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.
Archive for March, 2010
Today is St. Patrick’s Day and on every St. Patrick’s Day for as long as I can remember, my husband has worn a green tie. Typically, he wears a rather bold Kelly green tie, but this morning he wore one more of the pastel variety – and I noticed.
“That’s not the tie you usually wear,” I said.
“But it’s still green,” he answered. And then he placed his pen in his pocket, tidied up his briefcase and went to see the patient admitted to the emergency room (they called at 5:30 a.m. to alert my husband that he had arrived) whose St. Patrick’s Day will be spent quite differently than the poor guy anticipated.
Last weekend, I went away. At 9 a.m. on Saturday morning, I was boarding a train at Penn Station for Providence, R.I. It was pouring rain, a veritable Noreaster which, if not for temperatures in the 40’s, would have dumped seven feet of snow on the eastern seaboard according to the reports from The Weather Channel. Instead, it was merely a wet deluge albeit of Biblical proportions. At the last minute, as I boarded the train, I upgraded to Business Class – a good move since Coach was filled to the brim and Business Class was nearly empty. I took the sandwich I’d made at home, bought a coffee at the snack bar, leaned back in the wide leather seat and finished the novel I’d been trying to read for nearly two weeks. I did two crossword puzzles with an ease that assured my brain was still functioning. And I thought. Thought deeply and logically as the scenery morphed from urban to suburban and finally to coastal with small houses dotting the landscape on what was clearly the “other side of tracks.” I thought about what it might be like living some place other than New York City where life might be less complicated, or perhaps complicated by different perplexities and at a slower pace. Then again, perhaps we take our complications with us wherever we go. But there is something about the coast, the Atlantic, that seems to untangle the knots with the roll of each tide.
I have always had a penchant for train travel – feeling it is a nearly magical transport from one place to another without the tensions of traffic or the security check points at airports. I was barely ready to get off the train when it pulled into Providence…the three and a half hours not nearly enough time to wallow in that calm, think clearly, write my thoughts on paper, circle words in the novel – Canopy, Puddle, Soffit, Recidivist – just a few words that struck me for whatever reason that they did as the train chugged along through the rain.
Providence was lovely. A visit with an old and dear friend, getting to know her husband and baby. Then a drive with my daughter who handily navigated the wet and foggy highway on Sunday (she’d met me in Providence) back to her home in Massachusetts. Her fiancé had cleaned their house from top to bottom so that it smelled like lemons, placed flowers and spicy candles in every room that gleamed with newly painted walls and floors. We went to the food co-op where they sell from local farms and the aroma from the produce is so fragrant it makes one heady. My heart is in so many places what with my sons in Manhattan and my daughter in “the valley.” I must admit, I often wish we all lived in “the valley,” a wise choice by my daughter: life feels simpler and purer there.
I took my daughter and fiancé to dinner before going to the hotel where I spent the night and where they will be married next winter – wanting my daughter and fiancé to have their privacy and needing my own as well. On Monday morning, I met with the wedding planner, took my daughter to lunch and then boarded a bus for a 20-minute ride to the train that would take me home. I started yet another book, did more crossword puzzles, and wished that my husband and my dog could ride the rails with me forever with periodic and unencumbered stops to visit “the kids.”
The train changed its route on the way home – I suppose because of the rain. I was slightly lost as I emerged from the tunnel into a part of Penn Station that was unfamiliar. A stench of humanity, soot and diesel assaulted my senses. It felt as though I’d walked miles before finding the exit where my husband waited for me with our car. The area of New York City surrounding Penn Station is true culture shock when you return from places that smell even faintly of sea air or are nestled in a valley where mountains cradle a wooden town.
My husband took me to dinner at The Red Cat, a cozy restaurant dimly-lit by oversized lanterns, surprisingly bustling for a rainy Monday night. On Tenth Avenue, the restaurant is in an area of town that once upon a time was hardly a neighborhood – let alone a place where one would even dare to venture at night. As New York City continues its gentrification, it uses up every space available – a glaring juxtaposition to the scenery from my weekend away where, although hardly Montana, the sky and space appeared so open.
Friends of ours are in Europe right now. They have stopped in Lisbon, Bologna, Venice and are now in Vienna. They visited St. Stefan Cathedral and tonight (as I am here boiling corned beef ) they will hear Arabella at the Opera House. I chuckled at myself – to think that my train rides over the weekend gave me a sense of freedom and spiritual tourism.
Back to my husband’s green tie: In some ways, it’s right up there with riding the rails. It is the kind of security one feels when you finish one another’s sentences or say the same thing at the same. A part of me thinks that my husband and I should go out tonight for a green beer simply because we can – because the kids are grown and we have that freedom. Instead, I suppose I’d rather stay at home and eat the traditional meal I’ve prepared – knowing that he will pat his – and at this juncture, my husband asks me to add the adjective – “rock hard” stomach after dinner as something sounding like Erin Go Bragh rumbles from his throat. That kind of predictability makes for a comforting alchemy in a 29-year-old marriage especially when you throw in a place like The Red Cat and romance on a rainy Monday night.
I planned the whole day yesterday around a class called Bosu Body. Figured I would try something new and different. I’ve used a Bosu before. It’s like a half ball on a platform. A little tricky and challenging, it forces you to balance. Not as easy as it looks to even simply stand on it. Anyway, I cleaned the apartment, wrote, coached, went to the grocer, cooked dinner, walked our dog Walter – and at 6 p.m., tossed my new Vibram Five Fingers shoes and a bottle of water into my gym bag and was off.
Five Fingers look like canvas socks – each toe having its own special place on a firm molded sole. My son David says they make me look like “some sort of sea creature” – an apt description. But here’s the thing – they force you to hold in your core, demand balance, and allow you the freedom to perform athletically as though you are barefoot. I love them.
As I signed in for class, the woman at the desk handed me a plastic card on a coiled rubber chain.
“The class fills up quickly,” she said. “Hang on to this because it secures your spot.”
The class did fill quickly – with barely enough room for all of us to place our mats, body bars, weights, and the Bosu. I’ve become accustomed to being the oldest one in the studio. Based upon my calculation, I bring the average age of the class to roughly 25. But I just look straight ahead, and figure that no one is paying attention to me when I stop to stretch out my joints or assume the Child’s Pose for my aching back. When the instructor asks if anyone has any injuries they’re working with, I no longer bother to respond. It would be like giving a lecture: Yeah, well, my right Achilles tendon acts up, I have arthritis in my right hip with a touch of sciatica, my knees sometimes pop, my neck is a bother and I get numbness in my left hand sometimes, both wrists hurt… Enough. My body, depending on the barometer and how punitive I’ve been in terms of trying new fitness classes (and taking old ones), is frequently in a free-flowing state of pain. I just don’t bounce the way I used to. The best thing I can do is to keep moving. In the morning, I feel like The Tin Man.
I took my place in the rear of the classroom. Usually, I stand up front because without my distance glasses (which I have worn since I was ten), I can’t see the instructor. But last night, I figured that I would just follow those in front of me, and since the instructor wore a miked-up headset, I could hear her.
The class began with familiarizing ourselves with the Bosu since at least ten hands raised when asked if anyone was new to the practice. Up and down on the Bosu I went – feeling an ease after several tries. Got it, I thought. I can still do this. Then we began with dance stretches. Got those, too. First position, second position, plie, isolate the rib cage, move side to side, flat back, curved back, forward lunge. I was loving it. The instructor (in her twenties with a ponytail) wove her way through the studio, stopped at my “station” and stared at me.
“This is right, right?” I asked as I mounted and dismounted the Bosu.
“You have to wear sneakers in my class,” she said.
“But these are better than sneakers,” I said, breathlessly. “People actually run outdoors in these. Trainers even wear them.”
She cupped her hand over her mike. “You need to leave. Now.”
“You’re joking,” I said, stopping the exercise and feeling my heart rate. “OK, what if I don’t use the Bosu and just march in place?”
I figured that compromise can’t hurt.
“Leave now,” she said with a growl. “People wear only sneakers in my class. Go!”
The last time I was thrown out of a class, I was around nine. A shy, scrawny and obedient kid, I was reading All-of-a-Kind Family behind an arithmetic workbook and suddenly (I don’t know what came over me) broke out into a rendition of Duke of Earl. The teacher made me stand outside in the cinder block corridor facing the wall. I remember the feeling that day: the heat that came over my face, the deep red blush I felt rise from my neck to my forehead, the uncomfortable stares of the other children who were trying not to laugh, and the tears that burned in my eyes. The feeling last night was no different as I grabbed my gym bag, pocketbook, coat – and fumbled with my boots – then slipped out of the room in my webbed feet. I saw headlines: Middle-Aged Woman Thrown Out of Classroom! I pictured an accompanying photograph of me in my leggings and sea creature shoes standing in a classroom of “girls” wearing T-shirts that said things like “Orientation ‘06” (there were a few of those around me last night).
The gym manager listened to my tale with sympathy. Not only would she correct the instructor as to my more than acceptable footwear, but she gave me a free personal training session.
My husband was home when I returned from Rejection.
“What happened?” he asked. “Is your hip bothering you?”
The ambassador should have left it at simply “What happened.” Now, I felt old, old, old. Right. I’m home early because I tripped over my “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” alert chain.
“My shoes,” I explained, pulling the Five Fingers from my gym bag to show him. “The instructor said you can only wear sneakers which is crazy because these are exactly for core work and…”
“And you who are so diligent about exercise,” he said, looking at me with pity, and then he laughed – kindly, but he laughed.
I felt my face redden again and my lip start to quiver. “These are great shoes,” I said. “She knows nothing about them.”
So, I poured myself a glass of Chardonnay, turned the heat up under the chicken stew, called the gym and made an appointment for my free personal training session (to which I will wear the Five Fingers) – and hummed a little bit of Duke of Earl which dates back to 1962. And, alas, not even my husband can boast that he has shoes older than that — though several pairs older than my instructor.
I knew it was not a good thing to do – to read a blog that someone wrote about my mother’s funeral. But I did. And pretty much right before I went to bed last night which was another bad idea. I was forewarned: The blog mentioned that my mother had been buried in a Chanel suit and, although it was amusing and cheeky, it might upset me. And it did. I felt both sad and angry because it was about my mother, and I suppose, also about me since I was the one who dressed my mother and planned her funeral. Maybe, if the blog wasn’t about my mother’s funeral, I might have chuckled, though I’m not sure.
Well, first of all, my mother’s burial suit was not Chanel – it was Escada. But based upon the blogger’s opinion that burying someone in a $5000 Chanel suit was wasteful since if sold on eBay the price fetched for the suit could feed a family for several months, Escada was right up there with feeding families. According to the blogger (who had not met my mother prior to her stroke), rumor had it that my mother was far too practical and generous to have wanted to be buried in that suit…she would have preferred selling it and giving the money to charity.
Here’s the thing – or really one of many things: The blogger, who is ten years younger than I am, still has her mother. Secondly, the blogger said that my mother was quite old (yes, either 87 or 89 depending upon whom you asked. If you asked my mother, she would have said 87. She also might have said 80, or none of your damn business). She also said that my mother’s death came after suffering a long illness, and therefore her death, although sad, was not devastating. In the scheme of life and natural progression, that statement is true. Dying at 89 (or 87) is not a tragedy, yet it is always too soon to die and always too soon for a daughter (or son) to lose a mother. Or, in the case of my uncle’s wife, too soon to lose your husband. He died in November at 87, after a brief but grueling illness: Nonetheless, his wife (and I) still don’t feel it was time for him to die.
My mother’s illness didn’t make her death any easier for me. For my mother, silent and wheelchair-bound for five years, I can bet that she would have preferred to have keeled over and dropped dead in the designer suit department at Bergdorf’s or in the supermarket aisle at Gristede’s. Simply, she would have preferred to have died rapidly rather than enduring five years of illness that left her trapped in a wheelchair, wearing diapers, and socially infantilized.
The blog did make me wonder what my mother would have wanted to wear for burial. Too late now for me to change her outfit. My God. I have enough trouble figuring out what I should wear when I go out for an evening – and now this? Honestly, my mother often said (before her stroke) that she just wanted to be cremated which would have meant that she exited naked. But cremation was not an option since my father was opposed and my mother had not written down her desire. On days when she was dressed “casually” (which were rare – my mother was not a “down dresser”), she might have been in one of her cotton flowing knee-length muumuus. But then again, those were her “house dresses.” Personally, I think she would have looked like some sort of eery doll had she worn one of those in her casket – further infantilized.
The blogger also mentioned that my mother was in a “very nice casket” in a “fancy funeral home” – something else I took personally and as another example of how I wasted money. So, now what should I do? Make an exchange? In fact, the casket was the second up from the cheapest one available. I chose it for two reasons: It seemed sufficient, and I knew my mother (albeit about to be buried in Escada) would not have wanted to waste money on a casket. Although the funeral was, indeed, held at a tony funeral parlor the likes of which caters to the Upper East Side over-privileged, my family’s “wealth” is a myth. I chose the funeral home primarily because it is nonsectarian, had held my grandmother’s body, and was just a few blocks from my parents’ apartment. When the funeral parlor removed my mother’s body from her apartment to the tune of $800 for a ride in their van, I was aghast. I toyed with the idea of just hailing a cab for the three-block ride a la Weekend at Bernie’s – something that would have made my mother laugh and say she was going to pee in her pants. As for the suit (and yes, I am being way too defensive), I wanted my mother to look in death as she did in life. To answer the blogger’s question about shoes and underwear – in fact, she wore neither. Although I did think about burying her in her trademark high heels – but when I searched the apartment for them, they had clearly all been stolen (probably by one of the many care givers) since my mother was relegated to sweat pants and sneakers for the last five years (and I never understood the sneaker thing since she was unable to stand let alone walk). Someone probably sold her size 5.5 Manolos on eBay and perhaps a family somewhere was fed for several months.
To think, until I read that blog last night, I thought I did a pretty good job of burying my mother.
As for the blogger’s take on the open casket, that was another tough call for me at the time. But my mother had open caskets for her parents, so I followed suit. I likened it to the way I set a dinner table as my mother did – her rule of never placing jars or bottles on the table even for a picnic. Condiments were always placed in small glass bowls on saucers with tiny spoons on the side/The dead were placed in open caskets. My grandmother/Heinz ketchup. So much for upbringing.
And finally, I do agree with the blogger that the embalmer/mortician was hardly Bobbie Brown. I arrived an hour before the “mourners” and with tissues and hand cream that I found in the bathroom at the funeral home, I dabbed my mother’s cold stone face, removing the caked powdery substance and all-too-red lipstick that was supposed to make her look life-like. I left her skin with a moist coating of cream, and used one of her own lipsticks that I’d slipped into my bag after her death (anticipating that I would give it to the mortician although I didn’t have a chance). Her complexion had always been magnificent. I tried to make her look un-dead, talking to her as I did the make-over as though she were alive…laughing while the tears streamed down my face…explaining that the mortician made her look like a cross between The Joker and Madame de Pompadour, and that’s why I was fixing her face.
I wore a blue peasant blouse and my trademark narrow black pants to my mother’s funeral – refusing to wear black since I felt that I wanted to celebrate my mother’s life, and although I usually wear black anyway, it made the wrong statement. When I bought the blouse the day before her funeral (on sale at The Gap), I figured it was something I could wear again. I never have. It hangs in my closet and I’m not quite sure what to do with it: I can’t give it away for some reason, and yet I can’t wear it – not even to someone else’s funeral.
And just for the record (another citation in the blog), my mother wears no jewelry as she lies six feet under.
I suppose the bottom line is that we really don’t know how it feels to lose a mother – even after illness and even at a “ripe old age” until we’re faced with that loss. For sure, we don’t know how we’ll feel, what we will wear, or what we will choose for our mothers to wear. It’s confounding.
Since my mother’s funeral, I have, however, thought about what I would like to wear for burial – a subject the blogger mentioned with the suggestion that just as there are DNR orders, we should have DNDB orders (Do Not Dress Badly) prior to our demise – this an outgrowth of a young friend of hers dying and ending up wearing pastel polyester and clutching a rosary in an open casket – anathema to both her young friend and to her. That hit home: I don’t want to be buried in something I wouldn’t typically wear. I haven’t come up with an outfit yet. As I said before, I have a hard time getting dressed to go out for the evening. My indecision, by the way, is a left-over emotion from the times when my mother more than often criticized my “outfits.” I usually end up “playing it safe” and wearing black leggings and a tunic top, regardless of the season. The DNDB order is not a bad idea. I would take it one step further and place an outfit aside. Although the blogger advises to skip anything like “fancy French underwear,” I request to wear a pair of my black Hanky Panky’s ($18 each and my one real indulgence when it comes to fashion) and socks (I’m a devotee of Hue). And then maybe just the leggings and a tunic top – and no bra since I never wear bras. Wearing one in death would infuriate me. But someone, please, send me off with a book or a magazine, and a few pads of paper and pens. If there is an afterlife, and I have nothing to read and nothing with which to write down my thoughts, I’d wish I were dead.
