This is an article about how New York was saved in 1975. No thanks to the federal government Continue Reading »

Stumble it!

I took the writer’s island prompt “ferocious” and combined it with two weeks worth of 3WW..
The first weeks words are: empty, highway, ignored. The second week’s words are: cautious, human, empty
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It took me two days to write this post and I deleted the best parts. Hope I can somehow replicate it. My apartment still hasn’t sold. I don’t want to be the first casualty in Manhattan. This is unedited–just made a change or two for clarity though it’s still probably lacking.
•••••••••••••••••••

She told me that when she adopted me and I smiled at her I gave her life. Even during the teenage rebel years, she claimed I gave her life. She claimed she gave me life when she and my father barred the door and wouldn’t let me go to the 68 Chicago Convention where I could have died or “worse.” “Worse” being brain damage. She loved my brain warped as it is. Going to the convention was one of two things she ever forbade.

She picked me up in the station at Great Neck and we drove to that great mother/daughter bonding experience Loehmann’s. She loved to shop. I hated to. On the car ride she told me the entire story of a movie she had seen the night before on TV, Tea and Sympathy We both knew “when you think of me and you will often, think of me kindly,” but neither of us knew where it was from.

At Loehmann’s salespeople rushed to her as if she were an old friend. Something about her invited confidences, big and little. People would ask for her opinions about their clothes. She was always truthful. Though she refused to sew as her mother had made all her clothes, she could tell what needed just a bit of a hem, what needed a dart, what couldn’t work….As “payment” she would say: “This is my daughter. Isn’t she incredible. Doesn’t she look…” I would twirl, smile, put on the show and want to fall into the store floor.

She was a born salesperson. Before I had been adopted she owned a fancy dress drop and from the time I was a young teenager until shortly before that ride four Junior shops. My sister and I had more tee shirts we didn’t want, and still imitate her opening a door to a bureau and saying “here, take this. Take that.” “No, ma you’re exhausting me.”

This was a woman who thought a fun Christmas Eve activity was to go to a new Ikea. I love houseware stores but that….Have you ever been to Ikea on Christmas Eve? Empty it isn’t. It would have been a five Excedrin night had I still done them.

Thing was I can’t remember her ever talking down to me. Oh I was the daughter and she was the mother, but she always assumed I could understand and I loved her so much for that. She was so loyal that if I disliked a girl she found many good reasons to dislike her mother. I couldn’t just dislike the girl or boy actually. I had to explain exactly why.

I began picking the books for her book club when I was twelve. Our favorite book the year before was A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. She had grown up after Francie in the next community Greenpoint and I felt thrilled reading a book that took place so close to her home.

We discovered Capote’s In Cold Blood when it was serialized in The New Yorker I was about thirteen but in books she considered me an equal.

She was a year or two behind in her New Yorker reading but I couldn’t stop talking about it. We idolized Capote. My sister insists she picked out the theme for her Sweet Sixteen–a Black & White Ball but I know it was based on Capote’s party at The Plaza. Our mother had a way of making you think something was your idea when she did all the planning.

Though she was barely five foot tall, she had legs that seemed to go on forever. Her dark curly hair and big toothy grin were irresistible. Growing up my sister and I were always cognizant we had a mother men never ignored. I noticed how happy that made my father and made a note to my future self to somehow become irresistible so my husband would always desire me.

My parents were the make-out couple of Long Island. It embarrassed my sister. My mother said the first time I saw them kiss I applauded. I always was a devotee of true love and they had it in spades.

That ride to Loehmann’s was our last mother/daughter true shopping trip. Our family banned her from the highway or any road as she had macular degeneration. A vain, independent woman she refused to accept that it was a permanent condition. Unfortunately the doctor’s were always promising a cure…

I prefer to remember all the times before.

My father was larger than life and it wasn’t until I was an adult I realized how hard being the “straight woman” was. Dare I say she made him seem funnier than he was?

And gave him class–well, she always said that. She or I were the butt of all his jokes.

She taught me how to seem to listen to the same story for the 2,00th time. How to laugh, nod, speak in all the right places. It’s a skill that has served me well in life.

She accepted everything about me. Part of her job, it seemed, was to tell me that he was only so critical because he loved me more than anything. That he couldn’t help himself….It was great to have uncritical love from one parent.

She was smart. Though she was the only member of her family without a college education, she wrote my father’s papers for him. He got the accounting degree. She got the education. Both she and my father took courses throughout their lives. Both were involved in as many organizations as they could find time for. Their lives made me dizzy.

After my father died she said she never wanted to go to another country again as they had been to almost countries but Viet Nam and Indonesia where they were supposed to be when my mother “had a feeling.” She never had feelings like that. My father’s oujia board had been banned from the house. She believed in the here and now. What could be explained, nothing mystical unlike her sister the Buddhist hippie. Her feeling was right. The week they were supposed to be in Indonesia my father had a sudden stroke and died.

So when Princess Di died and she asked me if I wanted to go to London for that week I was very confused. I had just returned from the Jersey Shore and a week alone with my mother in London was–well my mother was slow. I’m fast. I’m not sure you can measure how many miles my mother walked in an hour. I should have taken her seriously. We should have gone, but I’m not sure she was serious.

She loved making me crazy as she grew older. Her jokes on me were funny and I’m not going to tell them now.

She was a cautious person. She did everything slowly, very slowly. It drove me crazy. She counted every pill in a prescription bottle, and yes counted her change. She was like this as a young woman so when she was older it felt like hell on earth.

My father could tell me to do something and I would “yes” him to death and do whatever I wanted anyway. He would carefully plan my trips to Europe. I would get there and change all the reservations. My sister always did what daddy said to do.

My sister would “yes” our mother, and do what she wanted to do. I could never “yes” our mother. To not be completely truthful; to not follow her advice to the letter….But she gave so little advice before our father died, that the one in ten thousand times she did I had to listen. And I have never been on a motorcycle–the one thing she asked me not to do. It’s coming on bike week here and….

After our father died it became so complicated. She began giving unsolicited advice. It was good–especially the writer part–but fraught with anxiety, and over-identification. I’m still not ready to talk about that time. Oh, she thought I should be a writer as I would read her all my papers in grad school. She had an amazing critical ear. I’m linear in school papers, and all research.

She was so blown away she finally asked why I wasn’t working at becoming a writer. “Your husband said I had some talent but not enough–and took my writing to ten writers he knew to have that borne out.” “But they loved your writing. He was scared for you. It’s such a hard life. And he always dreamed that you went to law school” Yes, I heard that one enough.

I understand now that they both would have encouraged me. My father had seen me fall too many times and encouraged me to pick myself up too often. My mother saved that for the big stuff. It’s hard to explain and I don’t know if I’m explaining it properly but I’m working on that.

It wasn’t that my mother was simple. She was possibly always the most complicated person I knew. She was always the best read, and when she went blind drove the male librarian at the library for the blind crazy. He wanted to send her romance novels. She wanted conspiracy theory books. She always had a great manner and finally said to him: Would you like romance novels? No, neither do I. Send me what you like.” He found himself another member of the fan club trying to please her.

My sister and I call her family comprised of Bohemians, Beatniks, and new age hippies, “the complex family.” Our mother was the one who passed for normal. Our mother was the one married to a former Communist who then bowed to Nixon and Reagan. She could have made a good Republican housewife.

Ha. My mother was the person who asked me two weeks after 9/11 if I thought it was retribution for all the horrible things we had done to other countries. If there is a god, I hope he/she/it forgives me for thinking she had become demented overnight. I know my mother forgave me for saying “some people think that but I can’t.”

I refuse to make her death two weeks later from a fall the centerpiece of her life. People say to me “oh your mother had macular. Must have lived an unhealthy life.”

I wasn’t raised on meat or sugar. My parents preached the evils of cigarettes from the time I was in a crib. My mother did everything right. She just happened to suffer from something nobody knew anything about. She was human. There’s a picture of her smoking a cigarette long before my sister or I were born. My sister held the picture in her hand and refused to believe it. I told her they didn’t photoshop in the 40’s.

One last little anecdote long term readers of Courting know. A few weeks before my father’s death we were taking a walk. He asked me if I knew the most remarkable thing about my mother. I was of course clueless.
She’s never had a gray hair.
Wow daddy that’s truly remarkable.

Of all the zillion things…I called her and we laughed, and laughed. And that’s why I practically live at the hairstylist. My father thought hair dye would kill you though it was overly obvious I dyed my hair–all the reds nature never intended.

After I came from meeting my birth mother, I felt empty. I opened my mailbox and there was a card from my mother. It just said “I love you, I love you, I love you, over and again. It was something we both needed to hear.

Maybe, just maybe I was too blessed in my choice of mothers. Letting go of her was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life. I wish that we had just five minutes. That’s all. Five minutes to say good bye. She didn’t even have to be conscious. Just sort of alive. But….

The first copy, the one I deleted was much better. Writing this made me so nervous I couldn’t sleep. It was the first time I could write about my mother the person without focusing on her death. I feel much joy over that. This is a time of new beginnings in my life and I know she would want me to go forward. She was a big believer in living in the moment before it was trendy. When she became blind she had to as she had to remember everything. People say I have the memory of an elephant. I get it from my mother.

Stumble it!

I thought the Writer’s Island prompt on Helen Hunt’s new movie rather serendipitous. I love Helen Hunt–except for the year there seemed to be only three actors–her, Kevin Spacey and Nic Cage
Then because writing this thoroughly depressed me and it’s cool and very windy out I wrote using the other prompt “outrageous.” But for me that’s commonplace.
She was expecting me to be married not divorced. She was expecting me to have children not be childless. She was expecting me to complete her. To be the one to live the life she could only dream of.

She refused to understand that the life I was living was one I had chosen. Unlike her I had degrees, and a life not centered around parents wants and wishes.

I didn’t just have desires, and dreams but plans and action. I had a professional career. One that had stopped being satisfying. I needed as much love as I could get from as many people who were willing to love me. I sort of understood that my semi-breakdown the year before and the resultant tests that typed me “learning disabled to the max” had knocked some life out of me.

Still I tried. Still I functioned. I wanted desperately to like her. I wanted desperately for her to like me. I didn’t act needy. That had never been my style. Neediness made and makes me uncomfortable. I might have acted the opposite. No guidebook told me what to do. I had no experience in matters such as this.

Unlike today there weren’t coaches who guided you through every step. My luck–to be a pioneer in the modern age. It’s a constant battle and I’m never truly sure why. It was the 80’s. Oh sweet beloved 80’s, so much of my life happened then. You weren’t sweet, really but beloved–even the horrible was good. I was young and pretty. Looks counted with everybody but her; she made it clear she didn’t like my looks. She refused to be seen in public with me. Not because I was ugly but because I was the image of her mother. But her mother was pretty and I was…..

She would find me selfish for running into and then out of her life. It wasn’t me she desired but some perfect creature I could never be nor aspired to be. She was the one who lived in a dream land

I had a choice. I didn’t have to call her “mother.” And so I didn’t.

The woman I called “ma” to be sort of snarky or “mommy” most of the time had that honor. And she was honored to love imperfect me.
Uh, dear email, radio, TV and more–since Easter I have been bombarded with Mother’s Day ads. The only mother I care about is dead; I have no children, and usually don’t care. But I spend a lot of time hanging out with and giving presents to other peoples children. I have gotten one present from one girl–ever and it was lovely, but Mother’s Day is a day I suppose I should sleep through.
People are looking at my apartment though it isn’t selling. I will take it off the market in June if nothing happens.
I just looked at my Technorati for the first time in many months. I have no screen shots of when I was a 2,500-5,7000 rated blogger, so who would believe it? Guess you had to be there.
Is this “outrageous” enough or is just me as usual?
I was never physically addicted to cigarettes. Basically I liked having them around and holding them and sometimes lighting them and sometimes smoking them. I would feel dirty and scuzzy if I gave into this urge but….. This is me with my parents when they were old and I had late 80’s hair as opposed to mid 80’s hair which was bigger. We had just had a Passover for about 40. It was to be our family’s last one but we didn’t know that then

Stumble it!

Thanks Bone for always picking such amazing words. I know it ain’t easy.
Here’s a link to a great op-ed piece by Paul Auster about being 21 in the spring of 68 and looking forward to graduating and being drafted.
It goes with the story I began several weeks ago.

Dinah lived several blocks from the beach now. When she finally had the choice she found she didn’t want to live on the bustling beach. Once a month or so she rented a hotel room that faced the ocean, and soaked in the smells and sounds of the ocean. Every six weeks she went back to New York for non stop socializing. And doctors and dentists.

Dinah didn’t want to be a New York elitist; her boyfriend was the town police lieutenant who teased her about her elitism but loved it and never tried to invade the space she made between her and the rest of the world. He compared her to a wave that looked as though it was going to break big time but came in gently. Rarely they would discuss the many nuances in that sentence. He was a cop with a Master’s in American Lit. His thesis had been on Capote. Somehow she found all that out when he spotted her comparing coffee’s in Kroger’s. He didn’t ask too many questions about the past she had come to a small Southern beach town to break from.

Dinah came from the world of live in the moment. Here she reflected on the past when walking on the beach, oiling the banister in her robin blue Charleston type house, or placing shells on one of the canvases that sold for way too much money. Honestly she had no idea what she was doing. People reflected about her work and made too much out of it. She just enjoyed placing found objects on canvass and painting over them with milk paints she mixed herself.

Today she couldn’t get into her work at all. It felt so meaningless. Jordy, husband one to three out of six had a new CD out, and she really hadn’t meant to memorize it. She remembered the most banal things about Jordy. The first time they had married had been a joke. She was eighteen and he was nineteen, in 1969. When her parents found out they insisted on an annulment. She refused not because she wanted to be married to Jordy but because she didn’t want to do what her parents thought proper.

The divorce had happened six months later, in the Dominican Republic, after she had walked into their basement apartment in a house on the Long Island Sound and found Jordy in bed with a girl she was kind of friendly with. He insisted it was meaningless. Dinah believed in few things but one of the things she truly took seriously was fidelity.

She would picture Jordy in bed with that girl over and over again. She tried to ignore him her Sophomore Year but wherever Dinah went, Jordy went. When she thought she was almost in love with Kent, the golden boy, they went to a school dance. Like all dances it had an absurd name: The End of the World.

Jordy’s group wasn’t supposed to be playing but they substituted for another popular Long Island college/bar band. Jordy sang four new songs she knew he wrote for her, and then “Dinah with the dancing eyes,” the song that was going to make him famous.

“Stop,” she thought. “I can’t love a man who writes beautiful songs about me. What else is there? What do we have in common? Why am I going to break up with Kent tonight?”

Because, just because.

Somebody took a picture of Dinah staring at Jordy and somehow he was reflected through her eyes. The picture would be on the album cover. If every picture tells a story that picture told more than either Dinah or Jordy could consciously process.

The draft had ended. Jordy had a high lottery number. Dinah wouldn’t marry Jordy again for three years, but she could drop out of college with him and go on his first tour.

The End of The World dance had been the beginning of Dinah’s real life.

Stumble it!

I lived in New York during 9/11. A big part of the reason I’m leaving is because of everything that happened after. I don’t want to rehash it now but people who have read Courting for years know about my personal tragedy a month later and the help I couldn’t find.

Hillary Clinton was an influential senator who could have done much to alleviate the suffering. Not just the counseling I sought, but she could have helped New York get its promised aid in a timely manner. Montana needed it more. I can never forget her for forgetting about the city she claims to represent. I can’t stand the people who choose to overlook that.

So would Hillary be good in an emergency? Only if it suits her needs.

Here’s a post my nephew of choice Kenny Butler wrote. Kenny represents the successful Black professional family man. I’m proud to have posted it and to link to it now.

OBAMA BRINGS REASON AND INTELLECT. OBAMA BRINGS HOPE. OBAMA CARES ABOUT ALL PEOPLE. HE IS ALL PEOPLE. FOR THE FIRST TIME WE HAVE A CANDIDATE WHO UNDERSTANDS BOTH THE BLACK AND WHITE WORLD. OBAMA ISN’T A MACHINE CANDIDATE.

IF G-D FORBID SOMETHING ON THE SCALE OF 9/11 OR KATRINA HAPPENS I HAVE FAITH THAT OBAMA WILL BE THERE FOR ALL OF US. NOT JUST THE CHOSEN FEW.

Stumble it!

This went into private though didn’t say that last night–nor did I touch anything to make it so. I need a design company to retweak Courting and another hosting company

The most exciting part of my day today, Monday was walking past The David Letterman Show twice and pretending that he came out to discover my brilliance and my Southern/New York beauty and put me on the show as an added guest. A girl can dream.
Until I sell my apartment, this will be my legal address. I’m coming back at the end of June, and suspect I will be coming to New York often even after I sell. New York runs through my blood as no place else ever could.

Spirit Air was only a half hour late. For Spirit that’s like being two hours early. At the Myrtle Beach Airport they had a display of banned cigarette lighters. Many looked just like guns. It was scary to think of what could happen if somebody took one out…I had never seen anything like them before. Hey I think Aim Flames look like guns–but these looked like the real thing.

Lucia and Rafe my two BFF’s came over. Lucia wanted to scream about how much she loved my hair but as Rafe was my hairstylist for so many years….Even he had to admit it looks great. We went shopping at Fairway at ten PM. It was much more crowded than any store I have been in, in North Myrtle during prime shopping hours. Thursday night I loved the exhilaration though I know that will wear thin. I bought sushi for breakfast. Sushi is one food I will never eat in North Myrtle–OK, it was brown rice, smoked salmon sushi but still–I wouldn’t buy any fresh fish that I wouldn’t eat within an hour or two. I did sample it when I came back home. Bought rough cut oatmeal as I can’t find it anywhere in North Myrtle. Rough cut oatmeal makes oatmeal into a truly divine experience. Have to buy hot wasabi peas and a few other things. Have a feeling I’m going to be buying many things over the Internet.

On Friday I began walking down Broadway looking for a certain mani/pedi place. The weather was incredible. When I passed Gray’s Papaya, I began tearing up–will take pictures and begin a photo blog to show you why. The thing is I can’t deal with the smell of hot dogs and have never actually been in a Gray’s. If I get a drink somebody has to buy me one. I was getting over an allergy induced migraine–my allergies are much better near the beach. But Gray’s symbolizes real New York to me, and my sinuses were clogged so I didn’t smell anything. Just stood there and teared and teared for my heart belongs here. Continue Reading »

Stumble it!

I’m not participating in 3WW this week as I’m going to New York to see friends and family and eat too much food I wouldn’t usually eat as it’s Passover and my sister is a great cook.

I hope to have news about my apartment soon.

I will say that if Obama is an elitist, then I’m____. He said what many of us say and/or think including people of faith. I used to say I would give people the Second Amendment if they would give me The First Amendment but…..The First is being slowly and not so slowly tampered with while the Second remains intact.

Boston Legal was incredible tonight. Nantucket, the Island, wanted permission to make a nuclear bomb. To truly over simplify they wanted to show that because of the present admin, every country has permission to make one–which means the country can use one The Judge was really incensed as Pakistan probably has one and that’s the country Bin Laden is probably hiding in. Of course he couldn’t grant Nantucket permission. My personal favorite line was “who will save us? The Vineyard?” I guess I am a Northerner.

Meanwhile, Shirley’s (Candice Bergen) father has end stage dementia. She had to go to court to get an order to let him have a morphine drip. Again this is a bare outline. Alan (James Spader) did a brilliant summation and talked about his best friend Denny (William Shatner) who has the very early signs. Someday Alan will have to make decisions about Denny–who unknown to Alan was watching the summation.

I have worked with many people with all different stages of dementia. I have also worked with people who were about to die yet they couldn’t get hospice care which would have allowed them a morphine drip. I have screamed at nurses and doctors.

The nursing home argued that this would set a bad precedent as so many teens and middle aged people try to kill themselves. Alan said it should be done on a case by case basis.

I disagree. Every person who is considered “terminal” and is or might be in dire pain–they argued that Shirley’s father was too far gone to feel pain–she said his agitation showed that he feels pain–should be allowed to have morphine drips. If they become addicted, so? The slight fallacy with her argument is that people with mid dementia become agitated simply because they are so confused.

I cried watching Shirley. She talked about what a great man her father had been. Now he was a shell. I have always said the greatest gift my father gave our family was dying within five days of having a stroke.

He died over Passover, his favorite holiday. My father discovered religion when we went to a seder in Mobile, when I was fourteen.

Now I live in North Myrtle Beach only it feels so North. Everybody is from somewhere else. I spoke to a woman from the Jewish Center, who invited me for a seder though I’m not really a believer. I thought that was very nice. Especially since I told her so–but many Jews aren’t. It’s a cultural thing for me.

She told me that if I just go 20 minutes South from here I will be in the real South. Maybe, baby.

Stumble it!