Some Blog

So this blog thing isn't working out that well for me.

You go along for 50 years figuring you're as self-absorbed as the next person, maybe more so, and then you commit to being self-absorbed -- in public (sort of) -- and where does it all go? Nowhere, that's where. The wimp's way is to pick on people who actually WRITE regularly, to nag at them for not borrowing from poets other than Yeats, as if I would know it if they did.

I have little to share in the way of insight from my Year of Being 50, which ended less than a week ago. I seem to recall enjoying myself quite a lot, and having had some good times with Krang and Xingu. Coming up on nine years of marriage, Krang and I are in a good place -- probably better than at any other time we've had together, and undoubtedly better than the best moments of my starter marriage. Being able to see that, having learned to appreciate Krang for his steadiness, loving him all the more for the quirks that drive me crazy....maybe that's part of what 50 brought me.

Xingu has passed the worst of being seven; I confess to being terribly in love with him just now. He sat with me through the entire broadcast of La Fanciulla del West from the Met. What's more, he seemed to have enjoyed it. I have never taken this child for granted, and what delight it is to see him growing into an interesting and good human being.

My work was tough last year, but I came out of the turmoil with some clarity....and a new business card that features that very word. Eighteen years of being one's own boss are hard to end...so I didn't. For now, at least, there are still gigs for a graying, plumping, impolitic and occasionally overcaffeinated crank.

I grew more comfortable with wrinkles, "melting" facial structure, and the noise of my knees. Plastic surgery ideation, yes; but think of the trips you could take with that moolah! I went to a place that does bra fittings and now own six bras in the same style (three colors, no prints), and the girls are perkier. I still have gray put into my hair.

But insight? I'll get back to you on that.

YEATS ALERT: KRUGMAN AGAIN!

Compare this to his July column, cited below:

Try to explain that when debtors spend less, the economy will be depressed unless somebody else spends more, and they call you a socialist. Try to explain why mortgage relief is better for America than foreclosing on homes that must be sold at a huge loss, and they start ranting like Mr. Santelli. No question about it:... the moralizers are filled with a passionate intensity. And those who should know better lack all conviction.

Where are this man's editors?
See the full piece here. (yes, I'm a little behind with this one....)

YEATS ALERT!

The ideal leader in this mental system is free from moral anxiety but full of passionate intensity. This leader pushes his troops in lock step before the voracious foe. Each party has its own version of whom the evil elites are, but both feel they’ve more to fear from their enemies than from their own sinfulness.

David Brooks, shame on you. See the whole article here.

YEATS ALERT!

....this from a source I would never have expected: Frank Rich, in today's Times:

And yet here we are, slouching toward yet another 9/11 anniversary, still waiting for a correction, with even our president, an eloquent Iraq war opponent, slipping into denial. Of all the pro forma passages in Obama’s speech, perhaps the most jarring was his entreaty that Iraq’s leaders “move forward with a sense of urgency to form an inclusive government that is just, representative and accountable.” He might as well have been talking about the poisonous political deadlock in Washington. At that moment, there was no escaping the tragic fact that instead of bringing American-style democracy and freedom to Iraq, the costly war we fought there has, if anything, brought the bitter taste of Iraq’s dysfunction to America.

YEATS ALERT!

Paul Krugman in today's New York Times:

The point is that Mr. Obama’s attempts to avoid confrontation have been counterproductive. His opponents remain filled with a passionate intensity, while his supporters, having received no respect, lack all conviction. And in a midterm election, where turnout is crucial, the “enthusiasm gap” between Republicans and Democrats could spell catastrophe for the Obama agenda.

Surely he could have conveyed this Deep Thought without going the S.C. route. Love the Nobel Prize, Paul, but find another poem to quote.

The do that did me in

The hair that convinced me to stop coloring my own. My thanks to the stage artist who put this artful streak in Stafford Dean's exquisite hair, the hair that made me want to, um, hear more.

Now leaving the comfort zone

As I write this post, my new (from the Humane Society) Jack-Rat terrier is draped across my arms and lap. My feet are up on the sofa because my ankles are swollen. They swell pretty much every day now, even when I'm wearing TED stockings (prescribed by my doctor and purchased in the same store where you get commodes and railings for your toilet and shower), which I didn't today because it's July and hot. This would be a good reason, too, to shoo the little lap dog away, but her sweet dog sigh makes it impossible.

Leaving the comfort zone has been on my mind for weeks now. My clothes no longer fit properly. My hormones are not at all themselves, at least as I have known them these last 37 years or so. My eye glasses no longer work, so I have pairs of readers -- all in zingy stripes and polka dots -- and Internet-ordered prescription glasses littering every desk and bedside table. The client for which I did the majority of my billable work over the last several years has been forced to create a leaner profile, and I have begun working for a new client, on a Mac, and the job is different and more demanding, and I am just too old to be having to disrupt my existence so completely. It's not comfortable and I don't like it.

Xingu has lost two teeth in two weeks and looks like a gap-toothed giraffe, with his skinny long legs, brown skin and blonding hair. Krang goofs along happily, replacing his old commuter bike with another old commuter bike, mowing the lawn and piling papers on his bureau until they topple. The new dog has a dreadful name because we are reading Harry Potter and "Winky" was more apt than Luna or Padma or Fleur. We are putting in some desperately needed new windows, but only on the north side of the house: the side nobody sees but us. The job transition kept me from planting a vegetable garden for the first time in 20 years or so, and the plot that should be overflowing with green tomatoes and eggplant is filled with self-sewn mustard and cosmos leftover from last year. Everywhere I look I see some kind of slop, anarchy, lethargy, disrepair, stupidity or dirt.

I spend too much time in my fantasy world, where I live a gracious existence with household help. Not only is there enough money for essentials, there is also enough for summer opera festivals like Santa Fe and Glyndebourne. Picnics on the ground, handsome and soft-spoken and witty men, well tended women in attractive linen dresses and tasteful jewelry. We listen to Mozart, maybe a little Verdi, some bel canto. Chamber ensembles play during lunch. The air is scented with lavender or sagebrush, and the breeze blows just enough to fluff the furze of gray hair we all wear with equanimity if not aplomb. We are easy in our loose skins, in love with music and oh, so comfortable.

Guest post: "I'll get you, my pretty...."

I am happy to share the following, oh-so-pertinent guest post from Deb (see also "Life is a highway," May 3):

I looked in the mirror and I realized my face was ‘melting.' The skin was sagging at the jaw line, pooling at the base of my throat, and slipping determinedly south. Like a candle stored in an over warm room, my ‘wax’ is redistributing itself.

A 50-something cannot say “I’m melting” without flashing to the crone crumpled at the feet of Youth in red shoes and blue gingham. The witch eventually disappears, leaving a pile of loose fitting clothes and a bad hat.

I confess that sometimes I feel like I really am melting. Having shed considerable light and warmth over the years, I feel smaller. As I move within society, I move without expectation or recognition. I’m a small flicker in a halogen world. Those are the bad days, and most days are good.

The more I thought about it, the more I realize that I am not melting as much as I am breaking a mold. I no longer require the constructs that served me well in my 30’s and 40’s. I am re-forming into someone who is well rounded and softer. Sure, I have bumps and drips where I was once smooth and tapered. But now my form is unique, a result of the forces that have acted upon it. What I have given off defines me, and my new shape reflects that.

I am not ready to disappear. Perhaps my brightest days are ahead of me. I can still be the candle that keeps someone from stumbling in the darkness. I can’t always light up a room. But let’s face it; everything looks beautiful in candle light.

Old dog

HECK! said the rebel

I miss Allan Sherman. "Seltzer Boy" was always my favorite, but today Xingu and I listened to "The Rebel" several times.

HECK! said the President.

From M.D. to sex kitten

What happened to Chistiane Northrup, M.D., to make her think she had to cut herself, dye and straighten her hair, and tart herself up to try to look 20 years younger? Wasn't this the smart doctor who wrote in her first book about the "toxic" nature of western medicine and all those nasty toxic messages we receive as American women? Yet by the time she wrote The Wisdom of Menopause, she can say with a straight [heh] face:

It seems to me that it is almost impossible to go through the normal process of facial aging in this culture and not wish that something could be done about certain parts of your face, especially the eyelids and jawline. If you're one of the lucky ones who really aren't at all bothered by sagging eyelids or jowls, bless you [you dumb shit]. If, however, you want an appearance-enhancing face-lift, eyelid surgery, skin peel, liposuction, laser surgery, or other cosmetic polishing of your exterior, then bless you, too. Through the years I've referred many patients for various plastic surgery or dermatological procedures. Just about 100 percent of them have been thrilled with the results.

And there you have it. I guess she thought nobody would buy her products (Team Northrup, anyone?) if she looked old. That's real wisdom.

A Mary Lou kind of day

I cooked three meals on my new panini press. I went to church long enough to sing the choir anthem and play the tambourine, and then I left. On my way home I stopped at Linder's Garden Center, which was giving 15% of my purchase to Xingu's school so I could of course crookedly justify spending more than I should have. I came home, saw Xingu off with a friend and Krang off to some bicycle-related errands, and then I spent hours in the sun -- working on my front border and pruning the bejesus out of my failing forsythia.

Some differences from Mary Lou: (1) I was alone. Mom always had a couple of kids around when she was outside, which was damn near all the time. (2) I was wearing sunscreen. My mother never, ever wore sun protection apart from the occasional goofy hat, and after spending two-thirds of her life in Arizona she was spectacularly wrinkled. Sixty years of smoking helped on that score as well. (3) I was listening to my iPod (The Yeomen of the Guard, Bach B-minor mass, Tommy Quasthoff's jazz album, my Stafford Dean play list).

It was sunny, clear and cool today -- the sort of day we almost never had in Arizona. Our old dog Gromit was near me, always in the sun, while I was out. I dug dandelions, trimmed grass with hand trimmers, uprooted tiny trees, planted a new variety of heat-tolerant (there's one born every minute, isn't there) lobelia, fretted over the tiny red insects that have already started in on the salvia. Nothing in the border is blooming; shall I use the poison? shall I?

The lilacs are post-peak but still fragrant. Mom visited several years at Mother's Day, and usually the lilacs were just opening when she was here. It makes me sad that she never met Krang and never knew Xingu; she would have adored both of them.

In 2000, at age 40, with my mother newly dead and divorce proceedings underway, I had to face the likelihood that I would not, after all, get to be a mother. And yet I was not ready to accept it, and I looked for loopholes, strategies and signs. I told myself that if the forsythia bloomed that year, it would be a sign from my mother -- whose favorite color was yellow -- that I would, indeed, have a child.

And it did, and I did, and tonight I'm raising a glass of prosecco (okay, maybe four or five; it's not bourbon, so that's another departure from Mary Lou style) to my mother, and to Krang's mother, and to Momo -- the recently departed mother of my sister in law -- and to the generations of women in these our families who have dug in the dirt and gotten too much sun and told the same stories over and over again and loved their children beyond all measure.

Mother's Day appliance

My mom didn't believe in Mother's Day. Her children always observed it in some way, but she claimed she didn't care if we did or not because it was an entirely bogus holiday. She used the word "bogus" often, in a big voice with well-supported tone, before it became as popular as it is today. Another of her favorites along these lines was a contemptuous, "It is to laugh."

I understand her feelings, now that I'm a mother. The first Mother's Day I qualified to be feted, seven years ago, I worked it for all I was worth. It had been a rough few months after all, I was trying to nurse a tiny infant who would rather sleep, I was up in the wee hours mooing at a breast pump -- is there any less dignfied thing to do to oneself? -- and so on Mother's Day 2003 I stayed in bed and enjoyed the novelty of it. Me, 43 years old, a mother.

After that, though, it's been downhill all the way. I felt and feel much as my own mother did about this guilt-inducing, ludicrous excuse to go to Target and support the local florist. I have instructed Krang and Xingu to leave off, already. I want to be treated like a queen every damn day of the year, and I don't need any bogus displays of affection or appreciation on that particular Sunday.

What I need is a panini press. A Cuisinart GR-4, to be exact, with interchangeable non-stick plates and an integrated drip cup. I had a vast array of delicious sandwiches in Venetian bars earlier this year (when I wasn't eating squid), many washed down with a sparkling prosecco, and I want to recreate un po' of that magic in my own hovel. So I started asking for the panini press about Valentine's Day, after I had tried out the one my friends Bonnie and Phil own.



I researched the best deal. I emailed Krang all the information, and he went on Amazon and ordered it using my account and credit card number. Which was invalid. So I went back on Amazon and gave them a new credit card number. "My" order shipped, and a big box addressed to me arrived the very next day. I will wait until Sunday to see what kind of show the boys make, but I'll tell you this: it will be my most meaningful Mother's Day since 2003.

Happy birthday to my big brother

His name is Gary. He's half Dutch, although it looks a little closer to 100% in this piece, entitled "Self Portrait With 100-Thread-Count Hat."

Guest post: Life is a highway

I am delighted to share this sweet essay by my friend Deb (who is also 50):

Shortly before I turned 50, my son turned 16. The irony was not lost on me. As I sit at a crossroads, contemplating the roads taken and not taken, my son plans his exodus into the wide world. As I yearn for the back roads and byways, he seeks the route that will jettison him quickly to the next destination point. As I move increasingly toward the slow lane, he is merging into the express lane.

We’ve logged a lot of miles together. The mile markers, the detours, the bumps in the road were part of a larger journey where I was the driver and he was the (mostly) willing passenger. When he was small, we sang Disney tunes and shared fruit snacks.

As he got older, we discussed current events (his), life lessons (mine), and traded thoughts on religion and philosophy in the relative safety of the car. Increasingly, his preferences dictated our background music. The soft rock station was replaced by Miles Davis, the Who, and Beethoven—sometimes all in the same trip.

My required stops were eclipsed by a whirlwind of practices and social obligations completely unrelated to me. Currently, we work driving practice into an already packed schedule. I went from driver to chauffer to instructor. One day I realized that quite literally, I was becoming the passenger in my son’s life. Soon he will be on his own.

As I slide into the passenger seat, I have to come to terms with a few things. My son has good reflexes. He has good judgment. He will gain experience and confidence as he gains seat time. There will be worries and sleepless nights. Is he safe enough? Can he anticipate the dangers as he travels down life’s highway?

Mostly, I will miss the time we spent together in the car. I hope he will report back on his adventures—what he has seen and where he has traveled. I know too, that someday the tables will turn. I will be the one being driven to my appointments and obligations. Perhaps we will sing a few Disney tunes. The Who would be okay too.

Tryon Estates aha

A most interesting article on estrogen in the New York Times magazine this week. Cynthia Gorney, an entertaining Mary Roach-like stylist, writes about her serious perimenopausal depression and the latest thinking on hormone replacement. Near the end is this:

Every midlife woman I know keeps redrawing for herself the defensible lines of intervention in the “natural” sequence of human aging. Obsessive multiple plastic surgeries are silly and desperate. Muscles kept in good working order are not.

I saw the truth of these assertions at first hand in the mountains of southwest North Carolina. My husband’s parents spent the last several years of their lives at a place called Tryon Estates, where hundreds of people, almost all in their 70s and 80s, lived in accommodations ranging from freestanding “villas” to apartments, from assisted living to memory care to nursing home beds. Beginning in late 2001, we visited at least twice a year until my mother in law Evelyn died in early 2009. Tryon Estates gave me a new model for old age.

It wasn’t until my second or third visit that I had my aha moment. Every day we ate breakfast and dinner in a dining room that might have been a hotel ballroom, with loud wall-to-wall carpet and muted tablecloths and wait staff wearing tidy black and white. At these meals we got to know many of Evelyn’s friends quite well. (Thanks to Evelyn’s keen memory for unflattering details, we also knew the back stories of many of the residents, their children, grandchildren, ex-spouses…and they knew ours. Krang of course had met many of his mother’s friends on visits with his second wife, whom we call Maris….but that’s another story for another hour.)

One day at breakfast, I realized that there were no seriously overweight people amongst the dozens we saw regularly. It had never occurred to me because I had never been in such a large group of old people, but it’s pretty vivid: fat people don’t get old. Or maybe the members of The Greatest Generation, who grew up in the lean years of the Depression, never got fat to begin with. Or maybe it has to do with social status and income: you have to be reasonably well off (and white, and Gentile) to buy yourself in to Tryon Estates.

In any case, I also noticed that pretty much every woman who lived there looked—there’s no other word for it—old. Sweetbriar girls who had been careful about the sun, staunch New England Republicans who had had every privilege including hired help and second homes and magnificent husbands—every last one of them looked old. Their hands were ropey with blue veins. Wrinkles, age spots, gray hair—all common currency. Because there was a dress code at dinner, residents had to put themselves together enough to be admitted to the dining room—but there’s no getting around it: regardless of how much their clothes cost or how artfully their make-up was applied, the women just looked old.

In short, they were way past feeling bad about their necks.

However. The women who stood upright, the women who wore walking shoes to breakfast because they were headed outside afterward, the women who didn’t need a cane or a walker or a little motorized cart to get around—these women looked youthful despite their lines and spots. And it came to me all in a rush at some point: given finite resources of time and funding, we’re best off to invest what we can not in Botox, not in a Myotonology Micro-Current Face Lift, not even in peptides, but in getting stronger physically.

There’s no substitute for youth. There is also no substitute for luck. Once the first is past, you really need the second if you’re going to make it into your 80s without catching an untreatable cancer, sustaining some sort of injury that will eventually incapacitate you, succumbing to heart attack or brain attack or melancholia or alcohol, losing your marbles, or all of the above. Here’s the deal, as Cynthia Gorney puts it:

Should luck and longevity cooperate, we are going to grow old. We’re already old, by the standards of our children and our ancestors, but the generation to which we belong expects to live a rich messy life full of extremely loud rock music for another 30 years after menopause.

I would substitute “extremely loud Verdi” for the rock music, but never mind. Estrogen is a big issue and luck is essential. But we can take some steps now by, well, taking some steps now. Working out with weights. Building up our bones and muscles.

We need to not tarry. We’re not getting any younger.

White trash birthday party

The kids got Ding Dongs instead of cake. You can tell it's a crowd of Montessori kids when they ask, "What's a Ding Dong? I've never had a Ding Dong before!" They loved the Ding Dongs; Jack had three. The main course was Parmesan Pastry Pups from Trader Joe's. They also had potato chips (baked, natch), grapes, watermelon, and organic milk boxes. Yes, the amount of garbage was enormous. For the first time in years, playing outdoors was possible. Six little boys, all with two parents and reasonable manners and a love for all things Lego....not bad. I crashed for two hours afterward.

Today Xingu sang a little song over and over: I am seven, you are fifty! I am seven, you are fifty!

Golden birthday

Xingu was born just after 8 p.m. on Monday, April 7, 2003. He was term (barely), weighed 5 pounds 9 ounces, and looked like a space alien. Today, his seventh birthday, he is a wiry 50-pounder. He is tall, blond, and miraculous to his parents in nearly every way. Two of his grandparents got to meet him; his father’s mother got to know him. More than that, he got to know her. One of the gifts older parents often can’t give their children is grandparents.

What can we give him as we age? Perspective, tolerance . . . time. Perhaps because we have lost our own parents, we are in touch with mortality in a way that younger parents are not. We have seen enough to know that we are all on the brink of the abyss at any given moment and that, in the words of a character in one of Xingu’s books, “Now is all the time there is.”

Xingu and I go way back together. Thirty years ago, single and anxious and prone to drinking too much wine, I talked about the sweet little boy I would have someday. He reassured me from the womb throughout my fraught pregnancy, and then here he was.

He has no clue that he will be bullied mercilessly if he continues to study dance. He loves to climb, swim, run and ride his bicycle; he is learning to skateboard. He knows snippets of The Mikado, The Sorcerer, The Yeomen of the Guard, The Lion King, and various operas (“Mom, who is worse? President Bush or Don Giovanni?”). He whines and pouts and whines some more. He reads Harry Potter. He hugs old people, who love him for it. He hugs his parents, who love him for it.

The evening Xingu was born, my good doctor came in to tell me why he thought a C-section was in order. I had hoped to put it off until the next day because just then I wanted to eat more than I wanted to have surgery. Dr. W said he thought it better not to wait. I looked at my husband Krang. “Seven is an odd number…” I murmured; Krang knows I like odd numbers. Dr. W added, “Seven is a lucky number.”

It gets better

NEUROPEPTIDES

I would kill for this hair

My friend Rosemary. Ooohhh, I love her style....and the hair I can only dream about.