Our Father, Who Art In NJ (and Florida)

TAE A FART
Oh wit a sleekit horrible beastie,
Lurks in yer belly efter a feastie,
nae maiter wit u dae,
abdys gonna hiv tae pay,
even if yae try tae stiffle,
it's lyk a bullet oot a rifle,
hawd ur bum tight tae the chair,
tae try n stop the leakin air,
shimmy yersel fae cheek tae cheek,
n pray tae god it disnae reek,
Oot it comes lyk a clap o thunder,
Ricochets aroon th room,
Michty me a sonic boom!
God almichty it fairly reeks,
Hope I huvnae shit ma Breeks.
~ Robert Burns

My father lives for his next meal. Yesterday he called me from a restaurant in Florida, somewhere near his Winter home, while he was having his lunch, to tell me all about what he was eating.
"Ohhh, Dawn. You would love this place. The food is so healthy."
"What are you having, Dad?"
"Ohhhhh, I'm having a delicious bowl of tomato soup, a Caesar salad (crunch, crunch, slurp, slurp) and an iced tea. Mmmmmm, delicious."
"Sounds yummy, Dad."
"And tonight, for dinner, I'm either going with Danny and Maria to the VFW Post for fish, because it's fish night there tonight, OR I'm going to this little restaurant I found about a mile away from my house. Tonight is North Atlantic salmon night there! You get delicious salmon, a baked sweet potato and string beans! (more yummy sounds) and it includes TWO decent glasses of delicious red wine for the price of one! But, I told Danny and Maria to let me know early whether or not they're going to the VFW for the fish because I like to eat dinner between 5 and 6pm. They don't eat until 7:30 or so and I don't like that. By 7:30 I like to have my tea and my popcorn and some marshmallows as a snack. I don't like to eat later than that unless I'm out with friends and then I'll make an exception."
I like that about you, Dad. You know what you like."
"Yeah, and you know what I'm having for breakfast tomorrow? There's a little diner just down the road from me..."

He's eating his lunch, discussing his dinner and planning and dreaming about tomorrow's breakfast.
I don't know what it is about me but when people are that passionate, especially about food, I could listen forever. It's a hit of verbal valium - sort of like when I was small and my mom would doodle while she was talking on the phone. Sitting there watching her draw, through the smokey haze of her ciggie, had a very calming effect on me. Same with this.
My Dad recently had a defibrillator implanted in his chest and he ran in to some complications soon after. Sitting in the ER one night all he kept saying to my sister and I, in between doctors and nurses poking and prodding him, was -
"If they let me out of here tonight I know a great place where we can get Chinese food."
If memory serves me, he's always been this way. When I was a kid, and even now, nothing excited him more than the sound of the tea kettle whistling. He would rub his hands together and make goofy giggle-y sounds while heading in the direction of the stove.
He is a true Scotsman. His parents, Mary Adam and James Moir D'Arcy, came here on the ship named Caledonia some time in the late 1920's/early 1930's with four children in tow. They lived two doors down from us on 63rd street in Brooklyn. At four o'clock every afternoon they sat at the kitchen table and had high tea. They never used a tea bag, always fresh loose tea, and they brewed it in a silver, English teapot. There were always crackers, Dundee marmalade and Scottish shortbread. It wasn't intended to be fancy, it was simply their ritual and the only way they knew how to do it.
My Dad modernized his at-home tea ritual and downgraded to tea bags. He used two "balls" as he called them. He had a knack for calling things by names that would make us laugh and then act like he didn't know why we were laughing.
He came to meet me at work recently and I took him to the vegetarian restaurant across the street to get "sandwiches". He was totally miffed by the fact that the "meatball" sandwich had no meat in it -
"So, if it's not a meatball, what the hell is it?"
He finally ordered a smoked mozzarella and tomato panini.
"Is it mozzarella? Are they tomatoes???"
He gobbled it down with relish, not uttering another word all throughout our meal.
On our way out the door, I turned around, all smug, and said -
"Sooooooo, you liked it, huh?"
To which he replied, as he picked his teeth with a postcard announcement of a local art opening,
"Nope. I was hungry. ."

Bothered and Bewildered

“I do not at all understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.”
~ Anne Lamott

My mother gave me three pieces of advice/words of wisdom over the course of my life that I am eternally grateful for:
1- the Summer of our 11th year, when my cousin Cindy and I set across the road to the lake to shave our legs for the very first time, armed with a bar of Ivory soap and my Uncle Mike's razor, my mother shouted from the porch steps, "whatever you do, don't shave above your knees!"
2- the time a few years ago when a very well-respected, and renowned, psychic came over to ME, singling me out over hundreds of people, to give me an unsolicited "reading", and I skulked out of the venue (a massive church on Park Avenue), in a state of panic, while the Medium's back was turned. I apologized to my sister and my mom for disappointing them as well as myself. My mother, in a moment of supreme motherly wisdom offered, "Don't be disappointed - you simply weren't ready to hear whatever it was she had to tell you."
3- on a sweltering August night at the lake house ,when I was around 7 years old, as I lay tossing and turning in bed, twisted up in my baby doll pajamas unable to fall off to sleep, she calmly instructed me to see how absolutely still I could be, which, oddly enough, didn't have the effect on me of stiffening up in an effort to lie motionless but, rather, made me look at the places in my body that were still restless and resistant. In essence, and certainly without knowing it, she gave me my first instruction on how to meditate.
It's hard to say if my mother was clinically depressed or if it's just my perception of her. In retrospect, I think it's more than safe to say that she suffered from some form of clinical depression. Then again, it's not that far-fetched to think that she might have been really, truly happy and content to watch Murder, She Wrote day and night. I think it's a bit of both.
When I was in second grade, I can remember hearing myself describe my mother's looks to Paul Showaks and Madeline Brennan when I suddenly realized I was actually describing the actress Elizabeth Montgomery and not my mother, at all. I said that my brown-haired mother who wore her hair in a short "mommy" cut had "long blond hair that she wore in a flip or, sometimes, if it was a hot day, she would pull it back in a ponytail and tie a ribbon around it."
Judith Ianelli's mom was a hairdresser so Judith came to school with the most elegant hair-do's every single day. I imagined her mother to look like Marlo Thomas.
My mother never openly complained about anything. She never exhibited jealousy around other women, either. But, strangely, my perception of her was certainly not one of confidence and self-awareness.
I do know that long hair on a girl was very important to my father. I had very long hair that he "never" wanted me to cut. I had no idea as to how much of my identity was tied to my long hair until I saw a childhood friend that I hadn't seen in thirty or more years and the first thing he said to me was -
"Dawn, you cut your hair!!"
Even at a very early age I had the impression that my mom was not enough of something. I wanted her to grow her hair so that as we watched Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller) my Dad wouldn't think long-haired Maureen O'Sullivan (Jane) was prettier than my mom. I had no obvious reasons for feeling that way. My parents never, and I mean never, fought and I never heard my Dad criticize or demean my mother in any way. I was hooked in to an undercurrent in their relationship and I would build upon that right up until the night my parents had their first real fight and their marriage took a sudden turn in a direction that would inform my life for years to come.

Grambo

RAIN
I opened my eyes
And looked up at the rain,
And it dripped in my head
And flowed into my brain,
And all that I hear as I lie in my bed
Is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head.

I step very softly,
I walk very slow,
I can't do a handstand-
I might overflow,
So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said-
I'm just not the same since there's rain in my head.
~ Shel Silverstein "Where The Sidewalk Ends"

My mother has always been obsessed with mystery and murder. She lives for Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie and looks forward to "her" TV shows: Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune and all of the Inspector so-and-so English mysteries on Channel 21. Murder and CSI-type shows stop her dead in her tracks giving her face that glazed over look much the same as the look small children get when watching Sesame Street or Thomas the Tank Engine.
My mother is the last of nine children. Eight girls and one boy. The first six, five girls and the boy, Uncle Billy, were fathered by a man named Bobby. Bobby, my grandmother's first husband, was killed in WWI leaving her a widow with six children. At some point, in the not-too-distant future, she married his best friend, Tom, and then had his three children - my mom and her two older sisters. My grandmother was 42 when my mom was born which, in 1928, was, well, old. My grandfather never missed a day of work or a night at his local tavern. Anyway, I tell this as a way of explaining my theory that my mom didn't get a whole lot of parenting in the traditional way. Her older sisters often took care of her. My grandmother was very much present and a truly wonderful grandmother and mother but, I suppose, by the time my mother came along, she was just plain tired.
This all leads me to a place of deep understanding when my mother, at 82 years old, still sometimes behaves very much like a child. It used to be a source of great disappointment and frustration for me when she'd walk away from a "discussion" and close herself off in her bedroom. Or, even worse, the time she actually put her fingers in her ears and began humming while I was trying to express a feeling.
As I've gotten older and, especially, because I have children of my own, I can see that parenting is not always an automatic leap in to maturity. Especially if you're still in need of parenting yourself.
When I was a teenager, and especially after my Dad left, my mother was a scary woman. I look back at that time and think that she must have been the woman on our block that the neighborhood kids thought of as the "witch". She never did anything terrible to anyone, she just never spoke to anyone and spent all of her time inside the house surfacing only when she was going to or coming from work. When my kids and my nephews were younger, they sometimes sat on the front porch of my mother's house, ducked down low like special forces commandos or pre-school Maxwell Smarts, to watch for her as she turned the corner of the block on her way home from the train station after work. The "sentry" would, upon sighting and a postivie ID, shout "GRAMBO," and then they'd run, as if their little lives depended on it.
She's turned some kind of corner in her older age, though, and I'm not so sure I'm completely comfortable with it. She stops on the street and makes remarks to drivers that she thinks are in the wrong, as if she's driving her own car right there on the sidewalk. She talks to everyone now, especially little babies. She likes to reminisce. Her stories are very detailed and I know, in the re-telling, that some of those conversations and interactions from her past are happening the way she'd have liked for them to and not so much how they really occurred. Yesterday, I took a walk to the local pet store with her to buy some food for my dogs. As soon as we entered, a very precocious, somewhat misbehaved 5-ish year old boy was shouting and stomping his feet. I knew enough not to make eye contact with him but my mother immediately smiled and bent down and said,
"Ohhhh my, what a BIG BOY you are."
To which the bad seed replied,
"I am NOT a big boy. YOU ARE. You have a MOUSTACHE!"
As I turned toward my mother I could see her face morphing into a combination of the old Grambo plus her own unique version of Bette Davis at her Baby Jane worst... and before I could stop her she looked at the kid with her arthritic finger pointing and snarled,
"I DO NOT HAVE A MOUSTACHE! YOU DO!"
I took hold of her arm and said,
"C'mon mom,"
and as I was leading her to the back of the store she wheeled around, utterly intent on getting in the last word as the boy skipped out of the store sticking his tongue out at her as far as it would go as my mother shouted,
"OH YEAH, YOU HAVE A BEARD!! AND YOUR FEET STINK!"
We walked quietly most of the way home as I could practically hear her internal discourse. Finally, as we neared my corner she said,
"You know what I should have said to that little brat? I should have said,
your MOTHER has a beard!!!"

Winds-day

Winnie the Pooh - "Hello out there! Oh, I hope nobody answers."
~ from "Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day"

Walking down 5th avenue in Brooklyn last Thursday, on my way to work, I found a penny, heads up, right at the corner of 6th street. I never pass up a penny on the street, or anywhere for that matter, for reasons I'll explain later. In any case, I always pick up the penny and say, under my breath, "penny heads up, good luck. Hi, Cindy!" Whether or not the penny IS actually heads up is not important. When I find one, anytime, anywhere, my perception is always that it's heads up.
Half a block from 5th street I noticed yet another penny. Now, I'll be the first to admit that at least half the time, in this exact situation, I have a serious internal debate for about five seconds that includes whether or not to pick it up, who's walking behind me, will they think I'm nuts, who's walking towards me etc. etc and then, as always, I pick it up. Now I'm two pennies in to my good luck when I notice a small piece of paper tumbling down the sidewalk right next to my right boot - literally, keeping step with me. I could tell, almost immediately, that it was a fortune from a Chinese fortune cookie. Again, the internal battle rages on but, and I swear to you I'm not embellishing this in any way to make the story more appealing, it really, truly was, well, chasing me. Rolling along the sidewalk right alongside me as if it was attached to an invisible piece of string with Alan Funt tugging on the other end. It got to the point where I laughed out loud and then thought to myself, "Pick the damn thing up before you miss your opportunity! Someone is trying to tell you something!!"

So, I picked this piece of paper up, this fortune, and it reads - "Your love life will be happy and harmonious." Sweet.

My cousin Cindy was on one of my best friends growing up. More like a sister. We were two months to the day apart in age with me as the elder. We were pretty much the same size up until our late teens and we were both competitive athletes. The only thing she could never beat me at was swimming. We spent our summers together at the lake where our families each rented summer homes, Budd Lake, NJ. Her house was just down the road from ours and in the years before I was permitted to walk that stretch of road on my own, my entire morning was spent waiting impatiently for either my mother or my Aunt Dot to bring me down to Cindy's so she and I could begin our day. The days were 24 hours long. No TV reception made for long days filled with swimming practice, bike riding, tree climbing, board games, comic books and fishing. On occasion we would take the walk to the local farm stand with our grandmother and she would sort through peaches, plums, tomatoes and whatever else looked good to her that day while we played.

The Summer before we turned 13 we sat in my Dad's car, parked in our driveway back by the barn, and discussed topics like great trips we would take together once we had our driver's licenses and how later that very day my uncle would be taking us out on the lake to water ski. Our talks very often went in the direction of the paranormal as we took great pleasure in scaring the crap out of each other. So, just minutes before we got out of the car we had a short discussion about signs we would give each other from the great beyond if one of us died. Secret signs that only we could read, knowing that the dearly departed cousin was acting as a guardian angel for the living cousin. I can't, to this day, remember what I told her my special sign would be but I do remember vividly that she said a penny on the ground meant she was nearby. Pennies from heaven.

She was killed in a car accident on August 20, 1982 and since then I have yet to pass up a penny on the ground. As a matter of fact, just a few months ago I received change in a store after a purchase and I could feel that the coin in my hand was different. It felt as if I was holding an old subway token.

She's such a show off-y angel. Sweet.

Zen Car Service

"Oh, you know you can't go on,
thinkin' nothin's wrong.
Who's gonna drive you home, tonight?"
~ The Cars


Richie Smirnoff. Or, just plain Smirnoff. That's what they called him at Brownstone Car Service on Union Street where he was employed as a driver. He's one of those people I wish I'd kept in touch with somehow. He's had a profound effect on me.

It started back when I was a waitress at McFeely's on Union Street in Park Slope, Brooklyn. I may have even begun tending bar there by the time I'd met Richie. In any case, it was the late 80's/early 90's and I was working at McFeely's and raising my two children. I'd call Brownstone every night at the end of my shift to get a car home. I used to drive my own car but three break-ins in less than two months and stressing about parking tickets forced my hand and I sold it to a junk dealer for $50.

The conversation between me and Vinnie, the dispatcher at Brownstone, went pretty much the same way every night -
"Hello, Brownstone."
"Hey Vinnie, it's Dawn."
"Hello doll. Ready to go home?"
"Yep."
"I'll have a car right outside in three minutes. How're the kids?"
"They're great, Vinnie. You?"
"Very good thank you, sweetie. You take care, alright?"
"Yep. Thanks, Vinnie."

He'd give me a "special" price and the car would be right outside the door, just like he said, in three minutes. And then, every night, as I got into the car I'd hear Vinnie on the radio dispatching the same message to the driver as the night before -
"$6, Smirnoff. $6 for Dawn. Take good care of her and make sure she gets in safe."
"10-4 Vinnie," Richie would say into the mouthpiece.

The first night I rode home in Richie's car I noticed something. It was quiet. Many of the other drivers kept their radios on, pumping out of the back speakers, tuned to the party music station. I think they thought people liked it. I didn't. I'd just come from a loud, smokey bar where every thought, word or interaction was punctuated with music. Loud music.

I sat in the back, never behind the driver so as not to make him/her uncomfortable, and made small talk for a minute or so and then sank into the seat and my thoughts. After riding with Richie for about five minutes he asked if I would mind if he put on some soft music. I said I didn't, with trepidation. He put on a jazz station. Not fusion, jazz. Not Andreas Vollenweider, Thelonius Monk. I was a fan. I didn't know much but I knew what I liked. Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, Sun Ra, Ed Blackwell, John Coltrane...many of whom I was fortunate to see play live at places like The Village Vanguard, Continental Divide and Town Hall. Monk played on the radio and Richie mentioned the fact that Monk was pretty much self-taught on the piano. I think he even said that what Monk learned abut reading music he learned by looking over his sister's shoulder during her piano lessons.

Richie had a soft way about him. I looked at him from behind and guessed him to be about 55 or so. I checked his eyes out in the rear view mirror - they looked clear and blue although I'm not sure. He wore his jet black hair in a sort of DA, slicked back. He also wore a black leather biker jacket and still, he seemed soft. The car smelled like coffee and occasionally I would see him take a sip from the cup he had tucked away between his legs. There was something about the way he spoke that made me think he had peanut butter or a cookie stuck to the roof of his mouth - in a good way. In a way that made me want to eat...well...peanut butter...or a cookie.

Richie soon became "my" driver. Every night when I called Brownstone, he would be the one sent over to pick me up. I loved it and came to rely on it. It was my favorite way to end my night of work. He'd have the radio going and a story at hand. I soon found out that Richie was, in fact, a drummer and that he'd played with many jazz greats including Chet Baker. Richie regaled me with stories about music and food. He'd talk about his apartment and the little Italian joint up the street that he went to often for a bowl of spaghetti marinara with fresh basil and a basket of warm, crusty garlic bread. He would speak about food in a way that almost made me want to cry, or eat. He was one of the first people I'd met that seemed so, so present.

One of the great stories he told me was about a time he was touring with Chet Baker - probably in the late 50's, early 60's - They were in Italy in a hotel lobby awaiting the arrival of Romano Mussolini (yes, Benito's son), who was an acclaimed jazz pianist and slated to join Chet Baker and his band on this leg of the tour. Before he arrived, Chet's band mates briefed him about Romano and pleaded with him (though Chet was high on heroin at that moment) not to make any mention, WHATSOEVER, of Mussolini's infamous father.

When Romano arrived, Chet was in a full junkie nod in one of the hotel lobby's cushy chairs. Richie said he elbowed Chet just as they all stood up to greet Romano. They shook hands and went around the small circle and introduced themselves. When they got around to Chet, Richie introduced them,
"Romano Mussolini, Chet Baker. Chet Baker, Romano Mussolini."
And, he said, without missing a beat, a weary and very high Baker extended his hand and said,
"Wow, nice to meet you. Drag about your old man, huh?"

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

"the plot of our life sweats in the dark like a face
the mystery of childbirth, of childhood itself
grave visitations
what is it that calls to us?
why must we pray screaming?
why must not death be redefined?
we shut our eyes we stretch out our arms
and whirl on a pane of glass
an afixiation a fix on anything the line of life the limb of a tree
the hands of he and the promise that she is blessed among women."
~ Dancing Barefoot" ~ Patti Smith


Things change. All the time.

Menopause, the "Change", the Mother of all changes, changes all the time. I am cyclical by nature. Always have been. Every few months menopause - or rather, my menopausal symptoms, intensify for a few days. Always a bit worse at night. I mean, during the day I experience things like the occasional full upper body hot flash. The kind that includes sweat on my forehead, upper lip, the sides of my nose and my entire back. Anyway, at night it becomes it's own brand of terror. Hot flashes are the least of it. There's heart palpitations before the onset of the sweaty part of the hot flash and then the anxiety that accompanies the palpitations. I've only realized in the past year that my perimenopausal symptoms began with those night time anxiety rushes years ago. Sleeping peacefully one minute and then awakening to a sense of panic and dread that would manifest physically into a sort of terror that would make me want to jump up out of the bed and do something - anything. Sometimes, I would get the chills to such an extent that I would shiver uncontrollably for a few minutes. Then I would poo. Yep,poo.
I guess the difference between that nice feeling you get as you begin to get the urge to poo prior to perimenopause is replaced with anxiety because it's a change in the interpretation of the feeling. As we get older and our hormones are morphing perhaps we feel less confident in what it is we're feeling sometimes.
My sister and I would refer to my mother's rare good moods as her having to "take a shit" moments.
e.g. "Was Mommy happy that it was her bowling night?"
"Yeah, it was like she had to take a shit."
That euphoric feeling right before you drop the kids off at the pool.
In any case, I have yet to determine whether or not the urge to poop was the start of it all or if I get the urge as a result of waking up and having hormonal rushes of anxiety.

Anyway, I had my last real period on March 13th, 2003. Yep. My mom said she went through "The Change" at 42. Her period "just stopped". No symptoms. Not a one, according to her. I guess all those years when she would come home from work and retreat immediately into her bedroom with a pack of Benson & Hedges 100's and a cup of coffee and sit, in a cloud of smoke, watching reruns of "Little House On The Prairie" don't count. My two kids and my nephews used to refer to her, at the time, as Grambo. No symptoms.

I remember distinctly the last time I bled. I actually knew that it was the last time. I don't know how, but I did. I remember looking down at the piddly little offering my body forced onto the pad thinking, "this is it".
Oddly enough, I still have the diary I kept in the 8th grade and one of the 5 or 6 entries is titled "This Girl Is A Woman Now." I got my period on March 13th, 1971. Exactly, exactly, exactly 32 years to the day, it stopped. I wonder how many women that happens to but they just don't have the information recorded?

I was, if they were all telling the truth, the last of all my girlfriends to get my period. I was an athlete so, in retrospect, it seems to make sense. However, I was incredibly envious of my friends and their "cramps" and "pads" and "boobs". I faked having my period for about a year or so. If my friends had payed closer attention, they might have realized that I bled 19 days a month and had cramps all the time. I just wanted to belong.

So, seven years ago I started having hot flashes. Nice ones. Ones that gave me a healthy looking flush every half hour or so. My skin looked all glow-y and Doris Day-ish. Over the past few years they've morphed back and forth from Doris Day flashes to the Satchmo kind - hanky and all. My sister gets them so bad that she carries around rolls of Bounty in her bag. She works with small children in a local school and recently, mid-flash, one of the kids said, "Miss Lori, what's wrong with your face?" My sister said she humored the kid with a pretzel but what she wanted to say was, "Nothing asshole, what's wrong with yours?"

She's Leaving Home

"She (We gave her most of our lives)
is leaving (Sacrificed most of our lives)
home (We gave her everything money could buy)
She's leaving home after living alone
For so many years."
~ She's Leaving Home ~ Lennon/McCartney

I moved out of my mother's house when I was seventeen years old, which is not to say I left. I found this out twenty years later when she put the house up for sale.

Life began, for me, on 52nd street between 7th and 8th avenues in Brooklyn. I have memories of our apartment there in spite of the fact that we left when I was barely five years old. It was a six-ish unit apartment building and we lived on, probably, the second or third floor. My friend Bobby lived on the first floor in the back and I loved going to play at his place because he had one of those big plastic horses propped up on springs that you could bounce up and down on and pretend to be the Lone Ranger, or Tonto, or just some girl riding a horse which, in Brooklyn, is equivalent to being an astronaut or a surfer. I was afraid of Bobby's father so I rarely played there anytime near 5pm when he and most of the other dads, would be coming home from work. I'm not sure why he scared me but I vaguely remember him being big, and dark and quiet. Too quiet.

My best friend at the time, John Ratazzi, lived in the building next door. His mother would take us on excursions to the bakery across the street for sugar cookies every now and again. John and I walked to our first day of school together, holding hands, and he cried hysterically when they separated us from our mothers and had us line up in the auditorium. I was on the girls line holding back tears and John was on the boys line sobbing and heaving as if our boat had just pulled away from the dock to go on a "three-hour tour" with the Skipper and Gilligan. I wanted to hug him, give him a sugar cookie and comfort him with the lie being told to all of us frightened children that our mothers were waiting for us right outside the doors of the school - even though I knew it was the first of many big, fat lies.

Another vivid memory I have from the apartment on 52nd street is the time I flushed my goldfish down the toilet in a moment's panic when my father came banging on the bathroom door because it was locked. I was forbidden to lock myself in there. I thought I'd surprise everyone and clean the goldfish bowl. So, I put the fish in the toilet to swim while I scrubbed away at the filthy scum hugging the walls of the small glass bowl using my parent's toothbrushes. For months afterwards I couldn't sit on the toilet because I was sure the fish would come back and take revenge on my tiny behind. I used a wooden potty chair for weeks because I knew there'd be no unpleasant surprises swimming up from the scary, unseen depths in the recesses of the bathroom toilet. I'd probably still be using it today if my father hadn't forced the issue and thrown the potty chair out one late night while I slept.

My parents divorced when I was 12 and at this point we had moved, the year before, to a big house on 68th street. This house was next door to my father's sister Anna and her husband Albert and, in the same house but on the top floor, my mother's sister Dorothy and her husband Mike. When my Dad left, that house became even bigger. My brother and sister and I would huddle, at the end of the day, in the living room together watching TV - something we weren't allowed to do when my Dad lived home. It was never spoken but I know that we just wanted, and needed, to be close to each other. So, there we were, sprawled out on the sofa, the floor - wherever. In those days, TV used to go off the air at a certain hour. The national anthem would play to an image of the flag waving in the American breeze and then the station would sign off for the night. Even if all three of us were sound asleep, the minute the anthem started playing, someone would wake up and walk over to the TV and change the channel. To anything. What was on didn't matter - having our electronic fireplace did.

Fast forward twenty years and my mother had over a hundred thousand dollars worth of remodeling done on the house and then decided that she needed to sell. It was, according to her, an "albatross" around her neck. She was in debt and stressed and ready to move on, finally. When she told me she had a buyer I had the first twinge of - well, for lack of a better word, fear. I was the one who'd left home at 17. How could I be having these feelings over a home I couldn't wait to leave?

Once I acknowledged the fact that this was, in fact, strangely difficult for me, I began to see even more clearly and realized that I had never really left. As independent as I'd been my whole life, somewhere in the back of my head, and heart, I always knew that if anything went wrong, I could always come "home".
I felt the need to ritualize my emotional exit from this time and place in my life, once and for all. I had planted the garden in front of the house the year before my Dad took off and I tended it and replanted it every year so it seemed the most logical place to "pull up roots", so to speak.

I went early one morning and chose a plant to dig up. My plan was to go to the ocean and toss the plant, roots and all, in to that vast expanse of water that would nourish it and possibly give it a chance to re-root itself elsewhere. I took the bus to Brighton Beach. When I got there, I sat for awhile in the sand and held on to the memories, both good and terrible, and I knew that they were inside me and safe and so was I. When I felt like the time was right, I walked in to the waves a bit and then hurled the plant over the crest of, what seemed like the wave I was "meant" to throw it in to. I stood there for a moment, filling up with emotion -

And just then I felt something at my feet that made me jump up out of the water and head for shore, positive that it was the tail of a great white or a slimy jellyfish that had brushed up against me. I looked down to see...the plant. The plant that I had unleashed in to the great and almighty Atlantic Ocean had found it's way back to me. Really??? I took a deep breath - renewed my heartfelt vow to honor the memories, blah blah blah, and threw the thing as far and as hard as I could. Less than a minute later, it came back again. I'm not kidding.

I was stunned. So, is this what my mother meant about the albatross?? Would I never, ever be able to leave this house, after all?

I decided to give it one last effort. I walked a bit further in to the water and said, out loud, right before I unleashed it again, "if you need to come back, come back, but I'm going to stay here until I'm sure you're gone." And then I realized that in order to truly leave, I needed to say goodbye. Goodbye to the fight my parents had right before my dad left for good - goodbye to Babe and Dog, the two beautiful animals that loved us in spite of ourselves; goodbye to the nights without heat and the days without my mom who was lost to her own sadness.

I threw it and this time I really, truly let go. I stood there for close to an hour - waiting for it to come back, and it never did. Even if it had washed up on shore right next to me, I don't think I would have seen it. I was changed. Things were beginning to look different.

What's Love Got To Do With It

"I believe the world is round
so we don't see too far down the road.
And I believe the sky is blue
to keep the blues from me and you.
And I believe old Einstein said it right,
It's a relatively simple life." ~ GW Bach

Life is interesting. Things change. I'm changing. I'm making very conscious decisions regarding my choices in life. Mostly, my emotional direction.
My parents are both having some health-related issues. No wonder, considering the fact that they're both in their eighties. The thing is that they're still my parents and I haven't yet gotten used to the fact that they're old. I've been so blessed because they've both enjoyed good health for most of their lives. I have, maybe, one or two memories of my mom being sick with the "flu" when I was a kid.
The thing is, though, amidst all these blessings I never really learned how to just be with what is - there was a pretty high level of denial when it came to things of an emotional nature. I don't blame my parents because they, too, are products of their own family environments BUT now, in their eighties, they're becoming the emotional equivalent of "touchy feely."
My mother has some yet to be determined form of early stage dementia. The neurologist I have the most respect for through all the testing and nonsense has said that he suspects she has Alzheimer's. In any case, she's started doing things for me, when she stays at my apartment, that she never did for me my entire childhood. For example, when I get up in the morning the first thing she calls out to me is -
"Dawn, do you want me to put the kettle on?"
"what????...oh, uh, yeah. ok, mom."
And when I get out to the kitchen she has a tea cup, a cereal bowl and two spoons set up on the kitchen counter for me.
This is the same woman who would come in to my bedroom my freshman year of high school with a Benson and Hedges 100 dangling from her lips growling, "GET UP!" And ten minutes later, when I still hadn't budged, she'd yank the covers off me and threaten, "I'm not coming back. Get up now or TOUGH SHIT!" The point being that my oatmeal was not ever laid out for me.
The same goes for my Dad. He was not the type to rip the covers off my freezing carcass but he drove a hard bargain. He was a tough disciplinarian and had little time for the cuddly stuff. However, he recently showed up for me on such an unexpected emotional level that all I could do was to think to myself -
WHY NOW???????
I had just gotten to a place of accepting my parents fully as the teachers they were meant to be for me and had, mostly, nestled in with the emotional distance they themselves had set up in each of our relationships. I know that I've learned more than a few things in this life and that I have made room for the love I feel for them and I know they feel for me, but still....still, I'm realizing I had hoped, somehow, that it wouldn't be enough to hurt me. Silly of me, I know, but I've been flooded by realizations lately. Realizations of the places/relationships/events that I weave this emotional fear in to, in spite of what I've learned -
Yes, I am a cup is half full kind of person. I am positive and am most comfortable with thinking the best of people and wanting the whole world to hold hands and sing. However, my most recent HUGE learning moment came when I was having a conversation with one of my children. I realized that my need to get to the emotional "point" was my way of getting to a place that would make ME comfortable - because I am not comfortable with, well, emotional discomfort. I need to know, in some way, shape or form, that something, anything, everything is alright and/or will, very soon, be alright. For me, sometimes, instant emotional gratification takes too long.
In a recent conversation with my daughter she pleaded, "Mom, I don't want you to fix it!! I just want you to listen."

Time Flies

Now We Are Six (1927)
A. A. Milne

When I was One,
I had just begun.
When I was Two,
I was nearly new.
When I was Three
I was hardly me.
When I was Four,
I was not much more.
When I was Five,
I was just alive.
But now I am Six,
I'm as clever as clever,
So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.

Dorothy was Dolores' Maid of Honor. According to my mother, Dolores, they only began to get close after my parents were married and my Aunt Dorothy had her first child. Dorothy and Dolores are the last two of nine children. Dolores is the youngest. My mother's memories revolve mostly around arguments between her sisters.
One of my deep regrets is that I don't feel, to this day, like I really, truly know who my mother is deep down. She was a homemaker for the first ten years of my life and I never really got the sense that anything about our home truly reflected her tastes. It was a very nice home and my mother loved to rearrange furniture but there was no one thing that gave me a clearer vision as to who she was or what mattered to her most. It felt like she was defaulting, somehow. When I was in grade school I would stroll around the school gym at our annual Christmas Fair and nothing at all would shout out to me "BUY THIS FOR MOM!! SHE LOVES THIS KIND OF STUFF!". I do remember once, in first grade, spending a few dollars on a fake flower arrangement in a white vase and bringing it home to her believing that it would make her so happy she would cry. She didn't cry. I don't think she even smiled. I would bet money that she thanked me and lit another cigarette.
I remember the scene in the film The Bridges of Madison County when Francesca's children follow their dead mother's written instructions leading them to a locked trunk at the foot of her bed. (Her beautiful, simple bed with the chenille spread) - and unearth, what essentially turns out to be, the map to understanding their mother's truest self in the form of notebooks and clothing and various other treasures. In a note to her children Francesca writes - "We all want to be known for who we really are during this brief stay..."
Yes!! Yes, mom!!! WHO ARE YOU??? What's in YOUR locked trunk???
This is what I DO know -
My mother is the most and the least judgmental person I know. She's pro-choice, a registered Democrat and she likes potato chips a lot. I think she has a stubborn, rebellious streak that isn't necessarily cute and I think it is a leftover from childhood. She's uncomfortable with love scenes in films and always has been. She's devout in terms of her faith but she has never shoved it down mine or anyone else's throat. She likes candy and ice cream a lot. She swears but has never dropped the F-bomb - at least not in front of me. She likes to have a leader - someone to answer to - like my father when they were together and then a bossy female friend or two and, especially, her sister Dorothy after my parent's divorce.
As for what I don't know about her that I'd like to know, well, it's not that simple. The things I don't know about her are, in my opinion, the very things she doesn't really know about herself. I take comfort in the few things she does regularly because I can count on her to do them. Things like making coffee first thing in the morning. I'm aware that many people make coffee every morning but it's something that helps me to define her in my mind's eye.
My mom has never spent real money on herself. I can remember the top of her dresser in the 1970's being filled with bottles of drug store perfume with names like "If you like Opium, you'll love "Topium" - some vile knock-off of an already cloyingly bad scent.
My sister, my mother and I went to visit a wealthy relative recently and as we were walking down the adobe tiled circular driveway my sister whispered in my ear, "Look at her shoes." My mother, who was a good twenty feet ahead of us snarked, "There's nothing wrong with my shoes. I got them at PAYLESS!" Nothing wrong with her ears, either.
The thing is this, at this point in my life I can really appreciate the passing of time and fully embrace that I am just an older, wiser and more experienced version of my 11 year old self. To paraphrase the writer Anne Lamott - she said when we reach a certain age,(in my mother's case, 82), we aren't merely the "old woman". We are every age we've ever been up to that point. It's so very true. I thought that very thing at the Assisted Living place when we went to visit Aunt Dot recently. Dorothy and Dolores are "old" but not a whole hell of a lot has really, truly changed.

Sitting

Meditation is a beautiful thing. It really, truly has changed my life. My mind is far less reactive and I feel so much better. The practice requires self-discipline, though. I am driven by what/how I feel and I'm only now beginning to be able to commit to a truly disciplined practice - not the "willy-nilly-when-I'm-teaching-or-taking-class" version. I was coached, as an athlete, for most of my most formative years. I've begun to rely on myself a bit more now.
The Buddhist teacher, Sharon Salzberg, is one of my main teachers along with Pema Chodron and Thich Nhat Hanh. I've been fortunate enough to sit with her on many occasions, the last of which was my birthday a few weeks ago. Her instruction is simple (the breath/mindfulness) and she manages to articulate many of the thoughts/experiences we all have during meditation, not the least of which is spending an entire sit wrapped up in our own inner discourse! Her instruction, though, - the one that I come back to every time, is "just one breath". Both she and Pema Chodron speak about "beginning again" and how that moment, the one where we notice ourselves wrapped up in our thoughts and then bring ourselves back to the breath is the real practice.
When I sit at home my dogs "sit" with me. Mike, my lab, sits at my left knee and Scout, my yet-to-be-defined breed of mutt, is on my right. Just one breath.