started. I did not stop for 50 minutes.   I was crazy, madly in love with “this guy.”  But this guy was not crazy, madly in love with me. I wasn’t whimsical enough. (To this day, I wince when I hear that word.) I was too much like him – serious, responsible. He wanted his opposite. Nobody specific – there was no competition at the moment – but he hadn’t met her yet.  Not that he didn’t “love” me in a way.  Just not the way I desperately wanted. Yes, we were sleeping together.  But for him, it was just a fun thing to do with a good friend. He was crystal clear about that. But I chose to believe his actions and not his words because his actions gave me hope…. a reason to think that there might be a chance I could morph into someone else.

I told her the whole story of how I’d met him at school, how we made films together, how he’d urged me to move to NYC a year before, found me a place to stay with his then-girlfriend, referred me for a job that he knew about, about how I’d moved in with him when the girlfriend broke up with him (crazy girl, lucky me), and how I was now living in an illegal attic apartment in Brooklyn. About how attached I was to him, how he made me laugh, how handsome I thought he was, how he made me look beautiful on film (he had magical powers), how the deep sobs rose from my toes and could not be stopped whenever the conversation turned to our (lack of) future together.  All the while, she just sat and listened to what must have seemed like the presentation of a person in the grips of mania.  I finally stopped and took another breath. Oh yeah, I continued, and there’s my daughter. I have a daughter. She’s 7 and she’s living with a family – they’re friends – in Queens. This was another huge situation in my life I couldn’t seem to get a grip on.

“We have to stop now,” the voice said. We discussed money. I had none. She asked me what I could manage and I told her. The deal was made, and I was shown the door. “I’m sorry that I talked so much,” I said. “I was afraid I wouldn’t have time to tell you everything.”  She smiled just slightly. “I was wondering why you were in such a hurry,” she said. “You know, we have forever together.”

Being that I was never mentally where I was physically located at that point in my life, it didn’t sink in until later. Then I thought – what a curious thing to say—we have forever together. What did she mean by that? Forever was a concept I didn’t quite “get”. Forever implied – well, a long life. Just a week before, I had stood in line at my bank waiting to open my first IRA as a defensive maneuver. The bookkeeper at my job had roughed out my taxes for me and due to accidental under-withholding my first year in NYC, I was going to owe the government money. I was terrified.  I only had about $2000 to my name and the bookkeeper had suggested an IRA as a way to solve my problem. The line at the bank moved very slowly and I was having an out-of-body experience. I was not quite 32 years old. I would not have access to my $2000 again for close to 28 years.  This was both stunning and sobering to me because I realized that I had not anticipated living that long. Opening an IRA was like a commitment to living. I wasn’t so sure it was possible.

When I returned to my office after the appointment, I realized I had forgotten to tell her that I wouldn’t be there the following week because I would be out of town. But I was “phone phobic.” I could not possibly call her to tell her so. The words would get glued together before exiting my mouth. I did the only sensible thing. I sent her a letter to tell her.

Two weeks later, I returned to her office. “What happened last week?” asked the voice. I panicked. “Didn’t you get my letter?” I did not want her to think I was irresponsible, that I would do such a thing as just not show up. “Yes, I did,” she said. She went on to tell me that she had been concerned because she was going away the following week for two weeks, and she had wanted to be able to tell me this the week I wasn’t there. She said she didn’t know how I would feel about such short notice. “It’s ok,” I said. Again, I was curious – why would she think I would have feelings about short notice? It would be fine for her to be gone, I wouldn’t notice the difference.  Have a good time, I said.

Well, that was for sure the last time that she would go away without me caring. “The voice” became the woman I call my ‘heart mother.’  [Not that I didn’t have a perfectly wonderful real mother but this was different.]  She moved into not only my heart, but every cell of my body.  It is largely because of her that I made it to the age when I could officially get my $2000 back.  

My heart mother will turn 70 on Tuesday this week.  I honor her and I thank her. And I’m still counting on her to keep her promise – that we will have forever together.  Somehow.

The Story of a Girl Who Wanted a Baby

The girl wanted a baby more than she wanted a man. When other girls were writing their name with some guy’s last name all over their notebooks, the girl was writing lists of names she might bestow on her daughter one day. It did not occur to her that she would give birth to anything but a girl.  

Eventually, there was a man. The girl, who thought no man would ever want her because she was not enough of anything, married the man because the man wanted her.   It’s true. The man did want the girl on some days. He especially wanted her at night and in the wee hours of the morning, whether she wanted him or not. Usually she did not.

The girl followed the man because she had to. She shut up because the man said to. She stayed out of his way except when she couldn’t. And one day, the girl got pregnant. It is not surprising, given how much the man wanted her.  The girl was happy then. Sometimes the man seemed glad, except when he felt tied down and then he wasn’t. (Glad, that is.)

The girl took care of that baby, the one she hoped and prayed would be a girl. There were no sonograms, no decisions to be made about knowing vs. not knowing. The girl would have to wait. While she was waiting, she took care of that baby. The girl ate more food than she ever ate because the baby needed to eat. She wouldn’t take pills for the headaches she always had. The baby came first. Even though the man thought he should come first.

There was a fight about the doctor. The girl insisted that she would have the baby in the city, with the doctor who had been her doctor since high school. The man insisted that the city doctor cost too much money and said shouted, “You will have the baby here in the country. The doctor here is good enough.”  The girl shouted back, “I will save my own money and pay for the doctor I want.” The girl won.

One day, the girl fell on some ice and everybody thought the baby might come early. But the girl went to her mother’s and stayed on the couch. Two weeks passed and the baby finally settled down to wait a while longer. The girl went home to the man, and for a while, the baby protected the girl from the man. Maybe you know what I mean.

Finally one night just when the man and the girl were ready to go to sleep, the baby signaled it was time. It was late and snowing and the hospital was forty miles away in the city. The girl was afraid the man would be mad about the snow, because she had defied him. But he was quiet and didn’t make the girl feel bad or sad as they drove through the weather.

A man at the hospital asked the girl what she last had to eat. She screwed up her face and said, “popcorn.” She had heard that women sometimes throw up during labor and she was mad at herself for not thinking ahead better than that. She didn’t think she wanted to vomit popcorn. The pains were speeding up. The man disappeared because this all was too much for him. The girl did not want to drug her baby so she would not take anything they offered for the pain. The voice next to her, the voice of a friend who rose from her own bed to be with the girl, urged her to relax, to breathe deeply, to count and to not think about the lightning bolt searing her body. The girl did not scream. She did not cry. (She also did not vomit popcorn.) She listened to the voice, she breathed deeply, and she struggled to resist pushing even though she wanted to do that more than anything in the world (except perhaps have a coke).

A man in a white jacket knelt down beside her with a needle. “What’s that?” she demanded, suspicious because she had said, “No drugs.” “We have to give you something because your blood pressure is too high.” The friend nodded, “You must,” she said.” And so the girl let him have her arm. More time passed, and finally the girl pleaded, “I have to push, I cannot wait any longer.”

The girl was wheeled into the delivery room full of lights and people and metal. The calm voice was still next to her, and she pushed because they said she could. Someone went to get the man to see if he wanted to come in. Someone else said, “He doesn’t want to.” The girl did not care. She did not want him to ruin the moment. Her friend was next to her and soon her baby would be as well.

The girl had her girl. It was 4:48 a.m. January 11, 1976. The girl was happy. She gave the baby the most beautiful name from her long-ago list. And she vowed to take care of that baby no matter what the man said or wanted. And she did.

Happy birthday, Julie Katharine. You are forever my jewel.

P.S. We escaped the man. 

Losing Momentum

I lost my momentum. It’s as simple and as complicated as that. ’m not sure why I just stopped writing after about 18 months of almost weekly outpourings. It isn’t that I got too busy. I’m always busy, and in some ways, since I was taking courses in the doctoral program at the time, I was busier then than I am now.  If you take into consideration the fact that I was under constant time pressure to do homework, write papers, and study for exams, it just doesn’t make sense. Despite unwavering deadlines, I managed to carve out time to express what was going on in my head. And then I stopped.

This stopping is familiar territory for me. I have not always been aware of that but this year – no, last year now – it happened often enough to seep in to my consciousness. I finished my coursework in the doctoral program one year ago. Without missing a beat, I studied like mad for one of four comprehensive exams I needed to take. I passed that exam in January. And then I stopped…stopped studying….stopped reading anything related to academics… just stopped.

I picked up my guitar and started practicing again. The last time I played had been the winter my mom passed away – my sister and I had taken our guitars to mom’s home where we were spending half-weeks each while she was in hospice care. We practiced playing Christmas hymns for the Christmas eve service we would conduct in the living room at her bedside. That was December 2005.

I bought a lesson book….relearned the chords, the notes, the runs, one page at a time. I practiced daily no matter how late the hour. I regrew fingertip callouses… nice ones. It felt great. I felt alive – as I have always felt when playing music has been a regular part of my life. Then my long-planned kitchen renovation began. And I stopped playing. Not a gradual miss a day here, miss a day there. I just stopped. 

I took a six-week series of tap dancing classes. This required a weekly Sunday night local train trip into Manhattan in the middle of winter. It did not matter to me what I had to do to get there. I loved it. I couldn’t wait from one week to the next. After the series ended, I joined a regular class on Sunday evenings, and never missed a one. I felt alive – as I always have during the “dance period” times of my life. And then in the early autumn, my elderly uncle who lives in western New York state had a stroke. My aunt and uncle have no children so nieces, nephews, and godchildren came together to help out. My presence was needed on a consistent basis on the weekends to provide relief for those closer residing help-givers who were on duty during the week. The 350 mile distance from their home to mine was too far for me to make it back in time for my dance class on Sunday nights. And so I just stopped.

The crisis has passed. My aunt/uncle are in Florida for the winter. He’s playing a better game of golf than he has in years. I am free on Sunday nights. But I am not dancing.

Not dancing. Not making music. Not writing. Three things that feed me, fuel me, give me hope, fulfill my need to create. I should add ‘not studying’ to the mix. Not that studying feeds, fuels, provides hope or makes me feel creative. But it is a necessary ingredient to keep moving toward the doctoral goal that I’ve set for myself.  

I’m not one to make New Year’s resolutions as I view them as a set-up for failure. But the passage of 2012 in to 2013 is as good a time as any to resolve to figure out what makes me ‘just stop’ so I can ‘just stop’ letting it happen.  

What have you stopped that you need to jumpstart?

Serving up Poetic Justice

This story begins in a convergence of back alleyways on a recent Friday evening in my hometown where a free concert, one of a summer series,  is about to begin. The band is a popular local group of sixty-something-year-old males who play country music and know exactly how to please their audience. The alleyway is crammed with people – young and old – and by the time the concert is underway, there is standing room only. Looking around, people north of fifty and those who are specially-abled are over-represented in this crowd.

My brother is one of those who are specially-abled. I have brought him to this concert because the band, TGR, is his hands-down favorite.  And although the direct care workers in his group home do their best to get him and his housemates to these concerts, occasionally circumstances arise that prevent them from doing so. I’m not taking any chances.    

It is a gorgeous night. The heat wave has broken, there’s a pleasant breeze and everyone seems happy and relaxed. It’s ‘bring your own chair’ so I set mine up next to T, who works in my brother’s home and who has, in fact, come with two of his housemates. There are other employees from other group homes – angels all – there with their excited charges and I am introduced to everyone.  

Promptly at 7 p.m.  the band members take their place on the stage and in a moment, the distinctive and familiar opening bars to Amarillo by Morning flow from the stage.  I love this song. I love TGR's rendition of it. I sink into musical bliss. I glance at my brother and wait for his metamorphosis. To watch him in this moment is to experience the true meaning of the 1970’s song, I’ve Got the Music in Me.  His facial expression grows intense. His feet start tapping. His arms begin moving.  He no longer appears to perceive anyone around him. It’s just him and the music. Within a few measures, every cell in his body is chair-dancing with a vengeance. Soon his chair can no longer contain him and, as if propelled, he springs suddenly to his feet.

He will dance every single dance tonight, with gusto, mostly by himself.  And he’s damned good.  His teachers include the best – Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Elvis Presley (those hips) – even Barbara and Bobby (and later Cissy) from The Lawrence Welk Show.  He's got all the moves. He’s light on his feet. He keeps the beat.  The words ‘debonair’ and ‘suave’ come to mind and stay there.  Oh, and a pinch of The Fonz coolness for good measure.   

A group of women enter the dance space and begin line dancing. My brother studies their moves, joins them on their periphery and tries to copy them. It is hard not to laugh and I admit I do but it is with glee. In his seriousness, he is just too funny. He is about ½ step behind because he’s following them.  They turn 180 degrees and he spins around, perplexed at what they did when his back was to them. They lift their leg, he does too. They clap, he claps. He scrambles out of their way when they suddenly switch direction and threaten to run him over.   And when they leave the floor, he is still practicing what they did.

A slow dance comes on and couples come out to two-step, fox-trot. My brother is still intent on his line dancing. I can tell by the look on his face that he is getting lost in his dance practice and soon he will be oblivious to everyone around him. On a crowded dance floor, this is not a good thing. I get up, I’m only a few steps away. I put my arms around his shoulders and say, “How about a dance with your old sister?” and I steer him in to a slow dance with me. His t-shirt is wet from his efforts. He stiffens at first – I’ve interrupted his escalation, but then he allows me to defuse his intensity.  I tell him I noticed how hard he was working to line dance with the women and what a great job he was doing. He looks at me so earnestly, and says, “I try.” Yes, my sweet bro, you try.

******

Not long before their break, the lead singer who I shall call BM (real initials, swear to God), waves a pile of 8-1/2 x 11 fliers and announces that it is their performance schedule for the near future. He sets them down on the stage. Three or four of the specially-abled attendees immediately take one and head back to where we are seated to present these to their staff chaperones. “Hey!” calls BM into the mic. “You guys can’t read!”

It takes a split second for this comment to register, to realize which “you guys” he is talking about. I look up at T, sitting next to me.  “That wasn’t very nice!” I exclaim. She agrees with me, as do others with us. BM begins to sing again. I am sitting, appalled and in stunned silence. Well, that’s not exactly true. I’m stunned, yes – but silent, no. I am fuming. How dare he make that stereotyped assumption and into a microphone no less! T is upset too because not only was BM insensitive – what he said was patently untrue.  You can be sure that if there is a piece of paper with this band’s name on it – TGR – all three of the guys traveling with us would be able to read it AND the dates AND the venues.

At intermission, I approach the stage. BM is fumbling with equipment. My brother and his friend, G, are close to the stage. I put my arm around both of them and look up. “Hi BM, my name is Jan and I’d like to introduce you to my brother, David, and our good friend, G.”  BM is eyeing me suspiciously, unsure of what to make of me. I continue, “These guys are two of your biggest fans…… they come to every concert you give that they can get to.”  BM is fidgeting  and looking like he wishes to evaporate. “And there’s something else you should know about them.” I pause for effect.  “They can READ.” BM looks everywhere except at me. I repeat myself, “They can READ.” BM starts to back away and mumbles, “I saw him singing.”  My brain explodes.  I lead my brother and G away – they do not know they’ve been dissed, and I can see that the big BM just does not get it. Back at my seat, the others let me know they watched BM’s reaction carefully and agree that the man is clueless (and classless, I might add).

*****

The next evening after dinner, I meet my friend Jim for ice cream.  Jim is a drummer and he knows this band – TGR  – well because he subs for their drummer on occasion. He tells me that he will, in fact, be working with them later this week.  I tell him about the events of the previous evening, hoping that he will “get” why this has upset me.  I can see in his expression that he does and I am relieved. He volunteers to say something to BM and I tell him, no, it’s ok – he doesn’t need to do that. But I am grateful for his willingness.

We are quiet for a moment. Then Jim chuckles and I look at him questioningly. “You know,” he says, conspiratorially. “None of these guys can read music.”  I wait for more, unsure why he is telling me this. “On a gig, when I pull out sheet music…. they can’t relate to that.”  He continues. “Maybe I’ll just hand BM a piece of music, then say, ‘Oh that’s right!  You can’t read this’ and pull it away.”  Jim is grinning at the thought.  I laugh with delight, inwardly marveling at the poetic justice of this plan.

What goes around doesn’t usually come around quite this quickly!