These Days by Stephanie

A few months ago, my daughter Ellie and I were in a Northampton, Massachusetts gallery that sells glass, crafts, and jewelry. Ellie was showing me the wedding band that her fiancé Larry chose: A broad band made of palladium that will endure as Larry hefts Goshen stones to create landscape designs. What Larry makes beautiful defies the expression “you can’t get water from a stone.” As for Ellie, she searched for the perfect band to complement her engagement ring and kept coming up empty. I have worn my grandmother’s wedding band since Mark and I married in 1981. I gave it to Ellie – so fitting since she is my grandmother’s namesake. Since Mom died, I have come to realize the splendor and joy when giving with a warm hand. A local jeweler re-sized the ring for Ellie: Grandma and I, oddly, given the difference in generations, had the same size seven hands and feet. Ellie has my mother’s small-boned hands: The ring was polished, taken down nearly two sizes, and the small diamonds reset. It was perfect.
In the gallery, I spied a ring in a case of “one-of-a-kind jewels.” Set in white gold, it was a flat, natural pearl – its color neither white nor pink, its surface neither smooth nor rough, with a delicate swirl of tiny pave diamonds above and below so the pearl appeared to float. It was something I uncharacteristically desired – having never been one for jewels, let alone rings which I feel draw attention to my “working hands.”
Mom was never a jewelry person either, and never bought anything of value for herself. What she left in her small yet elegant collection are pieces that were either my grandmother’s or bought for her by her husband – most of which, she rarely wore save an “Egyptian head” brooch that is an unidentifiable metal which she bought for herself at Sylvia Pines Uniquites  — her favorite antique store on New York City’s Lexington Avenue. I cherish the few pieces Mom either gave me from her collection or bought for me at Sylvia Pines.
I had some money tucked away (it’s usually what I slip the kids whenever I see them – I’m always good for fifty bucks here and there). I went through my jewelry box and pulled out some things that have been lying in there for the last 25 years (none given to me by Mom). Nearly every shop window from the shoemaker to the jeweler has bold signs “We Buy Your Old Gold,” and so I went with my gold in a Baggie. I had enough to buy the ring. Yes, I could have just put it on a charge card and slipped the expense by my husband, but the point was to buy something from me to me: Something Mom never did. Mom forgot to teach me that sometimes it’s important to pamper yourself. In truth, indulgence can be like oxygen: You can’t give air to someone else if you can’t breathe yourself. With the ring’s purchase, Mom’s legacy was undone, although not without a modicum of guilt and a palpable shaking off of the self-indulgence factor. Belief systems are hard to leave behind.
I realized, it wasn’t simply that I loved the ring. Rather, I was drawn to it. The ring personified all things metaphorically a “pearl:” Simple, raw, unprocessed, valuable — and yet refined. In other words, the ring defined Mom. The purchase was an ode to Mom’s dreams and pursuits many of which, since she’s been gone, I realize were unfulfilled. It said, “See, Mom, once in awhile you can do something that’s just for you.”
I lost the ring this past weekend when Mark and I were in Miami. The humidity caused my hands to swell and I placed the ring on a magazine atop a table on the balcony of our hotel room. A false move into the table sent it flying to the ground below – a mix of saw grass, foot-high reeds, and a swamp. I am covered with spider bites now from crawling on the ground for hours, using a fork to separate the blades of grass and stones as I searched everywhere but the swamp.
For sure, I don’t want another ring , and I don’t want a duplicate because there is none. Like Mom, the ring was one of a kind. I’m trying to figure out what the Universe is trying to tell me.

OK, so here’s a trick question for you all. What’s worse: Being dressed in black Lycra, exiting the gym (and feeling, oh, so sassy) and falling flat on your knee, or being dressed in black Lycra, exiting the gym (and feeling, oh, so sassy) and falling flat on your knee in front of a construction crew in muscle shirts? Oh, and did I mention that you’re old enough to be the mother of probably the oldest crew member who says, “Are you all right, Ma’am?” as you bend down to retrieve the contents of your spilled gym bag which you’d forgotten to zip, brush the wet tar off your arm, and hitch up your Capri Lycra pant leg to exhibit a slightly bloody knee and a deep blue bruise resembling an eggplant (the downside of daily baby Aspirin).
The saving grace was that for some reason I shaved my legs and moisturized this morning before working out.
Ah yes. I remember the days when I was a young Miss as opposed to a Ma’am, and I strutted past construction crews — bristling and welcoming the whistles at once. Now, mind you, I was hardly expecting any attention as I walked past the crew. I was simply feeling “spry,” and trying to cross the street which resembles a war zone downtown here in New York City as the new subway hub is being built and office buildings are renovated to make for more lavish and overpriced residential “dwellings.” Apartments are no longer called “apartments” – they are “dwellings” or “residences” where “habitation” is a “lifestyle.” The advertisements and billboards woo us: Come home to a “sanctuary,” a “haven” in an urban jungle. Lobbies are dimly lit Zen-like labyrinths with black slate floors, waterfalls, and couches so low that both sitting down and rising are challenges for those over 50. As for the slate floors and dim lights, falling on your keester is a definite maybe.
So, there I was after a great workout, exiting the presciently named Crunch, nimbly stepping in between a cement mixer and a paver when the toe of my sneaker caught in the small gulley between the new curb and the old sidewalk, and although to my credit, I did not go down like a lead balloon, I did execute a rather awkward partial handstand. As I write this blog, I notice that aside from the eggplant (hmmm…perhaps aubergine? tres chic) knee, the knee also has a dotted circular abrasion (wet tar will do that to you), there is a sliver of glass in my left hand, and a deep blue bruise on the palm of my right hand.
The upside is that most New Yorkers pick up after their dogs now, and my teeth are still in my head.
Speaking of teeth (or lack thereof), in the last year, I have managed to pulverize bridgework on the upper left of my mouth (the original loss was the aftermath of a mistakenly deployed air bag about ten years ago), and pulverize “real” teeth on the upper right. I now have one less bridge than Lower Manhattan. Upon examination, the oral surgeon asked if I was “under stress.”
“Why?” I asked, trying to talk with the rolled gauze pad between my gum line and teeth (and feeling oh, so lovely, as one can only feel while drooling at the dentist).
“You’re a grinder,” the dentist said solemnly.
“Meaning?”
“You probably should sleep with a device.”
“A device?” (Grinding? Device? Though I figured he wasn’t thinking of some “toy”  from The Pink Pussycat Boutique – does that place still exist?)
“Yes. A bite plate. To prevent you from grinding.”
Attractive, I thought. I imagined the scenario. “Excuse me, darling, while I slip into something more comfortable and put in my bite plate.”
My dentist made me a subtle device that fits between my upper and lower front teeth. Add some pointy ears and I would look like Alfred E. Newman.
“How about if I just wear wax lips?” I asked, device in place, as I viewed my visage in a magnifying mirror under the fluorescent lighting in the dentist’s office (yet another assault to my increasingly fragile self-image).
And so, after the fall, I sit here now with a bag of frozen corn on my purple left knee. I should mention that this most recent fall comes three months after a fall from the window sill in my apartment onto my right knee. I climbed onto the sill seeking leverage as I attempted to open the gargantuan window that was sealed so tight, it was immovable (the aftermath of this heat wave which caused the frame to “swell”). I finally called the handyman to open the pane glass mammoth: Even he needed to call an assistant to lend two more hands. I fell because it really is foolish to climb on a window sill while wearing high heels (at any age) and step down onto an unstable hollow hassock when the hassock’s lid is askew.
The answer to the trick question is obvious: My ego is far more bruised than my knee, and hurts a lot more.

The woman makes her home in the doorway of the church on my street. She sits on post office crates, and is surrounded by cloth and plastic bags filled with her belongings. I have seen her bathe in the fountain on the next block. I have never seen her sleep. Most of the time, she writes in a notebook. Once I watched her, and saw that she writes with symbols reminiscent of hieroglyphics. There was nothing resembling words. Her drawings are small, and executed with deliberation and diligence. Often, she sings – gospel – in a voice that resonates down the tunnel of the narrow streets here in lower Manhattan. I wonder if, as a child, she sang in a choir. If once she dreamed of being a singer. Yesterday, when I got off the subway in the 100- plus degree heat, I heard an echoed clapping. As I walked toward my apartment, the sound came closer and louder, and there was the woman, dressed in layers of gauzy cotton clapping her hands and dancing wildly in the middle of the street which was closed to traffic. It was one of the few times I have seen her not sitting. She seemed oblivious to the heat, agile, and ageless. I have never heard her ask for money or food. She appears to be well-fed, if not robust, and typically has something to eat newly wrapped in aluminum foil, and a bottle of water or soft drink. I would imagine that the local restaurants (and there are many) bring her sustenance.
I grew up in Manhattan on the Upper East Side where the homeless (a term unused back then) were oddities in the 1960’s and 1970’s – and quickly carted off lest the neighborhood be “sullied.” In other areas of New York City – Times Square, The Bowery, near the old Madison Square Garden, what we then called “bums” or “hobos” wandered the streets and slept in doorways — they were more than predominantly male, and most of them looked aged. Of course, when you’re a child, everyone looks aged. I remember the Sundays when my father drove the family in his Cadillac, turning off the FDR Drive onto Houston Street, and locking the doors with a flourish, the automatic locks snapping down like prison gates.
“Bowery bums,” he explained, as I gazed out the car window. “Most of them are veterans or were journalists during World War II. They’ve lost their way, but then again you never know. You have to be careful.”
Our destination was Chinatown for trinkets, and then a stop at Katz’s Delicatessen for a hot pastrami sandwich and a Cel-Ray Soda. Clinging tight to my mother’s hand, we quickened the pace as we walked to and from the car. I was both fascinated and terrified by this other world, and eager to get back to the sanctuary of not only the Cadillac, but the Upper East Side.
The city’s homeless now transcend both age and gender. Although they are ubiquitous in Manhattan, I am not inured to their presence. I have made so many calls to 911 when concerned that someone is not breathing that I am wondering if 911 has me listed as a “crank.” Just the other day on Mulberry Street, a man lay on the corner, swathed in rags, the side of his face pressed against the hot pavement, his bare feet filthy – and none of the telltale signs that the corner might be his home (shopping cart, bags, blankets, plastic cups). I stopped (yes, at a safe distance) to see if his chest was going up and down. I couldn’t tell, and called emergency. I waited a while, and no one came. I called again, and they said that someone was on the way. Passersby walked around him, barely glancing down, reminiscent of the scene in Midnight Cowboy when the unconscious man lies on the street in front of Tiffany’s. The neighborhoods once notorious for human debris have been cleaned up. Times Square is a mall: It’s misleading. The homeless have merely been cleared out of Times Square so the tourists have a different impression.
A wave of unidentifiable emotion came over me when I discovered that the joyous clapping and dancing came from the woman at the church who seemed undaunted by the oppressive heat. I wondered where she was from, if she had a family anywhere anymore, and what she was like as a child. I wondered what happened to her along the way. Was she ever in love? Did she ever have children? Was her decline insidious, born from trauma, born from mental illness? Is she even remotely aware of the men in suits and ties, and the women in their black pumps and narrow skirts who disappear into apartment and office buildings and dine in the windows of restaurants across the street from where she lives?
Joseph O’Neill writes in his novel “Netherland” that once we have lived in Manhattan, it is not only difficult to leave, but nearly impossible not to miss it if you do. I used to believe that more than I do now, and yet there is a part of me that remains nearly addicted to this city despite what is a cacophony of the harsh, pleasant, comforting, miserable,and frightening. The city can assault you with its gloom and lift the spirits within a block’s walk. It is a film noir, and so black and white, with eight million stories, indeed.
I wonder what would happen if I tried to speak to the woman who lives in the church doorway – or perhaps her world is best left to both her imagination and mine. At least downtown here, nestled in the church doorway, she appears to be safe, and appears to feel at home.

Jimmy Dean died. Really, I didn’t know his music well. When he became popular, I was around 10. Then, in the 1970’s when he had a TV show and more hit songs, I was busy with folk singers, protests, and poetry. Back then, country music didn’t appeal to me. Funny thing is, now I love it – the lyrical stories set to music, the romance, the cowboys in their ten-gallon hats and boots.
When I read Dean’s obit, I vaguely remembered The Jimmy Dean Show and the beat of “Big Bad John.” He was, for me, just the “sausage king” and I had no idea he owned the company. I thought Jimmy Dean Sausage was just one of those entities where a “star” lends his name to a company because he’s been put out to pasture and it’s the only gig he can get.
Dean’s death at 81 was headline news on the Internet this morning. According to The Associated Press, “He had been sitting down to eat dinner in front of the television when his wife [Donna Meade Dean] went into the other room. When she returned, he was unresponsive and was later pronounced dead…Dean lived in semiretirement with his wife, who is a songwriter and recording artist, on their 200-acre estate just outside of Richmond, where he enjoyed investing, boating and watching the sun set over the James River.”
I am trying to picture him in those last moments: Was he sitting on the couch, his dinner spread out on a tray table or a coffee table…a flat screen just across the room? Or was he sitting at a dining table or a kitchen table? What I take away is that he sat down to dinner, the way he always did, and then painlessly and quickly died.
After reading about Jimmy Dean online, I picked up the New York Times. Every morning for a little over a year I read the obituaries. I read them before reading headline news. It’s a morbid habit I’ve developed since my mother died. In the last year, I have read obituaries for friends of my parents who disappeared from their lives around the time my mother became ill – either because they became ill as well or simply because my parents’ circle of friends was not a tight one. It was, in fact, somewhat superficial, mostly professional contacts through my father, and with people who were substantially younger. My mother did not have girlfriends the way I do. My parents did not have close “couple” friends the way my husband and I do. At one point, perhaps 30 years ago, there were some “couples” in a small coterie of friends, but all of them were dead or invalids by the time my mother became ill. Sometimes I see obits for the parents of friends I “used to know,” and for parents of people with whom I went to high school or college. And, of course, I look at the ages and causes of death. As I said, it’s a morbid habit. I haven’t quite figured out exactly why I do this. I think it’s a way for me to honor the dead, and I all too often read about someone whom I wished I had read about and known about while they were alive. Just in the last two days, for example: Joan Hinton died at 88. She worked for the Manhattan Project and helped develop the atom bomb but then spent the rest of her life as a Maoist working on dairy farms in China, and Dr. Fred Plum, 86, who coined the term “persistent vegetative state” and wrote the essential text “Stupor and Coma” in 1966 with Dr. Jerome Posner. People like that: I wished I’d followed them when they were in the throes of living. And then there are all the paid obits for the non-famous written as short stories in small type trying to capture a life well-spent signed by those who knew and loved them.
Perhaps I read the obituaries because I believe that we exist as long as we are remembered. But how do we want to be remembered? I would imagine that Jimmy Dean would be pleased that one of the memories of him was watching the sunset. My mother’s paid obituary had my name incorrectly (it used my husband’s surname and not my own). I’ve stopped sweating the small stuff, but for some reason that small mistake still irks me – perhaps because it was a bone of contention between my mother and me: She worried that using my “maiden name” would offend my husband. I argued that she needed to stop using the expression “maiden name” since I was never a maiden. On the days when I believe in ghosts, I wonder if she’s puzzled as to why my name appeared in that form after she died – maybe she’d think that I finally stopped arguing.
I wonder what my mother would have written in her own obit to capture her essence.
I wish that my mother could have spent evenings watching sunsets in her “golden years” rather than spending five years tarnished by illness and true confinement. I wonder when it was that Jimmy Dean unknowingly watched his last sunset over the river. I’m guessing it was probably better if he didn’t know that it was his last one.

Headline news! Breaking news! After 40 years of marriage, Al and Tipper Gore Are Calling It Quits! Third Party Involvement? Is Al Having an Affair? Does Al Have a Younger Tipper Doppelganger? What Does It Mean Financially?
Forty years of the Gore marriage – crises, careers, children, grandchildren — now tabloid fare with the usual tabloid hint of scandal.
Well, for one thing, as we baby boomers get older, 62 can be the new 42 – particularly when you have the cash to back you up in terms of a lifestyle that doesn’t take its toll medically or cosmetically. In the case of the well-heeled Al and Tipper, perhaps they feel they still have a chance to re-invent themselves — albeit separately.
The photos capturing their previous “romantic moments” sadden me – for them. Yes, they’re a public couple so they had to expect all of those pictures would surface. But they’re a private couple, too. Do either of them (or their children) read the comments beneath the snapshots?
“Why not just stick it out?”
“I’m blessed that I’ve had marital bliss for 33 years!”
“Al is a nincompoop and Tipper has just outgrown him.”
“He’ll probably find a younger Tipper!”
All those photos with what appeared to be heartfelt embraces. Were they merely posing? Who knows? Either way, it’s got to hurt.
I could never understand the notion of married people needing to “stick it out.” For whom? For the sake of the children? I am a firm believer that children of any age know when their parents’ marriage is not a “good” one…that growing up in an unhappy “intact” home is worse than growing up in one that’s “broken.” Do we stick it out for our extended families to spare them the shame, the explanations, the angst? At its essence, what makes a marriage differ from a romance? Isn’t marriage a romantic relationship that became licensed? Sure, we make wedding vows. But can we keep the promises and own the same dreams that we had at 22 some 40 years later? When the connection frays, the chemistry flattens, the sizzle (albeit intermittent after decades) loses steam, the conversations tire… do we really want to settle for “sticking it out?” True – the best of marriages take work. But sometimes, perhaps, does the effort simply become too strenuous?
And, by the way, what is the reason the headlines question if Al is the one with “third party involvement?” Why does society typically assume it’s the man who is the “infidel” and not the woman — particularly not one who is a wife and mother? Of the 100 women whom I anonymously interviewed on the subject of their marital infidelity (To Love, Honor, and Betray: The Secret Life of Suburban Wives), there was only one who got “caught” – and that was because she wanted to get caught, and went off with her lover. The others – and, trust me, none of them were “types,” neither Hollywood nor tabloid material — had affairs either because they wanted more “oomph” in their lives, but mostly because they were lonely. All of the women used exhausting methods — real cloak and dagger stuff — to carry on their affairs under the marital radar for the simple reason that they didn’t want to lose their husbands and break up their homes. This is old news: Women are simply more discreet than men, less boastful, family-oriented, more mindful of consequences. Women are also not given a societal pass with a “wink-wink” or slap on the back: “Girls will be girls” does not exist as “boys will be boys.” Hester Prynne is alive and well. The question is, why did the unfaithful wives put such effort into an affair and not the marriage? Their answer: The relationship with the lover was more like a drug-induced high, and they still hoped for the fairytale with their husbands.
But speculation about third parties and captured kisses from the Gore’s past aside, changing the context of any relationship after 40 years is painful – particularly a marriage that started as a romance at the tender age of 19. .
I wonder how many times they tried to give it a go…Did they take vacations to resurrect their romance? Did they walk down the aisle at their children’s weddings and figure, each time, that although their marriage was clearly not satisfying, this was not “the right time” to split? With the birth of each grandchild, did they ask, “How can we do this now?” How did they know when it was finally the right moment to unequivocally state that “sticking it out” wasn’t what either wanted…that maybe they have a chance at what they feel is true (and new) happiness — with someone else or on their own. Perhaps they both pondered, “Is it better to be lonely in a marriage or alone?”
We know that marriages have a turning point when the nest empties. The marriage can choose three directions: complacency, new-found relationship, dissolution. Those of us hovering around the 30-year mark (like myself) are stunned that this vibrant couple (and low-profile couple when it comes to scandal) called it off after 40 years Now, if we heard that Bill and Hillary were divorcing, we might not be as surprised. Perhaps we’re equally as surprised that The Clinton’s are still together — many assuming they probably have a politically-fueled arrangement. Bottom line: We don’t know what fuels and nurtures anyone’s marriage unless we’re that proverbial fly on the bedroom wall. Sometimes we don’t even know what sustains our own.
Subjectively speaking, and knowing too many people in “bad” yet long marriages, I would think that the Gore’s decision took substantial courage and thought. In the end, regardless of who gets the farm, who gets the “big house,” and the real reasons behind their decision – after 40 years, it’s still a formidable life change – regardless of how amicable the split.
Mea culpa for any subjectivity: I hope they remain kind to one another so the past is not regrettable. I hope their 40 years together doesn’t end up in a tell-all. I hope they’re just moving on. For sure, this was not a decision the Gores made overnight.

Yesterday my husband called at five o’clock to say he was leaving the office. This is a man who never leaves the office at five o’clock. He leaves our apartment around 7:30 each morning and returns each night at (the earliest) seven-thirty. The joke is that he works a half day. Given what our younger years were like together, it’s become a short work day. He used to leave our suburban home before the sun came up even in summer, and make the trek back around 10 o’clock at night. In those younger years, the “babies” had been asleep for three hours by the time he came home, and we were both spent. I’d put dinner on the table, fold the laundry that accumulated into mountains each day, we’d talk (he’d eat and I’d “pick” since I’d had enough bread crusts and apples peels at that point), we’d fall asleep close to midnight, and begin the routine over again in the morning. If we were lucky, at least one of the babies (born within less than four years of one another) would sleep through what was left of the night. That rarely happened.
I was delighted to hear that he was leaving at five – maybe he’d get to the gym and we could actually spend some time together in daylight. Just recently, I was thinking that in a past life we must have been bats. He said he was heading to the sale at Golfsmith to buy golf shoes since the ones he wears have not only seen better days but hurt his feet. I went to pilates at 6:30, and an hour later flung open the door to what I thought would be a note on the buffet saying “@ the gym. C U Later. LY” in our usual shorthand, but the apartment was dark. Clearly, he hadn’t been home. Despite the daily news flashes that every male politician, political contender, actor, preacher, celebrity husband, and regular Joe has either denied or confessed an affair, I was nearly convinced that something happened to him. I called his cell phone. No answer. I figured that, once again, he had it on vibrate and, as has become typical lately, assumed it was the paresthesia in his hip rendering that tingling pain down his leg that he often confuses with his cell phone’s vibration. So, for the next 20 minutes I sat, sweaty and breathless (from both the pilates class and anxiety). He finally called. Golfsmith was busier than he’d expected, the lines were long, and once he got to the register, the shoes he bought were the only ones not on sale, but he bought them anyway.
“I’ll be home in two minutes,” he said. “I just got off the subway.”
I took a shower, put the pork roast in the oven to re-heat (I’d made dinner early that morning when he left at seven-thirty), and set the table. Now, I was beginning to get not only anxious but angry – it does not take 20 minutes to walk home from the subway stop. Unable to decide whether I would feel better once he showed up or want to clobber him for making me worry, I called his cell. He was in the lobby, talking on his cell with a friend who’d called from Georgia. A sigh of relief from me. You see, where we live downtown in New York City, the streets are cobblestone and narrow, and cyclists delivering take-out whiz down the streets against the direction of the traffic. We’ve had a few close calls.
“I thought you got hit by a bike,” I said.
He laughed. “I’ll be right there.”
I heard his key turn in the door yet another 20 minutes later.
“You know,” I said without a hello, “the reason they’re called ‘mobile’ phones is because you can walk with them. You don’t have to stand still when you get a call. You can actually move. You didn’t have to sit in the lobby. Get it? Mobile.”
He shrugged and laughed again. “Pour us some wine,” he said.
As I poured the wine and set us up in the living room where we have our nightly pre-dinner catch-up-on-the-day talk, I wondered if this is what happens when one reaches a certain age: Am I now beginning a new phase of neurosis? The “kids” are out of sight and out of mind in terms of when they will be home, where they are, and (to some extent) why they aren’t answering their cell phones.
Am I now going to worry that my middle-aged husband has either keeled over on the subway, tripped in a pothole, or been hit by a cyclist? And why wouldn’t I, instead, worry that he is at some rowdy bar with a chippie half my age right out of Carrie Underwood’s song who’s caressing his wedding band as though it’s a bear trap? My husband is strong, smart and handsome and only in his mid-fifties. If single, he would still be a “catch.”
Digging into my history, I decided that my newest neurosis is because life is calm and seems to have settled into a nearly audible “ahhh.” This is not to say that we are without bumps in the road, but we seem to better accept one another’s flaws as well as our own. Humor, passion, intellect, and a best friendship has exorcised old demons and thrown out the gorillas in the room : A confession unto itself that makes me want to knock on wood, spit through my fingers, spout Yiddish expression like Alevei (It should happen to you), say a Hail Mary, carry a rabbit’s foot, four-leaf clover, look for shiny heads-up pennies on the ground, and generally genuflect. In other words, cover my bases because, for whatever reason, since childhood my comfort zone lies in the realm of ‘if things are good, then something is bound to screw them up.”
I have unsuccessfully kept my propensity for worry under wraps with my kids. As teens, they teased me relentlessly, “Hey, Mom, I know. I’ll be careful. I could poke my eye out with this slice of pizza.”
Maybe it’s genetics – or just imprinting. My mother was an inveterate worrier. To the point where if I was ten minutes past curfew, I would find her in the lobby of our apartment building in her robe and slippers, pale and twisting her hands (and pre-empting the goodnight kiss from my date), and then wagging her index finger at me as she said , “I’ll never forget this.” What she wouldn’t forget was that I’d made her worry that something happened to me, although by morning, she had forgotten except for a myriad “tsks” at breakfast and a bit of the cold shoulder. So, yes, I spent many nights (and days) worrying about my children’s whereabouts, too. Once, before the kids had cell phones, I had the manager page my 16-year-old son David (who was hours late for dinner) at a pool hall in White Plains, NY. Don’t ask me how I knew he was there. I just did. David has never forgotten it. He reminds me – although with less frequency lately, but still reminds me. When David was two, my husband took him out on the golf course at dusk to putt some balls with his little toy clubs, and I made him wear a helmet. What if an errant ball hit his sweet little head? My husband said it was lunacy. I still maintain that it made perfect sense.
Maybe this anxiety also emanates from the fact that when I was young, I was a daredevil. I roller skated wildly through the streets of Manhattan, rode horseback with my equestrian friends (having never ridden a horse), skied (having never been on the slopes), water skied (with no prior experience save a lesson here and there), and generally did a lot of physical activities that required a knowledge that I didn’t have – simply assuming I would “catch on” by watching others. On our honeymoon, though never a golfer, I even teed off at Pebble Beach (and by the way, I hit a 220 yard tee shot straight down the fairway, and flipped the club to the caddie like an arrogant pro. The rest of the round took about six hours and had my score been for bowling, it would have been terrific). I had scraped knees and bruises until I was about 30 and pregnant.
But again, is it nature, nurture or both? I still blame my mother for her over-the-top worrying about everything when it came to those she loved. Although, when it came to my father’s whereabouts, she was typically suspicious rather than concerned about his well-being.
This morning I was sleeping when my husband left the apartment. Typically, I am either at my desk or cleaning the bathroom while he’s still shaving. I murmured, “Do you have your cell phone? Your keys? Your wallet? Your briefcase?”
“Yes,” he said. “And my ass and my elbow.”
He kissed my forehead and told our dog Walter to take care of Mom today since she’s gone crazy.
So, is this the resurgence of romance in my marriage or a middle-aged version of love in marriage? I’m not sure. Maybe both. Maybe genetics. Maybe history. Maybe I should go sky-diving or bungee jumping (never done those before!) and see if I can resurrect that old devil-may-care from my youth.

There is a restaurant that sits on the shore of New York City’s East River. As a matter of fact, it sits so close that one feels as though one is nearly floating in the river herself. Yesterday, Mother’s Day, was so windy that the river’s currents flowed wildly and visibly. It was surprisingly cold for May, and so we sat indoors – four seats right next to the clear pane glass window. Despite the cold, you could see for miles.
My daughter was at home in Massachusetts and my oldest son was flying home from a bachelor party in Las Vegas. It was my husband, myself, my youngest son and one of his closest friends whose Mom lives in California.
The restaurant is not where we go with frequency. It’s pricey. One of those places we reserve for special occasions. And every time we go, we wish we would go more often. Anyway, between the appetizer and the entree I went upstairs to the rest room – one of the few rest rooms in New York City where I don’t go with trepidation. I left my purse at the table. I didn’t remember that the rest room was “attended.” The woman attendant was shining the sinks as I walked in the door. There were sprays of flowers on the shelf above the sinks, an array of lotions, potions and hard candies – and the requisite porcelain dish filled with dollar bills. I washed my hands and the woman handed me a cloth towel.
I left my purse at the table, I explained, glancing at the porcelain dish. I’ll come back.
She probably thinks I’m just saying that, I thought.
She told me that it was “OK,” patted my arm, and wished me Happy Mother’s Day. I thanked her and asked if she was a mother, too.
Not really, she said. But I raised my sister’s eleven children.
That makes you a mother, I said. So, Happy Mother’s Day, too.
And then I wondered what it was like for this woman who was probably somewhere in her seventies, or maybe not even quite seventy, to spend her afternoons and evenings catering to women like me who were fortunate enough to have dinners there. Women like me who drop dollar bills in a porcelain dish with a nod and murmured thanks. Women like me who don’t know what her life was like raising those children of her sister’s, and who don’t ask the many questions laden with answers that are the story of the woman’s life.
I had to get back to the table. The words “limousine liberal” haunted me as I walked back down the stairs.
The restaurant started to empty after we finished our entrees. It was time for me to go back upstairs as promised. No purse again, but two five dollar bills in my hand.
I walked in the door to the rest room just in time. The woman was packing up her belongings – this time leaning on a footed three-pronged cane; her cardigan that had seen better days, hung over her shoulders.
I told you that I would be back, I said, pressing the bills into her hand.
And then I asked her about those eleven children. They were her sister’s (as she said before), and her sister had them one after the other, and then her sister died young. Two of the children died when they were in their 30’s. The oldest one is now 60.
So, this is your older sister, I said.
No, this was my younger sister, she said, shaking her head.
Quick calculations told me that her sister must have been a teenager when she started having all those babies. More calculations told me that the woman was probably not more than a teenager herself when she started to take them on as her own. And then the woman talked on, telling me of the ones who are successful, the “grand babies” she has now.
Once, a long time ago, an older journalist named John Hanna mentored me. One of the greatest lessons I took away from him was that the best stories are big ones about little people.
I’m Stephanie, I introduced myself. What’s your name?
I’m Mae, she said.
And in that moment as we told our names, Mae took my hand in hers and just looked at me. And within a moment she pulled me into a tight embrace and planted a kiss on my cheek, and then she just hugged me into her and squeezed me hard in a way that I imagine she had squeezed those eleven children at one time or another.
I was going to take the subway home, she said, tucking the two fives into her skirt pocket. But now I am going to take a cab.
She said she was there on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays and had been for many years.
Come back and see me, she said.
I will.
My mother used to say that “any cat can have kittens” when it came to motherhood. So true. Being a mother isn’t about giving birth – as proven by Mae. I was missing my mother yesterday – no more than I do every day, but her absence was driven home even more by all the cards I couldn’t buy for her again for the second year in a row since she died.
There was I who was so grateful for my children who are simply my favorite people on earth (and not because they’re “mine”). There was I, feeling such a kaleidoscope of emotions with Mae as we stood in that rest room. Two people from such different worlds with a common denominator of womanhood and motherhood. And, if I were to be perfectly honest, that maternal embrace of hers meant the world to me when I needed one so badly. Next time I see Mae, I want to hear more about her life. Mae has become my special occasion for going back there – even if all my husband and I do is have a glass of wine at the bar.

I am not certain if I noticed the near perfection of the cloudless turquoise sky before
or after the towers fell on September 11. I can’t recall whether or not I awakened that morning and thought it was a beautiful day. I did question, after turning on the news, how something so horrific could happen on such a glorious morning.
It is much the same feeling I have about the day that my mother died last April 17. My
friend Ellen and I were supposed to meet that morning – a planned visit to my mother. But Ellen canceled at the last minute. I was preparing to visit my mother alone, and oddly eager to get there. Just as I was pulling a shirt over my head, the phone rang with the call from the care giver telling me that my mother’s heart had stopped. Too shaky to drive, my oldest son drove me uptown. I chided him for driving too fast – saying that at this point there was no urgency. And I remember the beauty of the day juxtaposed to the loss. I can’t remember whether or not I woke up thinking what a gorgeous day it was: sunny, blue-skied, cloudless, and a perfect temperature. All I know now is that both days in that September and last April were filled with different kinds of loss, and the turquoise skies remain in my mind.
It is odd to think back both one year and nine years later and know that a specific day’s weather is so embedded in my memory.
I can tell you that one year ago after my mother died, the weather changed abruptly: April fooled us and became wintry cold, windy, and rain poured down in buckets. I do not recall the weather after September 11. I am certain that others remember it well.
About two weeks ago, I bought a scented wooden-wicked candle. It is similar to the candle I bought the day my mother died and burned until the wick was gone and the glass holder held just a trace of wax. But last year, I bought another candle and then another, and subsequently burned a candle every day for a month. I have not yet decided if I will do the same this year, or simply let this one candle burn until it is finished. I have a cold, and so I cannot smell its scent, but my daughter and her fiance who were here this weekend tell me that the aroma is sweet.
On Saturday morning, the one year anniversary of my mother’s death, at roughly 11 a.m. which was the hour she died, I sat still at my desk, looking at nothing, simply remembering a lifetime condensed. I felt disembodied, light-headed, and missed my mother in those moments more than I have missed her in the last year. It was a pain that ran so deep I couldn’t even try to explain it to anyone. I needed to keep it wrapped up tight, afraid of what might happen if I let go and allowed the tears. In fact, it was an exercise in that “self-control” that my mother preached to me from the time I was a child to an adult. Never be self-indulgent, she told me over and over again – words that brought me through many events in my life when I felt I could have easily crumbled and yet I remained whole.
My daughter, Ellie, has been with me on two most significant events in my life when loss hit me hard. The first one was a dreary November day in 2004 when my husband and I were separated, and I took two of our five dogs to be put down. The vet spread several worn floral quilts on the floor of the stainless steel examination room, and I sat on them, cradling the dogs on my lap as he administered an injection that put them to sleep. Once they were breathing peacefully, he gave the injection that would keep them sleeping “forever.” I remember his tender words about “sleeping forever.” I had spent the last year carrying Lucy and Fred to their “spots” outside where they relieved themselves, and cleaning and bathing them after those all-too-frequent times when I miscalculated their needs and their incontinence left them sitting, although obliviously, in a mess. They were blind, deaf, and well, really, just wasting away. But still…they nuzzled my legs when I walked by – something the vet chalked up to instinct – that part was hard for me to capitulate when it came to quality of life issues for them. Once they were gone in my arms, I cried – sobbing so uncontrollably that the vet offered to drive me home. A combination of missing Lucy and Fred and wondering who was I to play God? I declined the vet’s offer – then, too, recalling my mother’s advice not to be self-indulgent. But at the end of that day, as my youngest son sat with me in the family room in our old house, my daughter walked in the door. She was in college then, and she and her brother had planned her surprise visit to me.
So, this past weekend, Ellie and her fiancé Larry were with me as well. For Sunday lunch, I made the pasta my mother used to make for our Sunday lunches at her country house. My youngest son was there as well, and it was not until Ellie made a toast to “Mommy-Mommy” (the name my children called my mother – a play on the words “Mommy’s Mommy” coined by my oldest son when he was probably three) that I began to cry – tears interrupted by something that suddenly, and thankfully, made us all laugh. But the tears exposed my grief. Until that moment, I’d managed to keep my emotions under control throughout the weekend. Each time over the weekend when my husband reached for my hand, I pulled away: His tenderness, I feared, would only unleash my precarious emotions.
This weekend, we shopped for the dress I will wear to Ellie and Larry’s wedding. On one hand, I thought that shopping for that dress was sacrilege under the circumstances, but my husband said my mother would have been the first to say that I should get on with my life despite her absence.
“She probably would have wanted to go with you,” my husband said.
I laughed. “No, she would not have wanted to go with us,” I said. “She would have said that she didn’t understand why I was buying a dress when the wedding is not for six months.”
It felt good to remember my mother in a real way. After I chose the dress, I had this feeling that my mother would likely not have approved of it – a notion that made me shake my head and smile. I believe that it is essential to remember her with a good sense of reality – no fantasies. I loved her and love her without illusions. I loved her despite the fact that she was a mother who did not love shopping with me. And now I love her because of all ways I knew her and because of all the ways I have come to understand her.
My daughter looked beautiful this weekend. I could not stop gazing at her. Her skin suddenly glows, her jaw line is defined, and has lost the round look of a child. She is delicate and graceful. Her speech is thoughtful and measured. Her laughter fills a room. She has changed: There is a peacefulness about her. I wish my mother were here to see how she has blossomed.
The candle with the wooden wick burns slowly. Each time I pass it in the hallway, sitting beside the bouquet of white flowers, I stop, pause, think, focus on some image of my mother. I also picture the circles in my life – my husband, our children and those who are the loves of our childrens’ lives. I believe that image of a circle is the key to life going on. Living quietly with purpose. Cherishing family. Remembering not to forget one single moment and to be present in each one.
The sun shines so strong today that I had to pull down the blinds for the first time this year. I listen over and over again to My Heart and Soul by Michael Paulo – it haunts me in just the right kind of way. Nothing like the sweet wailing of a saxophone to feed a soul.

On Saturday night we went to a wedding reception in Tribeca, a once unlikely area of New York City to be considered residentially-chic. These days, it’s brimming with bistros and upscale restaurants. Venerable buildings hold loft-style apartments where new windows and modern lobbies are the only hint at opulence. It was a somewhat unusual wedding in that the bride and groom are both middle-aged, have been living together for quite a while and the “buzz” among the guests consisted of expressions that they “finally tied the knot” or “I don’t understand why they had to get married.” I understood neither sentiment: Marriage, at its essence for me, is simply a public announcement of devotion and love, so why either a sense of relief or puzzlement? Be happy for them. Period. A particularly profound statement, perhaps, in middle age.
The reception coincided with my father-in-law’s 84th birthday – he was also a guest at the wedding. It occurred to me that my father-in-law was two years younger than my husband is now when I first met him. In addition, it is now the beginning of April – the month that marks one year since my mother’s death. I thought about the fact that one year ago, on the eve of the “Tribeca” wedding, my mother had two weeks to live and no one knew. I wondered if I had known, what I might have done differently knowing she only had two weeks left. Probably nothing, since there was nothing to do. The only thing would have been to sit vigil – and strangely, I had been doing that anyway for five years in one form or another. Although as I sat vigil, there was often a part of me, mostly revealed in my dreams, that hoped she would rise from her wheelchair and suddenly be fine, poo-pooing the last years of her life and moving on. That, I suppose, is the beauty of dreaming.
It is odd how we can mark a single year in different ways. When we are married one year, we celebrate. Pull out the slice of freezer-burned cake we saved for the occasion, look through the wedding album, watch the video, recall our honeymoon (and consider taking another), deflect the questions from those who ask when we will start a family. We celebrate the day our baby turns “one” – a cake with a single candle, a pointed hat with sparkles, balloons…we watch the baby stumble like a drunkard as he takes his first step, encourage him to clap his hands, demonstrate that he knows where his parts are – give him the cues – “Where is your nose? Where are your ears?” As he points, we beam: He has grown older, he is becoming brilliant, a genius no less. His hair is growing, his chubby little feet fit into white leather shoes with laces. A year ago – perhaps we got our first job, graduated high school or college, had a first date which led to falling in love, bought our first home…and if memory serves me, there was never a feeling as those “first years” flew by, it wasn’t supposed to do anything but. As I look back on so many events, I don’t recall a sense that time was lost – or rather that time could go on despite the “event” of a year before. Not until now. This marker of one year to the month that my mother died is painful. I went through every day, every month, every moment not thinking that time was going by – and now, in retrospect, it is as though I see the pages blowing past one by one in the wind.
Last year, in this month of April, I spent two days writing out cards to thank people for their condolences. Printed cards stuffed into envelopes with my printed return address. On some, I wrote a special note, although mostly the cards had to speak for themselves. People needed an acknowledgment and expected little more than that…I wanted to show my family’s gratitude, but pretty much ran out of steam when it came to personal thank-you’s.
This past weekend, I sat in the same place as I did roughly a year ago when  my mother died – at the dining room table – surrounded by boxes of cards, lists of addresses, and sheets of stamps – “Save the Date” cards for my daughter’s wedding. Oh, there are a million adjectives that I could ascribe to the emotions I felt at first, none of which capture the feeling – perhaps because the feeling was not singular. Yes, a part of the feeling was laced with “poignancy and irony,” and yet it was also a testament to life going on, and a wonder at the progression. It was a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit, my own, and then that pesky bittersweet…I don’t like bittersweet. Give me one or the other but don’t bother me with both.
And so, the addressing of cards became sweet. I liked addressing the “save the date” cards – tried to keep my handwriting even, tried to center the names on the envelope. I thought about how some who have known my daughter since the day she was born will get the card, and I pictured their faces as they recall the baby girl and perhaps ask something aloud like “Where has the time gone?” At first, yes, it was an exercise in self-control as I pushed the tendency to wax “ironic” from my brain. Instead of a photograph of myself from last April with condolence cards, I pictured years before when my mother sat at her dining table addressing Christmas cards, complaining every so often about how she “hates the fucking holidays,” shaking out her cramped wrist, and asking aloud how this became her “job.” It made me smile.
After my mother died, I took the small wedding album she saved from Mark’s and my wedding. Just yesterday, I pulled it from the shelf. Within the  cardboard pages were bills from the hotel and florist, a hand-written guest list and then pages of “table lists” – names circled, crossed out, punctuated with question marks – clearly, my mother was arranging and re-arranging. The coral silk chiffon gown she wore to my wedding hangs in my closet – the fabric discolored and stiffened by time. Feeling more like stale bread than silk. She had her gown made for my wedding. I just ordered mine from bluefly.com – returnable in 60 days if it isn’t what I think it might be.
This is yet another April like no other.

The year before I graduated high school, Betty Friedan stormed The Oak Room, that male bastion of a bar at New York City’s Plaza Hotel. I’d walked past that mysterious room, inhaling the cigarette and cigar smoke that wafted through its doors when I went to dinner with my parents at Trader Vic’s (also in The Plaza).
At the time, I had no idea that Friedan was wearing what became her trademark sunglasses that day because her husband had given her yet another beating – something he did with regularity and typically on the heels of her being in the spotlight of the media. I knew nothing about domestic violence – the term hadn’t yet been coined. I knew nothing about “the problem that has no name” – the depression suffered by women at the hands of emotionally and physically abusive husbands. Besides, my protestation of the War in Vietnam pre-empted my interest in The Women’s Movement at 16 – a time in life when I felt that the world was mine to have despite what anyone – or any man — dictated.
It wasn’t until years later that I recognized my father’s chauvinism when he poo-pooed my desire to become a pediatrician. Despite his discouragement, I knew I would “grow up” and have a “job” – a notion that my mother both supported and ingrained in me when she took me to sign working papers at 14. My mother did not work although she often wished she did. I never paid much attention to her plaintive “your father won’t let me.” In those days, having a nonworking mother was de rigueur. I didn’t dig any deeper.
In addition, and in retrospect, attending an all girls school (“single sex” was also not a term used in those days and by the way, the only male in our school was the glee club teacher) made me feel that I never had to battle for anything: We “girls” were all on equal footing, healthily competitive both academically and athletically, and well, I simply didn’t feel any less deserving as a woman. At 16, when Betty was insisting upon service in The Oak Room, we hiked up our school uniforms after school — well above the “below the knee” regulation, smudged on some lip gloss, lit up our Tareytons and strutted our stuff. Whether it was the construction crew on the corner or the private school boys pouring out of their single sex hallowed halls as well, we would flip them off when they admired our tits and asses – and it was nothing but a game. We were entitled and brazen.
Until years later.
Come college at NYU “with boys,” Betty gave me a new perspective. The Feminine Mystique was my own required reading. Suddenly, there was a world out there where women needed to take a stand. I was no longer fair game for public commentary on my anatomy, nor would I entertain male professors willing to trade better grades for favors, nor would I tolerate a man holding the same job as I did on campus but getting more pay. Although hardly militant, I had new rules and expectations: Open a door for me, and I will usher you ahead of me with great aplomb…Pick up the dinner check and hey, no one buys my affections… I am more than capable of paying my own way and you will not have yours with me just because you bought me dinner…Walk on the street side of the sidewalk to protect me, and I will remind you that there are no more horses and buggies that might slosh muddy water on my mini skirt…Tell me that I have a maiden name and I will remind you that I am not chattel and never was a maiden.
At 19, I did a brief stint as a bar maid: I slapped a customer across the face when he grabbed my behind. My male boss told me that it comes with territory and fired me. And still, I never called myself a “feminist.” Somehow that label compromised my credibility. I mean, were there masculinists? “Equalist” would have better suited me.
So, what with all that history, and the way the world has changed in the last decades insofar as men being “politically correct” and eschewing chivalry lest they are rebuffed, I became upset when a man offered me his seat on the subway on Tuesday morning. He was a younger man – maybe about 45 and looked a great deal like the actor Ed Harris.
“Please, sit down,” he said.
“No, that’s OK,” I declined.
“Please. Sit,” he commanded (with such machismo I confess I nearly tingled or perhaps felt like a spaniel).
And it was then that I wondered whether this rather good-looking younger (stress younger) man gave me his seat because I was female and looked old. Sheer kindness did not enter my thought process. Maybe, I thought, just maybe he sees the book in my hand and notes the disappointment on my face when everyone else is aggressively pushing to grab seats, and I am left standing. Clearly, I wasn’t upset for the same reasons I would have been 40 years ago. This was not about gender.
If he stays on the train, I’ll feel humiliated. Whew. He gets off with his friend at the next stop.
That same afternoon, it was raining, and I took a cab home. I’d just paid the fare when a man, around 30 (a day of younger men, indeed), flung open the door as I was collecting my belongings and umbrella.
“I am so sorry,” he said. “I thought it was empty.”
“Not a problem,” I replied as I fumbled to ready the switch on my automatic umbrella.
“Here, let me help you out,” he said, reaching a hand forward.
Two shining knights within hours?
“I’m fine,” I said curtly, trying to exit the cab with agility and grace.
I felt like Ruth Buzzi on Laugh-In, ready to swat him with my pocketbook.
Once upstairs in our apartment, I examined my face in the magnifying mirror that hangs on our bathroom wall. Does chivalry begin again when a woman becomes of a “certain age” or is it simply making a comeback? Ten years ago, would I have welcomed this gallant behavior and assumed it was because I am attractive? Or is it just kindness among both men and women and no different than the times I’ve given up a subway seat to a younger or older woman (or man) with a book, a heavy package, or a child?
Perhaps it is that I am about to have a married daughter and people are now forewarning me about impending grandmotherhood that is rocking me with insecurity and making me feel like I’m wearing an AARP badge. Grandmotherhood? I’ve still not recovered from motherhood. Grandmothers wear Red Cross Shoes, beige pants suits, yellowed pearls, and smell like Pond’s – like my Grandma did. But then I recall my mother when well into her seventies and still the eternal coquette (although a grandmother) – never doubting the attention of a gallant man was anything other than male attention, but recoiling from me if I helped her to step off the curb.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she’d ask me.
“Nothing,” I’d stammer. “Being polite? Helping you?”
“Well, just you stop that. Right now. Cut it out.”
It still rings loud and clear in my ears – makes me smile and laugh, and finally understand that my good intentions insulted her: She navigated those curbs just fine in those great spike heels.
As for me, I’m on the fence about Knightly Subway Guy. I’m hoping he thought I was a fairly attractive bookworm who looked disappointed when all the seats were taken. I’m not believing that though. My self-esteem is shaky. In a nosedive. Ah me. To think that ten years ago – maybe even five – I might have thought that being given a seat by a handsome man on the A train was a pick-up line.