Category Archives: Reflections

40sarethenew40s’s Most Influential Reads of 2015

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These are the books, articles, and essays that made me think. Some of them, like Fuller’s book, I haven’t stopped discussing with the friend who recommended it; some of them I found myself. To make this list, the piece has to have the following effects:

  1. Some image, line, or idea from the text makes a permanent impression on me and influences how I view the world around me.
  2. I then attempt to discuss this image, line, or idea with my husband, i.e., I take it out of the friend zone and into my most intimate life.
  3. I walk around for days, weeks, and months thinking about pieces of the text.

Book (nonfiction): Leaving Before the Rains Come, by Alexandra Fuller

This book combines several topics that fascinate me: African culture, alcoholism, and the deterioration of marriage. Alexandra Fuller has knocked me out before with her tales of growing up with eccentric parents of colonial ancestry in southern Africa, namely Zimbabwe. This time she’s all grown up, living in Wyoming with an American husband, drinking too much, and suffering from culture shock. A close contender for my nonfiction vote was Wednesday Martin’s Primates of Park Avenue, but the richness and complexity of Fuller’s writing prevailed. Plus, I love an alcoholic protagonist.

Book (anthology):  Drinking Diaries: Women Serve Their Stories Straight Up, edited by Leah Odze Epstein and Caren Osten Gerszberg

I found this little gem myself. Ever since I read Carolyn Knapp’s Drinking, A Love Story, I have craved more tales about drinking by women who drink. This anthology is not an AA weapon, a Go Ask Alice piece of bullshit designed to dissuade even the most rational thinker from ever picking up a drink again. Rather, it’s honest stories by professional writers for whom drinking plays a role in their family, culture, religion, or identity. There are tales of inspiration and moderation in here. In fact, I think they outweigh the horror stories. And that’s what I like the most about this collection: its embrace of multiple perspectives on a topic that is often treated with all-or-nothing reductionism.

 Book (fiction): Dark Places, by Gillian Flynn

I read this before I discovered it was a movie, thank goodness. My husband only watched the movie and had no idea what was going on. This novel is too complex for film. It’s told from three points of view—the protagonist in the present and past, and her brother and mother in the past. All past events cover a 24-hour period of time that that protagonist is trying to figure out in the present in order to solve a mystery. The protagonist is angry and surly, and there’s no role model character in this novel, rather conflicted people who err. Again, there’s no black and white thinking here—just the way I like it!

 Essay: “Take Me at Face Value,” by Tawni O’Dell

This short essay is a light read. I found it in an anthology called 40 Things to Do When You Turn 40, which I bought and read in the Philadelphia hospital where I tended to my post-op parents in July. O’Dell discusses attending a book club meeting with women in their 20s and 30s, and here she realizes that there are some fundamental differences between her way of thinking as a 40-something and theirs.

 Article: “The Coddling of the American Mind,” by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt

Yes, I read stuff that isn’t about either women or alcoholism! Ordinarily, I avoid reading stuff about education because it’s just so fucking depressing, but I had had to read this. This article, in fact, is my 2015 first prizewinner for most influential read. Lukianoff and Haidt have received much criticism from the left for raising this issue—Colleges and universities should be the bastions of free speech and freedom of thought, places where students go to learn how to open their minds and to think critically, to use the Socratic method to discuss sensitive issues, and to emerge from the education as grown-ups. But the opposite is happening in our institutions of higher learning—coddled, closed-minded children are dictating what their professors can and can’t say. Before teaching novels like The Great Gatsby, instructors must begin with caveats, or “trigger warnings,” that the material contains such sensitive material as alcohol abuse or sexual abuse. Any ideas not considered PC enough are ousted. Potentially interesting speakers like Condoleza Rice, Bill Maher, and the Muslim feminist Asra Q. Nomani are “uninvited” in protest of soundbites of their views, “We don’t like you… WAH.” The lunatics are running the asylum.

I’ll end on that note… Happy New Year!

Practicing Feelings

Aging Parents, Reflections

August, 2015

I saw my friend for the first time since her mother died in front of her and a hospice nurse. My friend cried a couple of times for the things she hadn’t said to her mother and for the things she had said to her siblings as they attempted to come together as adults and deal with an estate. I listened and occasionally threw out some advice, but not a lot of it. I don’t have much advice to give on this subject. Now.

My friend cried because she hadn’t told her mother a lot of things that she should have told her in those last few moments, basic stuff that some lucky families share every day and other families, like hers and mine, just don’t say. I tried to imagine myself in her shoes, at my mother’s or father’s deathbed, sharing feelings that I hadn’t voiced already.   I imagine taking a shot at that drama, the kind that merits an orchestral soundtrack, and I cringe at the awkwardness of the scenario.

“If you come from a family that doesn’t really do that kind of thing,” I tried to reassure her, “you’re just gonna startle people by coming out with a bunch of dramatic thoughts at the last minute.”

She laughed a little at that, which meant to me that she got it—some families just don’t do feelings. They don’t do feelings when they’re healthy, and they certainly don’t do them when they’re sick.

I breathed a secret sigh of relief that my friend had bought my logic. But I knew that in her shoes I would have cried just as much. Some things need to be said, sure, but how do you say a lifetime of everything when you haven’t even started with the first few words?

For months, I’ve been wondering how to share my feelings without creating awkwardness all around. I’ve been wondering, even, what my feelings are. I’ve alienated so many people over the years, and my people, like my friend’s, just don’t do feelings.

Another good friend broke me out of the rut. One day, she concluded a phone call with “I love you.” Just like that. I responded in kind, “I love you, too.” And I thought, I do. I do love this friend. She’s been patient, supportive, entertaining, intellectually and professionally stimulating… a fun shopping partner. What is there not to love?

I guess it starts small, by concluding a phone call with a simple declaration of caring. Or it starts even smaller, by just thinking about concluding a phone call with that simple declaration. I have a mental list of all the people who need to hear it—my brothers and sisters-in-law, cousins, aunts and uncles, and all my friends are on that list. I’m almost certain some have heard it from me, and I’m certain others haven’t.

I’m starting small, but I’m starting. I love you I love you I love you. With practice, this will become natural, and then we won’t need to worry so much about “squaring up” our feelings at the last possible minute. Literally.

Such is the Irony of Life, I Suppose

Aging Parents, Reflections,

This past Fourth of July holiday was probably the weirdest one I’ve ever experienced. Shortly before that weekend of obligatory celebration, my father had a back operation. Minutes before my father had a back operation, my mother fell into his gurney outside of pre-op and broke her knee, requiring her to check in for a knee replacement. So I spent the week prior to the Fourth of July weekend in and around a hospital in Philadelphia.

This hospital, being the oldest in the U.S.A., was situated in the heart of Old Philadelphia, just blocks from early Americana like the Liberty Bell and the American Philosophical Society. In the other direction were the pleasantries of your typical well-moneyed urban neighborhood–a Whole Foods, a juice bar, cute couples on foot, and a ton of charming architecture.   When I wasn’t tending to my parents’ post-op struggles, I spent a lot of time just drinking in the environment around me.

I should add that neither I or my parents actually live in or around Philadelphia.  The city attracts patients from unfortunate towns all over the state, places where waiting room stays last for hours, choices for medical services are few, and doctors routinely misdiagnose patients, causing infections to worsen or sickness to death (I am convinced that these dying industrial towns are the new third world, but that’s another subject entirely). My elderly parents live in one of these bankrupt places, routinely driving two hours to the nearest big city for their medical services.

That’s how I ended up spending a week in the nation’s first capital, in a hotel at its old Navy Yards, occupying a room that my mother had intended to stay in during my father’s recovery from back surgery. My father had been stationed at those Navy Yards in the fifties. I wandered miles of the now industrial complex after visiting hours ended at the hospital, studying dormant officers’ houses, barracks-turned-art studios, abandoned docks, and gigantic retired war vessels.

During my days I wandered in and around Pennsylvania Hospital. While my parents napped, I walked through a street fair where I saw a pogo competition. At the American Philosophical Society I saw a page from Lewis and Clark’s journals and a bust of Thomas Jefferson. At the hospital I saw a lot of the first-floor cafeteria and my mother’s nakedness (I hate hospital gowns). On Broad Street I saw an old furrier—not sure if it’s still in business—with faded bluish glossy pics of women in fur coats on otherwise empty walls behind dirty windows. I saw an old restaurant and lounge—definitely no longer in business—with a florescent tube light sign boasting air conditioning. I saw a strange little BMW, met a crazy lady with bright red lipstick. I tried a new Cliff bar. I took the stairs at the hospital, seven marble flights. I remained occupied.

That is what you do when you have nothing else to do but wait and watch.

I’d been in that position before, in a hospital, cringing at the sight of my parents’ bodily fluids and frailty. But this time around I was a better hospital, in a better place, which was in a holiday spirit. I was able to cope with the mess and the sad fact that my Mom and Dad are falling apart. Every night, from my hotel window, I could see brilliant fireworks displays. I took pictures of them and of everything else I described above and showed them to my parents in their matching hospital beds as they came in and out of post-op pain.

Such is the irony of life, I suppose.

Giving It Your Half (or Maybe Your Three-Quarters)

Reflections

I never understood career drive. Even now, now that I have found a niche in my career that I like, I still don’t have trouble finding other things to do during my unscheduled time.   I don’t think I was born with a personality that thrives on action and accomplishment in the workplace, envy and adoration of my colleagues or what-have-you.

I am glad that I have a part-time job now because I dedicate as much time to my two or three classes a semester as I dedicated to a full-time teaching load in a public school. In my present job setting, however, that time spent accomplishes a lot. And it pays off—I am organized and entertaining, and my students can measure their progress and accomplish their goals. I can effectively teach, and also I can spend a good amount of time in my own head, entertaining thoughts that have nothing to do with teaching. I’m going out there, and I’m facing the working world, and I’m giving it my half (or maybe my three-quarters).

Unfortunately, the amount I was able to sink into my role as a public school teacher didn’t cover the time I needed to be a great success in that field. My students suffered—I suffered—and if I had a do-over… well, if I had a do-over… I wouldn’t go into the profession at all. I was wrong. I made a big, fat mistake resulting from relative youth and lifelong depression and alcohol abuse and the junk pile of all the prior mistakes I had been sitting on when I made that big one.

If I had a do-over, I know I wouldn’t do that. But what would I do? Be a lawyer? A park ranger? Who knows. Who knows what I was meant to be. I’m 43. Are questions like these even relevent?

My mom is a half to three-quarters woman herself. She was the “me” of her generation, kinda drifting around, working various jobs that offered varying levels of responsibility, botching up and then patching up her marriage (my father, I believe, helped with the botching part). She daydreamed, had a couple kids, had me.   She listened to me about half the time. But she made it to place where she can feel satisfied. I wonder if she ever wonders about do-overs? If she ever blames herself like I blame myself for where I am?

Although, maybe “blame” is not the right word. I didn’t “end up” where I am now as much as I made it happen, the good and the bad. I can trace that accumulating pile of choices from the bottom up, from my foolish twenties into my experimental thirties, into my wiser forties. When I scan the vistas from the top of my mountain, I am satisfied with what I see—a rare breed of husband, “my winnings” from a high-risk gamble; the opportunity to live well, to write this. Yes, I am satisfied with what I see, so satisfied that I almost have forgotten how I got here, how many tough decisions I had to make. And now, with so many of my past struggles behind me, I can stop blaming myself for what didn’t work. I can even feel pride for what did.

Get Ready to Join the Grandmas’ Club

Reflections

My little cousin, the girl who convinced me that eating green bananas was healthy, who talked me into shaving my belly button thatch (which then grew in black and wiry), who insisted that we wear matching purple dresses for an entire weekend; the girl I used to catch lizards with, fight with, chase boys around Disneyworld with, get caught smoking cigarettes with; this girl became a grandmother yesterday. My little cousin.

She hasn’t been my “little” cousin in years. We’ve always lived apart, and her world became serious much sooner than mine when she had her first baby while I was still dawdling around with that guy I’d called my husband. She grew up long before I did. She’s tough, quick-witted, and stone-cold practical like our Scottish grandmother had been. She’s a matriarch in a man’s profession, and a mother who can father. And she’s gorgeous. And now she’s a grandmother. Fuck.

I gotta say, I thought I had it all figured out. I was growing accustomed to friends getting cancer, to parents getting feeble, to nieces and nephews growing up and having kids of their own. Hell, my brother has been a grandparent for thirteen years. But I wasn’t prepared for my dearest childhood friend to introduce a tiny granddaughter to the world.

It’s sinking in now. It makes sense. I knew this baby was coming. I just needed a minute to breath, to regroup, to remember that we’re grownups now.

This Could Be Our Last Decade of Hotness

Reflections

Remember John Cusack in Say Anything? Probably not.

What I mean is, you probably remember Say Anything (if you were alive then, and over the age of ten), but you probably don’t remember the ripped, youthful, smooth-faced John Cusack in that film. You might remember Cusack, but what your memory sees is a more recent image of him. Say Anything was a long time ago, in the eighties, when we all looked just as youthful. And how well do you remember that?

I recommend seeing the film again, especially if your only remaining impressions of it are a forty-something John Cusack and a memory of your then boyfriend sitting rigidly in the theater, tight-jawed and fuming and refusing to hold your hand because, earlier in the parking lot, you’d made some humorous remark that he didn’t think was so humorous. He was the first of many, you would later learn, whose egos could be smushed by the smallest of observations…

…anyway, forget old boyfriends.

I caught a few minutes of Hot Tub Time Machine last night, and Cusack was still quite delectable in 2010. At the time of the film’s premiere, he was exactly my age now, 43. He was in his youthful forties. I could see that adorable young actor under the lines around his mouth and eyes, under the thinning hair and emerging paunch. I think that’s what makes some men in their forties so attractive to women and men of all ages—they’ve got their shit together, and they’re still hot. Chevy Chase, on the other hand, the clairvoyant hot tub repairman, was starting to fall apart. Chase, a comedian that I and John Cusack might have enjoyed in our youth, was well past his forties.

Five years later, having completely shed that delusional aura that allows us to still see what we want to see, a youthful version of the person under the white hair and the extra pounds, Chevy Chase stumbled on the Saturday Night Live’s 40th reunion set. He tripped on a small step, on nothing basically, the way a 72 year-old man or woman might do. Twitter fans were all abuzz with concerns for his health. Without any sort of professional degree to back me up, I’ll contend that his health sucks. It certainly sucks in comparison to his kamikaze Saturday Night Live days, or his Vacation decade, or even his cameo appearance in the first Hot Tub Time Machine, and that’s because he’s old. And that’s what happens when you get old—you take funny meds, and you gain or lose weight, and you trip on shit, and people start treating you like you’re old, start tweeting about your weight gain and over-enunciating when they talk to you. Chevy Chase is lucky that it took this long for viewers to notice his age.

These days, when I run into someone I knew in high school, the encounter can go one of two ways: I might see the person through my memory lens, superimposing taught skin and big hair over the present image until I’m comfortable with the adult standing in front of me, or I might find the person to be completely unrecognizable. Either way, we’ve aged. And when the old high school acquaintance says something like, “You look exactly the same,” she means that she can still remember what she used to see underneath your starting-to-sag skin, your extra pounds, and your fly-away hair. And unless you’ve undergone some kind of aesthetic transformation inspired by money or fame or success that makes you appear way hotter than you ever were in high school, that’s what you want.

We want to be in that limbo state between young and old, where our accomplishments and our confidence more than make up for our once flawless appearance. That’s hot. And this could be our last decade of hotness. So carpe diem.

Shame is Universal

Reflections

6:30 a.m.

My dog is sleeping in, which I think is comical. He spent the past week at my in-laws’, where no one gets up before eight on weekdays and before ten on weekends. He’s experiencing his own form of jet lag. I pay a lot of attention to the dog. I’m able to diagnose his ailments before taking him to the vet. My husband says he won’t question my keen power of observation concerning this dog because I’m always right.

I wasn’t so attentive with my last dog, and I think the guilt and shame of that semi-neglect inspires me to pay particular attention to this one—my forties dog. In my thirties, my pet was just another prop in my drama, a reflection of the fuck-up I was making of myself. In my forties, I have become aware that the world consists of other beings besides myself.

But I think it’s a bit reductive to blame my dog neglect on age, as if one can cross some sort of invisible line and become a mature person on her fortieth birthday. If it were that simple, then the world could be saved by thirteen year-old Jewish boys when they become gallant and responsible men on the day after their Bar mitzvahs. Maybe I would have reached my epiphany via cotillion. We cross hundreds of invisible—and not-so-invisible—lines to become what we are.

***

On the subject of reductionism, a very brilliant friend of mine wrote a not-so-brilliant comment in a recent letter. I had told him about one of the more visible lines that I believe has marked my character in this decade—a suicide in a family I am very close to—and he asked me why she did it. “Was it shame?” He asked. Then followed up immediately with, “I think it was shame.”

I replied (rather diplomatically, I think) that “shame” is probably involved in every mess we get into, suicide included, and that—of course—this event was much more than that. If we went around offing ourselves at the onset of “shame” then nearly every sentient woman in the world would be dead. Men worldwide would be like they are right now in China, looking around and wondering where all the women went and hitting up anything with ovaries in a desperate attempt to couple before they die. Here is where I separate women from men.

I’m in the middle of reading Lena Dunham’s memoir right now. In this memoir, especially in the first section titled “Love & Sex,” she reveals some of the sources of her own shame*. I’ve highly regarded her HBO series, Girls, for representing young relationships and sexual encounters as they really are—underwhelming and confusing at best, often disgusting and shameful.

I’m thankful that Dunham put herself out there.   Now I don’t have to. And I wonder now how many other women should be thankful that Lena Dunham was creative enough or crazy enough or young enough to put herself out there, to share those secrets that never make it to print because they’re the real, the shameful, kind of secrets that victims of low self-esteem or women who lived through adolescence never tell anyone.

Dunham is making me think differently about shame.   I’ve felt it before, acknowledged that shit happened, that I was once a complicated girl and, later, a complicated woman (and by “complicated” I imply a level of fucked-up that isn’t so much funny as it is sad). I’ve thought about my transgressions, but not in the way that I’m thinking about them now.   Since Dunham cracked herself open and let me view hers, I’ve stopped thinking about my secrets as shameful tales that only I am stupid enough to be privy to. These are collective tales, like the 800+ recorded versions of the Cinderella story that permeate every culture and time period in the world. Shame is universal.

But I digress, again, into reductionism. And before going even further with some maudlin thoughts about death being the only universal that there truly is, I will stop myself. Maybe take the dog for walk. I’ve spent enough time in my head today, and it’s not even 8:00 a.m.

*reference from Not That Kind of Girl.