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.
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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!

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!

The words come from Bone. This is 3WW
This is part of a much longer piece I have been writing in my head while walking, with the words added. I really need to get a new tape recorder but first I need to find someplace to live for six months. My apartment still hasn’t sold. Wrote a post and accidentally deleted it!

The ocean was changing from winter gray to summer teal. Dinah could see infinite blues and greens that were best viewed from her sunglasses. The colors reminded her of her eyes. Some people thought she had deep blue eyes; others swore her eyes were emerald and still other people thought them violet. Like the ocean they changed with the sky, storm and turbulence.

As she walked she threw a stone into the deceptively calm ocean and watched the tiny ripples. She didn’t know why she began to think about the men in her life. None of them had understood Dinah’s need for the ocean. They could breath without salt air, sand, and ocean waves. She never really got that.

Dinah thought back to her first day of college in 1968. She had been walking past the theatre when five boys came out and said hello. One captured her heart immediately. He was the boy she had seen in her dreams forever.

She couldn’t remember what Jordy said to her to make her laugh so much. He could have said anything and she would have laughed. She finally met somebody who could peer past her ever changing eye color deep into her soul.

The next few months were a blur of sex, pot and anti-VietNam activities. Unlike most people they knew they didn’t do acid but mescaline. The edges weren’t as hard. Everything was funny.

One day, deep under the influence of drugs, they got into a VW bus with three of Jordy’s best friends and no particular destination in mind. They only really cared about leaving New York for the restaurants off the Jersey Turnpike.

They got points for knowing the life story of each person a restaurant was named for. Only Dinah knew Clara Barton; but she was a girl and the boys said it didn’t count. They continued the argument as they found themselves driving across America.

They would backtrack when Jordy would remember a friend he wanted to see. Often he could talk the friend into joining them. Dinah never wondered why the other guys who took turns driving would always listen to him. Later she wouldn’t be able to give examples of his charisma, but she constantly found herself drawn into it.

When they arrived in Vegas it only seemed right that they get married in one of the wedding chapels. They had picked up four of Jordy’s old friends on the way and three new ones. Dinah felt as if she were marrying a mob.

It was the first of their three marriages and divorces. Later she would realize that Jordy had planned on stopping in Vegas the whole time.

They celebrated their honeymoon with at least 25 people in the Haight, and saw Janis Joplin one night at the real Filmore.

Dinah didn’t really have any friends outside of Jordy’s circle. The girls in school, torn between wanting to be independent and finding true love envied her. She wanted to tell them she wasn’t worth envying but something always stopped her.

Stumble it!

I was going to thank Bone for the words out of habit but I picked them which didn’t make them any easier to use. This is a Three Word Wednesday. There are two–one Southern Highlights is about Southern life. The second is depressing.

The sun came out yesterday afternoon, and I ran out with it. I am a walker, and walking in the rain, though I do out of necessity, isn’t one of my favorite things.

Probably I should move to the desert. I know that it has its own kind of beauty, but it’s the ocean I need to be near. Even if I don’t go to the ocean for days, just being parallel to it fills my body with something akin to joy. I know it’s the negative ions but prefer to think it something mysterious; something that shouts “I am alive, never leave me.”
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I had my hair cut, dyed, highlight, and blow dried, the other day, all for less than the price of one of the first three items in the salon I go to on Madison Avenue.

Yes I cheated on my hair stylist and great personal friend, Rafe, and when he called the other night didn’t know how to tell him. He’s having a hard time believing that I’m really leaving for good, and this isn’t some long time vacation.

I have been known to disappear for weeks, sometimes months on end. My parents believed that travel was the answer to most of life’s myriad of problems, and while I might never make it to all the countries they went to, I will make up for it in time spent away. Though this is home now, I still own my Manhattan apartment and have lived in Manhattan or right next to it most of my life.

I have never cheated on him before. The one other time in the almost quarter century I have known Rafe, I had been gifted a visit to Nicky Clarke in London, and even Rafe agreed I should have my hair done by one of the “true celeb stylists.”

That was in 96 when John Barrett was “hair salon homeless” as he waited for his salon in Bergdorf’s to be built. I call Rafe, salon owner to the “homeless hairstylist celeb” as he has a penchant for taking them in. Now Rafe’s salon is filled with hairstylist, upon hairstylist, some of whom I have known forever.

For me to go to a salon without a pedigree was unheard of. I thought that I would bounce from salon to salon, but I think I walked into every salon in North Myrtle. I picked the one where the stylists and clients had highlights I loved. It was thrilling to me when it took the stylist awhile to realize I have frizzy hair for I had blow dried it that morning and walked the mile in soft dripping rain.

It took her almost four hours to do my hair. There weren’t a gaggle of assistants. The noise level was minimal. Nobody had their Blackberries out. Actually I was the only client with cell to the ready as I was expecting some calls I had to take.

The conversation wasn’t about media, real estate, the stock market, or politics. Nobody was trying to show their importance. Nobody was frenzied, or speaking above each other.

Exceptionally truthful moment: Monday was the first time I actually loved having my hair done. On Madison Avenue I always feel jittery and want the experience to be over.

Once I thought of making an appointment at John Barrett’s salon, just to be to say I’m a Bergdorf blond, but I couldn’t cheat on Rafe that way. John Barrett takes credit for inventing Jennifer Aniston’s haircut on Friends but I have read that somebody else does also.

Rafe sent me roses the other day. I hear that they’re exceptionally beautiful but I wouldn’t know. They were really a gift for my Manhattan apartment. My friends are so used to being there they still hang in it a night or two a week.

I thanked Rafe for the roses and told him they were the first flowers anybody has ever sent me that I haven’t actually seen. He found that hysterical and told me to write about it, so I am. The first time he realized I might actually have some writing talent was when I came up with the “hair salon owner to the celeb homeless hairstylist” line.

I don’t know if I will have the nerve to tell him my cheating will be permanent. When I go to New York for Passover, he will see that I might not be a Bergdorf blond but I’m a Southern brunette with blond highlights. Many highlights in a champagne/ash. They suit me.

Rafe’s known for his reds, and when I grew tired of having every color red hair nature never intended, Rafe seemed to grow bored doing my color. Maybe this change will make him happy. I pay for two out of three visits. Rafe buys me expensive dinners and sends flowers to my apartment when I’m not home….

I know how expensive the salon is. When Rafe was making the decision to go solo he would come to my house and we would bounce around ideas for hours. I encouraged him in this venture as I knew he needed the thrill of being the one and only boss.

He tried to discourage me from leaving but once he realized that I truly needed the change was one of my strongest advocates.

I think Rafe will understand when a hair obsessed girl finds a hair salon she likes she has found home.

I am going to look for a place to rent for six months as I want to hang with my friends not be the permanent lodger. I can’t buy until I sell my apartment and spend enough time here to make sure that it’s the right place for me. People are getting used to see me walk. It’s odd enough for people to comment on it. I tell them I hope they join me someday and not just walk on the “walking paths,” or the beach, but through the whole town as it really is the best way to get to know a place. Continue Reading »

Stumble it!

I put the posts on top of this in the sidebar category. I’m a bit in love with this post. Here’s what my Dad wrote when adopting me.
My father was a CPA who disliked accountants. Found them boring. He did love accounting. I thought of how ashamed he would have been during Enron, and he would be more ashamed now of accountants role in the subprime mess that is affecting us all.
As usual I thank Bone for the words
Hi Daddy,
Seventeen years and five days ago, we were meeting at Bloomingdale’s, 40 Carrots, for dinner. I was working for SSI, in Jamaica, Queens, and all the subways there went down. Only the truly rich had cells then and it was a bitch getting in touch with you. But I knew you would call mommy, your personal drill sergeant, psychologist, and the love of your life. Oh how you fought, oh how you made up.

When I finally got to Bloomingdale’s,almost three hours later, I saw you sitting on a bed decorated by Ralph Lauren. I thought you looked so old and tired. Funny the things we remember the last time we saw somebody really alive. You said you were just about to leave but I knew you would have waited for me forever and a day.

I don’t remember what we talked about but I know you asked me a question or two about my job. You liked me working for Social Security but you thought I should have been a claims rep for SSA with the “normal” people, and not work for SSI. It was one of our many ongoing arguments.

The following Monday night, you yelled at me because I didn’t want to watch The Academy Awards. You said The Academy Awards was a significant event. I said i had to get up at 5:30 and sleep took precedence. We settled on me recording it, though you couldn’t understand how I could miss such an event, live.

Uh, daddy, Monday had been your poker night most of my life. I know you were an early advocate of multi-tasking, but I could never see how you could focus on an award show when there was poker to play and interesting people to talk to.

It wasn’t the first moon landing, something else we argued about. I never told you that you were right. It should have taken precedence over my teenage love life.

The following morning you yelled at mommy, because she was there, about Kevin Costner being an idiot who didn’t deserve to win. I have always been proud of you for being an early-Kevin Costner hater.

Nothing was abnormal about breakfast, you had a glass of orange juice, wheat toast, fake cream cheese mommy would make out of pot cheese, and a cup of Postum.

Then you went down to your office. I don’t know exactly when you had the stroke. Mommy was going out and she yelled to tell you. You didn’t answer. She went down and found you. Elka and I have always laughed, because that’s what people do, at the thought of 5′0,” 100 pounds, mommy trying to pick you up.

You were supposed to pick Elka up at the train station as she was working for you. You insisted that both of us work for you at different times. You thought that Elka would make a great CPA and envisioned both of you in practice together but you really wanted us to understand the stock market. We do as much as anybody can these days. It’s changed so much.

Nobody picked up the phone at the house and Elka took a cab. By the time she got to the house there was an ambulance and the entire town fire department. I can’t imagine what Elka felt.

I didn’t get any of my famous “feelings.” It was just another day at work. Then I went home to my apartment and called the house. Mommy answered. Something about her voice was a bit off, and I screamed:
“What happened?”
“Daddy had a little stroke. Nothing major. Nothing to come home for.”

You were mommy’s world. For the first time in her life, at the worst of times, she went into deep denial. I listened to her but by the next day went to the hospital after work. I put my hand on yours. You held it up to your mouth and kissed it. Elka claimed that it was a reflex action, but I have always believed you knew it was me.

You gave us so many gifts over the years. The greatest gift was the six days you lay in your hospital bed “like a lox,” as mommy always said. We had time to get used to you dying.

They were going to make us tell them whether or not we wanted life support the following Monday but on Sunday your breathing was different. It was the breathing Native Americans think is the soul leaving the body. I would like to think so also. Elka and Eddie went out to dinner that night. Mommy and I stayed for a couple of hours. As we were leaving I left the room so mommy could be alone with you. I couldn’t help watch her throw her body on yours. It was so out of character I almost laughed.

Not an hour later you died. We never talked about it but we knew you were too considerate to die while we were there, or to hang on any longer.

After they called to tell us, a nurse called to tell us how handsome you looked. You were a very handsome man. Why couldn’t you ever photograph the way you truly looked? Even in your MTV commercial, you looked, well, bewildered.

I think you had too much personality. No photograph could ever capture that.

I’m not sentimental when it comes to pictures or a person’s possessions. The only things I kept were the kaleidoscope Elka and I gave you two years earlier, and the Turkish shoe shine box you carried all the way through Turkey. There’s a long story about it that I can never remember though I must have heard it 80 times.

Possessions are just a token. It’s the real man I remember, and write about so that you will live in your granddaughter’s memory and maybe a few more people will learn about you.

The decade after your death was difficult. Mommy went totally blind. They say a decade begins and ends with significant events. My 90’s began with your death and ended with mommy’s in 01.

I hope there is some kind of afterlife and you are somewhere where Postum is always available. I hope you found mommy and ushered her up. I can imagine you arguing over many things and making up, but what do I know? I’m down here.
You were mommy’s God. Men asked her out:
But how can I when I had the best?

I will always carry you both in my heart and soul.

Love for all time
#1 daughter

I do carry my parents with me. Just wish they could answer a few questions. There is a second part to this letter I will post in a few days.

Stumble it!

Darn forgot: this was prompted by the words in Three Word Wednesday So is the post below where we properly thank Bone for the words. The post below is dark
Delane wanted to fall in love. She wanted it so badly she couldn’t think of anything else. All her girlfriends talked about how wonderful love was. She would see them cuddling with their boyfriends and she felt so lonely.

Her parents would tell her to give it time. Someday a boy would be swept away by Delane’s beauty and brains. She didn’t believe them. Her father would feel sorry for her and give her extra money on a Saturday for shopping. She already had two credit cards. But cash was always welcome.

That Saturday she was supposed to see her best friend Alexa. When she went to Alexa’s house, Alexa was all tangled in her boyfriend Joey’s arms.

Delane knew what girls did when they were depressed; they went to Juicy and bought some new clothes, pocketbooks and accessories. So she did. It felt as if nobody understood that she was truly depressed. They all said “someday.” Delane wanted someday to be today.

She looked real good the next day when all her friends came over. Her mother had wanted to do something really big. But Delane wanted a pool party for her eleventh birthday.

Stumble it!

March 19 Iraq War Blogswarm 3/19/03–3/19/08:
Here’s a Bush marking the five year anniversary slide show. I’ll save you the trouble, because who actually wants to look at him?. He said we’ll stay with the course while he acknowledged the cost has been much more than anticipated. Of course all the costs are much more. As I remember the war supposedly ended about six weeks after it began
Courting Destiny began as our way of protesting the RNC in New York in 2004. Our original url, freenynyfrombush.blogspot.com is one of our proudest partial lines. We didn’t know that some crazy radical rightists thought they ran the blogosphere, and yes we can admit it now, made us kind of cry. We wouldn’t back down then and we’re certainly not going to back down now.

Bush came into New York on Friday. If you haven’t read Gail Collins amazing article about his stupidity read it now. His statement reminded me of Karl Rove’s remarks when he came to New York, the city that was attacked, and said “liberals want therapy for terrorists.” Actually Bush is stupid and dangerous; Rove is pure danger–not in a good way. Wasn’t going to let the fifth anniversary go by without some Rove Rage. He might have resigned from the administration but his legacy lives on.

I am a New Yorker who can’t afford to live there. I’m a liberal who wanted nothing more than to see Bin Laden beheaded. I’m a Democrat solely because I won’t vote for a Republican now.

I wrote this story in my head while walking down some country roads. North Myrtle is the beach, burbs, country and city all in one. i didn’t want my fiction return to be dark, but 3/19 is a day for darkness It’s a 3WW. I added the words that Bone supplied. It’s a first very rough draft. Actually I don’t like this story. I want to write lighter more fun things. But today has never been one of my favorite days–began a long time before the war and I remember everything about today, five years ago.

Saw a screening of a 9/11 film with a friend in Times Square. It was too soon for me. Had to review it and have no idea if it was good or not.

Six weeks before my sister and I had to run around finding money to pay estate taxes on our mother’s estate. We wouldn’t have had to pay taxes two years later. It’s hard to feel good about paying a bit for an unnecessary war. Many people have paid much more in other ways.

America is so troubled. I almost think a person has to be disturbed to go into politics. Don’t think most parents want their children to grow up to be president anymore.

Two of the words were very easy. One was very difficult.
••••••••••••••••••••••

Allie could barely remember a time Jay hadn’t been in her life. Her older sister Suzie had taken him to Allie’s Sweet Sixteen, in 1970. Allie was jealous at her own party of her beautiful eighteen year old sister who was hanging onto the most gorgeous man she had ever seen. Jay had long curly dark brown hair, and a look in his dark blue eyes that entranced Allie. He had recently returned from Viet Nam and was attending Suzie’s school.

Suzie soon moved into Jay’s apartment. Allie smoked her first joint there, and barely minded when she watched them shoot up. Suzie said all the hip kids at school did. Jay had moods where he would get real quiet and suddenly begin screaming and banging walls. Suzie said smack mellowed him.

The moods got worse and no drug helped him. Suzie and her friends brought him to the VA which immediately admitted him. His roommate was an 80 year old shell shocked World War One vet. Jay seemed to get even more moody but the VA said there was nothing they could do. Continue Reading »

Stumble it!

This is my first attempt at Writer’s Island. This weeks prompt is Second Chance.
As always I thank Bone for the words.
Yesterday was the 15th anniversary of the first attack on The Trade Center. I will never forget either attack. The fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq is quickly coming. We’re not honoring the dead by remaining in Iraq.

My printer is throwing a fit so I almost run to FedEx/Kinko’s on a very gentrified West 72nd Street. When it was just Kinko’s I used to feel I was in a Al Pacino movie, and would look for all the lonely crazy people. My cable was down more than it was up when I was a reporter and I thought it would be a fate worse than death not to have friends I could wake up at midnight to use their computer when I had just seen a movie and had a six AM deadline. I couldn’t imagine being in Kinko’s through the night. It seemed so transient.

I have had many second chances in life. It almost seems unfair to be constantly reinventing my careers. Same city–three apartments, same friends, but oh so many careers.

There is only one career I crave and I crave it so much I feel like a vampire sucking blood. Who am I to think I can make it as a writer? Lately I have been reading so many good blogs I think I’m not even a ripple.

On March 5, I will take a 90 minute plane ride to a new world for me.

90 minutes by plane but a world away. A new life. A new chance. I won’t be stressing about things costing more every day, or a woman yelling in Fairway:
You, you deserve to die.
I have no idea why she pointed to me and said that. Neither did the other people waiting on the long line. I could understand the man who screamed at me as I almost went to his check out counter instead of the one just across from it.

He told me that I owed him an apology. I didn’t think so, and I’m the former princess now queen of apologizes. I had already told him I was sorry. He wanted something more. Something neither I nor the other people in Fairway could have given him.

I accept people going crazy in Fairway. It’s built so that the aisles are too small and everything looks dirty though the fish is always ranked first in freshness, least in mercury, etc.

I know people who won’t shop there as they don’t want to be yelled at. They want to be distant from the fracas yet really all life in Manhattan is frazzled.I accept Fairway as a normal part of Upper West Side life.

When push comes to shove, and it does all the time there, do I have to accept it?

I write about Fairway too much as it’s the bane and justification of my existence.

The years immediately preceding and subsequent to 9/11 were the worst of my life. My mother was rapidly aging. She was the person I had always gone to for advice, for validation. She wasn’t at all demented but blind. People treated her as if she was demented. Sometimes they didn’t but she thought they did. It didn’t matter. I heard it all. I had no filter that separated her feelings from mine. I tried to consider her feelings. She tried to consider mine. Yet so many times we didn’t act considerate of each other.

I worked in a nursing home. Surrounded by old age I almost became old myself. I felt adrift and alienated from almost everybody. It should have been easy, for me, to find help to deal with my conflicted feelings. The professionals in the nursing home couldn’t understand how I could let my mother live alone.

I would quote them to them. “She has capability in all areas but sight.” They would tell me that if it were their mother they would insist she live in an assisted living facility or a nursing home. “But you’re the ones literally writing the book on the many types of capability. Don’t you understand, stubbornness? Vanity? The want to live an independent life? I can’t tell a woman with capabilty in almost all areas where to live” No, not in this case. She was blind. That she could distinguish medications by putting different sized rubber bands on the bottles–a home care agency test of cognizance–didn’t matter.

That she was sharp and mindful of all possible problems didn’t matter. Didn’t I know I was a bad daughter?

Therapists outside the nursing home would tell me I had to separate. I knew that but how? I didn’t live with my mother. There were five mandatory phone calls a day. If I didn’t call at exactly nine AM she would get sick to her stomach. They didn’t know what I could do. They just knew her dependence on me wasn’t healthy. I knew that also. They refused to believe I was also dependent. I seemed so strong. I stopped believing in therapy. I knew this wasn’t an easy problem but I needed support. I needed to feel that I was a worthy person.

Oh sweet irony. I had gone into this field to learn how adult children and parents could get along. I had gone into the field to look for new ways of housing when people became old. I had gone into it with many expectations that people didn’t want to consider then.

Now the news is filled with this problem. Then I felt so alone. After her death, shortly after 9/11 I felt guilt, sadness, despair. Nothing but time could heal this.

I became the person I hated. I became a person who screamed in Fairway. My gait is slightly off. It’s not noticeable except when I’m tired or my psyche is worn out. I would bump into people. They would scream. I would scream back.

The supposed 9/11 affect of people becoming nicer; the halo that was supposed to have surrounded this city; it bypassed me. I felt as if I had become a punching bag for everybody with any problem to dump on.

Later I was to realize that no matter how horrible the problem we have a responsibility to only let it out at the right times. That there were few right times then–that this was a city in deep mourning—I truly should have understood that. Yet my need to mourn my mother should have been acknowledged.

I was right in giving up the friends who told me to stop mourning after six days. But I made my other friends responsible for my happiness and that’s always wrong. I felt so sad and distant from the world that once seemed to belong to me.

It was my straight male friends, and one great girlfriend, who were there for me. I can never participate in straight male bashing. One was physically present whenever I truly needed somebody to cry to. He would drive me where I needed to go, and basically translate my language of despair and need to our friends.

Another knew how to make me laugh. He has known me most of my life and knows I would rather laugh than cry, and needed people who understood that.
I hope that there is never another terrorist attack or Katrina type emergency. But if there is all people affected should be given counseling if they want it

I have moved past mourning my mother. Still I needed continuity. My city, the one constant in my life other than family and friends, was quickly changing into a city I no longer knew.

My best girlfriend would walk the streets with me and point out how many people bumped into me and yet I would be the one to apologize. That gave them license to yell at me. She pointed this out and pointed it out until I understood apologizes were unnecessary. Not everything in the world was my fault. I will always love her for that and much more.

The first time I was able to go into Fairway without feeling scared that I would blow up was my biggest victory in my adult life.

I came back to myself. I’m an improved version as I have gone through the eye of too many storms that hit back to back. I did come out of the funnels stronger.

I never yell in Fairway. Even this past Sunday when the store was wall to wall people, when I was told I deserved to die–something I had thought in the horrible years–even when the man thought my “sorry” wasn’t enough, I smiled.

I don’t want to use all my energy just getting through the day.

This past decade wasn’t all horrible. I watched two young girls turn into wonderful young women. I became closer to my true friends. I met many new people. I learned that America consists of more than the NorthEast Corridor, South Florida, and SoCal.

I learned that despite my disability, dyspraxia/non verbal learning disorder, I can move where ever I want to. I learned that I can take the best of me and make it better.

I have a chance, a true and planned chance at a new life. It hasn’t hit me yet. I don’t really understand that once I sell my apartment and buy something new, my expenses will be cut drastically. It hasn’t hit that when people in North Myrtle say something is crowded, I have to look–and never really find–the crowds.

It hasn’t hit that I will live in comfort with a dishwasher, washer/dryer and things other people take for granted. And it won’t cost more than $1200 a month above the purchase price.

Outside of New York I can focus on what’s important to me. I know the first six months or so will be difficult. I will be selling one apartment and looking for a townhouse to buy. A townhouse, a place with steps and room. It feels like a fairytale. It’s not

More importantly, New York, is the city of too many memories. I find myself reframing my mother’s final years. I wasn’t a bad daughter. I was a daughter who helped allow my mother to live her final years with the dignity she so badly wanted. Somehow it’s easier to understand that outside of New York.

New York was my dream city in my 20’s and 30’s. I have changed. New York has changed. Change is good. Change keeps cities thriving and people growing. New York has a chance to remake it into the model international city. I have a chance to devote my time to my passions, and I have many.

Really I’m just a simple girl from Long Island gone country.
•••••••••••••
I can’t comment right now so don’t feel the need to. ..

Stumble it!

Thanks Bone . I might not be able to comment or post much as I’m hoping to leave next week–finally! Have taxes to prepare for the preparer, files to be cleaned and many many little things. Courting is probably going on hiatus.

Fast, unedited–and I’m going to have start taping my BFF and my conversations. Though I’m leaving which makes me both happy and sad. This is for the girl who will be my roommate at the old ho home
••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Lainey and Maris were sitting at a table in the back of the bar. Lainey was choking into her beer:
No, we’re like Grace and what’s her name on Saving Grace
Laura San Giacomo.
She has a name
Yeah, Grace’s best friend
Is that what you think of me, Maris Kane’s best friend?
Maybe, maybe not. Look at him.

They looked at a man in a tight black tee-shirt, black jeans, long black hair tied into a very nice ponytail, and earring. He seemed to be smiling at them. Maris wondered if they should try to pick him up. This time Lainey didn’t just choke but sputtered:
Girl we were retired years ago into the permanent collection of The Old Ho’s House
So? Just shows how great we are. We still have it.
You’re crazy. Look at the girls in here. All size double zero up to two.
Oh come on Lainey. Are we or we are not honky tonk angels.
Yeah 20 years ago, we were called that exactly once by a drunk…
You married him.
True but shouldn’t that tell you something?

Lainey hated to be the rational one. She wanted to believe that their looks could still pack a punch. She wanted this night at the last remaining C&W club in New York to be fun but remind them they weren’t 30 anymore. 30 did seem to last through two decades. But there had to be an end to youth. Maris was holding on so hard….

Lainey really didn’t want to watch Maris unravel, but….

Stumble it!

This was very quick as the other one is long. Personally I think I can’t win PCH as long as I live here–they see the zip code and think “all apartment buildings.” But I don’t really believe in lotteries or pennies from heaven
Every week day as she filled the PCH lotto form without once accidentally ordering anything she imagined what her life would be like if she won.

At work nobody knew she had a brain. As she filled out the data entry forms she would daydream about a world unlike any she knew.

The forms were simple. Rosanna heard people talk about her: “Simple and plain.” “Look at her; she doesn’t even try to dress well or wear make up.” “At least she’s clean.”

As she heard each slight she would imagine a comeback but she knew she wasn’t clever enough to say something that might sting.

Rosanna had been longing for a boyfriend for as long as she could remember. Even more than that, she imagined a girlfriend. Just one that she could have long conversations with, laugh with, or talk about nothing as other people seemed to do so readily.

Most people left exactly at five. She would wait until six as she made minimum wage and the hour overtime was a necessity. Then she would walk the ten blocks to her rooming house where she would timidly smile at whatever residents passed her.

One had once invited her to a movie. Rosanna couldn’t afford the ticket price so she had said no, and the person never talked to her again.

Rosanna knew that this was just a passing phase. She never thought how it had been 25 years since she dropped out of high school. The PCH lotto said that somebody with the initials RS in her zip code had to win, and she knew it was just a matter of time. Yes, sir, she knew it.

Stumble it!