Nearing Career's End

It pains me that I’ve arrived at the close of my writing/editing career. The realization catches me up on a regular basis: the world belongs to the younger folks coming up behind me.

Not so long ago I was the Young Turk, the up-and-comer, building a successful career in book publishing, then starting a publishing business with colleagues, and eventually launching my own freelance service where I took minutes for a university board of trustees for 18 years, wrote manuals and training materials for a pharmaceutical company, wrote books for foundations about their founders, and prepared countless brochures and publicity pieces for lost causes. So much I have learned about so many things: campus master planning, university advancement, Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement, blood glucose monitors, the history of radio and automobile racing, auto body repair, quality control software, all kinds of oddments that come the way of a writer who’s willing to help anyone write anything.

I’ve given up the trustee minutes, which were my chance to learn how a university runs, how formal organization meetings are conducted, how what you think you heard is sometimes nothing like what goes on behind the scenes. I’ve long since given up writing about pharmaceuticals, the victim of constant turnover in the corporation, loathe to keep reintroducing my skills to the latest product manager. I’m finishing up editing and publishing a memoir written by a family friend—printing quotes and a decision on the cover design are all that’s left to do. After that, I think I’m done writing and editing for a living.

Funny thing is, I’ve loved writing and editing all my life. I like nothing better than a pile of notes and papers that have to be crafted into a coherent policy manual. I thrive on helping authors get their intent across concisely, translating techincal language into plain English. I love helping people tell their personal stories for posterity. Choose a job that you love, they say, and you never work a day in your life. I’ve been lucky to be in that position, and could probably keep on as long as I draw breath.

But other things are calling…travel with my retired husband, teaching my grandchildren to bake and to sew, enjoying the time my 96-year-old mother has left, and pursuing my more recent passion, garden design, not to mention my commitment to the not-for-profits I support with those very writing and editing skills.

In short, it may be time to retire. But.... Can I really let go of a career that’s fueled me for a lifetime, put food on the table, revealed to me what I was good at and what not, garnered me lifelong friends? 

It’ll be tough, but it may be time… 

Giving Thanks

We dined royally Thanksgiving evening, a full table—six adults, four children—passing serving plates galone, everyone helping themselves to turkey, stuffing, gravy, creamed onions, cranberry relish, mashed potatoes, green beans, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, kale and red cabbage salad, and macaroni & cheese brought by our friends Ian and Karen.

Beforehand, we toasted those who were with us, those who could not be there, and those who live in our memories. We adults sipped champagne from flutes commemorating Uncle Harry’s 80th birthday; the kids imbibed sparkling cider from tiny sherry glasses that belonged to Great Grandma Wooll.

Afterward, we went around the table saying what we were thankful for—being together with family and friends was first in the running; good health and Obama’s election were mentioned; a child was grateful for J. K. Rowling for writing the Harry Potter series. My idea of getting everyone to sing rounds as a new family tradition was vetoed (but I haven’t given up).

We made our usual mess of the kitchen, me and Jesse, dancing around each other to deliver the many dishes to the waiting tableful. Maria kindly ran several loads through the dishwasher as a start to cleaning up.

We ate off table settings that stepfather-in-law Al remembered eating from at his aunt’s home in the early 1900s. We used all the silverware from the box I had from Grandma Woodruff and had to supplement with dessert forks from my mother’s silver that I carted off when she went into assisted living. With dessert (two pies and a carrot cake), the children drank chamomile tea out of the Limoges teacups, and said the act made them feel old. The youngest requested a second helping of frosting.

At bedtime, Victoria and Jimmy and I took turns reading stories to each other, and the next day we watched The Secret Garden on TV, then made paper cut Christmas ornaments out of an old nature calendar.

Another Thanksgiving drawn to a close. Sweet memories to savor, of talk and laughter, of the threads of tradition and memory that tie us together, of the surprises and delights of getting to know a new generation. Tonight, finishing up the leftover wine from several bottles, I bask in the afterglow, knowing that, whatever life holds for me, I have much to be thankful for.

Wedding Day 1967

Wed in a stone chapel at Oberlin College, we were Children of the Sixties.

We wrote our own service, with verses from Khalil Gibran and John Donne.

I made my own dress of satin and lace, using a borrowed treadle sewing machine. Cousin Mary Beth crafted a head piece of satin roses.

We found a Unitarian minister to marry us. God was not invited.

It was 85 degrees that day, rare for a March 25th in Ohio.

We processed to an electric guitar tune composed by our friend John.

My bridal bouquet: a single white carnation.

I forgot my lines during the ceremony. My maid of honor Beth helped me out.

We recessed to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy played on the banjo by our friend Joel.

The reception was held in David’s (our) rented house next to the Student Union.

There were posters of Timothy Leary and Sigmund Freud on the walls, and paisley curtains.

My mom made macaroni salad. We had spicecake from the bakery on the square.

We toasted with André pink champagne.

David’s father was the photographer. We were all cut off at the knees.

My first college boyfriend was there. They tell me he got sloppy drunk.

My brother Brian gifted us with homemade banana wine, still percolating.

My mother gave me a pink peignoir set for our wedding night.

We kicked people out at 4:00 a.m., all except Joel who slept over on the couch.

Next morning we breakfasted at the truck stop on Route 10.

It was a great start to our 45 years together.

Unwelcome Visit

It’s the summer of our grand (well, 10-day) European tour, occasioned by David giving a paper at an international Law & Society conference in Budapest. We’re in Bad Reichenhall, Germany, a spa town redolent of the heady fragrance of blooming linden trees, just like I remember. David and I locate the address we seek, Traunfeldstrasse 3, and ring the bell at the gate. The grounds are ringed with a stone fence and close-set trees, affording just a glimpse of the substantial gabled two-storey house I once knew so well.

A women emerges from within and shoos us away. The family are having lunch, she says. Come back another time.

But we’ve come all the way from the United States, I protest, from Indiana. I used to live in this house. See, here in my mother’s memoir is a photograph of it. We’ve come to see the house that holds so many memories for me. Grumbling, the women—the maid? the cook? the wife?—turns back into the house. We wait at the gate to see what happens. 

Presently the man of the house, a blond businessman of about 40, approaches. I explain all over again about having lived here. The man indicates that somebody else came here about five years ago—must have been my brother Peter, making a similar excursion down memory lane. See, I said, my mother wrote about living here in her memoir—I show the photo to prove it, then realize my faux pas. The words are there fairly jumping out on the page: “We loved this place and felt no compunctions about displacing the owner, Bad Reichenhall’s former Nazi Burgermeister (mayor).” Er, well, I would sure appreciate it if we could come in and take a look…

Peeking around him...Oh, yeah, I remember a big walnut tree right there where I rescued a fallen nestling. We made a nest of cotton for it in a bowl, fed it ground walnuts, encouraged it to fly, but it fell victim to the Siamese cats; we buried it over there in the back corner, put a tiny cross on its grave…And that’s where there were nettles, under the three evergreens at the north end of the yard—ouch!...And I remember climbing, then falling out of, the apple tree…the Christmas pageant organized by our nursemaid Elfrieda, where the painted backdop fell down in mid-performance (it’s captured on home movies)…the cocks crowing at dawn, and the church bells…taking the “cure” for my sinus infection at the baths that the town is named for…the big bowls of thin soup served up by nuns at long tables at my brother’s elementary school…the curved window seat in my parents bedroom…playing with Gisela, the cook’s daughter who lived with us…

All this I do not verbalize, but the man must feel the urgency of my mission. He grants us permission to take a quick look around the grounds, lets me photograph the house from the same vantage point as in my mother’s book. No entry into the home, sorry. I don’t blame him and, in fact, am by now somewhat embarrassed.

This never occurred to me: He’s no doubt the descendant of that Nazi mayor whose house the US Army appropriated after the war with Germany and gave to our family to live in while my father worked for the CIA in nearby Salzburg. What to me brings fond memories from the tender age of four or five no doubt recalls in him the forced removal of his own parents to an apartment over the corner pharmacy for the duration of our stay, and perhaps that of others before and after us. Now here’s this la-di-da Indiana lady invading his family’s privacy, bringing up events better forgotten.

I try to make amends, gushing about what a wonderful house it was and how happy the memories of my sojourn there. With profuse thank yous I make for the gate, and we slink away for a restorative Bavarian iced coffee.   

To a Prompt*

In the dim, dusty attic of life, I find…

Moments of sparkling clarity.

The fallen nestling, rescued in a dish of cotton, feeding it walnut paste, “teaching” it to fly.

My favorite perch by the cottage at the lake, the waning sun scattering diamonds on the ripples.

One precious evening, writing each others’ names in the snow, entwining our futures.

Snug and proud under a steamy warm blanket, my newborn, my first, taking first breaths in the next room.

Mining treasured moments, I hold them up to shine again, just for me, savor their sweetness.

*Five women undertook to “workshop” each others’ writing at an inaugural writers group meeting. We wrote for 20 minutes, then read our scribblings to each other to receive supportive feedback. My first experience with workshopping. Interesting. And it prompted my next blog…

Pity Party

I once had a coworker whose signature response, when you asked him “How’s it going?” was “Can’t complain…Nobody’d listen.” Well I’m here to complain like crazy even if nobody’s listening. This has been a month to try a person’s soul!

I’ve been beset with five plagues:

CONSTRUCTION: The environmental studies magnet school where I volunteer has been undergoing a year of renovation. I learned that, not only were the construction crews going to dig an eight-foot trench through the lawn in the garden I designed for the school, they also needed to cut a ten-foot swath right throught the shrubs and perennials we planted in order to bring in the heavy equipment needed to dig the trench. I rustled up some gracious volunteers to help me dig the most valuable plants that were in the way. The work was supposed to be completed in two weeks. It’s now been six weeks, and the rescued plants are still out of the ground. I’ve been watering them twice a week. Even so, we’ve lost at least half of them in this heat.

DROUGHT: In April, volunteers at the school transplanted 2-3 inch caliper trees with a tree spade and filled in with sapling native trees. Hardly a drop of rain has fallen since. I started hand carrying jugs of water to the saplings which were struggling to gain a foothold. Then at the beginning of July, I noticed the larger transplanted trees were also threatening to turn into crispy critters. I hustled over to Walmart and bought thirteen 100-foot hoses so I could access water from the only available spigot, most of them being inoperable during the construction. I’ve been watering ever since, trying to keep them alive in 100+ degree heat. We’ve lost about one-third of what we planted.

TOOTHACHE: Meanwhile, a tooth began to draw attention to itself when I would take a bite of something chunky, and it hurt when I tapped it. My dentist prescribed an antibiotic, which I took for a week. Then the tooth commenced to emit a burning, aching sensation. Then it would send a jolt of pain if I drank something cold. My dentist sent me to an endodontist, who took numerous x-rays. The verdict: the root was alive, but the tooth might be cracked—in short, it was doomed. Next stop, my periodontist, for a tooth extraction. Multiple sticks with a needle numbed the area, and Dr. Beagle pulled the offending tooth, number 12. I asked if he noticed a crack. He didn’t, but allowed as it might have been a microscopic crack. I told him the endodontist said the tooth was doomed on account of a crack, and Dr. B responded, “Well it’s doomed now.” Logical, as it had just been removed, leaving a gap in my smile.

ANTS: They’re all over my kitchen. We do battle with ants regularly, but the latest round involves a new tiny variety that’s extremely prolific. Dave has put out the customary bait all over my counters, and the ants ring themselves around the drops of poison and suck it up, but more just keep on coming. I have to brush them out of the way just to cook. One just ended up in my martini. In the time I set the shot glass down to get the rest of the ingredients, the little booger hopped aboard and I had to fish him out from among the ice cubes. And they’re not just in the kitchen. Ants climb on me when I’m sitting on the couch, or here in my recliner (my preferred writing venue, with my laptop on my lap), and even at my desk. It’s enough to make me scream.

POISON IVY: It started on the inside of my right arm, a cluster of the damned itchy blisters, the bane of this gardener’s existence. I right away applied the last of the cortisone cream a dermatologist prescribed a year ago. But the affliction has spread to my breast and armpit, my inner thighs, and my ankle, with new sites appearing daily. This morning I practically bathed in calamine lotion, and it helped a little, but I’m sitting here having to force myself to resist the urge to scratch.

Don’t you feel sorry for me? I’m ashamed to be complaining when farmers are losing their crops from the drought and families in Colorado have lost everything to raging fires. But in my small corner of the world, it’s been tough going for this old gal. Thanks for listening. I feel better now.  

Silver Slippers

Today is a nozone day, 101 degrees Fahrenheit, with attendant warnings for 65-year-olds to stay out of the heat and take it easy. That didn’t stop us from going for our hour of Silver Slippers.

That’s what my husband Dave calls our twice weekly exercise class at the YMCA. Officially, it’s Silver Sneakers, a trademarked program of exercise for Active Older Adults. I join him willingly in this class, even though I’m making a leap from dancing jazz with teenagers to exercising ever so gently with 75-year-olds. Dave and I are probably the youngest in the class. We eased into this by taking six private classes with our teacher Margaret, and I’ve not been sorry. Dave is balance-challenged, and this all-around workout is good for him. For me, it’s easy going after a morning of pulling thistles and hefting 40-pound bags of mulch in my landscaping business.

It feels just a bit strange to be the youngest in the class after being the oldest for years. I’m adjusting to a whole new reference group—the folks who will be my exercise companions through my senior years. They will drop out, one by one, and people younger than me will come to take their places. But Margaret will go on, voicing cheerful step-by-step instructions and encouraging us not to do any moves the doctor has told us we shouldn’t do.

We start with a standing warm-up to the thump, thump, thumping rhythm of top ten hits remastered to fit the strictly even beat needed to guide our movements. First march in place, right left right left…four…three…two…one, then heel and heel, right and left, for eight counts, now toe and toe, and up and back, step touch side-to-side, and forward and back. All warmed up, we sit down for our stretching moves, then do resistance work with elastic ropes, then balance exercises with the ball, and muscle toning with weights. It’s all good, mercifully easy, and wonderfully soothing.

I had the weirdest experience the other day, though. I was in the midst of step-touch, step-touch, Margaret officiating, when I realized we were moving to a song by the Jefferson Airplane—“Don’t you want somebody to love, doooon’t you need somebody to love, wouldn’t you love somebody to love, gotta find somebody to love….” That fabulous old rock tune! This flash of awareness threw me into a major flashback to life in simpler times…

I conjure up an image from long ago and far away: Surrounded by hippies in full hippie regalia. Dave and me, circa 1969. In a crowd descending on Diamondhead crater on the island of Oahu in Hawaii to hear a rock concert. Our son Dan a babe in arms. We’re passed by a convertible with the top down, carrying the band that’s about to play for the throng. The sole woman in the car sees us with the baby, and smiles. A brush with greatness. Grace Slick of the soaring voice. The Grace Slick, the first female rock star. With Jefferson Airplane before they became Jefferson Starship! A story that’s become part of the family lore and a source of pride for our guitarist son, Dan, who takes inspiration from having been “blessed” by a famous rocker.

My musings are interrupted by this unsettling thought: When Dave and I are ready for long-term care in the nursing home like my mom, will they be piping Jefferson Airplane songs on the loudspeaker during meals in the dining room? Or “Big Chill” songs? Or, God forbid, Bob Dylan? What happened to those blithe youngsters we were? In the blink of an eye, we’ve joined the ranks of Active Older Adults.

It boggles the mind.  

Going Grey, or Not

I face this dilemma just about every six weeks when my temporary hair coloring has totally worn off. Why don’t I just let my hair be grey??

I began coloring my hair some time after I turned 60. My sister persuaded me to try it. She’d been doing it for some time, using a concoction that washes out after 24 shampooings. I liked that idea, because the color would gradually wash away and not grow different colored roots like permanent hair color (although Chelsea Handler’s dark roots and blond hair imply this is fashionable). The product was easy enough to use—mix the chemicals, apply to wet hair, wait 10 minutes, wash out the chemicals, apply the conditioner, wait 2 minutes, rinse it out, and you’re done.

My hair is, or used to be, a medium brown color. When I began using the color wash six years ago—I chose the shade Pecan, same as my sister—I was covering just a few grey hairs. Now my hair is shot through with grey and silver threads. Truth be told, there’s hardly a medium brown hair remaining.

So what’s wrong with that? It’s Nature’s way. Grey hair signals that a female is no longer a potential mating partner, at least if the male of the species is seeking to continue the family line. Grey hair symbolizes years of experience with life, and presumably the wisdom that comes with it. It connotes the family matriarch, the doting grandmother, the hard-working mother who has paid her dues and earned every one of those grey hairs!

So why is this decision so difficult every six weeks? I should revel in my greyness, maybe find a product that brings out the best in my silver threads.

Hmmm. No such products on the supermarket shelves. Nothing but a proliferation of hues to cover the grey. For grey enhancing treatments, guess I’d have to go to the “beauty parlor,” that institution beloved of old ladies who have their thin clouds of white hair shampooed and set every week. Darn it, I’m too young for that!

So, will it be Tweed or Golden Amber this time? Go for another six weeks of looking more like my younger self than my real self. Keep the charade going until I feel ready for the beauty parlor, until I feel as old as my hair.  

Good Sport

The Greatest Spectacle in Racing! That’s what I’m in for today, my first ever attendance at the Indianapolis 500. I vaguely remember hearing about this, the world’s largest automobile race, on the Armed Forces Radio Network when I was a teenager in Germany. Now I live in Indianapolis where it all happens on Memorial Day weekend, and where my custom is to spend race day weeding my garden while listening to the race with the radio turned up loud: “Gentlemen, start your engines!” Rooommmmmmmmm!!

David has invited me to join him for the race. He went last year with Bob, a follow-on to their annual May Friday afternoon playing hookey from their professorial duties to wander the team garages on Gasoline Alley and watch the drivers practice.

I have a new outfit to wear—selected for the predicted 96 degree temperature, the hottest in Indy 500 history. It’s a cropped pants and jacket set, a linen blend in tomato red, and a contrasting cotton shell. I dust myself with bath powder as I step out of the shower, hoping it will do some good. Do I have everything I need? Earplugs, check. Sun screen, check. Bandana in a baggie, check. Canister of water, check. ID, check. Healthy veggie snacks, check. Lunch money for some diet-forbidden treat from an Indianapolis Speedway vendor, check.

It’s decision time on footwear: Do I wear the delicate flats that complement my outfit or the white aerobic shoes with white cotton socks that guaratee happy feet? Comfort wins out. I check out the look in the mirror—I look like a damn tomato with white feet! Top off the ensemble with my trusty Tilly hat, and I look like a complete geek. However, I will be only one spectator among 300,000 at the Speedway, enough souls to populate a small city, so who cares what I look like.

David has thoughtfully arranged for us to be transported in air-conditioned comfort from a parking lot at his university to the Speedway. The shuttle bus drops us off right by the track and we blend into the mass of cooler-bearing humanity strolling in the direction of the stands. Our seats, when we locate them, prove to be our worst nightmare—the second row (curiously named Row E), metal folding chairs, right by the track, in full sun.

We have an hour and a half before the start of the race, and no way are we going to wait all that time in the sun. We climb up all the way to Row Z, which is under cover and empty, and settle in to take in the scene.

There have been activities on the track since at least 8:30 this morning: the march of high school bands, the parade of Indy 500 queens, etc. We’re just in time for the parade of former Indy 500 winners, sitting high in the back seats of open pace cars and waving to their fans—the likes of Rick Mears, Johnny Rutherford, and AJ Foyt. Too bad we can’t really see them from Row Z, but there’s a nice breeze up here and it’s blessedly shady.

Still, it’s hot. I take off my jacket. Dave attempts to tuck in the tag of my cotton shell, and points out that I’m wearing it inside out! I consider pulling it off on the spot and setting it to rights—we are in the very last row, after all, and only a few race fans would notice—but I choose not to shame the family and just live with the embarrassment of the fully exposed clothing tag.

Now it’s time for the parade of classic Indy 500 cars from bygone eras. The ancient number 12 car driven by Mario Andretti needs some encouragement from helpers running behind and pushing, but finally coughs into action. Oops, the jig’s up! The ticket holders for the entire Row Z have shown up, and we’re kicked out.

So it’s into the sun for us. Don the Tilly hat, slather on the sunscreen, hydrate, hydrate. The announcer tells us the temperature on the track is 120 degrees Fahrenheit (it later rises to 133). We’re sitting about 25 feet from the track, it’s almost high noon, and the sun is beating down mercilessly. Luckily the surrounding crowd provides distractions: a row of beer-drinking young men directly in front of us. To their left, a family with two kids, ages 6 and 9, I would guess. To their right, a group of older men, two grey heads, well-kept golfer types. Further distraction arrives with the singing of America the Beautiful and tributes to our armed forces and their sacrifices for our country, punctuated with a breath-arresting low flyover of four vintage Air Force planes in tight formation.

Oh boy, time for Florence Henderson to sing God Bless America. I’m hoping she sounds better in person than on the radio, because I swear she sings more off key every year. She’s an icon and a Speedway tradition, and has a powerful voice, God love her, but I dread what’s ahead as she intones the introductory verse, her lusty vibrato hanging dangerously below the intended melody line. I decide there’s nothing for it but to join in and sing my own, hopefully on-key version. As Ms. Henderson launches into the final thrilling notes of God Bless America, I notice everybody else is singing along too. Maybe they’re doing the same as me, providing their own on-key rendition to override the voice coming over the loudspeaker.

The buildup to the start of the race continues with the invocation, praying for the safety of the drivers (Preacher: Can I have an Amen? Crowd: Amen!), and a creditable rendering of the national anthem by country/western artist Martina McBride. Jim Neighbors is not feeling well so cannot be with us, and we are asked to send him our prayers as we hear a recording of his famous Back Home in Indiana, an indispensible part of the pre-race fanfare. And finally, it’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for, Mary Hulman George intoning over the loudspeaker, “Ladies and gentlemen (three females in today’s lineup), start your engines!”

I listen for the exhilarating thrum of motors starting and revving up—but I don’t hear a thing! A distant hum at best, and I’m not that far away from them. How disappointing! Must be the new race car technology, no more ear-splitting roar. Here they come on their several parade laps, thirty-three colorfully decorated cars fairly purring along the track, showing off their sponsors and engine makers with logos galore emblazoned on their small frames. We’re seeing a new automobile structure this year, a “skin” that protects the tires so that when somebody runs up on them, the cars don’t launch skyward. Indeed that’s what happened to last year’s winner, Dan Wheldon, at a race in Las Vegas late last year. He was killed, and much of this day is devoted to honoring his memory. We fans don our Dan Wheldon memorial sunglasses, cardboard replicas handed out as we came in, recalling Wheldon’s flare with eyewear, so that ABC television cameras capture a sea of faces so adorned.

A few laps later, the pace car withdraws into the pit lane, the green flag is waved, and the race is on! 

NOW I can hear the roar. The entire field passes by en masse and my insides jiggle with the vibration. I hastily insert my soft rubber earplugs. They help dampen the assault to my ears but do nothing to abate the shock waves that threaten to shake my liver loose. I thrill to the action, however. I am amazed by their speed, and anticipate the approach of the group each time they pass by. Here I am, enjoying the Greatest Spectacle in Racing!

Presently the field spreads out somewhat, individual cars whizzing by in a blur. From Row E all I can see of them is the tip, the top six inches. To the extent that I can spot the full cars as they round turn one, I make it a point to figure out which car holds which driver and is powered by which team; it’s a question of matching the paint colors and sponsor logos to the photos on a cheat sheet we got with the race program. The two bright green cars are easy to spot and identify: the dayglow green Go Daddy car up front is James Hinchcliffe from Toronto; the one dead last is rookie Bryan Clausen from nearby Noblesville. The bright yellow car is easy; it’s driven by rookie Josef Newgarden from Tennessee, and sponsored by Dollar General. The two Target logo cars are Chip Ganaci Racing Team cars driven by Scott Dixon and Dario Franchitti (a Scot, would you believe?). This matching game entertains me for about 20 minutes. A giant video screen across the track scrolls through the list of drivers, updating their positions on every lap. The cars continue to whiz by. 

So now what?

I’m hot! I dampen my trusty bandana (I never travel without it) and dab at my steaming temples. It’s 92 degrees out and the sun is still beating down on us. The video screen ahead says the leaders have begun lap 50. I start doing the math, difficult as that is with my brain half fried. Let’s see. Each lap is 2.5 miles. It’s the Indy 500, so it’s 500 miles, so it’s how many laps altogether? OMG, 200 laps! 150 laps to go. I’m dying here!

Time to take a walk, or take a bathroom break anyway. And while I’m at it, I can turn my cotton shell right side out so I can go jacketless. Long line at the Ladies, but it moves fast and there’s toilet paper. Nowhere else to go, so it’s back to Row E, seat 12, to bake in the sun. What’s Dave doing meanwhile? He hasn’t budged and seems perfectly content. He spent most of last night programming a device that enables him to scan the chatter between drivers and their teams. His giant headphones are tuned into the inner workings of this race. I yearn for a good book to read, and console myself with my baggie of snap peas and tiny carrots. The cars just keep on whizzing by...

By lap 100, I can’t stand it. I just can’t sit there any longer. Besides, my stomach is yearning for real food—specifically, an Italian sausage with sauteed peppers and onions—and I know right where to get them. The Ladies has run out of toilet paper, but my tote is provisioned with a packet of Kleenex, no problem. Apparently everybody has decided it’s time to have lunch; every vendor is doing a brisk business. The line at the Italian Sausage stand is ten persons deep. No matter, I’ll wait; I’m starved.

Clutching my foil-wrapped prize, plus a lemon shakeup to banish the heat, I head back to my seat. The sandwich, doused with hot sauce, is yummy, but I can’t persuade the stoic David to take a bite. The beer-drinking youths in the row in front of us have disappeared; I imagine they’ve passed out somewhere. The little boy to the left is fast asleep in his mother’s arms. The grey hairs to the right still look impeccable and are focused on the race. Most everybody else looks bored. But there’s good news for those of us in Row E. Slowly, gradually, the sun is creeping westward and, minute by minute, we’re mercifully falling into the shadow of the stands above us. We’re still hot, but not baking in sun.

The cars continue to whiz by, although a lot of them seem to be taking pit stops now to change tires and refuel. Every so often, one of them spins out of control or hits the wall and is out of the race. Mostly I don’t see what happens, it occurs so quickly, maybe just a puff of smoke to alert us that somebody’s in trouble. Meanwhile, the big video screen relentlessly scrolls through the list of which driver is in what place. I’m beyond caring. Around lap 120, during a yellow flag interlude because of some wreck somewhere, I fall fast asleep where I sit. Enough with the Greatest Spectacle in Racing.

I wake up around lap 150 to a roar—it’s everybody who’s left in the race starting off again to a green flag. Progress. I have to tough it out for only 50 more laps. To my surprise, this does not prove too difficult. The race falls under the yellow caution flag several times during this final quarter, leading to excitement every time they restart to a green flag. Under the yellow, the cars are supposed to line up in the order they were when the crash, piece of debris on the track, etc., occurred. When the flagman signals green again, it’s like another start to the race. People who’ve been way behind sometimes catch up under the yellow. Crowd favorite Tony Kanaan from Brazil sneaks up from behind to an approving roar from the stands. Another time it’s four cars abreast on the straightaway coming off the restart, lending a burst of excitement until they sort themselves out on the first turn. Then the two lead cars, the Target logo ones, play leapfrog on every lap, each taking the lead in turn, first Franchitti, then Dixon, then Franchitti again. Wise guys.

Only a few laps to go! The crowd is on its feet anticipating a dramatic conclusion, and in this we are not disappointed. On the final lap, signalled by the white flag, Takuma Sato goes wheel to wheel on the inside with Dario Franchitti, only to lose control and spin across the track to crash into the wall. The race ends under the yellow flag, Franchitti, Dixon, and Kanaan taking first, second, and third, respectively.

I feel bad for Sato and his brave last-ditch effort to take the lead. Dave says it’s Sato’s Formula One moxie showing—he’s a crossover from the Grand Prix international racing circuit, which David watches with rapt attention on TV most weekends. I also feel bad for whoever will be cleaning up the enormous pile of beer cans, napkins, and chicken bones left under the seats of the careless young beer-drinkers in front of us. Their mothers would be horrified; I’m sure they weren’t raised that way.

We don’t stick around for the ritual drink of milk by the first place finisher, or the top three drivers standing on pedestals to be shown off to the admiring crowd, or the presentation of the enormous Borg Warner trophy, all the treasured traditions of this Indy 500 that’s been running since 1909 and has made Indianapolis a household word around the globe. Thank heavens for the air-conditioned shuttle bus. I almost feel back to normal by the time we reach our parked car. The thermometer registers 97 degrees on our way home. Dave’s talking about purchasing tickets for next year, maybe upgrading to a shadier spot, and wonders if I’d care to join him.

I may be a lousy sports fan, but I’m a good sport. Today, the answer’s doubtful, but perhaps in time a cooler head will prevail. 

Sudoku

This morning I screwed up the Sudoku again. That scares me. I’m used to feeling like I know what I’m doing, but every now and then, some little incident catches me up.

·         Like pulling out of my driveway and hesitating for a moment, not knowing which way to turn because I can’t remember where I was going.

·         Like writing a check to my own garden design company when paying for purchases at a local wholesale nursery. Surprisingly the nursery cashed the check and it went through just fine.

·         Like being convinced that the checkout guy at the supermarket made a mistake in ringing up chicken breasts when I had purchased only chicken legs. The store manager was nice about it when I phoned in later to say I figured out that 3279 NAT GDNSS CHICK BR stood for chicken broth, not chicken breasts, and even said I could forget about returning the refund.

·         Like signing up my son and my mother for Christmastime flights to Indianapolis on Expedia, in two separate transactions, and in both cases indicating they would stay until January 28 rather than December 28. That one was really scary! And costly. I ended up driving my mom home to Cleveland to avoid paying the huge airline penalty for altering the return date.

I wonder what brain fart or stupid mistake is coming next. Meanwhile, every day that I complete my Sudoku without error, I reassure myself of my competence.

Proud Day for Grandma

Today my granddaughter Victoria made her first communion. From the vantage point of my leather recliner at day’s end, here is how I remember it.

I rise early to take Rocky out for a pee and use the opportunity to plant the daisies that I brought from home. Victoria’s mom has sensibly left out fruit, bagels, and several flavors of cream cheese for the breakfast crowd so she can tend to the all-important preparation of the young communicant. (Not that we need much to eat after last night’s home-made feast of arrachera [flank steak], tortillas, guacamole, pico de gallo, beans, rice, and confetti salad!) And here comes the young lady now, descending the stairs to greet an admiring audience of family members.

Dressed as a bride of Christ, Victoria wears a glowing white full-length dress, white tights and white patent leather mary janes—with the finishing touch of a tiara and veil, she’s a vision of piety and innocence. Her auntie Veronica prepared her hair this morning using a curling iron, in ringlets like Shirley Temple, with cousin Ava in attendance, wearing her own sparkly, graceful outfit of white and blue crinkle cloth. Grandma Olivia and Grandpa Luis have made the trip down from East Chicago. It’s a rare treat for Dave and me to visit with those dear homebodies who gave birth to our son Jesse’s Latina bride Maria Elena.

A shower of congratulatory cards and gifts ensues, then family piles into vans and caravans to St. Thomas Aquinas, dropping off Victoria and her excited mom at the back door of the church before parking in the capacious garage next door.

For Jesse, this is his first time entering the Catholic church his wife and children have been attending for two years. In his suit, he looks like a million damn dollars, as David Letterman would say. As we stroll toward St. Tom’s, I notice his once fiery red hair has become more subdued and faded to white at the temples, but I still see the little boy who mowed the neighbors’ lawns with a reel mower that towered over him and who liked to read Black Stallion books.

Our entourage enters the church and finds our assigned six seats—for the communicant, her parents, brother Jimmy and cousin Ava (counting as one), and grandmothers Olivia and Wendy. Grandfathers Luis and David take a seat off to the side with Aunt Veronica and Uncle Al, where Uncle Al kindly interprets and comments on aspects of the service for the benefit of David, who, like me, is unschooled in the intricacies of Catholic ritual.

The service commences with music—a children’s bell choir and a piano accompanied by acoustic guitar, flute, and base guitar—and soon there comes a procession the thirty solemn communicants, adorable boys in shirts and ties and girls in white gowns and headpieces, enough to choke up a mom or two, in particular the one in the pew next to me. Our Victoria joins us at the end of the row marked with a handmade banner bearing her name. I wonder how many times this ritual of first holy communion has been carried out among all those assembled, this rite of bonding the children to the church and its community, this culmination of a year of study which fits them to become bona fide partakers in the holiest ritual of the church.

Then begins the singing of hymns, the reading of assorted passages of the gospel, the sprinkling of holy water over the worshippers, several prayers, a mini-sermon geared to the young honorees of the day, and the reciting of a creed that sounds familiar from my own Protestant upbringing, but with expanded wording and the addition of the Virgin Mary.

Finally, it’s time for the main event, the approach of the communicants and their families to the front of the church to receive the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Accompanied by the congregation’s hymn singing, we in our pew await our turn. When it comes, we take our places before the waiting priest and Eucharistic assistant, those of us not taking the wafer and wine having been instructed to cross our hands across our chests to signal our nonparticipation. Victoria takes the wafer from Father Patrick and crosses herself, then takes a sip from the chalice of wine, which the assistant wipes with a cleansing napkin between supplicants. Unfamiliar to me, the ritual is all a blur, but then it’s over and we’re back in our pew to join the singing while everyone else takes their turn.

The wait is not inconsiderable. Next to me, my grandson Jimmy exercises extreme self-control to get himself through not just the rest of the communion taking but also a speech by the Mayor of Lafayette exhorting us to become engaged in the community by volunteering to assist persons in need. I’m proud of Jimmy for coping, and my mind drifts to the study and preparation he will undertake for his own first communion two years hence.

Afterward, it’s an extended photo shoot back at Jesse and Maria’s house, featuring various combinations and permutations of Victoria with grandparents, parents, brother, cousin, uncle and aunt. The sun is so bright, everybody puts their heads down and on the count of three raises their head, opens their eyes, and smiles for the camera. “Graceful hands” I keep stage-whispering to Victoria, who’s fidgeting in her lap with her fingers, newly manicured French style with white half moons to match her outfit. 

History will record that we took at least thirty photos to memorialize the occasion before heading out for the grand finale, lunch at The Trails restaurant, where everyone piles their plate with whatever they want from the several sumptuous buffets before dispersing to their respective dwellings in East Chicago, West Lafayette, and Indianapolis.

What a glorious day—a spiritual experience for me, not in the religious sense, but in the sense of appreciating Victoria’s journey through a rite of passage that is important for her mother’s family, of seeing my husband and son honoring Victoria with their presence despite their impatience with organized religion, and feeling the love and pride shared within our family and within the other families present—a richly rewarding day for me, a proud day for Grandma.    

My Career on the Stage

It’s been four years since my last dance recital, and I may have to come to terms with its having been my very last dance recital. So sad. So sad. I have so loved to perform.

It started with dancing. I have memories of attending dancing school in Bad Reichenhall, Germany, so I had to be about 4 or 5 years old. I can remember standing at the barre doing pliés and relevés, and lying on a mat with a brick on my stomach to practice breathing from my diaphragm. Being the only American girl in the German studio, I was singled out for the special honor of leading the parade for Fasching, Germany’s version of Mardi Gras. I wore a frilly costume, held high a heart-shaped sign at the head of the procession, and got to sit up on the stage with the King and Queen of Fasching.

I made up my mind to be a ballerina when I grew up. But my hopes were dashed by a well-meaning family friend who told the six-year-old me that I didn’t have the build to be a ballerina. Maybe I was a little chubby, I don’t remember. But that was a blow from which I didn’t soon recover. I did take a few dance lessons in elementary school in northern Virginia and performed in one recital, to a tune from Scheherezade. And a partner and I won the rhumba contest two years in a row, in 4th and 5th grades, at the after-school dances. (We had a principal who set great store by teaching us manners via school dances, with little cards on which our dance partners could sign up for the waltz, cha-cha, etc.)

My self-expressive drive turned to other vehicles. I could sing, and I got the notion I wanted to be an opera singer. My father loved opera, maybe that’s why. I chose to study French in high school, which carried over into college, because my dad said many operas were sung in French (Carmen comes to mind). Italian would have made more sense, if my high school had offered it. I made it to the finals of an elementary school talent contest singing “Santa Lucia” and accompanying myself on the piano, all alone on the stage in a big high school auditorium.

A forray into acting came next. I performed the role of Emily in Our Town in high school, managing to forget my lines and having to be prompted during the graveyard scene by one of the other “dead” people. (This seems to be a pattern: I forgot my lines at my own wedding!) I sang solos at the Teen Club and Officers Club (“Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”) and in a talent show on the SS United States, crossing the Atlantic (“My Funny Valentine”).

A big break came when my father’s young secretary, playing the role of Amy in the musical Charlie’s Aunt in my local little theatre group, realized that the only time she could get vacation overlapped with the two-week run of the show. I quickly learned Amy’s lines and songs and dance steps, and they brought in the rest of the crew to rehearse just the scenes Amy was in, and I filled in for the last two performances. What a hoot! Remember the lyric, “Once in love with Amy, always in love with Amy”? That was me.

   

From being a big deal in choir, school chorus, and drama in high school, I went to being a nothing at Oberlin College, where everyone, it seemed, was more talented than I. I managed to make the chorus of Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Pirates of Penzance” my freshman year, but at the next year’s G&S tryouts I didn’t get picked for anything. And there was no way I could get into the Oberlin Choir, the legendary group that got to perform at New York’s Lincoln Center. Next to all those conservatory students, my voice must have sounded pretty puny. So, hopes dashed again, I gave up performing.

And that was it for the stage, until 30 years later when my aerobics instructor Beth introduced me to her friend Margaret who taught dance. I took up dancing again, attending jazz and tap classes at Margaret’s home studio on Keystone Avenue in Indianapolis. Schooled in dance at Butler University, Margaret was strong on technique and brought me quickly along. It was just the best to be on the stage again in her yearly recitals, even if I shared the program with 4 and 5-year-olds who following the steps of the teacher standing behind the curtain.

When Margaret retired and moved away, I danced at Jordan Academy of Butler University for a few years, always the oldster in a class of nubile young dancers, taking my chances with jazz splits—one in particular that left me unable to walk comfortably for six weeks. When we moved to a different neighborhood, I cast about for new dance classes and settled at Village Dance Studio in Zionsville. My jazz and tap teacher, Fred, a man close to my age, had been choreographer to the stars in California and even appeared in a dance scene in a Hollywood movie. Fred was great, not formally trained but creative with funky, jazzy steps and full of heart. We always lingered after class to talk about life and hear about Fred’s recurring knee problems, insurance woes (endemic with self-employed dance teachers), and family cares.

The studio mounted a series of bi-annual recitals, huge productions in high school auditoriums with costumes and stage sets, lighting, dress rehearsals and two performances to the delight of family and friends. I eschewed dancing with the youngsters in jazz class, but tapped my heart out with the motley assortment of young and old in my tap class. At my last (and apparently final) recital, three of us older ladies danced with Fred in a Caribbean-themed number featuring palm trees and pink flamingoes, we girls wearing flowy beach cover-ups, Fred wearing an embroidered Mexican dress shirt. We were all swaying hips and paddle turns and waltz clogs and arms waving gently. A minor annoyance, we danced in front of the curtain, where the gaffer had taped electric cords across the stage so we had to watch carefully where we stepped, not a situation conducive to the kind of concentration a performance demands. Margaret, who has become a dear friend, came to see me dance and lavished compliments on me. I was so pleased.

Fred retired, the knee problems finally sealing his fate, and now lives in a mobile home in Florida near the beach, happy as a clam. I’ve had several young misses as teachers since his departure, but things are just not the same without Fred, and with the vigorous hoofing they encouraged—and which I thrilled to—I’ve developed plantar fasciitis and have had to stop tapping, at least until my heels stop hurting with every step.

And I guess that’s it for my career on the stage. Sad, so sad. I’ve so loved to perform.

Hard Bodies

In my mind’s eye, I can still see my grandmother undressing for bed, silhouetted by the hall light, long after my sister and I have gone to bed.

Born in 1896, Grandma Anderson is visiting from Detroit, where she and her engineer husband raised my mother on Lawrence Avenue when life was good, before the stock market crash of 1929. We live in Northern Virginia now, and my sister and I are sharing our bedroom with Grandma while she visits.

The last piece of clothing removed is a corset, a full-length pink monstrosity with endless hooks and eyes that have been holding Grandma under strict control all day from stem to stern. I marvel at the redoubtable antique corset, just a few steps removed from those lace-up corsets that rearranged women’s internal organs in Victorian days just so they could boast an hour-glass figure. I’m excited at the prospect of wearing its younger cousin in just a few years, when I’m more grown up.

That time comes all too soon, and in high school and college in the 1960s I wear a girdle when I dress up. It’s a tight rubber contraption fitted with little tabbed devices to hold up my stockings while reconfiguring my teenage chubbiness. In stewardess school, our foundations consultant says she likes “her girls” to wear a little firming girdle so they look professional. We all agree, and purchase the necessaries to look as professional as possible.

 

In the 1970s come pantyhose, some with built-in tummy-flattening, butt-hardening elastic tops to create hard bodies out of soft flesh. Then comes the era of real hard bodies, the compact, well muscled, bikini-clad California roller bladers along Venice Beach. We dance aerobics and take up running to be like them, and give up elastic in favor of real muscles. What a difference exercise makes! As a mother of elementary school kids, I may not have a really hard body, but I feel fantastic! I run 1-1/2 miles to aerobics class, dance for an hour, then run 1-1/2 miles home to cook dinner for my husband and children. All this after working at a full-time publishing job during the day.

The years have taken their toll, and I admit to looking more like the saggy baggy elephant than the svelte somebody I set out to be. I’m not much of a shopper, and rarely set foot in a department store, so it came as a total surprise on a recent visit to JC Penney to discover that girdles are back! Can you say Spanx?

Will we ever stop trying to rearrange our bodies and just be ourselves, let it all hang out? Come to think of it, that’s what the Hawaiians invented muumuus for. Total comfort in a colorful drape. That’s for me!

If the Spirit Moves

My son Jesse has asked me to write about my spiritual life, and I‘m happy to oblige.

I’m an avowed atheist, finding little incentive to seek out a higher being. A quiz I once took online called me a secular humanist. I guess that’s accurate. But that’s not how I started out.

For as long as I can remember, I went to Sunday school, and often to church as well. As a preschooler I remember children’s sermons by Reverend Olander at the church in Athens, Greece, and singing “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam” as a duet with another girl in Sunday School. I attended Sunrise Services Easter morning atop the Acropolis, near the footprint of the ancient temple of Athena. I accompanied my mother into the poorest parts of town to minister to the needy.

I remember going with our Greek maid Maria to her home town, a long bus ride from our suburb of Athens. Her mother lived in a stone cottage with a dirt floor and nothing but a bed, a stove, and a giant loom in the corner. We attended a wedding at the village church,where priests in stovepipe black hats and black vestments swung incense before gilded icons of the saints and holy family, and afterwards ate the pastel candy covered almonds that were traditional for such an affair. I remember the dark chapel, the mystery, the scent of incense, the holiness of the occasion.

Very different was the church I attended while in elementary school. Munson Hill Presbyterian was its name, and I remember what a big deal it was, at age 10 or so, to get ready for Easter Sunday. We had to purchase a new Easter outfit. Mine was yellow, with a wide-brimmed yellow hat to match. I grew up in that church, singing in the children’s choir, then advancing to a solo sung on Christmas Eve before the entire congregation (“O Holy Night”). In Sunday School, we debated the meaning of predestination and other weighty matters. Our teen Youth Group took a field trip to Great Falls on the Potomac River, and held a dance social where I remember the first brush of my face against the cheek of my partner—a heady experience that I later relived in fantasy over and over. My dad was a deacon of the church and taught adult Sunday School. My mom stayed home and prepared Sunday dinner for the seven of us.

When we moved to Frankfurt, Germany—the end of the world for me!—I moped and moped, refusing to leave the car even to see the magnificent Chartres Cathedral in France on our way from the dock at Le Havre to Paris. I had been torn from my home and friends and was convinced I would never recover.

Soon, however, I was actively involved with the Army Chapel, headed up by a baptist minister, Reverend Armstrong, who introduced me to sweet old baptist hymns that we never would have thought of singing at the Presbyterian church. I sang and soloed in the adult choir, was substitute organist for various chapels around the area, and generally embraced the role of devout Christian young person.

This did not last through college, however. Somewhere along the line I switched from true believer to impassioned non-believer. Perhaps it was the influence of flagrantly anti-religious boyfriends, but I never made it back into the fold. As an adult, I’ve had no use for organized religion and its mumbo jumbo and promises of life after death.

That’s not to say I’m not spiritual. I revere all of creation, and see humans on an equal footing with the multitude of creatures with whom we share the planet. I have a basic faith that people try to do good if at all possible. I respect those who profess to have faith, though I wonder why they need to call on events that happened in the Middle East thousands of years ago to validate their religious experience; the place-based spirituality of Native Americans makes more sense to me. (Thanks to Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, for alerting me to the themes that permeate all religions.) And I certainly don’t begrudge people who call on God to explain why their personal difficulties are all part of His plan. May they find solace and support in that conviction.

   

In any case, no church for me. I glory in the sight of a spring woodland when shafts of sunlight pierce the tree canopy. I tune in to the rhythm of life when waves break over and over along the shore. I see diamonds in the sparkling waters of a lake at sunset, hear the voice of the ages in the call of cranes passing high overhead.

These things speak to my spirit more than any organ or choir or preacher or written word. 

Marshmallows

When I turned 65 and eligible for Medicare, I decided it was time to revisit my bra size.

To all of you who are rolling your eyes and thinking “thanks for sharing” or “don’t go there”, my apologies. Underwear, in particular, underwear that fits, is one of life’s essentials.

It was time for me to get a professional fitting, the last one having taken place in the summer of 1966 in a store near stewardess school in Des Plaines, Illinois, when I weighed a mere 128 pounds.

I presented myself at JC Penney’s lingerie department to a nice lady who looked ready to help. “I need some assistance selecting a new bra size,” I say. “The size I’ve been wearing for years, well, I seem to have puffy parts hanging out over the edges in the front.”

“Got marshmallows, eh?” says my helper. OMG, there’s a name for it! Nothing new under the sun.

My nice lady brings options for me to try on, one after another. You guys have no idea how hard it is to shop for a bra! Girls really do have all different shapes, and it can take all afternoon to find something that suits. Time to think back…

I’ve always had great boobs. If there was anything I could take pride in about my body, that was it. Not too big, not too small. Enough to make an impression. I’ve worked diligently to contain them presentably and comfortably through the years, but I must admit that a certain pudginess has crept in with my advancing age.

I remember a little orange and tan bikini in Hawaii that I could actually wear without dying of embarrassment. In middle age, I wore supportive contraptions for running and dancing that made me feel trapped in bands of steel but kept me from flopping all over the place. Once I even tried going topless at a laissez faire beach in France. And lately, I’ve experimented with leisure bras—an excellent innovation, for I don’t fall out of them when I bend over in the garden, weeding.

So it’s a more generously proportioned over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder for me. (Can you even imagine, young people, especially you lithe bodies in my jazz class, that some day you too will reach this stage?) I guess if it puts an end to marshmallows, I can live with that.

El Exigente

I’m exhausted after a day in the garden. But don’t blame the infirmities of my advanced age. It’s all on account of my dog.

Usually I’m chomping at the bit to get outside and get the garden tidied up in advance of spring bloom. But without having had a winter this year to store up a reservoir of yearning for yardwork, my enthusiasm has been lukewarm at best. With temperatures rising into the 60s today, ample sunshine, no wind, and a workaholic week behind me, it’s time.

Find the gloves, find the rake, find the hedge clipper—a job that involves rummaging through yard implements left higgledy piggledy all around the garage last fall—and venture out to begin job one: cutting down the ornamental grasses. My goal for the day: the bed of prairie dropseed bordering the swimming pool.

Don the gloves, heft the clipper, commence to shear off the tuffets of skinny buff-toned dry grass blades to admit the sunlight that will stimulate new growth. I’m soon aware of a furry presence nearby bearing a frisbee, meaningfully dropped next to me. Rocky’s not about to waste this beautiful day sitting around.

Okay, Rocky, I’ll throw the frisbee for you. I reach for the green fabric circle with the black rope edging but am met with a pounce and a firm gripping of teeth. Apparently, throw-and-catch is not the game he wants to play. Keep-away and tug-o-war are more like it. Okay, Rocky. I grip the frisbee with both hands and tug and pull and shake back and forth, to delighted mini growlings from my 20-pound opponent. Oh, my aching back! Rocky, I don’t want to play this game. Drop it, and I’ll throw the frisbee. Drop it!

I manage to wrest the disc away from the teeth and throw it as far as I can—it lands in a tree! Put down the clipper, wander over to the tree, reach high to dislodge the frisbee. Throw again, a nice long arc, and the disc lands in the periwinkle under the crabapples. Zip! Rocky’s flying after it.

Back to clipping, circling each plant to cut off the long strands and leave a short stubbly mound. This is a massed planting of dropseed, and I have fifteen of them to give a haircut. Clip and clip and…Rocky’s back! I grab the frisbee for another throw. Still not the game Rocky wants to play. He clamps down on the other side. I lift him right off the ground, both of us refusing to let go. Oh my aching back! It goes on like this about ten times, and I’ve only sheared three dropseed, moving half as fast as planned. But I can’t deny the pooch. What kind of a beautiful spring day would he have if I locked him in the house so I could get some work done?

Eventually Rocky tires of frisbee and wanders off. Clip, clip, clip…But lo! He’s discovered something in the nearby Japanese juniper. He stares meaningfully at the shrubbery, then keeps looking back at me, a clear sign he wants my help.

What have you found, Rocky? I lift the evergreen boughs and have a look around—why it’s the ballie! Rocky’s favorite little orange ball with the blue swirl; must have been out all winter. I lift the tiny rubber orb from the entangling branches and Rocky jumps up and down in anticipation of a good run. I heave the ball as far as I can, and zip! He’s after it.

Back to clipping… No such luck. Seconds later he’s back and drops the ballie meaningfully at his feet and, with his nose, nudges it in my direction. Okay Rocky, here we go! Another long throw and tiny paws scampering away in the same direction. Back with the ball again. Throw again. Back again. Throw in another direction. Fooled him; Rocky runs the wrong way. So now it’s time for the game of yup-nope. I yell yup if he heads in the direction of the ball, nope if he heads any other direction. When he approaches it I yell There it is! There it is! You got it! Usually he spots it and pounces. But sometimes, including this time, he passes right by the ball again and again despite my yelling. So, put down the clipper and go and point to exactly where the ball lies, pick it up myself, and throw again.

After the next throw, Rocky doesn’t reappear, so I resume my grooming project. Clip, clip, clip…bundling trimmings, raking, carrying basketsfull to the compost bin, finally making some progress.

Presently, from the other side of the gazebo, a sharp bark of frustration. What now, Rocky? Did the ballie get stuck in the shrubbery again? Yup, he’s sitting before a stand of Pacific juniper looking meaningfully at it and then back at me, again and again, little pink tongue hanging out. I walk the short distance to lift the branches and find the prize.

A couple of final throws—I’m all in—and Rocky reappears…with the frisbee! Aaaarrrrrrgh!

No wonder I’m exhausted! Happily, my prairie dropseed project is complete, no thanks to my demanding garden companion. 

Under the Influence

I have got to stop drinking so much!

They say that if you start looking at the clock at 4:00 p.m. with an eye to your daily libation at 5:00 p.m., you’ve got a problem. If that’s accurate, then a problem I do indeed have.

I love the feeling of being a bit tiddly. In fact, I crave it, and look forward to it every day. There’s so much in life over which I have no control, so much aggravation, even so much good stuff to celebrate, that it always seems to be time for a libation. I yearn to be transported into the zone where I haven’t a care in the world and all things seem possible.

My drinks of choice: a Cosmo and Three-Buck Chuck!

The Cosmo I was introduced to by my son Dan on his 40th birthday (although any abuse of said cocktail is solely my responsibility). We made Cosmopolitans in quantity for the guests at his party. My favored re-creation of this combination is 1-1/2 parts citron vodka, 1 part triple sec, 1 part pomegranate juice, and 3/4 part lime juice. I am under the influence of this very combo as I write this.

My favorite Three-Buck Chuck is the Charles Shaw Sauvignon Blanc that I purchase at Trader Joe’s. Accuse me all you want of being a cheap drunk, but I love this stuff! It goes with everything and never fails to hit the spot, whether at dinner or with late-night snacks of Sargento string cheese and Triscuits.

Truth be told, I’m not supposed to drink any alcohol with the mild dose of antidepressant that I take. And if I embark on the cleansing and diet routine my daughter-in-law Maria advocates to drop the seven pounds I need to lose, I will have to do without ANY alcohol for a full TEN DAYS. I’m desperate to lose the pounds, so I’m snarfing up Cosmos and Sauvignon Blancs right and left to exhaust my wine and liquor supply in preparation for the dry season ahead.

Will I have sufficient willpower to stay the course? Wish me luck!

To Be Known

This blog nothwistanding, I’m a very private person.

I rarely speak my mind unless put on the spot. With friends, I’m a good listener. In work and public life, I don’t like to take center stage, preferring to work behind the scenes with people I've developed relationships with. So why do I expose myself publicly like this? I think I know why.

People want to be known. No matter how shy, they want to feel that people “get” them, sense where they’re coming from, understand what they’ve been through. It’s my feeling that this is one of the deepest drives we have.

My behavior in recent years bears me out. I've been wanting to reconnect with people who knew me when, people I feel comfortable with, don’t have to prove myself to. I've been looking up old friends—my next-door neighbor Linda, for example. We used to spend every afternoon together at her house or mine when we were in high school. We reconnected 40 years later, and picked up the conversation like it was yesterday. My good friend Jay, who went on to be a carpenter and had five kids; I discovered he's a gifted writer and published two fabulous novels about the Napoleonic wars at sea. Jerry, a high school buddy who became a social worker. Robert, erstwhile bridge partner and prom date, whose father was post commander where I lived in Frankfurt, Germany. Hank, my first college sweetheart. Elias, the Greek-American philosophy student I dated during my junior year abroad.

These are people who knew me well. We came of age together in the days before we adopted the slick personas necessary for our careers and public lives. But how many people since then, apart from my immediate family—and perhaps even including them—have known the real me?

I think this is what prompted my mother to write her memoir, which I helped her publish for the family.

Asked why she wrote the saga of her growing up and meeting my dad and bearing five children and moving the household all over Europe and the US, she shared this thought: “A pebble falls into the pond. The water ripples for a moment, then smooths over as if there had never been a splash. The people who remember what you were like—as a girl, as a young woman, as a wife—grow old and die out, and it’s like you were never there. Somebody has to tell the stories, or as the years pass they’re simply gone.” A sobering thought.

Remember how as our kids reached age twelve, each one in turn just had to have a boom box? And when you and I passed the milestone age of 40 we all began to need bifocals? Maybe 66 is precisely the age when this line of thinking--about what mark we've made on the world--kicks in. The kids are raised, retirement is imminent, and the very age span between grandparents and grandkids encourages a long view of life. We come up against the big question: What are people going to remember about me? Especially if they don’t really know me in the first place?

  

In the end, I guess I do want to be known, just like everybody else.

Then there’s the related question: How well do I need people to know me? Does being known mean I should tell all? Should I revisit incidents best forgotten? My friend Kit, quoting a wise writing coach she knows, says the litmus test is this: To what purpose shall I make such revelations? I have painful memories just as we all do, and maybe dredging them up will do more harm than good.

I’ll have to think about this. 

Friendly Skies

I was once a stewardess with United Airlines, and you can thank Annette Funicello.

Well, not really, but I was a devotee of the Mickey Mouse Club, in fact I remember the very day it first aired in 1955, and Mouseketeer Annette did a segment where she visited an airline and learned what it took to become a stewardess. To us youngsters (I was about 10), it seemed a glamorous job—the perky uniform, the travel, the opportunity to greet and serve interesting passengers.

Fast forward to Chicago, August 1966, and find me enrolled in stewardess school at United’s campus in suburban Des Plaines, Illinois, studying the cabin configurations of various equipment: DC-6, Boeing 727, Caravelle, etc. Mockups of their galleys showed us where to “find coffee, tea, or milk.” We practiced CPR on rubber dummies. We learned how to evacuate passengers in case of an unanticipated landing (if they won’t leap onto the inflated slide, stick ‘em with your hat pin!). We rehearsed making opening speeches about the little face masks that would drop down in case of a sudden decompression. We went up in a training plane and experienced steep banking (like wearing a lead bodysuit) and zero gravity (all the ashes and cigarette butts in the armrest ashtrays rose skyward). We were shown video commercials that made our breasts swell with pride and company loyalty.

All that was just the technical preparation for stewhood. Paralleling the classroom instruction (which we all smoked our way through, including the instructors, cough, cough) was The Big Makeover. Consultants helped us personalize and apply a professional makeup. We were weighed and measured to be certain our bodies complied with regulations. We were professionally fitted for foundation garments and uniforms. The message: United wanted us to look professional.

The subtext: We were sex objects! In those days—it seems barbaric in retrospect—you could not be married and be a stewardess. We had to maintain an aura of availability around United customers. Girls with live-in boyfriends or, God forbid, husbands had to be careful lest they be outed when United phoned them at home and heard a male voice on the line. I spent a memorable layover in Portland with a dreamy-eyed girl anticipating her wedding the following week, which would have to remain a deep dark secret from her employer.

The way things worked, we stews bid on monthly schedules and were awarded flights based on seniority. A newbie flying out of Chicago, I got the milk runs all over the midwest: Grand Rapids, Akron/Canton, Moline/Rock Island/Davenport, Allentown/Bethlehem, to name a few. The most senior girls might fly to the coast and back twice a week and have the rest of the days off; I always thought it would be a great career for an artist or writer, keeping bread on the table but leaving time to create. Every third month, even we newbies had an opportunity to fly to the big cities: Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, and Denver. For this month we would be “on standby,” waiting for the call to substitute for a stew whose flight was delayed, who came down sick, whose uniform did not make it back in time from the cleaners, and so forth. Sometimes this meant subbing for more senior stews on their choicer flights.

That’s how I came to be celebrating my 21st birthday at Disneyland all by my lonesome (discounting the mobs of families with little children and teen couples on dates). Taking over for somebody on a flight to the coast, I had a day’s layover in LA, and chose to spend it at the Magic Kingdom. Here I was, finally legal to drink, but just try to find a cocktail lounge at Disneyland—it wasn’t going to happen!

Life at the “stew zoo” on West Higgins Road was exciting, with nonstop partying around the apartment complex where many airline personnel and other singles resided. I remember ending several festive evenings with steak and eggs at 2:00 a.m. I shared a room with Phyllis, a stew from my class who had been a dancer and Las Vegas showgirl before taking on this gig. Neither of us owned a car and had to call taxis to take us to O’Hare. Returning to the apartment was always dicey—cab drivers hated us for being the short-trip fare in a line of travelers seeking rides all the way into downtown Chicago.

My most painful moment as a stewardess: The time I came down with strep throat mid-circuit and had to recuperate in an airport motel in Philadelphia, croaking my hot tea orders to room service. I remember a particular sandwich order vividly; they made it up on toasted bread—I saw stars when trying to swallow.

My most embarrassing moment: The time I received my hotel wakeup call and put my head back down on the pillow and completely missed my flight! I had to deadhead back to Chicago later that day, tail between my legs. Come to think of it, that happened in Philadelphia as well. Bad news, that Philadelphia!

In the seven months I flew for United, I did indeed greet and serve interesting passengers. Aretha Franklin and her band flew with us out of Detroit; she was tiny then, and the bass fiddle warranted a seat of its own. One time Jets quarterback Joe Namath, giant rings on his fingers, sat in first class with his personal assistant, looking over a Time magazine feature about himself, and invited me and my fellow stew to “come visit him any time” in his New York apartment. I held hands and prayed with a little old lady flying for the very first time. I accompanied a boisterous Little League team and their chaperones on a Christmas day jaunt to Florida; when the pilot got on the mic and announced “there’s Cape Canaveral on the left,” EVERYBODY got up out of their seats to peer out the lefthand windows, and I swear the plane tilted with the sudden weight change.

I gave up all this excitement to get married, which I did on March 25, 1967. Years later, I was invited to become a party to a class action suit lodged against United on behalf of all those stews who were terminated because they got married. I opted out, acknowledging the truth that I left of my own free will to move to another town and march down the aisle.

I had always known my path would lead, not to a career in the friendly skies, but to my chosen life role: the supportive woman behind the great man. My poor unsuspecting husband! 

Guilty Pleasure

Sometimes going to the grocery store is just that. Sometimes it’s more.

My sister is in town for a rare visit, and we’ve spent the afternoon combing through the racks at the Salvation Army for outfits our mom can wear, especially nighties which seem to keep disappearing at her long-term care facility.

Now famished, we’ve cooked up a nice meal plan and stop off at the Marsh Supermarket to pick up the missing ingredients. Our Marsh compares favorably with the nicer stores in Cleveland, my sister observes, and we continue chatting amiably as we approach the checkout counter and unload our basket onto the conveyor belt.

I glance up…and stand transfixed! A new guy. Curly light brown hair, blue eyes, tall and athletic, huge hands reaching from graceful arms extending from solid shoulders, lifting the grocery items and sliding them skillfully across the scanner…beep…beep…beep. My God he’s gorgeous! Not so much handsome as magnetic. Built for action. He could be a basketball forward at the high school, an Olympic swimmer, a Hellenic soldier at Sparta in leather armaments, a…

Oh, yes, grab my debit card and swipe it, eyes fixed on the nameplate, averting my gaze. A last lingering look as I collect my bags and say thank you.

Outside on the pavement, my sister and I both exhale. “Eli,” she says. Yup, I nod in perfect understanding, and we head for home and margaritas.