These Days by Stephanie

I’m having a problem juggling what I feel are strange collisions in a world where we have little privacy on the one hand and secrets on the other. And somehow, a lot of it boils down to trust. Can we now trust no one, and are we ourselves not to be trusted?
Remember the days when our social security cards were so sacred that we memorized the numbers, and then locked the little blue and white cards away? I recall my mother’s strong caution to never tell anyone that nine-digit number. She didn’t use that now ubiquitous word “identity,” nor did she give any specific reason. It was simply something hushed like sex, religion, politics, and illness: You didn’t discuss or let on. And so, I committed the number to memory and hid the card.
Now, we go into any chain store, seduced by a 20% off purchase price if we open an account. We succumb, filling out a form with our particulars, sometimes even asked out loud, “What’s your social?” and then we are approved (or declined) based upon data revealed by those nine magical digits that bring up everything except for how many times a day we floss.
We can visit websites called peoplesearch and intelius (or “google” someone  – an interesting new verb), put in a name, and within moments we can retrieve basic information about that individual, and then from $9.95 to $49.95, we are privy to more – names the person has used, names of their neighbors, relatives, ex-spouses, previous addresses, credit histories, criminal records, liens. Our phone numbers, our “socials,” our personal data is all fair game for free or a price. So much for social security.
People phone, and Caller ID eliminates the surprise. If our phone number is blocked, we often hear a recording, instructing us to unlock our number because the recipient won’t respond to “private callers.” What happened to the days when the phone rang, and there was that wonder and anticipation? I can recall my mother, busy cooking, phone ringing. “Now, who on earth can that be calling at dinner time?” she’d ask, placing the pot holder on the counter to run across the kitchen and answer the corded phone.
And then, there’s the irony, the totally antithetical counterpoint to invasion of privacy: Secrecy. PIN codes, passwords for email accounts, cell phones, and every account we set up online that greets us when we log on, “Welcome back, Stephanie!” with a parenthetical disclaimer, “If you’re not Stephanie, click here.” Would they really know? We’re advised to devise passwords with combinations of letters, numbers and symbols, with caution to case sensitivity, and the suggestion to periodically change our passwords thus protecting ourselves from hackers who get taller ladders as we build higher walls. One password- cracking website is called Jack the Ripper.
Scary stuff.
Our apartment building has hidden cameras; our streets here in NYC’s Financial District have more candid cameras than Alan Funt; a building log tracks the name of every visitor, every package, and every time we come and go with our dogs (the latter, something management states without explanation simply as SOP  – go figure). Clearly a lousy building for a dog owner who’s having an illicit affair.
E-Z Pass tracks our cars through tolls (tracking our whereabouts even if we choose to pay cash unless the device is placed in the protective cellophane bag in the glove box). Print outs of every cell phone call made and received are easily available. Try to find a working pay phone these days - they’re nearly extinct  along with anonymity. And then, of course, there’s Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace (a rather ironic name)…and the convenient but spooky GPS that not only tells you where to go, but can also tell someone else where you are…Need I go on?
So, what impact do passwords, logs, cameras, GPS, EZ-Pass, and data bases have on a marriage or any relationship where trust is one of the most essential elements? Why do couples have separate email accounts and cell phones with dedicated passwords unknown to one another? Are we hiding things, or is this simply that Brave New World? Is that Aldous Huxley saying, “I told you so.”
It was Ben, my 21-year-old son who listened yesterday as I tried to unravel exactly what was bothering me about the strange and blurry marriage of intrusion and privacy .
“People could always have secrets, Mom,”  he said, “Now there are just more ways to be secretive.”
And that was it. More ways. Do we really need or want the passwords to our spouse’s email accounts and cell phones? Do we really want to hear the messages or read emails from friends where innocent chatter could be misconstrued or taken out of context? Do we say, “I was reviewing your messages and invading your privacy and, wow, you never told me that you all went to Hooters after your golf game last July?” or  “I see you didn’t drive directly home from work last July 28th, and stopped at the driving range because the toll was on the EZ-Pass?” Are we not entitled to the private jokes, the occasional complaints to a girlfriend about our husbands left on voicemails or sent in emails? Long ago, did we not get letters marked personal, and write in locked diaries as girls?
My husband received a letter last week ( snail mail) from a patient’s daughter whom he hadn’t heard from in a decade, thanking him for his devotion to her father until his death, saying what a great doctor and friend he was during a rough time.
“What do you think of this?” he asked.
I read it, and looked up at him. “Whew,” I said. “Her husband left her. You should call her.”
He shook his head. “You’re crazy. You’ve been watching too many CSIs.”
Mark made the call, and then called me. After 40 years of marriage, her husband left her, and quite unceremoniously.
“How did you know?” he asked.
“It’s a taking-stock letter,” I said. “A reaching out. Starting over. Re-tracing her steps.”
So the question is, what with all the “too much information” out there, are we forgetting how to believe our gut and heart, and losing faith in both? Does electronic information really supercede instinct, a reliable source for thousands of years? Can all the googling in the world tell us what we really need or want to know? The problem is, I’m not sure. Ten years ago, all of this didn’t seem to bother me as much.
The bottom line is, in marriage and in any relationship, the password is trust.

My friend Helen is feeling a little on the heavy side. She’s been eating too much and skipping gym days. She just feels certain things are drooping and others are getting thicker. She’s the only one who sees it, which really is the only thing that matters.
The other night, Helen stood before her husband Sam, in the new bathing suit she bought for the Caribbean trip and asked that dangerous question, “Do I look fat?” Guess what Sam said? “Well, maybe you could lose a couple of pounds.”
Clearly, Helen is married to a madman.
Sam defensively reminded her of their pact for total honesty in their marriage. Helen said that wasn’t the kind of honesty she had in mind. That it had more to do with the sanctity of marriage and fidelity and matters of the heart. She explained, Sam should have said, “You sure don’t look fat to me, but if you feel that way, then take off a few pounds.”
That would have been a way better script.
There are certain situations where departure from honesty in marriage is warranted: How’s the coffee? Do you like this dress? Should I cut my hair? Do I look my age? Does this skirt look tight? Don’t those Victoria’s Secret models look air-brushed and lifeless with those fake boobs? And the situation when Mark took off nearly a week during the childrens Spring Break last week while I worked and did everything shy of tap dancing to entertain them.
My husband was in Chicago at yet another reunion. Last month it was camp. This time it was medical school. He has become quite the Indiana Jones lately in a quest for lost youth. The grail, this time, was an old college girlfriend, albeit married with three kids, but nonetheless his last stop on The Disorient Express.
He called from his hotel room, and as our conversation closed, he said, “Today I’m having lunch with Brian and Steve and Joe and Mmmmmm.

“Who was that last one?” I asked, knowing full well, but forcing him to say the name above a mumble.
“Marsha.”
“Ah. And when was the last time you saw her?”
“Eighteen years ago.”
“Well, have fun. Talk to you later.”
Did he really think that mumbling would make his meeting seem less exciting? Behavior like this is often exhibited by a three-year-old who knocks over the living room lamp. You run in to see what’s happened after hearing the crash, and there sits the child covering her eyes. She assumes she can’t see you, so you can’t see her or the broken lamp.
The days passed and the old Chicago friends went to lunch. My husband called around five o’clock as I was preparing dinner for the troops at home. I needed to shower and get to a six o’clock interview for the magazine, and of course, the sitter was late.
“How was your day?” I asked, phone crooked on my ear, frying pan sizzling burgers, checking the clock.
“Great! Fantastic. It was a great day!” he said with unmasked enthusiasm.
“And how was Marsha?” I asked boldly, tired of the mumbling charade.
“Awesome!She looked terrific. Hasn’t changed a bit.”
AWESOME? Did I marry a teenager? Ah, wrong answer. What the ambassador MEANT to say was, “She looks good. Of course, not as good as you.” Or even better, lie to me, “Well, she gained some weight, and I never noticed that wart on her nose, but otherwise, she looked terrific.”
Either of those answers would have been acceptable.
Then Mr. Wizard asked if I had felt a “melancholia” when I met with an old boyfriend a few months before. Melancholia? Who was this man?
“I don’t get you,”  I said, barely wanting to bite.
“You know, it was strange to sit there with Marsha and Joe. I mean, I was her boyfriend, and they’ve been married for 15 years now. My orientation was off. I kept forgetting she was married,” said Honest Abe.
“I see. And did you also forget that YOU were married?”
“No, not really,” he answered, my comment going right over his pointy little head. Or maybe the dunce cap was interfering with his hearing. “But you do know that she and I had a very intense relationship for four months.

Four months? I thought. I had no idea it was only a four-month stint. And “intense?” What was that a buzzword for? And the way he’d spoken about her, I thought the relationship had been four years. I wondered, would he describe our last 15 years together as “intense” in the same vein? I wasn’t sure whether to pity this man or hang up the phone. What with the frying pan in my hand, he was one lucky duck not to be standing in front of me.
“Listen, I’d love to wax philosophical, but I need to shower and wash my hair,” I said.
“Hey! But I’m enjoying this conversation,” said George Washington, cherry tree ax in hand.”I mean, isn’t it weird for you when we’re with Michael and his wife after all the years you were his girlfriend?”
“Do you mean, do I flash back on “intense”  times with him?” Emphasis on the buzzword de jour. “No, I’m pretty much over it, and as I said, I really need to wash my hair.”
I lied  – not about having to wash my hair, but about the flashbacks. Sure, I think back sometimes, but I don’t tell my husband. Same way that I always say no when he asks if I think he should start using Rogaine.
“Marsha and Joe are taking me to the airport tomorrow,” he said.  “And oh, they have a condo in Vermont that we can use any time.”
“Swell,” I said. “But you don’t ski and we both hate the cold.”
“We can use it in summer,” he said with a lot of gusto.
“How nice,” I said, while thinking, ‘when pigs fly.’
The evening passed, the interview was done, the kids were settled, and I have been awake since dawn…actually long before the birds started chirping. I have spent the past week with our children while meeting deadlines, shuttling one child to the driving range, others to Blockbuster, and buying various foods to keep everyone quiet and a bunch of ant traps since the crumbs are falling everywhere while Mark has been mired in nostalgia. I’m waiting for him to come home in a Nehru suit.
I might be more inclined to stay in Marsha and Joe’s condo if I knew she’d beefed up a little (though I’ve never met her). I did not come home from my evening with Michael and say, “His hair is a little thinner but he still looks fantastic.” I simply said his hair was thinning. I didn’t say he was in better shape and more pumped than he was in the 1970s. And for damn sure, I didn’t discuss past “intensities” nor the juxtaposition between college then and motherhood now.
The kids wanted to welcome Dad home with a roast chicken dinner (his favorite). I’d like to whack him with the drumstick.
The kids and I picked up Mark at the airport. I put on make-up and got dressed up.
“How are you?” he asked, leaning over to kiss me.
“OK,” I said. “It’s been a tough week. I’m exhausted.”
“Yeah, you look it,” he said.
Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
His roast chicken dinner never materialized. We all went out for dinner.
There’s honesty, and then there are those beautiful white lies my grandmother always told me about  – the ones that spare feelings when honesty isn’t always the best policy.

There are plants on the window sill of our New York City apartment:  two peace lilies, bamboo, aloe, and jade, bought about six months after we became Manhattanites again. Who knew I’d miss greenery? The porch in our old Victorian was planted with impatiens and geraniums in summer, mums in fall, and strung with white lights in winter. Maybe it’s since the kids have moved out that I need something to nurture and grow, or just all the urban concrete that makes me long for green. My mother had violets in hand-painted china cache pots lining a wooden bench in her dining room, along with wrought iron ladders of plants with thick leafy greens. Her poinsettias bloomed well after Christmas. She spent Sundays pruning and watering, taking a pride in the blooms that I never quite understood.

My plants tend to do better with benign neglect: if I care too much, they begin to wilt. I tend to over-water, and when I prune, it’s often with so much gusto that the stalks come up by the roots, and I inadvertently break off healthy stems.

I wonder: Is this my approach to life in general? Moving too quickly, over-nurturing, digging too deep? Even our doorman cautions me as I do my once-a-week erranding.

“Try not to over-do it today,” he says.

I have a tendency to come back with so many bags of groceries and supplies that I can barely carry them.

My husband and I are nearly polarized personalities, a condition that, for the most part, strikes a balance. A good thing in the long run otherwise we’d either sit around in silence, or spend the evenings trying to get words in edgewise. Whereas I dig, he smooths over. He’ll ask, “Don’t you get tired of probing?” I’ll respond,” How can you ignore this?” I feel he lets things go to the point of denial; he feels my tenacity is overwhelming. Notice: I am trying to be objective here. Let me add, neither of us are incorrect/correct.

In fairness, and in addition to our personalities, our days are different as well. Mine are spent alone with the computer as companion, conversations and human interaction mostly limited to that which comes out on paper. There are times I find myself talking to the dog. When the dog answers, then I’m in trouble. Mark’s days are spent interacting with patients and other physicians: constant dialogues, explanations, and yes probing  —  probing for results both good and bad. He has learned to be a master of brevity, an outgrowth of having to deliver conversations within time frames that give people what they need with succinctness and specificity. I over-think, and over-analyze, an outgrowth of creating scenarios in novels that often begin with the premise “what if” and take me on a ride into fiction where sometimes I nearly go into a trance. Come evening, he wants a hot meal, a glass of wine, and, well, silence. I want to spill my guts and every thought that had no verbal outlet, and I want a response. He lets me talk, good man that he is, but his eyes glaze over.

At the moment, we’re in Dallas, staying with our friend Nancy. I say “our” friend because although Nancy and I have something special, so do Nancy and Mark. She contends that Mark is one of the few men she’s attracted to, truly likes, and would even consider marrying. On her own for as long as I’ve known her (about a dozen years), she’s independent, beautiful, nurturing, brilliant, and worldly. In turn, Mark loves Nancy, evidenced by the two of them sitting side by side last night in her matching recliners, watching CNN’s talking heads on the flat screen. They agreed and disagreed as the pundits droned on. Interesting, I thought, when they disagree, it doesn’t become an issue as it does when Mark and I are on different sides of the fence. Not to mention that when he and I watch CNN, my banter annoys him…hers doesn’t. She even chided him for having too much wine. He said, “Well, I’m on vacation,” and took it on the cuff  – hardly the reaction he would have given me. And his opposing social/political opinions left her undaunted with a simple, “Really? I can’t believe you feel that way.” And then, “Oh, well, I guess I can understand your point.” Note to myself: she didn’t say she agreed with his point, but she did say she understood.

Assuming a fly-on-the-wall position was enlightening. So, what is it about being married that sometimes takes the same conversation, and turns it into an argument, a polemic, a criticism? The answer, says the fly: When you’re married, the expectations are different. And maybe they shouldn’t be. Here’s the thing, Mark and I are a pair, but not conjoined. Nancy and Mark are not married (to each other). The good news is that Mark’s and my arguments come through with the fury of a thunderstorm, and then that sweet calm after the storm gives a chance to breathe deep and there is renewal  asking another question from the fly: Don’t marriages sometimes need that fury?

So, after 27 years of marriage, how could Mark and I sit in matching recliners and manage the art of friendship and marriage? Like plants, you want to keep the bloom on the rose, so to speak, but with neither drowning nor benign neglect. Young love begins with passion and can get to the point of obsession. Mature love is supposed to be trusting and calmer. So, where does married love fall? Have Mark and I come to the point where married love is mature? Mature, for me, is a euphemism for that which has gotten to its peak and can’t go any farther. It’s beyond ripe yet just shy of rotten. Immature of me, perhaps, but somehow not concomitant with the romance I still want after all these years.

Last night, after being the fly for two hours, I had a headache.

“My head’s exploding,” I said, as we got into bed.

Then Mark fell asleep.

This morning Mark asked if my head was still exploding. I didn’t know what he was talking about.

“You had a headache, remember? Can’t you ever just say something like ‘my head hurts?’ “ he asked.

“But it was exploding,” I insisted.

“I’m a doctor. People don’t say their heads are exploding. You’re not in Scanners,” he said. “You’re not normal.”

Then he laughed, and put on his golf cap.

And then I thought, that’s it! I don’t want Normal.

I want that combination of passion, obsession, trust, calm and a little insanity to keep things edgy. And a few days with Nancy so she and Mark can sit in matching recliners and zone out to CNN, and then she and I can spend the day together listening to each other’s over-cranking brains while he’s on the golf course.

Nancy went to work for the day and Mark left for the golf course. I’m ensconced in her kitchen with my laptop and coffee.

“You’re going to be OK  today?” Mark asked before leaving.

I think it was a statement, really. For sure, he didn’t really want to know.

“Nancy’s dogs are here,” I said.

“I didn’t mean safety-wise. You’re alone. You have no car.”

“I know,” I said.

“So, you’ll talk to the dogs?”

I shrugged. “Maybe.”

He looked at me and shook his head more than quizzically.

Aha! I’m a mystery, I thought.

Perfect.

If you had to graph my marriage, you would probably need extra paper. Certainly, you would need an oversized sheet with extra squares to track the vicissitudes. This is perhaps what has kept things more than interesting for 20 years and regularly sends me into a maelstrom of emotions ranging from pure, unadulterated loathing to adoration. The notions of complacency, happy medium and an easy ho-hum are simply not in my marital lexicon.

I suppose if one were to analyze this imaginary graph, one would see that nearly 20 years ago, two people who were entirely different got married in the proverbial fever and had three babies close enough together that they could have been misconstrued as a litter. Then, you take this man who has a propensity for electric guitar, the Grateful Dead and the solitary pursuit of golf on a hazy summer morn, and throw him into a pile of Pampers, a house in the suburbs with an antique boiler, four misbehaved dogs and voila! You have succeeded in turning a really cute boyfriend into a downtrodden husband.

Take the woman as well: At one time, she was a senior editor at a publishing house with her own office and assistant. She wore suits and heels and owned several pairs of weekend blue jeans that she spent hours purchasing, making sure that each one was sufficiently poured on over what was a neat figure. Suddenly, she finds herself barefoot and pregnant for nearly four consecutive years, finds her new office is the basement laundry room, suffers the daily indignity of having strained green beans spat in her face and spends her days meeting everyone’s needs with a smile when once, long ago, someone brought coffee to her desk. Not to mention that she used to greet rocker boyfriend at the door in something scant, scented with Chanel, and now wears a rather voluminous get-up that smells faintly of sour milk.

That’ll send your graph into a plunge right then and there.

Call me self-indulgent, but the last several weeks were devoted to finishing my second novel. I had promised myself I’d be done before my birthday. A gift to myself, if you please. I did not predict that the roof would leak, the doorbell would short-circuit and the basement would be overrun with mouse droppings. Nor did I know my middle child would succeed in passing her road test (the only test I ever prayed she would fail) despite the fact that, by her own admission, she nearly put the motor vehicle tester through the windshield because she almost missed a stop sign. She was flying into rages because I would not lend her my car.

I remained stalwart as I pecked away at the keyboard, ignoring piles of laundry and bare cupboards. The doorbell could wait, the mice hadn’t come upstairs and the new driver was not ready for a solo run despite the DMV sanction.

But, it increasingly puzzled me why it seemed no one else was capable of running the washer/dryer or buying bread and milk. Why no one else interpreted dogs barking as an indication that they needed to go out. Why no one else was bothered by the broken doorbell. And, I confess, I felt guilty. Oh, I told myself how I was entitled to this brief period of self-indulgence even though my husband was borrowing my socks (I figured if he started borrowing other lingerie forms, I’d do a wash). I mean, it wasn’t like everyone wasn’t aware that Mom hadn’t washed her hair in days and the state of the household was in disarray.

Did no one wonder why I suddenly abandoned the five food groups at dinner and felt lo mein and Diet Coke (we were out of regular soda, too) were sufficient nightly fare? Could anyone else boil pasta? I was tired, unkempt, frazzled. I found myself fantasizing about the male protagonist in my novel.

“You know, we’re out of raisins,” my husband said as we shared a pizza Friday night at a local restaurant.

“You’re kidding, right?” I asked, disbelieving.

“Nope, we’ve been out of them for a few days now,” he said.

Now, you must understand that this man is a real healthy snacker. But he works in Manhattan. He’s surrounded by delis and supermarkets.

I was outraged.

I didn’t buy the raisins and it nearly killed me. It went against every nurturing bone in my body. I was haunted by Sun-Maid signs. I watched Mark furtively check the pantry all weekend long. I saw him substituting stale honey-roasted peanuts left over from Thanksgiving for the small morsels of dried fruit. And don’t think I didn’t give him the cold shoulder, either.

It wasn’t until Sunday night that Mark begged to know why I was barely speaking to him.

“You said we’re out of raisins,” I said, ready to crumble. “Is there no end to what you expect from me?”

And then, he did the unthinkable. He laughed. “That’s what this is all about?” he asked.

He explained that he relied on me for things like raisins. Told me that he was tired of wearing my socks. Said that I hadn’t told him once during the week that he looked good in his new suit or that I loved him. “I can’t compete with men you make up in your head, you know,” he said solemnly. “Shoot me. I love raisins.”

OK, so I bought him the raisins. Actually, I gift-wrapped them. Last night, he cooked dinner while I finished the book. He even folded towels. I guess, when all is said and done, he is (and forgive me for this one) my “raisin” d’etre.

Sinatra was right. When I was seventeen, it was a very good year. A plaid-skirted, blue-blazered, far more innocent person than I thought then. It was the year I couldn’t wait to grow up. I suppose most of us felt that way, and have felt that way for centuries.
It was the year when, according to my high school yearbook’s profile of my persona, Jack Kerouac was my “probable companion,”  to go wherever I want whenever I want was my “suppressed desire,” and I “would like to have lived” on the road.
My husband, for sure, is the antithesis of Kerouac, and as a romantic and compelling a figure as Jack remains, perhaps Jack wouldn’t have made a great companion. Interesting for sure, but the heavy drinking and borderline personality may have gotten in the way of bliss. As for going wherever I want whenever I want, and living on the road, the former became a pipedream when I got married and had kids, and now, staying at a motel is about as close as I want to get to living on the road.
The yearbook also listed things we “liked.” For me, it was “night time highways, earrings, sandals, bare feet, blue jeans, long hair, summer, early morning, beaches.” Well, there, some things never change. So, as I pulled out the yearbook, wanting to bask in nostalgia, I wondered how much do we all really change? Or is it that circumstances change, and we accommodate and adjust?
My husband and I were together a mere18 months before we married, and another mere 18 months before our first child was born. Mark didn’t know me for very long as anyone other than his wife and the mother of our three children who came along in less than four years. For sure, my children have only known me as Mommy, although during an 18-month period when my husband and I were apart, they saw glimmers of me as a woman. I tried to keep a stiff upper lip and mask both my anger and sorrow, but I was fairly transparent despite the cloak. I remained their mother to the extent that one of them was always home on the weekend rather than leaving me alone. And alone was sometimes what I wanted to try on for size  a la Mary Richards who tossed her hat in the air as a brave single woman in the 1970s. Even my oldest, who was in college and a seven-hour drive away, showed up one Friday night after discovering his brother and sister wouldn’t be there that weekend. For them, Mommy and me were one and the same person. And so, in that period when my husband took a hiatus, motherhood prevented me from hitting the road with someone like Kerouac, or testing the waters of solitude.
I question if I even know how to be free anymore, and worse, if I ever really did. Somehow, motherhood both quells and pre-empts that thirst. As for those who, for example, take a leave of absence in search of greener pastures or simply the luxury of searching their souls…are they truly free in their quest, or grappling with demons who taunt them about what they’ve left behind and what could lie ahead? Maybe freedom hinges on love: Once you have children and love them, or marry someone you love and make a promise…the definition of freedom somehow changes.
For sure, I would never forsake my husband or kids for total abandon. Even entertaining the concept makes me feel guilty. I can’t even bring myself to not answer a phone call from one of them. My cell phone is practically part of my anatomy– turning off the ringer during a yoga class feels nearly defiant. Letting the land line go to voicemail (a real conflict if it’s Mark or the kids), not answering their emails with immediacy, ignoring the house phone announcing a delivery, ordering-in rather than cooking, reading in the middle of the night while Mark is sleeping, singing along with my iPod, sitting alone on the building’s roof deck with a glass of wine at 6 o’clock, stealing time for a pedicure  – those are my pathetic stabs at freedom with the gremlin chiding me for being self-indulgent.
Freedom defined is the power to act or speak without externally imposed restraints. So, if a genie popped out of a bottle right now and said I could have a day of absolute, guilt-free and carefree abandon – what would I do? And mind you, this is the genie’s suggested wish…if asked to give my own, it would be something else entirely…the obvious one that every mother would wish, but won’t tell or it doesn’t come true.
So, upon genie’s orders: I would have my hair fall to my waist as it did when I was in college. This October weather would become July. I would have my old 1970 green Dodge Dart again, and head out to the beach at Montauk. I would sit (wearing a pair of worn blue jeans) on the sand in the early morning, the ocean washing over my bare feet, wondering if my dangling golden earrings were reflecting the sunrise, and I would think clearly, without multi-tasking and over-analyzing,  take my brain to the past, present, future, painful, fantastic, hopeful, and remorseful with no interruptions – electronic or otherwise. I would melt away every care, concern, and obligation. And then when night fell, I would drive the empty highway home with Cousin Brucie on AM radio playing every song I love.
So maybe I really haven’t changed all that much at all since I was 17. I suppose, as freedom’s definition states, it’s those externally imposed restraints that get in the way.
Of course, the telling part of the fantasy is that the genie gives me only a day…and at the end of the day, that night time highway takes me home. Not to Kerouac and not on the road. The truth is that desires are probably not as suppressed as they often feel…longing to be wherever I want whenever I want, for the most part, is here.

My husband and I lived in a four-flight walk up in Manhattan when we first got married. Actually, it was five flights, but an easier hike not counting the front stoop. There were no disadvantages to the climb – we had fewer groceries to carry back then, we ate out or brought in since there were only two of us to feed. Breakfast was coffee and a bagel from a deli, and lunch grabbed at work. The five flights gave us a sense of privacy as people were less likely to pop in when they faced stairs. It was equivalent to crossing a moat.
The focal point of the living room was a hideous foam-cushioned sofa whose upholstery was worn and slick. A plaid Castro convertible clearance item (beige, blue and gold) that clashed with the orange and black shag carpet purchased by my husband’s mother at a motel rummage sale when she furnished her bachelor son’s apartment. Even when Mark and I changed the shag carpet to innocuous beige pile, the sofa sat with far too much prominence…sore thumb style. Yet the sofa was where we sat each night, my new husband playing ballads for me on his acoustic guitar. It was where we sat and made our plans about having babies and traveling and envisioning how special our lives would be as we moved forward. We talked while we ate lo mein out of cardboard boxes and sipped beer from bottles. On those evenings, our world was just us, and a safe haven.
And then I got pregnant. Planned, but pregnant. We moved to the tenth floor of an elevator building, succumbing to pragmatism. It was my mother who suggested that lugging a stroller up five flights of stairs wouldn’t be easy. The movers huffed and puffed and swore with every box they carried down the stairs…mostly wedding presents that were still unused, our kitchen table and chairs, shelves, the bed and dressers. Then they looked at the plaid sofa and, in unison, said, “Impossible. We’re not carrying that down five flights of stairs. And it’s a piece of crap anyway.”
Gee, I mean, were they spies from House Beautiful or something?
Reluctantly and nostalgically, we left the sofa behind for the new tenant. We bought a beige sofa from a regular store at a regular price, a remote control television, and ditched the cozy double bed for a queen size with a fake brass headboard. It reminded me of a song my husband used to sing to me called Normal. “Why don’t you and I get normal? It don’t have to be that formal. We’ll just sit and watch TV like others do. We’ll eat meat and mashed potatoes, cut our hair so folks don’t hate us. Life is nuts enough just living here with you…” Who knew that would be so prescient? Suddenly, we were “grown ups.” And we were accessible. The elevator whisked up intruders  from old friends who just popped in, to new neighbors, and family. I was no longer coupled off with this man I’d fallen in love with, living in our secluded nest, and no longer felt a sense of privacy. Once the baby came, we were no longer a couple, but rather parents of the grandchild, and fair game regardless of the elevator or the former stairway to heaven. My husband’s family began calling in August to put in “dibs” for Thanksgiving. We hammered out decisions regarding Father’s and Mother’s Days, and every holiday in between. Suddenly, there were sides: his side and my side…and life was not a question of our side or us. Holiday trips to my husband’s family in New Jersey and mine in Connecticut with a carsick baby were tricky, the tension palpable as we drove in silence. My husband’s work hours were then longer, and I was a stay-at-home mom. Life changed. The acoustic guitar rarely left the case.
Sometimes I wonder …what if we had kept the sofa ? Would it have been some sort of tangible symbol of what we had before the invasion of family, obligations, mortgage payments (ultimately, we really threw in the proverbial towel and moved to the suburbs), life insurance, car payments….need I go on?
I think about the sofa a lot these days as we sit at the bar in our local Italian
restaurant on Saturday nights here in the suburbs, our three kids safe at home with our sitter the godsend. We come here once a week, drink some wine, have a bowl of pasta, and steal a few hours. I still think about the sofa as the holiday season approaches, and we’ll travel with dread and anticipation to the different “sides.”

Five flights: Really, life was a breeze. Sh-boom.

There were a lot of rules when I was growing up. I’m not exactly sure why or when they came into play. Most of them either started, or became evident, when I became a teen. I couldn’t come to the dinner table with bare feet, had a strict curfew that ran hours earlier than anyone else’s, and I wasn’t allowed to receive phone calls after 9:30 p.m. The latter was probably the most difficult given that there were no cell phones then, and I certainly didn’t have a dedicated line. When I was waiting for “that boy” to call and 9:30 rolled around with no ring, I felt just shy of Cinderella missing the ball altogether.These days, my mother doesn’t use the phone, nor does she react to the ringing. When I call, and bravely ask to speak with her, the care giver places the receiver to her ear. There is always silence on the other end of the line. I find myself struggling, nearly childlike, as I repeatedly ask, “Mommy, can you hear me?” a question typically met with either more deafening silence or a warbling “Hello,” and then dead air. My father seems to have forgotten the phone mandates from my childhood. He calls well after 9:30, clearly having little regard for time as his evening hours wile away with what I know is loneliness. In the early days of my mother’s illness, my phone ringing after 9:30 with the caller ID displaying my parents’ home phone (the same one since 1957, only now with numbers and no longer the Lehigh prefix from way back when) made my heart skip a beat. As I have come to grips with my father’s new rules, or rather no rules at all, my heart remains calm. I have the mixed blessing, though, of an over-cranking brain: Typically, I wait to hear his voicemail before calling back, wondering whether the call is one of an “emergency” nature. So far, it hasn’t been the kind of emergency requiring medical attention, but I question: What now defines an emergency? Is my father simply calling to talk (a departure in our relationship since once our conversations were historically limited to touching base weekly) or is this calling to “just talk” somewhat of an emergency now as well? It doesn’t occur to him that I am alone with my husband, that perhaps his old rules should apply to us in terms of privacy. But my father’s loss of companionship makes it so that I’m having a tough time as I wrap myself around the notion that on-going sadness requires an intervention concomitant with pneumonia needing oxygen.

Conversations with my mother were on a daily basis beginning at 8 a.m. when my kids were in school, our husbands at work, and we were able to steal moments before the day began full force. There were those who said our frequent contact teetered on the “unhealthy.” For me, again, it was a mixed blessing. As fraught as our relationship was, it was ours. We complained, laughed until our sides ached, battled, and dished. I still have that knee-jerk, going to dial her number and say, “Ma, you’ll never guess what just happened….”

It is somewhat of an emotional juggling act as I subject my husband to my absence as I converse with my father. My father’s dialogue often rambles and jumps topics from politics to finance to medicine (he’s a retired physician) to how are the kids, the dog, and the plaintive, yet transparent, refrain, “You know, I think Mom is getting better.” The even tone of my voice amazes me, the patience I muster, the pain I mask as he clings to a dream about my mother’s recovery that isn’t happening.

I straddle lines between being a realist and a great believer in silver linings. I suppose that if there is a silver lining here, it is that I have developed more patience and pathos. My middle child status has become nearly prophetic if not pedantic: I find myself in the position of anchor and keeper of the peace (not that different from motherhood, is it?) I also find my tolerance for inequity on the rise when it comes to the elderly, children, and the infirm. I am angered by those who don’t give up their seats on the subway, by the management in our apartment building who shoos away the homeless woman using the building’s decorative fountain as her bath, by those who scold children who are barely old enough to speak, but cry out for candy tempting them at the supermarket check-out. I stop myself from helping the morbidly obese woman who works in my neighborhood, her breath so labored that she stops to lean on trash cans and mailboxes as she lumbers up the slightly inclined sidewalk to her office. At the risk of sounding maudlin, the human condition now affects me far too viscerally as it hits so close to home.

I try to erase the view of my parents’  lives as an all-too-rapid time line as I recall their glory days and now. I try not to recall my mother when she was elegant and outspoken; when my father was so bold and demanding that his attitude often infuriated me. Sometimes, the snapshots in my head are too vivid. As a matter of fact, the literal snapshots of them taken at past “events” (looking truly like movie stars) that once adorned the shelves in my home have all been temporarily removed. The juxtaposition, a word that is too repetitive in my lexicon as I waffle between the past and the present, is too reminiscent. Although I have displayed a black and white photo of my mother at 18  — it is palatable because it was before she was “Mommy.”

I am just beginning to allow the memories — the good and the bad –  to enter my conscious despite the angst of recalling better days. I hope I have savored and kept enough of them. It’s inarguable that pain is part of the process of healing, and that memories keep those who are gone,  in whatever way they are absent,  from disappearing. Slowly, perhaps even unconsciously, I am accruing memories, ultimately adding up to the sum of a lifetime despite the denouement which dangles in limbo.

The challenge for those of us dealing with our elders in altered states lies with living our lives now. We have to be strong, if not truly mindful, that the state of our parents is not some sort of intangible crystal ball…that our futures don’t necessarily hold the same fate  – genetics and family history aside. And we have to embrace the present as well as the tomorrows eagerly anticipated by our children without feeling jaded or stopped in our tracks by, “Yeah, but, what if?”

When I dream of my mother, as I do often, she is always dancing and laughing, twirling like a Sufi and somewhat reckless. It comforts me.

 

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The other night I asked my children to please take out the trash. This is a task that no one likes to do after dark. The trash cans sit in a high wooden bin. The lid is nearly too heavy to lift. Despite the heft of the lid that provides protective covering, chipmunks dash around furtively, waiting for a scrap. But Ellie and Ben, the dynamic duo, dragged the over-stuffed plastic bag, arguing as they went outside, about who lifted the lid the last time.I heard the distinctive drop of the wood, and then there was a furor. The kids raced back inside, rummaging through my Tupperware, and then back outside again. What was all the commotion about, I wondered, as I followed them outside. Ah, simple: The fireflies are here again.

There is something about fireflies that hearkens summer more than anything else. More than Fourth of July, more than Memorial Day , and the first hot day that allows the kids to shed their sweaters and jackets as they wait for the school bus, or I tuck away my flannel nightgowns and bring out the summery ones.

I’m not quite certain what it is lately, but there is something in the summer air that makes me watch my children carefully. It is not a vigilance the way a mother protects them or warns them about “danger.” Rather it is a thoughtfulness, an attention to each moment where I feel the intensity of the ephemeral. It is as though I use my mind’s eye as a camera, clicking on a moment, capturing it for posterity, and filing it in a box that says “Remember When.”

Last night, as our oldest packed for his summer sojourn (he’s a junior counselor at a summer camp), he mentioned that come September, he’ll be an upperclassman.

“What do you mean?” I asked, truly puzzled.

“I’ll be a junior in high school,” David said, as he tossed his copy of Portnoy’s Complaint (required summer reading?) into his trunk.

How could he be a junior? I thought. It wasn’t but yesterday that we took him to fireworks on Fourth of July, and he, the toddler, covered his ears in terror.

What happened when I blinked?

Ellie is 14. Her bathroom is littered with sweet-smelling colognes, disposable razors, and flavored lip glosses. Ben is 12 and a very-important-half. He wrote a letter to a girl named Jessica who’s away at camp. He searches the mail box each day. Twice.

“Are you sure I haven’t gotten any mail?” he asks. He is a study in nonchalance.

My children are growing up with the velocity of a hurricane. The kind that blows relentlessly no matter how you batten down the hatches. It moves with unstoppable force, sending whatever isn’t fastened sailing down the streets. When it’s finally out to sea, you recall its force, and you see what’s left behind in its wake.

When the kids were little, really little, I was caught up in the storm. I remember one night when I lay all three down on the bed. David was four, Ellie two, and Ben was an infant who still could not roll over. It was that “witching hour” of five o’clock. They were hungry, tired and simply spent from a day of being babies. They wailed while I ran around trying to divide myself into three – trying to decide who to change first, feed first, bathe first. It was always an exercise in keeping afloat: days of comfort, teaching them to share, getting through birthday parties where there was more ice cream on the floor than in their tummies. I remember when they all at chicken pox at the same time, and I fashioned a ward in the guest room, boxes of oatmeal bath lining the shelves, and nights spent reading Berenstain Bears while cautioning them not scratch.

I worry that maybe I was too caught up in the vortex of those years – dealing so much with the practical that I didn’t savor the moments the way I should have. Was I too intent on simply getting through the days, trying to please all the people all the time?

These days, the kids need me in ways far less physical other than driving them to and fro. They scramble their own eggs, run their own showers, make their beds, arrange their dates, read to themselves. Tonight we took Ellie and Ben to Blockbuster, stopping for ice cream cones, and the CVS for a few essentials. Mark has his usual pile of paperwork and I am on deadline for this column. As the kids ate the cones outside the CVS, I watched them so intently that Mark read my mind.

“Summer should just be about the simple things, right?” he said, more than questioned. And I thought about ice cream melting so fast in the heat of a summer night. Too many metaphors.

There are fireworks exploding somewhere in the distance as I write. Ellie and Ben just ran outside to watch them from the porch. And now I hear them running back inside again and rummaging in cabinets.

“What’s going on?” I yell out.

“More fireflies,” Ben explains as he’s on the run.

I hope I always have this house. I picture a day when the kids are “all grown up,” and we can sit together on the porch with ice cream cones, remembering the summer nights when the world was lit with fireworks and fireflies.

I just want to make sure I remember.

Thirty years ago I was divorced. I was 24: the age my daughter is now. And I am now just shy of the age that my mother was then. My parents introduced me to a young man of whom they were enamored. Before I could say “I do,” we were married in the garden at my parents’ weekend home one year after my college graduation.He was six years my senior, an up-and-coming Miami trial lawyer who wore velvet blazers, creamy trousers and Nik Nik shirts. I wore blue jeans, boots, peasant blouses, and carried a ubiquitous guitar. To this day, I don’t know what he saw in me. It was evident he had a propensity for busty blondes with a lot of bravado. I only fit into the blond category. Pygmalion syndrome, perhaps? But he was good to me.

Life in Miami was a whirlwind: tennis, swimming, sailing, sunning, discotheques, travel, seaside restaurants, and Daiquiris. Swept away, I went from flower child to lawyer’s wife – although I worked for Newsweek at the time and freelanced. I always felt like a novelty among our social set. There was no glitz about me. On a recent visit to Miami, I noticed that a lot of women in my age group had Botox-frozen faces and breasts that didn’t move. Had I stayed, would that have been my future?

Packing the Hartmann luggage he gave me as a wedding present, we spent a weekend in NYC in 1977. The irony of the luggage didn’t occur to me until years later. He flew back on Sunday for a trial, and I ended up not using my Eastern Airlines No Frills return ticket on Monday. Instead, I called him, saying all too simply, “I don’t want to be married to you anymore.” Delivered as casually and colder than saying “No, thank you” when offered a passed hors d’oeuvre.

A far too bitter divorce ensued, although I rejected alimony, had no designs on our condo, and cared nothing about dividing up wedding presents. I just wanted out.

I took a studio apartment in Midtown Manhattan where my roommates were cockroaches, and although the landlord said the building was filled with “stewardesses,” they were mostly prostitutes. I bought a sleeper sofa, hutch, and a black and white TV with a coat hanger antenna. My job at a publishing company netted $98/week, so my one meal a day was a Bagel Nosh special: $1.69 for tuna on a bagel and an orange drink. I bicycled to work.

I was free.

About ten years ago, the man (I’ve never called him “my ex”) called and asked to meet at The Algonquin Hotel. I hadn’t seen him seen 1977. Once there, I nearly walked past him: his hair was white, and he looked not like the 28-year-old I’d married, but an elegant older man.

He chose a booth and ordered a bottle of red wine.

“Why did you leave me?” he asked matter-of-factly.

A girlfriend of mine thought the line came from a really bad “B” movie. Yet I explained that my departure was attributable to youth. I wasn’t ready to be married. In fact, during our marriage, I had covered the first televised murder trial. A sexy assignment with journalists from around the globe. Awaiting the verdict, a fellow reporter and I had dinner. He asked me back to his hotel, and although not happy in my marriage, I adamantly said no. Even at 24, I knew that infidelity was not a solution. That night at The Algonquin, though, was the first time it dawned on me that I had essentially run away, rather than facing up to someone to whom I’d made a vow. Until then, it was an episode that faded into the landscape. Until that night, it never occurred to me how my abrupt departure impacted his life. I was, despite my youth, his wife.

The ex (there it is) and I spoke over the years after that evening. Our conversations were enjoyable as we waxed philosophical. Last year, we met for lunch when I was in Florida. He drives an Aston Martin (which I thought was a Corvette). I drive a 2000 Acura with 120,000 miles on it. His apartment is spacious, minimalist, professionally decorated in neutral shades, gray stone, and glass. Mine is accented with primary colors and somewhat cluttered. He collects contemporary art; I prefer the realists. Since that lunch, it has become apparent that he no longer wants ties with me. At first, I thought perhaps it was painful to be my friend. Now, I believe there’s no place for me in his world, or perhaps a girlfriend who prefers, understandably, that he sever the connection.

It is inarguable since the Florida lunch, though, we wouldn’t have lasted.

I think my mother knew that then. Shortly after that Florida lunch, I was puzzled as to why she hadn’t insisted upon more sensitivity and grace from me in my exit; why she allowed me to be a runaway bride. Perhaps she wanted me “out” before we had children that bound us for eternity. Her generation viewed divorce as a drastic alternative. People stayed for the long haul: lousy and long marriages were better than ones dissolved.

Shortly after my divorce, my mother and I were at the theater and she ran into a woman from her “social circle.”

“She’s not married?” the woman asked, as though I wasn’t in earshot.

“She was. She’s divorced,” my mother said. It retrospect, she was defending me, with a strange pride.

I reflect upon my mother with a different eye these days: During that episode, she took a woman’s stance, not a mother’s. My parents have been married for 65 years. Not every one was a day at the beach. Maybe what I did at 24 was something she once thought about in her wildest dreams…simply entertained… despite the fact that she stayed for the long haul.

September 2006

Last month was our 25th wedding anniversary, an event that too many people called a milestone which made me think of Sisyphus pushing that rock uphill. There were also far too many unsolicited (although well-intentioned) remarks asking what is the “trick” for longevity in a marriage, as though it was something like removing an ink stain from white silk. There were those who exclaimed “good for you” as though we’d just limped over the finish line in a marathon. And then some people who thought they were pretty darn funny  – comparing marriage to prison, asking if we’d now get time off for good behavior. Last, but not least, were the well-wishers who told us how happy our 25th made them – something which truly baffled me. I tend to over-react, I suppose, but I feel that discussing marriage in terms of contests, prison, potions, and dutiful perseverance is just so unromantic, let alone no one’s business.
The well-wishers were not unlike the too many strangers on the receiving line at our wedding who wished us luck, issued warnings, and gave advice. Even back then, despite the fact that I had paraded around with a mock veil (usually a pillowcase) trailing behind me since I was about six, I wished we had eloped to an Elvis chapel in Las Vegas, worn our jeans, and hit the road for a few weeks in our Duster.
Friends of ours celebrated their son’s wedding to his pregnant bride a couple of months ago – a ceremony at our friends’ home with 50 people, family and friends of the bride and groom. It was perfect, my friend said, adding that she only hopes her daughters get married in the same way, not necessarily pregnant, she conceded, but without the “hoopla,” and the feeling that the wedding could just as easily be a fund raiser. My friend also confessed that she “hated” her wedding,  a surprise to me since I thought she was more conventional. It just wasn’t personal, she said. I can’t say I “hated” our wedding –it’s just that it wasn’t what either my husband or I wanted: Not the right venue or band, “must have” guests from both sets of parents, formality not unlike annual business functions where strangers act like friends for a moment and then vanish for another year.

It was the night after our wedding, before my husband and I left for our honeymoon in California, that I still hold dear: We slept all day in our tiny walk-up apartment, and then had a late-night dinner at a restaurant we typically couldn’t afford, but thanks to the wedding gifts (we returned an enormous number of bowls), we splurged. We were finally alone after too many months of planning all the pomp and circumstance against our wills.
We escaped to Arizona for our 25th. I had visions of Pueblo huts and miles of turquoise along a two-lane desert highway. Instead, the wide road from the airport was flat America to quote Thomas Friedman: a cookie cutter strip of mall shops and motels that could have been Anywhere, U.S.A. I was worried: Maybe we should have just stayed home, shut off the phones and computers, and stopped the mail. The scenery changed abruptly as the car turned into the resort where we sequestered ourselves for the next six days. A golden fountain spouted in front of the lavish entryway, men in dark suits and ties greeted us, and the desk clerk wished us Happy Anniversary as we gave our name for registration. More anxiety welled up in me: Was this just a little too high-brow? Was it too much like The Wedding at the tony New York City hotel chosen by my mother with little regard to what we wanted? Was the desk clerk the equivalent of the queue of strangers after our wedding? Apparently, when I made our dinner reservation at one of the resort’s four restaurants for our anniversary night, the savvy concierge took good notes when I asked which one would be appropriate for our 25th. I was a wreck, though, expecting the 300 people who had been at our wedding in 1981 to jump out and shout “Surprise!” Maybe we should have, as my husband had suggested, gone to Vegas. Maybe it would have been time for the Elvis chapel.
It took us about 36 hours to relax, unwind, and feel that we were away. On the night of our anniversary, we sat in a restaurant overlooking Tempe, Scottsdale, and Phoenix –  a string of lights across the mountains disguising the roads littered with mall shops. Fires in outdoor hearths burned outside on the patio. It was so much like that night after our wedding, but better: 25 years later we know ourselves and one another, and perhaps sometimes even know one another better than we know ourselves. We had talked about renewing our vows, having the kind of celebration we’d wanted 25 years ago, but wisely abandoned the idea: Arizona was just ours, and we were alone together.
Yesterday, I watched the remake of Father of the Bride. I got very choked up when when Steve Martin and Diane Keaton, parents of the bride, dance alone in their living room after the guests have all gone home, their home littered with post-wedding debris, tears in their eyes. I realized that I’ve misinterpreted my own feelings about weddings. It’s not weddings in general – it was the kind of wedding we didn’t have. My husband proposed to me at a downtown Manhattan club while we danced to a band called Your Daughter’s Wedding. Of course, we never recognize prescience as it’s happening. Perhaps, as is my way with so many things when it comes to our children, our daughter’s wedding will be just the kind she always dreamed of having.