Our Little Girl is All Grown Up

It happened on a Saturday. Months in planning: meeting with attorneys and bankers, signing leases and changing addresses, arranging for movers and painters, all leading up to the actual day that my mother moved out of her house, but it wasn't until Saturday, after the movers had come and gone, that it hit me.

"You mean that I am now expected to sleep here?", looking around the living room of her new apartment, as confused as I suppose she might have looked on the day I was born.

As did I, because in that moment I realized that I was no longer the child; never again would I ride in the backseat with my parents in front, directing my life while I sat helplessly staring out the window.

I was homesick. Not for the house from which we had just pried my mother, one that was never my home, but for a time when I wasn't making decisions, when it wasn't my responsibility to see that everyone was fed and dressed appropriately.

This really happened years ago when I was vaulted from daughter to decision maker after my father had a life altering car accident. In the emergency room the questions came at me so rapidly that I didn't have time to think, and the only answer was please, please do everything you can. And they did. Our roles changed that day, but it happened so quickly and without warning I didn't really understand.

"It's like I'm the kid again, my mother and grandmother do all the cooking", explained a mom friend, right before Thanksgiving. That idea is now so far away that I cannot imagine what it might feel like to wake up on Thanksgiving day with nothing to do but watch parades and arrive at dinner with only a bottle of wine.

I'm the oldest in every possible way: I direct, I coordinate, I make decisions. I'm happier in charge and feel lost without direction. But every once in a while, just for fun, I'd like someone else to pick the restaurant.

Last week, while reading a book to the second grade about family, one of the boys in class raised his hand, "Are your parents still alive Mrs. Lang? Because if your parents are still alive then you still get to be a kid."

Oh if only that were true.

Traveling through My History

It was not the answer I expected, not from my pragmatic and history obsessed child. Kate was asked  "where would you go if you could travel in time?" and I so smugly thought that I knew the answer. Kate would find a seat in the corner of Independence Hall and watch the signing of the Declaration, or she would stand in the crowd when Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address.

I was wrong. Kate, who usually chooses to think with her mind rather than her heart, answered immediately. Forgoing a chance to ride on the back of Paul Revere's horse as he made his way from  Boston to Lexington, Kate opted instead for a seat in Mrs. Grow's fourth grade class, at a desk near mine. "I would go back to when you were my age Mom, and I would be your best friend".

From time to time my girls say things that actually make me stop, breathe and realize that at the end of the day they are becoming just the kind of people that I really hoped they would. They are becoming the kind of people I would like to have as friends.

Unfortunately I can't offer you a seat at the next desk but I can introduce you to someone who made fourth grade my favorite place to be: my partner in too much talking, too little working, and hours of laughter, testing the sanity of our poor teacher.

I'd happily give up my seat in Independence Hall to find a friend like Jim for Mary and Kate.

I Can Breathe Clearly Now the Rain is Gone

Recently I've noticed that I am growing more and more boring, which I attribute to age. It seems now that one of the most exciting things I can find to discuss is the weather. I'll discuss the weather with anyone who might listen, and it is clear that I am thrilled to have such fascinating content at my disposal: Saturday it was hot and Sunday it was cold! Madness!

I mentioned this to one of my college roommates, who is also getting older, interrupting a truly titillating conversation on wind, "do you think we're getting old? We talk about the weather". She did not see this as a problem, pointing out that we choose to talk about weather, rather than other more pressing things, like dry cleaning. This is a woman I lived with for almost four years; someone willing to discuss with me, in great depth, the motivation of the boy downstairs in taking his garbage out at midnight rather than 10:00 pm. Hours of our young lives spent, across the table from one another at Egg Roll King, trying to identify every ingredient in chicken fried rice. We talked into the night, on more than one occasion, in an effort to understand why the woman who drove the bus to campus didn't have the huge, hairy mole removed from her chin. We strove to understand the deep meaning behind the lyrics of every Janet Jackson song.  We were never getting married, or we were but we were not changing our names, we were never having children, or we were having five.  Our lives were wild, chocked full of intrigue and mystery, we were interesting. Now we are grown up and too busy to notice hairy moles on bus drivers.

Just when I thought I could not possibly get more dull my allergies arrived. Through my thoroughly congested nose I tell anyone who cares to listen about how difficult it is to breathe, how I can't believe how quickly this came on, how they do seem to be getting worse as I get older and yes, incorporating both my interests, "it must be the weather this year, allergies just seem to be worse than ever before". Understand I said they exact same thing last year, and the year before that.

Last week someone at school, clearly unable to listen to me blather on any longer, suggested I try the Neti Pot.

"Really? They look so awful, you run water through your nasal cavity? All of it, just irrigate the entire thing? And stuff comes out? Like, snot, things like that? In lumps, or clumps? Does it just run out in one long boogery stream? Is it one big horrid snotty mess? Sounds a bit scary really". She smiled and ran from the room.

This weekend I bought a Neti Pot. So overjoyed with the disgusting result, and my new found ability to take long deep breaths through my nose, I raced to the phone to call the college roommate. "No", said Jack, "just no".

He thwarted my attempts to post this miracle on Facebook. He reminded the children that I love them when I shouted, while still taking deep breaths, "Glory be! This is the single greatest day of my life" over and over and over. He tried to interrupt when I said that nothing had more dramatically altered my life than this miracle pot, nodding to the two children staring in complete shock at their temporarily allergen free mother.. He stopped me from explaining just how good it felt to breathe without congestion to the nice lady taking my breakfast order. And he yelled "no, stop, enough" when I stood on the back deck singing "I can breathe clearly now the goop is gone". 

It's going to be unseasonably cool in Chicago this week. Bundle up if you live close to the water and don't let that sunny sky fool you, it's chilly out there! As it turns out, it was entirely possible to get more boring.

Flying by the Seat of My Pants

At approximately 9:27 AM yesterday I discovered that my pants were unzipped.

In this life, 9:27 is well into my morning. I had showered and dressed (somewhat), made breakfast and packed lunches. I rode in a taxi with the family to school, kissed the husband good-bye, attended a meeting (which included people I had not met before), read two books to 25 fourth grade boys and girls, talked extensively with them about selecting a good biography and then got up and showed them where exactly to  find said biography (which included a good deal of walking around, up and down movements, and lots of Carol Merrill type gesturing), checked out the appropriate biographies (which involved sitting, thank God) and then, once the entire class left the library, only then did a discover that my pants were unzipped.

This discombobulated woman thing is sadly becoming part of my daily shtick, and I'd like to assign it a place in my 46 year old dossier but the truth is I've been this disheveled mess for years.

"Turn around!"
Immediately I whirled around to see my friend Heather, literally doubled over laughing. "No, turn around again!", she went crashing to the floor.

At the front door of the Laura Ashley store, where we both worked, in a huge suburban shopping mall, I stood with my short kilt tucked into the back of my dark tights. How long I had been wandering around that way we will never know. Thankfully I was 22, the damages far less severe than a similar mishap now.

When I was 32 I wore two different shoes to an early morning meeting, similar in style but markedly different colors. It wasn't until I crossed my legs, and then immediately switched rapidly back and forth to confirm, that I noticed the end of my legs did not match. Long pants can only do so much when one shoe is black and one shoe is red.

My sweaters have holes, my glasses are smudged, my intentions are good.

It's no accident that I surround myself with the kind of wonderful people who are not afraid to tell me to turn around and zip my pants. I fear I'm going to need even more of them as this life goes on.

Thankfully there are no pictures to accompany this post.

Face to Face, Hand to Hand

Last week, as I leaned in to inspect what looked to be a newly forming pimple, but rather, turned out to be splotch of red dry skin, I realized that I had been leaning in to look at this same face for a very long time. I know this because my daughter Mary, who is so creepily like me in both looks and demeanor, spends an enormous amount of time looking in at herself. What she sees now is so completely different from what I see, but I know, from pictures, that what she sees is a face that looks very much like what I used to see, 37 years ago.

Frequently we are stopped by complete strangers, "she looks just like you!" they say, and I nod, "yes, we hear that quite a bit", but I don't really see it, not now. Our baby pictures are almost identical, often requiring a second look to be certain. Like Mary I was a complete ham and threw myself in front of every Kodak flip flash I could find. Early on I posed with a hand on hip starlet look, one that she mastered years ago. How did this face I have now once look so much like the one she wears? What happened between seven and forty five?

Several years ago, way back when we actually took film to be processed, I was a regular at our local camera shop. Once the nice photo shop lady asked if the woman in the pictures was my mother because she could certainly see the resemblance, "you look just like her!". It was not my mother, it was my grandmother, and I was complimented because I always thought that my grandmother was beautiful. It was just recently that I realized, while shopping for wrinkle creams and radiance booster serums, that I only met my grandmother when she was 54 years old, much older than I was back when we still developed film. And she was beautiful then, as she was at 87, when we said goodbye.
 
It has always fascinated me, when looking at pictures of my childhood, that the hand waving good-bye to my father from my 3 year old body is the exact same hand waving now, at my children, from my 45 year old body. It's larger, and full of spots; my knuckles are crinkly and skin saggy, but it's the same hand that once was so puffy and tiny. The same hand that used a blue crayon to scribble "Allyson" on the wall in the laundry room now squirts the 409 and tries to remove "Mary" from the wall in the living room. The same hands that wrote their way to a blue ribbon in creative writing now type out story after story on a machine barely conceived of back in those blue ribbon days.

The very same ones that held so tightly to my grandmother's perfectly manicured hands now wrap around Mary's small fingers, trying so hard to never let go. And those same hands hold her, just as they were once held, back when we saw ourselves through the lens of a Kodak Flip Flash.

Finding My Balance

My wrinkle cream is giving me pimples.

At an age when I might finally be able to admit it's the mid-point, a close to the halfway average of the eventual last age of my two grandmothers, I see myself teetering on top of Mount Aging Gracefully. I am not steady, it's a balancing act, and I've never been to sure of my footing at high elevations. My skin is as confused as I am.

Several months ago I sat with a group of women all close in age, early to mid forties, and one 37 year old. She sat silently as we discussed this new found aging. I was truly shocked to discover that all those pretty freckles on my hands were actually age spots; the old gals enlightened me, but not my spots; those creams don't work they said. The 37 year old chimed in, "neither do the wrinkle creams, so I had Botox". We all stopped, looked and inspected. "See, my forehead used to look like that", pointing to my severely disfigured cranium, "but now it looks like this" and she gestured, Carol Merrill like, at her smooth yet immobile temple space. The forty year old crowd was without words, their not yet gray heads bobbing back and forth as if they were center court at Wimbledon, searching for vast differences in our foreheads. I smiled and crinkled up my skin to get a better look.

Only validating my theory that 37 was the perfect time to have children, I seem to have lost my tiny print eyesight at the precise time my girls have learned to read. Coincidence? I think not. No longer am I limited only to restaurants where I know the entire menu by heart, "what's this?" I say, gesturing at some mouse sized words under the header "primi". Kate reads, in her best Italian, every detail of the cappellacci di zuca and we move on to the wine list.

It does not seem that long ago when I would spend Sundays with my grandmother, dividing the morning paper and joking about my reading the wedding notices while she read the obituaries. Here I am now, somewhere between weddings and funerals, working on the crossword puzzle. It seems to me that my crossword puzzle years should be relatively skin issue free.

Many years ago, when Mimi was considering a face lift, I said no, assuring her that I really liked her wrinkles. I did, her face without them wouldn't have been her face at all. In my life, she had always been a bit lined, "Allyson, just look at this chicken neck, someday you won't think this is so beautiful!". Her face was wonderful, familiar and loved. The benefit to wrinkles, versus the pimple, is that there are very few "Good Lord, where did that come from?" mornings. Wrinkles sneak in where the pimple announces his arrival with gusto; wrinkles reflect happiness and experience, pimples reflect stress over finals and too many late nights at The Wheel.

The real buger is this: I thought I had conquered adolescence. Rarely am I without a date on Saturday night, and when poker night trumps sitting at home with a movie, I cherish the quiet. Long gone are the days when I felt self conscious, with snickering teenagers ready to mock my every move. Of course I do realize that with two seven year old girls in my home, the snickering will soon reappear, to some degree warranted as it's not infrequent that I show up at school with a large hole in my sweater or with my pants unzipped. But still, haven't I grown too old to worry about looking geeky? Isn't it time to embrace my inner geek?

There is no longer room for both adolescence and middle age on my pale freckled face, although I'm not really ready to commit to either. My days are spent fine tuning the balancing act, teetering with one foot on either side, a stop at the Clinique counter on the way to the Estee Lauder night cream. I'm simply confused, as is, apparently, my skin.

Genius.

Hand in Hand

It was clear when they walked in that they had been married a very long time. In one hand he held a folded newspaper, in the other, her wrinkled hand. He pulled out her chair, sat down himself and began to read.

"Where is that restaurant?" she asked.
"Downstairs dear".
"So it won't take long to get there?"
He smiled at her, she checked her watch.

He read, she flipped pages in a magazine.

"Do you know our tickets are for 1:30?"
"I know we are going to the symphony this afternoon," he answered.

I checked my watch, it was 11:10; we were one half block from the symphony center.

"What are you going to eat? At lunch."
Without looking up he replied, "I haven't seen the menu yet dear".
"I think I'm going to have soup, something that won't take long to prepare. What do you think?"
"I think you should get whatever pleases you."

He read; she flipped pages, crossed and uncrossed her very old legs, adjusted her skirt, rifled through her purse and sighed loudly when she checked her watch again.

He folded his paper and looked at her, "Marilyn, would you like to go and have lunch?".
"You know, I believe I would."

They left hand in hand.

A Wrinkle In My Time

They stopped, right in the middle of the very congested aisle at Macy's. They stared. "Mom, what is this?", pointing madly at the picture of the woman above. I moved back and explained that this was an advertisement for a face cream, hoping that would allow us to keep moving. "But why does her face look like that?".

We are late, my two children are frozen, mesmerized by this photograph. I look like the pretreated face and I don't want to take the time to explain wrinkles and advertising and vanity.

At a certain age my grandmother considered a face lift as so many of her friends were getting tucked and tugged and tight. She asked my opinion. My response, as retold countless times to anyone willing to listen, "but Mimi, I love your wrinkles", evidence of my young charm and general love for anything having to do with my very wrinkled grandmother.

"Girls, this is a photograph that is here to try and encourage people to buy this cream, " and I took a step forward. "Why does her face look like that?", I backed up. "This company is showing us that their cream can help a person look younger, but they only used this cream on one side of her face, to show us the difference". Nodding, general understanding and finally a willingness to move on.

"MOM! Wait, don't you want to get some of that cream?"

We were indeed late, and I remain wrinkled.

Image courtesy of Origins Skincare

"Wanna Jump?"

They moved in the summer before third grade. Scuttlebutt in the neighborhood was that there were two boys, one about my age, but when I saw them in the back patio there were two boys and a girl, although she appeared to be older than 8. My mom came out to peek from the deck, “the girl is their mom dear, sorry, two boys”.

Their house, next door to ours, sat at an angle meaning that I could effectively spy, from our guest room, directly into their backyard and garage. After two weeks of constant surveillance, my father suggested I introduce myself in person.

Not necessary, the large trampoline in our backyard served as a magnet for all the neighborhood kids and in no time the boys joined the assembled crowd bouncing dangerously close to one another. That September Michael and I were in the same third grade class; Jeff and Lori moved in soon after, and Amy after that. The Scanlons, Storys and Clossers were just down the street, the Ridge and Campbell families just across. My mother, terrified of neighborhood children flying too far and landing injuriously on the hard ground, or worse, on one another,required that everyone who jumped on the trampoline have a note from their parents. That old wooden box full of handwritten notes provided hours of entertainment for me on rainy days.

The entire scope of my young childhood memory is centered on this trampoline, surrounded by these people, all day and long into the night. After dinner, but before our parents started calling from their back doors, we would sprawl from one end to the other, tired of jumping all day, and relax in the familiarity of the friends who made up our every summer moment. Only the jingle of the ice cream truck was compelling enough to pull us from our comfortable roost.Dusk moved to night as the fireflies joined us, someone ran home for Popsicles and we ended our day, yet again, a sticky mess of dirty children. There was bickering and fighting, and laughing and loving, even though we were far too young to admit that. It was on that trampoline that Eddy told me, with knowledge acquired in his year of seniority, the exact role my parents played in my being, and I did not believe one word of it. It was there that I blurted out "I love you" when I meant to say something far less committing, and then cowered for weeks after, secretly hoping that no one heard me blunder the most important thing you could ever say to another. It was there that we took turns, shared, supported and dusted off the bump when one of us fell particularly hard.

Because they lived next door, my day often began when Michael appeared on our back deck, soon after breakfast, "wanna jump?", the neighborhood code words for "come out and play". From the two of us the usual crowd assembled and thus began yet another summer day, without agenda, just as it had been the day before.

We grew up, grew apart, moved away. Gatherings moved from our trampoline to the house next door, Michael's fully outfitted basement the new home for the next stage of our young lives. Completely ill at ease in a dark basement surrounded by friends becoming teenagers, I often made my way upstairs to the family room, spending my boy/girl party time with Mr. and Mrs. Feeney who kindly relinquished their quiet evening to the awkward girl next door. When I tripped over my brand new, and completely hideous, platform sandals at the junior high football banquet, it was Mr. Feeney who pulled me off the floor and saved me from years of certain embarrassment by delivering one of his straight on one liners.

The snow falls outside the coffee shop window, 500 miles away from the old trampoline. The death this past weekend of Michael's father reminds me that distance is measured not only in miles but also in years. With little effort I hear his big voice screaming from the patio, "Michuuuul, Patriiick", so frequently ignored by his sons. Eventually he would appear in our yard, hands on hips, exasperated look on his face, cocktail in hand, and our summer night would end. Remembering him this week brought back that night, and those wonderful summers. Goodnight Mr. Feeney, and thank you.

Birthdays

Getting older is so much nicer when you are lucky enough to spend your days with these people. Old, certainly, but blessed with friends and family who made turning 40 something you might want to do everyday.

Old Man Jack

Yesterday we moved into the six year portion of our calendar. Six months of the year I am five years older than my husband, and then in one wonderful day, I become six years older. It matters. Five years is nothing, six years is longer than high school, longer than college, six years means I was in first grade when he was born. He loves it. I love that he is graying at the temple.

Jack is old, at least in soul. He's been a 55 year old button up'd banker for 20 years. He loves v-neck sweaters and wool gabardine trousers, he is always tucked in and never, ever has schmuts on his shirt. His shoes are polished, usually laced; he rarely shows his toes.

Jack is old as I am young. He worries, I laugh, he festers, I sigh. Together we sing, although rarely the same song, a five year age difference quite noticeable in musical taste. He plans, I execute, he keeps me organized, I keep him silly.

Mary and Kate, not yet five, illustrate just how far apart we are, and how close we have become.

One Year Older

One year ago I sat down and began this project, having put it off for the previous 42 years. There were journals full of notes, and pages and pages of scribbling stashed away in the empty spaces in my brain, having spent years writing down my every thought and observation. Of course when I actually sat down to write what I found was that it was today that interested me most, and how today interacted with yesterday, and the day before.

In third grade, when I won the blue ribbon for creative writing at the curriculum fair, I decided I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. But that was third grade, things change, there were the architect years, the Supreme Court Justice years, the Senator years, the political journalist years and the graphic designer years. Then I went to college and had no idea what I wanted to do, none, and so I majored in political science and communications and went to work as a waitress. That didn't last, thankfully.

At 42 I have almost accepted that my dreams of winning Olympic gold may have to be shelved. There is still hope for the Academy Award, Jessica Tandy won at 80, but as I have no acting or directing or costume designing skills or aspirations, I may need to let that go as well. But I can still write, maybe not well, but prolifically.

It now appears that at eight I had a good read on who I was supposed to be, had I only listened to myself years ago. But then I would also think that my Dad was Superman, tomatoes were disgusting and Bubble Yum was the most amazing invention ever, no question. I want to be a writer, not when I grow up, but now.

And of course happy birthday Barry Manilow!

A Tale of Two Old Ladies

"Try these".
"I'm fine, really".
"Try them".
"No, I'm well, alright, oh, oh dear".

Look, there it was, miso sea bass, spicy yellow tail, curried tofu, I could see it all. Jack shook his head, I succumbed to the pressure, I could see the menu. But not if you held it over my left shoulder, a dull ache on that side prevented me from turning my head, rotating my entire body, like Joan Cusak at the water fountain, was the only way I could see the room behind me. The full body twist combined with the reading glasses, my only saving grace being a pimple I felt growing on my chin; sans that I was at least my own age, if not older.

When we got home my sister reported that Eleanor Roosevelt was unable to jump up on the sofa. The next day she winced when touched. Five buildings away she had to stop and take a break, sprawling out on the sidewalk, our walk blissfully cut short as I could only hold the leash in my right hand finding it far too painful to keep hold of the slowly lumbering first lady with my left. She flatly refused to climb the steps to our apartment and so, with great care so as to not hurt her or throw my back out completely, I carried the 40 pound beagle up the stairs. We were both exhausted. She cried when the children came near, I thought she had somehow gone blind over night, being easily startled and scared. Waving my hands wildly in front of her face, I pictured her in reading glasses, red to match her collar. I wondered if seeing eye dog courtesies would be extended if neither of us could see.

Without a car, or any feeling on my left side, I scooted the two children into a taxi, hoisted the injured Mrs. Roosevelt, still unable to move, into my lap and hurried off to the vet the first thing this morning. She is not old and dying, she can actually see, she simply sprained her back. One half an anti inflammatory a day, administered tonight via goat cheese after rejecting peanut butter and pasta, and she will be fine in a few short days.

My course of treatment should be only so tasty.