Born Legal, revised again, because Alice, you’re worth it

Both my dental appointments will be on Monday the 19th. That’s exactly a month from a big day in my life. Used to extend it to all of July Now it’s all summer

My desktop will be replaced on Friday. Still have that unsettled feeling. Have heard too many stories of what can go wrong at the last minute. Wish people would be quiet. Paid enough to feel secure.

In America, sad as it, sometimes money does buy health, and I’m not doing this for vanity. She says after spending an ungodly amount of money on 24/7 Freeze products from Bliss

My dentists told me that I would learn patience. They didn’t tell me that I would learn both yoga and compulsive blogging. The only two things that I have had protracted patience for are reading and writing. Actually there’s a third thing but I’m not going to mention it here as y’all think I’m so pure.

Or that I’m a whore. But that’s in my blogging past.
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I understand that many people won’t understand what I mean when I say “what does marriage mean anyway?” I am not anti-marriage. When I began college in 1968, the times they were a changing. Yet girls were still supposed to be in college basically to find a husband. I did.

While the marriage didn’t take, the friendship did. We were too young and immature to be married. Today, we, and I do mean both of us, wouldn’t have been in such a hurry to get married. One of us wasn’t; maybe not the one you would expect to be in a hurry.

Though my parents had an examplary marriage, and I was a romantic, I believe that I began to have serious reservations about marriage when I had my first marriage proposal while in high school. I feel callous in saying that I thought of him as a temporary stop on the way to true love.

I think of my parents as being each others true loves. Their parents came from neighboring Russian towns, their fathers came over on the same boat and roomed in the same boarding house only to lose touch until my parents met. I think of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning as “true loves.”

Yet that’s a romantic ideal and I have recognized that forever. My parents “needed” marriage. If they hadn’t met I know they would have married somebody else. They might have loved the imaginary spouse less but they would have married. Maybe because I’m adopted, always knew and at twelve finally realized that I had been just another illegitimate infant, took some of the idealization of institutions away from me. Though I did hate Emma Goldman for living with a man not marrying him that same year.
I’m my Dad’s daughter; I change answers to suit each variable, and can argue any and all points in an argument.
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Thanks for the uploading suggestions. I am a person who thought some slot in my printer was a USB port. I will never make that mistake again.

The one job that I was ever fired from was a very early on-line research company. Thing was while my knowledge of tax research was outstanding, and I was hired to specifically do tax research, it was all about computers.

Many people had external modems then. If a certain noise wasn’t heard, it was dead. Simple. The only simple thing about the job, and four out of five CPA’s refused to believe me. As my dad never believed me except when he decided that I was the gospel incarnate, I had life-long training in how to treat an accountant.

But I didn’t belong in the world of fixing software and hardware problems. No, no, no. I have collaborated on the design of document control forms and have written training manuals. Yes, my brain switches from non-linear to linear in technical situations.

I feel resentful having to learn all this stuff that’s not about writing. It takes time and mental skills that I would rather not develop right now. But I like photography and plan on taking many pictures and DVDs, in what might be my last summer in New York. Really does pain me to say that.

While I complain about the expense, that’s the secondary, a very big secondary reason, not primary reason for the move. Can’t live in a 9/11centric city anymore. Most people don’t notice how many 9/11 articles are in The Times each week. I do.
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I had never had the complicated relationship with my Mom that I had with my Dad. Actually, it was more complex, but I didn’t see how my Mom could manipulate me until her last years when I saw all too well. On a scale of one to ten, she was still a ten as compared to Marie, Ray’s mother on Everybody Loves Raymond.

My mom had agreed to an aide four hours a day five days a week about a year before she died. Our relationship was slowly getting back to normal. I know that my mom lost her will to live after 9/11.

I have unfinished business; we didn’t finish mending our problems. With my dad, it was so different; we had come to an understanding. He remained in a coma for five days after the stroke. Yes, that was a blessing.

My Mom had been my friend. We read the same books, liked the same movies, and had the same politics. Now that every woman I know is a mother I so see how she accomplished that. As my Dad worked at home one or two days a week and shared in the child rearing, and I feel more a child of YUPPIEs than a YUPPIE herself, I see how different the father/daughter relationship from the mother/daughter one.

My Dad had been my hero when I was a kid, but my Mom was my rock. I’m trying to recapture the great memories while working out the problems that began between us when she moved into the widow’s complex as I call North Shore Towers with its eighteen hole golf course, arcade that looks like a movie set of an idyllic town center. Each night I would take out three large coffee’s for breakfast the next morning. My Mom had never grown past Sanka, and I think that good coffee equals three of the four food groups.

I was thinking about all this when I was reading Newsweek.com’s article, Marriage by the numbers, on its infamous, “women over 40 have more chance of being killed in a terrorist attack,” article

As I was 35 and had been married, I believe that my odds were slightly lower; I mean I had slightly higher odds of remarrying. I remember how hysterical all my friends and my sister were. Like eight of the eleven women in the article they did get married, and have kids. I honestly couldn’t have cared less.

What does marriage mean anyway? And why did the women who got married and had kids in the article act smug? They should be the most understanding, but often are the least understanding. It just wasn’t that important to me, sad as it may seem to others.

People who don’t know me very well think that was selfish of me. People who know me well understand that I might have been born independent, but I do give a damn.

Always thought that Gloria Steinem got it right when she married at 65, as she is my role model. Her husband did die a few years later. That’s always a possibility. Steinem, more than any other woman, personified the woman’s movement to me. She’s never been afraid to be sexy and nobody can argue her strength and intelligence. I have been influenced by too many women writers to list though Emma Goldman, Collette, Doris Lessing, and okay, Dorothy Parker come to mind immediately. I like strong women who don’t give a damn.

My Mom introduced me to each woman though she begged me not to read Goldman’s autobiography “Living My Life,” when I was twelve as I was too young to understand the nuances. She was right. I hated Goldman, not for condoning violence, but for living with a man. There is nothing like a twelve year olds morals. Four years later I reread it and loved her.

This is the last time I shall say, “but I don’t condone violence.” When I lived with Zachary, I took all the knives out of the house, out of fear that one of us would use them, and it might not have been Zachary.

About this time last year, soon after I finished Grand Jury*, that was totally boring and the biggest waste of tax payer money I have personally seen, I began to get incredible comments by somebody who would preface half with: “I’m only a 20 year old college student.” Did have my doubts about that, Cooper, but as I got to know you better glimmers of youth would slip through.

My Grand Jury only heard fifteen cases. The average NY Grand Jury hears 50. We had juror issues.

I’m not usually at a loss when describing somebody, but Cooper defies description. Have to say that the dawg with his-oh-so-sweet yet much more sarcastic manner has The Empress of Wonderlandornot, and The Queen of Courting Moderation Alice pegged, yet there is so many more sides to her

Alice turns 21 today. There are few people anywhere, bloggers or real life, who have impacted on me as Alice has. Like all bloggers, Alice likes the spotlight. Unlike all bloggers, Alice, does things for people without telling them.

She would have laughed at the woman’s study 20 years ago. I did. The terrorist line did make me flinch, and I love tasteless jokes. I had been on the first Air India jet after one was bombed the prior June when a TWA jet had been hijacked. We were held many many hours in an isolated area of Heathrow as our plane had a bomb scare

Several months later, I was in Europe with my parents when the Achilles Lauro was hijacked. Leon Kinghoffer’s body was on our plane coming home. Yes I had good reason to flinch at that line.

Life’s risky. Obviously my near misses, and I do have more, are risks of the privileged. Alice is truly privileged, and she learned early, as I did, that along with privilege comes responsibility.

My sister found a letter I wrote when I was eleven that my Dad saved where I told Danny Kay my life story, and enclosed some money for something. A dollar of it was from my sister. My Mom was at a party and unable to watch his TV special. I apologized for her absence.

Like Alice I excelled at manners. I’m sure that Alice’s mother doesn’t have to write her thank you notes. I apologize to about everybody I ever used to know for that. I was much better at writing celebrities who had no desire to know my life story

Having read Alice’s blog this year, I have watched her evolve as a person and as a writer. Alice has one of the super strongest, best voices around. Post secret: In the past few months I have been learning from her,

Her biggest cause is Darfur. Please play Darfur is dying. It will stay with you a lot longer than The Sims.

I couldn’t think of a suitable birthday present for Alice. She’s become our resident expert on Duke. Tried to think of a third cause with a “D”, but date rape could almost be a subheading under Duke.

Somehow stopping Alice’s mother from calling her “darling,” and her brother “dear” doesn’t seem like a cause worth fighting,but one to be preserved.

Please go to Alice’s Darfur, hell on earth site, and then to her personal blog. She doesn’t usually bite. She blogs on the edge and with an edge. Love edges because they can be dangerously exhilarating. And exhilarting to understand that while Alice might have a stronger more developed voice than most woman her age, she has to be speaking for many other woman turning 21 this year

Alice have a wonderful 21st birthday. Please party like it’s the summer of 1985, one of the last great party summers around.

Then most people got married, joined AA or both, just to show the study how wrong it was. Sure. They got married because they were ready to, I hope.

I partied because I was alive.