by Naomi Rayman

Nighty Night

Posted on March 13, 2020

In 1959, following her cardiologist’s orders, my mother took to her bed for a year. Her arteries were found to be compromised (later determined to be angina), with the concomitant restricted blood flow, necessitating dramatic measures of treatment. These were the antiquated days of medicine, apparently. Leeches and cupping were no longer in vogue and bypass surgery was in its developmental stages. Bed rest for cardiac patients seemed to be the prescription of choice. It had only taken three months of hospitalization for my mother’s doctor to arrive at a diagnosis and the resulting prognosis. While my mother languished in Peralta Hospital for an entire season and my father fretted over how to care for his 8-year-old hand-wringing daughter, family friends took action and scooped me up, brought me to their jewel-box, split-level house in the Oakland hills, and plopped me down in the spare twin bed in my little friend’s bedroom. There I ached to see my mother, agitated over my father’s unpredictably timed visits to see me, and felt conflicted that the Leysers’ house was so much cooler than our suburban ranch-style I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave this modern house and vivacious family. The views from their enormous plate-glass windows were stellar; plus they had an entire playroom in the basement complete with a small stage for all our theatrical production needs.

My parents and I eventually reunited. None of us returned home whole probably because the linchpin in our family unit had been irreparably damaged; my mother’s “condition” frightened us all in ways that were never discussed. Anxiety prevailed but was tamped down by my mother’s humor and my father’s doting attention to “his girls.” I threw myself into hours of Barbie-doll fantasy play emerging from my room only when paged to do so by my mom. Only my mother took her time regaining her bearings once she returned home. The resting part of her doctor’s bed rest decree, in fact, resulted in the three of us moping around lethargic and unmoored. Her world had shrunk to a reasonably sized bedroom mercifully outfitted with a Zenith portable black-and-white T.V. and a remote control dubbed the Space Command by the manufacturers. My mother called it Sputnik. My father never tired of recounting how he had won the T.V. in a golf tournament thanks to his eagle on that par-5 hole. What auspicious luck, he would say, morphing our family’s precarious predicament into a light-hearted fable.

For her year in bed, my mother costumed herself with as much panache as she brought to her business outfits and her social ensembles. I was called upon to reorganize her closet and dresser drawers according to her directives reflecting the new clothing guidelines. We moved her work wardrobe to the back of the closet along with her high heels and dinner plate-sized hats. She folded up her oversized sunglasses into their quilted sleeves. She ironed her gloves with a stroke of her hand before tucking them into a drawer, and she placed her enormous purses in the only spot big enough for storage: the laundry hamper.

What she kept accessible were her foundations…that is, underwear. I will elaborate further: girdles, garters, and nylons (aka hose). As she had spent her adult life wearing high-heels, with a more recent penchant for backless shoes, she satisfied her compulsion to mimic life on the outside by wearing peep-toed slides that she insisted were bedroom slippers. Some had plastic glittery straps; others were adorned with pom poms on the toes. None were meant to hit the pavement but placated my mother’s need to keep her fashion bar high. In fact, her heart was unpredictable enough that she became disinclined if not downright scared to leave the house in case her angina attacks required more than a lie down. More than once she had collapsed on the sidewalk or inside a store resulting in an impressive shiner on her face and another time a broken wrist. Suddenly, her disease was visible to all. Vanity prevailed, agoraphobic fears took hold and both resulted in a complete change of wardrobe and accessories. But how to procure new threads when on house arrest?

Way back then, on-line anything suggested the backyard clothesline or perhaps the telephone’s party line. It certainly didn’t refer to shopping. That’s what the newspaper ads were for. Deep within the body of the daily paper were the women’s pages—Dear Abby columns, recipes, Helpful Hints from Heloise—all to entertain, inspire, educate and occasionally repudiate the homemaker. Buried adjacent to these literary treasures were advertisements, boxed-in and bordered with heavy, bold lines. Found within was an ad for a specific shop’s dress, sweater, coat, etc. rendered to hit all the right buttons. Lovely young buxom women illustrated with bouffant flips that would make Patty Duke envious. If my mother were scanning the paper for some recreational shopping she only had to espy the garment on the model drawn with a tiny waist, slim gams, and thin arms animated in some way – in her pockets to illustrate the dress’s movement or with a purse daintily hanging from her wrist—to then imagine owning it. Shopping commenced while Sputnik patiently rested on my mom’s lap. Overnight deliveries unheard of, we giddily waited for the parcels to arrive. Generally speaking, the arrival of the daily mail induced palpable excitement. It was a bit of a schlep from the front door, across the yard, and through the garden gate to the mailbox which stood sentry on the curb. The mailman would raise the toy-sized red-metal flag signaling that the box had been restocked with our daily haul of letters, bills, and magazines. Parcels, though, received the royal treatment. These were the post-Pony Express but pre-Amazon days. The mailman (and they were all men) didn’t unload a flotilla of packages as we have now come to expect; rather he brought the long-awaited carton, wrapped in brown paper, and often tied with string, to the front door and rang the bell waiting for the recipient to gleefully accept the goods. Not so very different than the personalized and enthusiastic speedy delivery service offered by Mr. McFeely to an ever-exhilarated Fred Rogers. Less chatter but similar gusto. If my mother was trussed up in one of her chenille robes she might accept the parcel, otherwise I was advised to open the door, get the goods, and to remember to say thank you.

First the bed jackets arrived. These were often ¾-length sleeved, button-down cardigans of a sort. Often there were silky bows that fastened at the collar; others had no closure but apparently kept the chill at bay. The satin ones were my favorites and probably my mother’s too because of the way the fabric caught the light and made the pseudo-jacket seem almost like party wear. Extravagant and useless, like so many fashion statements, they looked debonair whether worn or nonchalantly tossed atop the bed.

Growing bored with skimpy, ersatz party jackets, the next mail-order packages to arrive disgorged fluffy, substantial robes all of which were particularly lavish. Heavy and full length, some terry cloth and others chenille, she draped these behemoths over her frail shoulders when her needs required her to leave the bedroom. Bathroom visits, the occasional trip to the mailbox or even the front door required modesty but more crucially the jaunt was an excuse for dressing up, as it were. I’ve always been a robe wearer myself, but procuring them is getting more arduous and depressing. My last robe purchase, in fact, found me in the dimly lit recesses of Macy’s 2nd floor where each lonely, homely robe hung askew like a displaced person in a poorly lit bus station.

Then, as months went by, boredom reigned and some new threads held the promise of diversion. When admonished by my dad for spending more money on what he called glorified pajamas, she countered: “Why do you think we call them bed clothes, Bill?” She managed to make everyday an excuse to dress up even if only she reveled in the appeal. Actually, that’s not completely accurate because on occasion she would find matching peignoirs for us to loll around in. These uber-feminine, often translucent delicacies were two-piece nighties…a negligee and a coordinated, if useless, robe. My mother was never without her undergarments, as far as I could tell. Always, decorously presentable, she nonetheless sometimes lazed around like Carole Lombard; as her mini-twin, I looked like a child bride. Did you see Brook Shields in “Pretty Baby?” The peignoir phase spilled over to the baby-doll stage – just for me, of course. Mine being the desexualized version of the otherwise risqué originals.

As my mother’s strength returned, or should I say, when the year was up (she never actually got stronger or healthier) it appeared that she enjoyed—or acclimated to–lounging around the house. Her bedroom ensembles were worthy of Gloria Swanson’s delusional encounter with Mr. DeMille. Emerald green satiny pants with a brocaded, mandarin-collared jacket was one such flamboyance. There was a paisley ¾-length light-weight coat worn over lavender-colored capri pants that worked well from day to night. But, the luscious and delicate white dotted-swiss two-piece set, the buttons of which were covered in the same fabric, made me almost hope that I too would inherit a serious heart condition if it meant I could wear these outfits one day.

While her stay-at-home wardrobe seemed to vanquish, at least for a few hours, my mother’s increasingly forlorn emotional state, she had other needs that weighed down her psyche and could not be addressed on her own. That is, she was told not to lift her arms above her head. What does one do about one’s hair? Unwilling to cut her prematurely grey hair into a manageable yet stylish coiffure, she trained me to fashion a reasonable chignon. Wispy and unruly, her hair was no match for my 8-year-old talents, and she complained to me that she was beginning to look like Jesus Christ on the cross. Perplexing to me because as Jews, Jesus was never a talking point in our home. A confusing reference to me at the time, I sought further knowledge in the Google reference of that time; I rummaged through our World Book Encyclopedia volumes. To look in volume “J” or “C” ? Did Jesus’ hair look different depending on his situation? As I find myself today going for a deep dive into the rabbit hole that is Facebook, the green-and-white trove of knowledge was irresistible. One minute, I’m looking for information on Christ’s grooming and the next thing I know I’m focused on the C-volume’s mesmerizing display of the color wheel. Illustrations of the crucifixion did nothing to inform my understanding of how my mom related to her thinning hair. What I did uncover, however, in the W volume of the encyclopedia was more like it: The Duchess of Windsor, Wallis Simpson, and my mom were obviously separated at birth. My mother shrugged off the comparison to the notorious royal agreeing only with the Simpson’s too-true statement that one can never be too rich or too thin. My mother added…or too healthy.

With her increased stamina, my mom required a more functional outfit for her life in limbo: intermittent bed rest and the occasional but hope-inspiring visit from one of her girlfriends. What outfit says both, “I’m not healthy,” and “Who wants a cocktail?” In abeyance, my mother donned a housecoat that spoke volumes with its casual yet festive look. It was as close to ironic dressing as, say, wearing her huge sunglasses when it was raining. She wore her housecoats with stockings held in place by her girdle’s garters. It could have been that in order to pull off a sophisticated look, she felt like the person she used to be…in control of her life and powerful. There’s nothing like a whale-boned corset to make one feel held together. To avoid comparisons with Moms Mabley, my mother never once owned a floral housecoat. These were the stay-at-home jaunty frocks that must have given her a fleeting sense of the optimism. I think it must have been the absence of a waistline that somehow mitigated the possibility of slovenliness and transformed her into feeling presentable for someone who was on lockdown.

On a sunny Saturday in February, the mailman handed me a package for my mom. But she had died the day before. My dad asked me to open it and proceeded to excuse himself disappearing into his grief. There, wrapped in soft pink tissue paper, was the most beautiful and feminine of all the housedresses I had ever seen. The dress was made from clouds. The material was soft and velvety-white with a lavish embroidered trim on the placket—from the mandarin collar to the hem. The buttons were delicate, simple pearls that seemed to float on the front of the dress like tiny dollops of whip cream.

The next day my father emerged from his bedroom and asked if I could manage helping him with one necessary task prior to my mother’s funeral. He wanted me to pick out what she should be buried in. Tough decision for any other 13-year-old girl maybe, but not for me. My choice was obvious and respected by my father: she would be interred in a shroud fit for a woman, hand-picked by the wearer herself, who could pull off even the most extravagantly glitzy bed clothes. I found the perfect pair of high-heeled slippers to accessorize her outfit.

By the mid 1960s my personal choice in nightwear was the Lanz Nightgown. These cuddly nightgowns were so popular that there were entire stores dedicated to the line of sleepwear. My favorite was the small shop on Maiden Lane in San Francisco with wooden floors and circular, revolving racks from which the sweetly patterned nighties hung. The innocence of the fabric’s designs on pastel flannel…tiny flowers, sweet honey bees, whimsical stars and moons…the lace trim on the bodice, the teensy bodice buttons looking like Candy Dots and the floor-length hems belied the very essence of that free-lovin’ decade. In the days of slumber parties, now called sleep overs, my crew brought their sleeping bags, flashlights, red vines, and Swedish fish to the party; some even remembered their toothbrushes. Lanz nightgowns were our evening wear of choice. All my friends and I were missing with these enveloping nightgowns was a chastity belt.

I moved on from my cozy Lanz evening uniform to oversized men’s tee shirts and hearty bathrobes that were more often than not terry cloth with pockets large enough to put a textbook or two in. These were days of co-ed dorms and shared bathrooms. No one needs ever to wear a nightgown or robe that has the potential to touch the floor of a co-ed bathroom.

A couple of years ago, I bought each of my small grandchildren their own bathrobe and they looked at me as if I had lost my mind. Such a superfluous and therefore ridiculous-looking sweater/coat, grandma. That’s what I imagine was going through their little noggins or perhaps it was the voices of their robe-less parents. But, I’ll keep trying to indoctrinate them to make peace with their genetic predisposition to dressing up for bed.

After entertainer Billy Eilish won 5 Grammys this year, her photo appeared in the New York Times. First, I had to figure out who the hell Billy Eilish is and then I took a good long look at that photo of her. She performed in what the paper called, a purposely baggy outfit. You can’t fool me, though. Those were pajamas she wore on the red carpet. I never doubted my mother’s fashion sense nor her exquisite prescience. My mom, would have applauded Eilish’s fashion statement. After all, the outfit was designed by Gucci.

Sleep Tight,

Naomi
Categories: Writing

Keeping Time

Posted on January 5, 2020

The venue certainly was nothing to write a blog about.  And, I definitely didn’t RSVP “will attend” for the promise of chicken wings and ribs. Anyway, how do you eat those things while working a crowd?   Despite decades of insouciant memory high jinx about my high school years, I finally and somewhat emphatically announced to my long-time posse of 4th-grade buddies that I wasn’t going to miss this 50-year salute to being one of the survivors of my high school class of 1969.  I may decline that finger food at the buffet, but I would need that cocktail.


As the soiree’s fall date approached, the wunderkinds who were orchestrating the weekend’s jamboree began sending out emails asking those of us who apparently had a viable email address to supply missing addresses of renegades with whom we might be in touch (rumor had it my English teacher, Mr. Blake, might show up!  How is that possible?).  On that missing persons’ list were people I would have suspected of going underground.  Or, there were culprits who may have determined that their perch above planet ordinary-life was not worthy of rubbing elbows with us hoi polloi. Nobody, I’m sure, was so far off the grid that they didn’t own a computer.  Well, ok.  Maybe THAT guy.  But, aside from him, if people wanted to be found they were ferreted out.  Along with a website devoted to our class with both a photo of a team mascot that I had no memory of as well as a few snaps in which a meager assortment of classmates were doing the twist, the reunion committee stalwarts supplied directions to the evening gathering as well as other activities planned for the weekend.


Amidst the gleeful excitement radiating from the reunion committee was the link to those classmates who were now deceased.  I referred to it as The Dead List.  Its very presence brought my posse and me to our knees.  So many gone!  When did they die and how?  Not her? Could he really be dead?  That Dead List was my call to arms and the reason I went to the reunion.  I showed up that night not just as a member of the class of 1969 but more crucially as one of its survivors.

After all, if Mr. Blake could make the Herculean effort…


A couple of my closest girlfriends and I agreed that we would arrive together and escort ourselves past the first-floor honky-tonk bar scene whose patrons were clearly the age of our own adult children. We ascended the dank and narrow stairwell–the carpeting on the stairs looked as if it too was rolled out in 1969. I wondered if my classmates would reveal themselves to me as equally worn and threadbare. We arrived at the stairs’ landing and immediately our threesome was accosted by a pack of giddy women whose smiles or voices or gestures were utterly recognizable and yet unidentifiable.  The little grandma of a lady, whom I recognized as the wispy, tiny blonde vixen of yesteryear cleaved a path where the three of us stood and from that moment, each of us were atoms split apart from our private orbit around our own galaxy. From here on out and as we were to slog through the night, we took solace knowing that we would meet up again the next day to rehash the evening’s unfolding events.


At the sign-in table, one of the earnest greeters asked for my name and proceeded to recite his autobiography: semi-retired except for occasionally narrating audio books and coaching his grandchild’s soccer team.  I think he said he also drove the school bus, but my nerves were on edge and sensory overload (is that a disco ball hanging there?) limited my auditory channels.  He lived in the Midwest and was divorced. So, he added, available.  I hadn’t changed AT ALL, he lied.  He asked me when I had cut my hair (my hair was legendary and also it became clear as the evening proceeded that it was the only memorable thing about me).   He spryly wiped the spittle from the corners of his mouth and quickly ran through my to-do list…sign in, take my name tag (with the unfamiliar last name of my salad days), affix the small tag with my black-and-white senior photograph on it (the photo of an eager-to-please senior girl with long hair and bony shoulders wearing the requisite crew-neck dark sweater). There was a pearl necklace hanging around my youthful and taut neck.  I remembered that the photographer had each girl wear the same professionally supplied necklace which his assistant fastened with a safety pin.


The evening was mercifully shy on 60’s-themed décor (except for the disco ball visage).  It could have been bad:  tie-dyed banners, psychedelic-colored puffy flower graphics, doves and peace signs and so on.  The festive atmosphere was instead supplied by over 150 68-year-olds strutting their stuff like wizened peacocks.  Most of us dressed in what I would call cocktail casual.  A few optimistic women donned flowy dresses and sleeveless tops and a surprising number of attendees dressed as if they didn’t have a chance to change after being at Costco all day. Surprisingly little face work was apparent and anyway it would have paled in comparison to the pillowy bellies and ebbing hairlines of my fellow attendees.


It’s called Memory Lane for a reason. If you start your journey down a lane, say, versus a road you might be in more of a contemplative and reflective mood.  Thus, a lane traveler is apt to be a sole traveler on the trek—gazing at and pondering the beatific surroundings and one’s own relationship to that environment. You might take your time—stroll, if you will.  If I were on a road instead of a lane, it might occur to me to hustle along and in fact be tempted to cross it just to get to the other side. If I haven’t yet lost you on this somewhat belabored metaphor, let me get straight to the point:  At the reunion, where my powers of recall were being strained to its limits, Memory Lane met up with a traffic jam of such proportions that I couldn’t stay in my sweet little lane at all.  I would FINALLY connect the person’s face to their senior portrait and steal a glance at their nametag only to discover that I was in conversation with the spouse of the senior whose picture was on display.  My brain was no longer on my country-lane amble.  I had hit a traffic circle.  Around and around I went searching for a way to make some sense of the chaos.


All 150 of us reunion guests were seekers; some of us eager to catch a glimpse of someone not only familiar to us but someone with whom we had, at one time and only during a 4-year span, a significant connection with.  Like the dude at the hospitality desk, some were eager to spew their accomplishments or worse (much worse) their kids’ accomplishments.  Others appeared excited to talk about retirement and their second, more successful marriages.  Still others regaled listeners with a litany of medical woes and sad demises of fellow classmates.  A few found Jesus; that’s when I stayed in my own lane and took the closest escape route.

The bar, not surprisingly, was a popular junction.  I had my best conversations there.  A few of the attendees had started drinking long before arriving at the reunion and a couple of those guys found me, as a result of their private happy hour, to be ravishing.  Nothing wrong with a bit of hyperbole but lying is another thing.  The same guys, by the way, who kept talking about my hair.


I suppose what all of us who were assembled in that space were searching for was a glimpse of how others saw us as young people before we even knew ourselves.  Listening to someone tell me how I helped her survive an English class or how much my mother made her laugh transformed a short conversation into an eddy of emotion.  It worked both ways, of course.  I was finally able to share with one man (who was a girl when her locker was next to mine) that because of her I survived P.E. with some semblance of self worth. And, we moved quickly through that conversation not because he was loathe to talk about his sexual metamorphosis but because he wanted to show me photos of his 3 (high successful, of course!) children and his wife.  I just wanted to kiss his bearded cheek and thank him for picking me for his team. Whether we played baseball or field hockey, being on his team meant 1) I never had to lift a finger, a stick, a paddle and 2) we always won.


There were plentiful opportunities to chat with strangers with whom I had, long ago, been close. In fact, everyone of us there that night had been part of a universe inhabited only by us classmates.  Sure, there were teachers and parents but every weekday for four years, we were in close physical and psychological quarters where our very existence was defined by our relationships with one another. For all but the most confident and self assured (maybe there were 2 or 3?), our sense of self was gleaned from our reflection we saw in others.   Ours was a heightened awareness of other—from our popularity status to our intellectual strata to our sexual explorations with each other—we traveled in unison unaware of each other’s private lives, personal challenges and, certainly, future plans.  I doubt that many of us realized that the future was not a given—I for one, had no concept of how to forge ahead past the next essay or exam or school dance. Summer vacations loomed large come spring, but once in the midst of a hot, dry summer’s day those of us lucky enough to escape the monotony of jobs like babysitting, paper routes, or pumping gas were eager for the new school year to begin.  Beginning the new year meant presenting oneself as the new, improved and naturally more popular version of the previous year’s persona.


From 1965 to 1969, the world was spinning at warp speed; a grizzly war was being televised, race riots were shredding apart cities, mind-bending drugs were omnipresent, boys’ hair was getting longer and girls’ skirts were scooting upward. But our high school class seemed to travel en masse through the hallways and into the classrooms with an oddly robotic predictability.  Or so it seemed to me.  Despite tumultuous current events, we teenagers clung to each other without knowing why, and yet we were excruciatingly aware that to be alone meant uncertainty and even worse, social suicide.  Maybe our lives were not as frenetic as those of today’s teens.  The lack of social media certainly slowed down the gossip streams and lessened the instantaneous rebukes.  But as I recall, passing notes to one another could precipitate any number of fatal outcomes from being reprimanded by the Dean of Girls if caught in the act of note swapping or, and this was much worse, having the wad of paper usurped by some punk who would then reveal it to a pack of giggling adolescents.  Believe me, the shame of one’s private notes going public was gut wrenching and demoralizing.  If we weren’t busy trying to separate ourselves from one another for the sake of popularity or individuality, we were mostly united over the sameness of our surroundings.  Or so it seemed.  We had fewer choices available so that all of us tuned into the same TV shows which we watched on TV sets that looked like our neighbors’, listened to the same British rock bands on our omnipresent AM/FM clock radios (or at the beach on our transistor radios), saw the same movies at the one movie theatre in town, and read the same magazines and as a result coveted the same hairdos and smeared on similar versions of white-colored lipsticks.  All of us had to wait by the kitchen-wall phone for that important someone to call.  If you weren’t home, you missed your chance.  Destinies were forever altered by an unanswered phone.  Even worse, your parents might answer.


It was when we spun off from the herd, at the end of the school day, that we each retreated into homes that could be widely disparate from even our best friends’ family lives. Not very far into my freshman year, my mother had died and I convinced myself that no one at school could possibly empathize with my heartache and loneliness.  But some friends were stoicly coping with a missing parent as a result of alcoholism.    I learned of abuse, neglect and corporal punishment at the hands of tyrannical parents.  I heard about adult infidelities and loss of jobs.  Not all of us were Christian either.  I came from a Jewish household as did only a few of us. There were a couple of Mormons on my street; a weirdo Unitarian brood lived down the block.  And, there was one black girl who rode my school bus.  Was she even in my class?  Funny, she was the most invisible teenager of all.

Within the walls of our reunion venue, the memories bounced around like bumper cars veering and careening off of each of us as we shared what we needed to say to each other.  We were questioning our own versions of the truth as we regaled one another with events that we had in common.  It was a Venn diagram where there was my truth, your truth, and the intersection where the real facts lie.  The odd thing was that every once in awhile someone would come up to me who was completely unrecognizable—even after making small talk and allowing a quick second to align the senior photo with the name tag—and shared a poignant memory with me.  How disconcerting to be recalled with tenderness and recollect absolutely nothing.


There is no moral to having experienced this event.  But there is this:  Rarely does the past collide with the present in real time.  On a balmy September evening this past year, a bunch of adults came to together to experience who we were and who we became precisely because we moved through the past together.  We are all versions of each other. I was so happy I went.  I had the opportunity to thank one person for being the best first boyfriend a girl could ask for; I was able to say to another that I hoped my sons would turn out like him; I told one woman that her mother had taken me shopping for a strapless bra she thought I needed for my prom dress and her daughter had never known this; I could ask my neighbors whatever happened to their parents whom I adored…and I could show off my very short hair and let people know once and for all that there’s more to me than my long locks.


Categories: Writing

More Later #1

Posted on August 16, 2019
Dear Reader,

If you’re up for a journey with me, I invite you to read my latest writing. I am developing a longer, fiction (ahem, memoir truth be told) body of work and I’m starting with this entry. Basically, I need the practice/experience of a different sort. Call it cross training.

The working title for this project is, “More Later,” and from time to time I’ll move the story along (fingers crossed); my regular blogs will also be published too.

I’m full of ideas but we will see if I’m up to the task. I appreciate your willingness to be part of this exploration.

You might be a fan or an occasional reader. It’s just nice to know you’re there.

Happy reading!
Naomi

Evelyn – June 1944

The situation was dire. The good news: Evelyn landed the window dresser’s job at Goldman’s Department Store. Hopeful that her taste and talent in fashion would be on display (literally), she now had an excellent chance to be on the retail management fast track. The lousy news was that as a recently single mother of a kindergartener, she had no money for babysitters. Worse still: Evelyn had absolutely no clue whom to ask for help.

The radio was tuned to the debut Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. As she sponged off the last of the dinner dishes, Evelyn was careful not to spray water from the adjacent kitchen sink onto the radio’s yellowed plastic casing. She was always careful to not get the wonky plug wet as had happened too many times before and the cracks on the radio’s plastic body wouldn’t withstand one more bead of moisture she was certain. The inaugural radio show began with the couple sitting at their kitchen table (sun-dappled, undoubtedly). Conjuring Harriet Nelson’s kitchen—where she no doubt managed to scramble Ozzie’s eggs without breaking so much as an eggshell all the while pouring his coffee from the unquestionably shiny percolator—gave Evelyn a sucker punch to her insides. The radio took up most of the coveted space on the bite-sized kitchen’s peeling Formica counter, but she had hastily grabbed the aged electronic as she fled the house she shared with her husband, Harry. Listening to the program, she thought enviably of her own scuffed-up percolator that she left behind. Fled sounds so lurid and dramatic–too hasty. In fact, Evelyn and Harry had spoken of (or at least imagined) and threatened separation so many times that even the idea of divorce was becoming routine. The risk of leaving the marriage no longer terrorized Harry with thoughts of loneliness never mind his worry about draining his already meager bank account. Evelyn knew, of course, that the law required her to prove extreme cruelty, infidelity, or neglect to begin divorce proceedings. And what of their son? Would it even cross Harry’s mind to demand that he have full custody of their little boy? Evelyn’s foggy vision of her future was complicated by maddening laws she didn’t understand and emotions that fluctuated between fear and loathing.

The evening she finally left Harry, she was clenching little Michael by the wrist; he squirmed beneath her hand and whined that her too-tight grip was pinching him. She probably was, and she gently checked herself to reduce the alarm he was understandably experiencing as the two of them each holding awkwardly assembled bundles of possessions darted for her car, Betty the Brown Buick. Betty was a lumbering machine built for endurance despite the dents which, as her sister Grace who had loaned Evelyn the car to hasten the some-day-soon get away reminded Evelyn, were merely cosmetic dings. The trunk was now full and tightly closed. Checking that its latch was engaged was something Evelyn did before starting off on each journey in Betty. This precaution was to ensure that the trunk was never again going to fly open while she tore down the highway. It was the night she left Harry for the first time—when he came home rabidly drunk and as a consequence delusional and had pulled little Michael out of bed just to remind the boy that his dad had the power to make people do whatever he wanted—that Evelyn put Michael on the car’s front bench seat, motioned for him to place his tiny, sleepy ginger-haired head in her lap and then drove to San Francisco to her sister’s hotel. In her urgency, she hadn’t slammed down the trunk lid and Michael’s favorite stuffed animal, Mr. Paws The Teddy Bear, flew out of the car along with Evelyn’s sweater and a couple of spare blankets. This time, all contents had been secured within Betty’s yawning trunk. The two weary passengers and their belongings found their way to an itty-bitty studio apartment on Telegraph Avenue and 27th Street in Oakland. Grace had come up with first- and last-months’ rent and insisted the landlord put a fresh coat of paint on the thin walls. The smell of the drying paint lingered too long. Evelyn had a headache for days.

As the radio show premiered, Evelyn poured herself a neat, lady-like portion of bourbon, put her throbbing legs up onto the seat of one of only two red vinyl kitchen chairs that came with the sparsely furnished studio. Naturally, she sat on the other one. Her early days dressing windows at Goldman’s Department Store were unquestionably the most strenuous physical labor she had experienced since her days teaching ballet to mouthy, precocious youngsters. It wasn’t so much the hefty loads of clothes she had to carry that exhausted her, but the secretive means of transporting the bundles to the windows without bumping into customers. She was mastering the art of being invisible.

Young Michael was now scooting his wooden truck back and forth on the thin carpet as he concentrated on keeping his truck noises soft enough to not disturb his mother. Michael knew the difference between weekend Evelyn and the workweek one. He was become accustomed to married Evelyn and now the single version. He was never scared that his mother would strike him. That was predictably his father’s way of getting the message across. But Evelyn could scream at him and make him cry. Michael hated to cry; if his father saw him, he would just as easily berate the child as haul off and smack him. He heard his dad call his mom a hot head, which he thought was funny because her head never felt hot to him.

The floor where he played was so close to the tiny kitchen, with its two-burner hot plate and squat icebox that he sensed he was crowding her. He had hoped that she would make a comment about his toy truck, or better to play with him—get down on the carpet and make truck noises too. But he could see that Evelyn’s eyes were closed now as she took another sip and the drink started to warm her insides and soothe her legs a bit. For just a couple of minutes, and Michael thought she was just taking a nap, she was comforted by the alcohol and how it opened up her dreams and allowed her to pretend, however briefly, that she was anywhere else but here.

Evelyn had arranged for Mrs. Cozzo on the floor above to babysit tomorrow afternoon. She would find out if Mrs. Cozzo could take care of Michael for the next two weeks—just after school—until she came up with a more permanent solution. With a plan in place, however temporary, Evelyn opened her eyes and reached out to Michael. With one hand she mussed his silky hair; with the other hand, she poured herself another drink.

Evelyn – July 1944

At Goldman’s store, Evelyn mostly stayed behind the glass. But her work was right out in front of folks, in plain sight of pedestrians and people driving by. Evelyn’s transparent cage perched about three feet off the sidewalk, on the sides of a block-large art deco building, and ever so wide. And, there were at least six, if not more, of these cavernous glass boxes. The sides of the cubicles could be rearranged to gain or to reduce the amount of space required to create a story—a narrative that was played out by stationary plastic models mounted on unbending steel rods. It was Evelyn’s job to dress the mannequins and position their heads, torsos, and limbs in such a way that the garments they wore depicted movement or, at the very least, allowed the fabrics to reflect a soft, shimmer of light from the overhead bluish-casting harsh store lights or at night to reflect a bit of gleam from the adjacent and more forgiving street lamps. This was an era for strolling down the city’s avenues. It was brilliant merchandising–catching people’s attention and enticing them to imagine what turn their own lives could take given the right sartorial purchase. Promenading took place during the day and into the evening hours. Often there were more passersby strolling up and down the sidewalks than could be found driving in their cars. Just to be safe, parking spots were plentiful and convenient. Pull over! Come inside! Stores presented their goods by beckoning the potential customer with glamour or at the very least with the promise of something new—a bit of sizzle and sass. No one needed what was displayed in the store windows, especially with a world war raging, but it was the promise of possibilities that compelled the shopper to come in and have a look. If not at Goldman’s, then at nearby I. Magnin or even the more conventional Capwells. One thing was made clear to Evelyn on her first day of work and each day after that: Get the clientele to come into Goldman’s. The saleswomen would handle the rest.

Every movement Evelyn made to create her fantastical window displays was there for the viewing. Pedestrians would stare into the windows as she worked. It wouldn’t occur to the viewer that Evelyn was tormented by her audience. She summoned up such fortitude to ignore them, the witnesses to her every action. Judging her, perhaps. The work itself was routine and repetitive, mundane really. Yet, she felt the weight of her every action and her resulting performance on her thin and fragile shoulders. It was being observed without knowing who her audience really was that relentlessly distracted her. But if the creative momentum took hold, she could be all right. She could find her footing and continue on with the job of creating a story that would be inventive enough to shift the viewer’s gaze from her to her mannequins. It was then that her magical ability to distract and deflect scrutiny served her well. She was handed, or rather, told by the head buyer for the store, from where to gather the clothes. The garments were scooped up from the sportswear section in ladies’ wear if it were spring or Evelyn floated through the haute couture floor to gingerly, delicately scoop up the full-skirted gowns, wrapping them in tissue paper to preserve all their sparkles, feathers, and hand-embroidered embellishments. This would be in the early days of the fall season of opera and symphony openings. Winter’s windows were the most physically demanding she eventually discovered because of the sheer heft of the camel hair coats, alpaca jackets, and the furs—all of which were hanging on heavy wooden hangars. Those furs were like herding animals. Once placed on the mannequins, the sables and the particularly the foxes had to be stroked with the grain so as to minimize static and shine up the pelts. She had to take inordinate care with these outrageously priced coats and stoles. Plus, they had to speak volumes above the garments they partially covered. For those dresses, too, were for sale. Artistic displays enticed the passersby with the promise of fantasy to be sure. But the window stage sets were only effective, the owners of Goldman’s Department Store incessantly reminded her, if people came inside. Getting shoppers through the revolving doors was her job. Once they entered the department store, the sales people’s job was to close the deal.
In the employees’ lunchroom, Evelyn met her first friend at Goldman’s. Jean Barth was a statuesque brunette who pumped up her height with her hair in a French twist and her feet in black crocodile pumps. Her laugh was hard won but if she found the conversation amusing, the reward of hearing her throaty, lush giggle was worth the effort.

“So, you’re the new window girl?” Jean had approached Evelyn and planted herself directly in front of her careful to not let her cigarette’s ash fall onto Evelyn’s plate of potato salad.

“Oh, yes, that’s right. I’m Evelyn Higgins. Nice to meet you,” she replied putting out her hand to shake Jean’s. Evelyn tried to straighten her shoulders but the effort was too exhausting.

“Did Mike show you where everything is? You know, like the little girl’s room, where to clock in, the whole bit?” Jean smiled with such ease that Evelyn felt heady and her stomach muscles eased their grip on her worried guts. But, the mere mention of Mike threw her. Evelyn had spent her days distracted from her son’s care. Hearing his name, even referring to someone else, drew her inward to thoughts of how he might be spending his day at school or more critically if Mrs. Cozzo would be late again to pick him up. Of course, she was being ridiculous, she thought. But the thought occurred to her that maybe Mrs. Cozzo drank a little too much. Wait, Evelyn thought. Jean must be referring to Michael O’Malley, the store’s general manager. But the conversational patter deadened if for only a second. Long enough, though, for Jean to experience the vacuum-sealed reduction of air in the room. For Evelyn, separated each workweek from her young son, the sound of his name punctured her heart. She only called him Michael, never the shorter version Mike, as if pronouncing one more syllable allowed her a bit more time with him. And, if she could say his name aloud, it felt as if he were in the room with her.

“Everything alright, Ev?” Jean continued. “You seem somewhere else at the moment. Probably thinking about the new line of sportswear that Mike is trying to showcase in those windows of yours, I imagine. O’Malley is all about the sales pitch.”

Evelyn hadn’t given Jean permission to be called by her nickname. She much preferred to see who and who was not worthy, in her own mind, of using such familiarity with her. When Jean used it, though, when she heard “Ev” from this self-assured colleague, a possible in-the-future friend, she enjoyed how it sounded to her. She lived alone with her young son, who of course called her mom. She rarely heard her first name spoken by adults.

“First-month jitters, I guess,” Evelyn finally answered Jean. “I’m so rattled by all the little things—the accessories are on one floor; the shoes are on another. And, Michael, Mike, talks so fast! I’m going to need a friend, Jean. Which department are you in?” Evelyn started to put on her coat and to check her pockets for bus change before clocking out.

“You’ll find me in payroll. I’m everyone’s best friend!” Jean laughed.

Categories: Writing
A Little Less Quixote; A Little More Sancho

A Little Less Quixote; A Little More Sancho

Posted on June 26, 2019

My own and most recent flight of fancy was actually a fancy flight. It’s amazing how much better champagne tastes when it’s free and served in front of equally deserving airplane passengers who have to suffer the indignity of flying coach. Full disclosure, and I’ll bet you already guessed this, what took my husband and me to the front of the plane were mileage points. Lots and lots of them. We were headed to Portugal and Spain, and what better way to get the fiesta started. “Salud!” I said to my husband before he secured his noise-cancelling headphones on his skull. From then on, it was a most pleasant way to spend 24 hours… eating every thing the flight attendants could place before me, watching all the movies I’ve missed since 2010 and clobbering my husband’s arm every now and then to let him know the flight attendant was waiting in the aisle for his dessert choice.

We had long hoped to visit these two countries to experience what every traveler yearns for regardless of the particular destination: rich experiences and thrilling adventures, local food delicacies and robust wine, scintillating new acquaintances and fresh takes on our own 40-year marital association, and plenty of ATMs with limited foreign transaction fees.

The windmills of our mind kept us alert for any and all razzle-dazzle, Iberian style. We didn’t don protective armor—such as Quixote clanked around La Mancha in–but we were on the hunt for signposts that might lead us to our next escapade. All figurative signposts were what Don Quixote mistook as gospel while Sancho pointed out the actual directionals to keep them moving forward. Our journey, equally quixotic, often placed us smack dab in harm’s way or left us confused and out of sorts. There were other days where our luck was rewarded in ways that if I were at all religious I would categorize as heaven sent. Once we put ourselves in the manos of providence, we turned off Google maps (batteries were running low anyway) and started to pay more attention to the signs right in front of us. Some were in luscious Portuguese that made me want to release my inner Girl from Ipanema; others were written in Spanish. Oye Como Va I screeched at my husband when we missed the exit. We nearly didn’t get off the bus at the correct depot when the town was announced in Basque (if you know a Fado song, throw on a cape and get to moaning).

Language is the great divide, isn’t it? One longs to be able to understand and to be understood. The couple at the next table wants to hear about our travels, or about San Francisco, or how the hell Trump could be president but we can only answer with gestures and two phrases sputtered in present tense with the vocabulary of a six-year-old—if that child had literally never said a complete sentence ever. And, that was in Spain. In Portugal, I put a nice spin on my pronunciation of obrigada (translation: thank you–when spoken by a female). I mean it. I was a natural judging from the number of deferential waiters who responded, “Oh, do you speak Portugese?” But, that’s where conversation in any language other than English ended. Always polite but painfully brief. Check please. Obrigada.

Despite experiencing the chasm between what was spoken and what we could understand, it was exhilarating to discover that one of our favorite pastimes while visiting these two countries was to explore the many bookstores found in nearly every city, regardless of the town’s size. Being around books was soothingly familiar and made us feel for a few brief moments as if the country and its culture were more accessible than we thought. The stores’ shelves were crammed with so many volumes from every literary genre that I could feel heat radiating from the walls. Sliding library ladders were in constant flight down the side rails of the shops as customers sought a better view of their desired book. Some bookshops were long and narrow; some were architectural treasures tucked in between two austere storefronts. Still others were two- or three-stories high. Not a single bookstore housed a coffee bar. If you needed a box of stationery or a greeting card, you were out of luck. In Porto, Portugal, Livraria Lello, is said to be the bookshop that inspired J.K. Rowling when she was writing the first book in the Harry Potter series. Here the line to get into the store wound around the shop, out the door, and down the block. Very Hogwarts but there wasn’t enough magic in the universe to plop us in the front of the queue. We went for a beer instead.

Way back in December of last year, for my birthday, my sweet and dear friend, Jany, gave me a book entitled, Shadow of the Wind (‎La Sombra del Viento), by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Jany had no idea that we were planning a trip to Barcelona but without a moment’s hesitation, I tucked that enticing book into my suitcase. It is the story about a book, its author, and its reader. The book catapulted me into the city I was now visiting as if I alone were invited to pull back the thick and heavy drapery to eavesdrop on tumultuous relationships and unrequited lovers. As if blowing off the dust and swatting at the cobwebs in an abandoned shed, every day I found myself in the places where the book’s characters walked, ate, drank, loved, and died.

And, then I met Federico. The young man with elegant posture and a strong jaw worked at the hotel where we were staying and when he caught a glimpse of my book, he expressed great interest in it. He explained to me that he is an artist and has illustrated three of his mother’s novels. With great excitement, he wrote down the name of the bookshop where I could purchase one of his mother’s books and then he would meet me at the hotel’s front desk the day before we were to leave to present to me the two other volumes. In the meantime, he would contact his mother and tell her about me (and my blog).

My husband and I had a promising field trip ahead of us. For, as you know if you have visited Barcelona, the alleys and streets resemble a plate of spaghetti. It’s easy to see where Gaudí, for example, would understandably eschew straight lines when disordered hairpin turns and voluptuous curves are much more beguiling. I began to wonder if this is why Spaniards eat dinner so late…it takes forever to find the restaurant. We plodded on and on in search of the bookstore Liberia Proleg, a feminist bookstore, which Federico promised would satisfy both my curiosity and my shopping list (buying his mother’s book) . I have a damn good sense of direction and even with the help of one confused Google map concierge, we were hopelessly lost. We stumbled into an alley with adorable shops but not one a bookstore; we passed flower stalls, tapas bars, museums. It was getting late, but I held out hope that if one doesn’t eat dinner until 10pm surely we could count on the bookstore being open until 8.

And then we found it! I threw open the door of the tiny Barcelona bookshop as if to proudly announce to the otherwise distracted owner, “Estoy aqui!!!!!” Instead of the welcome response I was expecting, she was smoking and on the phone. I feigned self reliance as I looked over her stock. The other option would have been to stand in front of her as I waited for her to help me. Curls of cigarette smoke drifted my way as I began to pace up and down the one aisle in the store. All the books were in Spanish, of course, but some covers were vaguely familiar to me based on the cover art. Like going to one’s high school reunion after 50 years, you know you recognize the person in front of you but age has taken its toll, and you’re just not sure if you do know who it is after all. The owner wasn’t even taking a breath as she talked on the phone, so I perused the shelves looking for familiarity. There was the Anaïs Nin book; ah, I recognize Marge Piercy’s work. Sylvia Plath is looking impressive in Spanish. Get off the phone, I kept thinking. Instead she lit another cigarette.

Finally, she hung up. Stubbing out her smoke, she asked if I needed help. I said I did and she replied, “Mea culpa.” Say no more, I thought. But, I had come all this way and I was on the mission to buy Federico’s mother’s book. Shake off the impressive Latin from the woman and stay focused, I thought.

“Do you have the book by Gloria Arcuschin, Libro de Juegos? I asked in English.

“Of course I do,” she replied. And we were off to discover much about each other and about her relationship with both son and mother Arcuschin. And, finally, we were able to discuss the book I was reading, Shadow of the Wind. I felt a chill in the otherwise stifling air of the bookstore when the owner told me her name…Nuria. Hers was the same name as the main female character in my book. Once she learned that I was from California, Nuria told me of her sister-in-law who was currently living in Saint Suzanne, California—by which we finally realized she meant Santa Barbara. And, with the owner’s facile language skills, she told me that the title of Gloria Arcuschin’s book, Libro de Juegos, translates to Book of Games and not what I had thought: Book of Juice.

I now own three books by Gloria Arcuschin and illustrated by her son, Federico Mañanes. All of them inscribed by Federico. In one, Federico wrote:

It’s been amazing—meet, talk and share with you in different and surprising way. With love, Gloria and Federico, May 2019, Barcelona

My husband and I found our way through the intertwined streets of the Spanish city to an excellent dinner. I drank just enough Cava to toast our success, to feel my weary feet relax and to be able to converse with my European neighbors at the table next to us. I did not want to drink too much because back in my hotel room I had a book to finish and another three to begin. We would search the city once more, this time for a bookshop where I could buy a Spanish-English dictionary. It occurred to me that I might pick up a Basque-English dictionary too so I never come close to missing another bus stop.

Que será será,

Categories: Writing

Rhythm Method

Posted on December 28, 2018

Sergei Rachmaninoff, the Russian-born composer who died in 1943, was reputed to have enormous hands. Helpful, these mitts of his were, when sitting down to play the piano.  Many consider him to be one of the greatest concert pianists of all time.

It was said that Rachmaninoff could hold out his right hand, palm side down, and reach his thumb under his four other fingers to extend his thumb about four inches past his little finger.  Try that at home, if you wish.  I dare you.

My mom relayed that piece of piano history as we were driving to lunch following another one of my tortuous Saturday piano lessons.  I was about 9 and drank a lot of milk.  That latter fact may seem incongruous in this context except that because of my insatiable desire for milk, each week our milkman delivered five quarts of milk.  As it was my weekly chore to rinse the bottles and place them on the front porch for pick up, I devised a Rachmaninoff maneuver of my own.  Each finger of my right hand would grab the inside lip of the bottles and carry them out to their metal-box container. The tinkling of the glass bottles against one another was sonorous; the pain was nauseating.  The desired result, to be a better piano player, was negligible.

My music lessons began in kindergarten at the home of Mrs. Reynolds where we little tykes were shuttled from the schoolhouse to the musty, flouncy, chintz-and-fringe adorned living room that housed two baby-grand Steinways, placed back-to-back…á la Ferrante and Teicher.  It would be a couple of years until I was given the nod to sit as a student at one of those behemoths (the piano, not Ferrante nor Teicher).  First, one had to master Rhythm Band.

Upon arrival at Mrs. Reynolds’ house, we gaggle of tots sat with our scrawny legs crisscrossed and merrily anticipated the ritual of lugging around the basket of instruments.  It was a very good day indeed when I foraged and retrieved a triangle.  More useful than one would think, the triangle added a delicate, nuanced ding to an otherwise clamorous, overblown cacophony of drums, cymbals (my backup choice), kazoos (too complex), and rhythm sticks.  That’s a lot of percussion if you ask me.  But, kids like to bang drums and not too slowly as it turns out.  I would wait for Mrs. Reynolds’ conducting cue (the drop of her arm on the downbeat and the subsequent ripple of her upper-arm flab) and lighten up the band’s din with my ding.

Not everyone continued with postgraduate Rhythm Band enrollment.  But, Mrs. Reynolds was the obvious choice for those parents who thought piano lessons were the one and only extracurricular activity worth their time and money.  Her students were a prodigious mix of boys and girls, youngsters to teens. My parents, neither of whom were skilled at the art of piano playing, looked to Mrs. Reynolds for their little girl’s musical education.  What a mistake.

At some point after Rhythm Band but before the piano lessons formally began, a lovely piece of mahogany furniture was delivered to our home.  This instrument was carefully placed against a wall, as it was an upright piano, not too close to the front door and away from any sunlight that might beam its deadly rays on that virgin, lustrous wood.  Although, there’s no way an upright can win a beauty contest if there’s a grand or even a baby-grand piano on the runway, the tonal quality of a fine upright piano is not to be dismissed.   As a matter of fact, Hoagy Carmichael, I read, composed and played on an upright piano. So too, Scott Joplin. Even more significantly to me, our son.  He went on to graduate with a degree in music composition, and he would sit for hours composing melodies that were ominous and dark or lyrical and snappy. Most enjoyably for me, the wafting notes emanated just steps away from where I was preparing dinner.  I could hear his state of mind without his speaking a word. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

If my weekly lesson at Mrs. Reynolds’ went well, I anticipated receiving either a gold (“Grandioso!”) or silver (“Reprise!”) star if both my practice log entries and my performance in class were deemed worthy.  If I were distracted by Mrs. Reynolds’ stunning and shimmering colored-glass or rhinestone jewelry, I would have my knuckles swiftly swatted by her 12-inch wooden ruler.  Undaunted, like brushing off a bad habit, I would involuntarily swoon over the way the sun’s rays would illuminate those burgundy-toned jeweled clusters on her ears or the emerald glistening facets on that one enormous brooch. But that ersatz sapphire pendant? Mesmerizing.

Smack!

I would collect my book of scales, my sheet music, and my spiral steno pad—the one with my weekly lesson plan—and collapse into my mother’s car.   My mom might notice my bruised knuckles and offer to buy me my own faux-bejeweled necklace.  Ha ha. She laughed.  Litigious days were yet to come…as was an awareness of the inappropriateness of corporal punishment.  Placated by mom’s humor and ever hungry, we would head for a slice of heaven in the form of a sandwich–the weekly repast at the upstairs ladies’ café, Phairs, where I always took a menu to act like a grownup but never for a second looked it over.  My lunch was tuna on white bread and chocolate milk and my companion was my best friend, mom.

My mother played only one tune on our piano.  She couldn’t read music but somehow she learned this piece and played the same 12 measures of it. Nola became her theme song.  Unlike her, though, I had scores of music I could play, not any of it well, and I could read music (very slowly; those bass notes were sheer torture to decipher).  I had an uncanny sense of rhythm for which I credit my triangle virtuosity as well as that damn metronome, in matching mahogany, that sat atop our piano and peered down in ridicule from its aloof triangular-shaped housing if my playing slowed down, sped up, or if I paused for any length of time to plead with my mother to let me stop practicing because AN HOUR IS TOO LONG.

My father agreed with me. An hour of listening to Bach, Schumann, Mozart, or even Chopin (who doesn’t like Chopin?) was too long for him. It was time, he told me sometime in the 6th grade, to play popular music.  He was going to talk to Mrs. Reynolds.  I couldn’t have been happier with this turn of events.  Mrs. Reynolds, who by now my best friend and frequent duet partner, Hallie (Teicher to my Ferrante), and I referred to as Renny, was onboard.  And, that is how in 1961 the popular piano pieces I was now given to play were not on the Billboard charts as were Ricky Nelson’s, “Hello Mary Lou,” or Chubby Checker’s, “Let’s Twist Again.”  Instead, I left my Saturday lessons with the Jerome Kern songbook in my zippered music binder. First assignment: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.  I must have branched out from there because what has become my own personal “Nola” moment after 57 years is Tea For Two.  Unlike my mother, I can’t summon up more than 3 or 4 measures at most…for which my own children can thank me someday.

My father was sublimely happy.  After all, Saturday nights were not complete unless we watched “The Lawrence Welk Show”. If Liberace had a guest spot, even better. Weeknights, though, I was held to a full hour of practice time because as he sat couch side, reading the evening paper, it was akin to being at his club sipping his Chivis Regal on the rocks listening to the night’s entertainment. All I needed was a tip jar.

He sat back, listened to my unpolished version of some of his favorite melodies and said, “If you can play the piano, you will always be a hit at parties.”

If only it were that simple.

With my classical training, I was better prepared by Mrs. Reynolds to perform for a debutante ball or to play the harpsichord for Mr. Darcy in the salon after dinner.   I straddled the 19thcentury parlors of my piano teacher’s imagination and the 1950s supper clubs of my father’s dreams.

My duet partner, Hallie, was a masterful pianist.  Gifted with perfect pitch, she was slumming it when she played with me.  I didn’t fully appreciate her talents at the time because I was more concerned with what new dress my mother would buy me for our required piano recitals at the Berkeley Piano Club.  It was clearly a bribe from my parents, but it got me to sit on that unforgiving piano bench in front of some extremely talented students and their proud parents and play, from memory, the classical repertoire that I was held to in spite of my father’s protestations.  When I performed my solo, it was a terrifying experience; but back-to-back (literally) with Hallie or the delicious few times we played four-handed duets (scrunched together on the same piano bench—she kindly taking the lower octaves), I was able to soldier through.  Undoubtedly she covered for me time and again.  And, it was she who became my piano teacher when I paid for the lessons myself in my early 20s.  By then, she owned a beautiful grand piano.

Everything is better when you have a partner.  In high school, Hallie and I would play duets to entertain ourselves.  We would cull music stores’ racks for vintage sheet music that had lyrics.  We discovered perfect ditties like, My Blue Heaven or our favorite and the theme song from the movie, “Razor’s Edge,” Mamselle.  Stoned or not, we laughed until we fell off the piano bench.  My father was right.  I was a hit at my own party.

My childhood piano moved as I did.  Once my mother died, my father and I were a duet careful to not cause dissonance in one another’s lives.  We mastered the skill of modulating keys based on what was happening to each of us. Eventually, we had to solo but my dad offered to store the piano so I could retrieve it when it literally could fit into the space I would find myself living.  So, the piano took its own journey.  We loaned it to my friend who had an outtasight rock band.  They lost the needlepointed piano bench, but you can’t really blame them for that, right?  I retrieved the piano and moved it from post-college apartment to apartment at great cost (especially the time the mover punched a hole in the stairwell wall with the side of the instrument).  The last location, before I finally sold it, was when I lived in the Mission District and was active in a women’s political collective.  Deemed too bourgeois and classist to indulge in “the man’s” forms of commercial entertainment, we entertained ourselves in our own apartments with talent shows.  With another duet partner by then, we performed our rendition of Body and Soul to great reviews.  Of course, we had a captive, if underserved, audience.

Hallie onetime told me, I think we were listening to the Cream album, “Disraeli Gears” at the moment, that she could feel music all the way down to her toes.  I understand now that music passes through each of us in different ways; some of us tap our toes or nod our heads or close our eyes or sway by ourselves or in the arms of another.  A favorite piece of music is to our sense of hearing as umami is to our taste buds—that special something.  You know if it is missing.

I am dedicating this blog to Hallie; she’s going through a rough patch at the moment.  She finds her true north, I’m sure, when playing her harp or sitting at her keyboard, or as part of her local symphony’s audience.  I picture her there, in fact, without her shoes on just so she can feel that music when it reaches her toes.

This one’s for you, Hallie.

Name that tune,

Categories: Writing
Play Through

Play Through

Posted on May 22, 2018

I grew up in a golfing family. By family, I mean my parents who both played the game. I, however, preferred amusing myself with my Barbie dolls any chance I could get. This included bringing Barbie, and often a reluctant Ken, along in the golf cart when I was made to accompany my mom and dad to the course. On the very rare occasions I was allowed to remain at home, which was during their rounds of twilight golf on Friday summer nights, I not only was left to play with my dolls but also to enjoy my favorite meal of all: Swanson’s fried chicken TV dinner.

I loved Friday nights.

On Sundays, however, our family time was spent on the golf course. Our family vacations revolved around visiting and playing golf courses up and down the state of California and the very rare excursion to Hawaii. I was always encouraged (nagged) to pick up a club, be it wood, iron, or putter and play a little. Word had it, according to my father, that I had a natural swing. I’m not sure how natural it is to try and wield in any semicircular shape a bottom-heavy, adult-sized club, but I apparently was pretty good at it. And, I could see how much pleasure both my parents derived from this sport. But no matter how much swinging and swaying, or even exuberant raking in the sand trap after someone’s ball took a bad turn and ended up in said bunker, I couldn’t fathom the sport’s appeal. As soon as we arrived home again and congratulatory cocktails were mixed and poured for the adults, I would head back to my room and pick up my dolls to once again inhabit my magical world—a universe where I was in complete control. Here I pretended I was the adult. An adult who had no desire to play golf. My Barbie Dream House was irresistible and Barbie was the flawless denizen in my neighborhood of make believe. It’s hard to compete with perfection especially as I imagined her to be.

The fresh air, the verdant and soft-squishy grass carpet underfoot, the sounds of metal cleats treading on the pavement around the pro shop, the myriad of golf-bag zippers being dragged opened and closed, that luscious wet suction sound of the ball cleaner gizmos found on so many holes all were diverting but never as exciting to me as what happened inside the clubhouse. That was where I could understand what all the fuss was about. It was inside the ladies locker room, for example, where I met the three B women who became for me the most significant women in my life once my own mother had died. Mrs. Burton, Mrs. Brenesell, and Mrs. Barnett as a triad embodied the characteristics of my ideal and, unlike my Barbie doll, very real woman.

Mrs. Burton, also named Evelyn as was my mother, seemed unflappable and composed. She could deflect her disappointment of an upsetting score on the course with a modest giggle and the sweep of her hand. She also had covetable earrings in the shape of sea scallops. Obviously, she had a flair with accessories. And, she was the one I would choose much later on–in high school–to show up at school when events required the presence of one’s mother: the occasional tea or fashion show come to mind. Evelyn also had a son, five years older than me, whom I was certain I would marry. My imaginary narrative spun this tale: Marriage to her son would cement my relationship with Evelyn assuring me that she would remain in my life forever. She was the kindest woman I had ever met. I was not going to lose this Evelyn.

Mrs. Brenesell, Vera, was the genius of the group. She tutored me in math and science and her home was ultra modern by 1960 standards. Split level with teak floors and a dining table set with Heath ceramics (even at Passover Seders!), what she lacked in fashion sense she made up for in home décor. Her vibe was cool and austere. She was logical and humorless but her refined, buttoned-up demeanor and unusual, halting speech patterns reminded me of Katherine Hepburn without the flared trousers. Tuesday night tutoring in her Berkeley home was a weekly occurrence that helped me progress in math and, more critically, gave me a few hours of womanly companionship and oddly intellectual stimulation that I could depend on. She was steadfast and committed to my growth and development as well as my grade point average.

Ellen Barnett, I always thought, was my mother’s best friend of the bunch. Her voice was froggy like Blythe Danner and her hair, loose salt-and-pepper strands unsuccessfully held in place by tortoise-shell combs, replicated the 1960s vibe with its loosening of waistbands, bras, and mores. On her wrists were clunky, Bakelite bangles in tequila-sunrise shades of reds, oranges, and ochers that she nervously toyed with by pushing them up toward her elbows or down toward her wrists. She seemed unconcerned with her jewelry banging into the pots and pans while cooking; she wore them while she weaved her magnificent wall hangings that included not only fibers of differing origins and colors but incorporated utilitarian items like wooden spoons and chop sticks or decorative adornments of feathers and beads. Her loom sat inside her craft room that had cathedral ceilings with wooden beams and a burnt-sienna-colored shag rug on the floor. She was the artist, the bohemian, the renegade whose house sat on a gnarly boulder the size of an army tank. It was Ellen whom I called first the night my mother died.

My father, however, introduced me to the pleasure of making friends. He could work a room like a master of ceremonies at a Friar’s Roast. He had a joke for every occasion and a personalized one for nearly every guy at the bar. He was happiest when he was at the club and happier still when he found the golf club that epitomized his having made it as an assimilated American Jew. A gifted and coordinated sportsman, who at one time paid for his education by playing professional baseball, he was now a paid-in-full and dapper member of the landed gentry. Or, at least he liked to think he was.

We lived about 3 miles from a gorgeous, stately course surrounded by fabulous homes with picturesque, well-tended gardens and long, gravel-strewn driveways. Driveways that were circuitous and inaccessible to folks like my family. The country club was restricted, which was code for: No Jews; No Blacks. Probably “No” to a lot of other folks, but those were the two groups of possible infiltrators whom people seemed most worried about at that time. Not being allowed to join the nearby course was one reason my parents became members of a club much farther from home. Eventually, a new club would be built nearer to our home, and it was there that I witnessed my father’s sheer joy at having a place feel as comfortable to him as his house. After my mother died, he and I would go to his club for dinner twice a week; he would see that I was sequestered in the clubhouse or at the pool while he finished a round of golf. Then I would do my homework in the clubhouse lobby while he had a drink with his friends or took a lesson from one of the club’s pros. The caddies were all cute boys from high schools other than my own, and so there was the added advantage of honing what pathetic flirting skills I had while not suffering the repercussions of being rebuffed–which I usually was. I always completed my schoolwork because I saw little action as a result of my listless feminine wiles.

As a teenager, I took great pleasure with my friends in tearing up the fairways of that anti-Semitic club close to home—the one that refused membership to my father and his ilk. Friday or Saturday nights a group of us would purchase blocks of ice, wrap them with towels and ice slide down the velvet, tractionless swaths of green grass. Dodging healthy doses of water from automatic sprinklers while inhaling other forms of grass or imbibing grain-based beverages, we slipped and slid and occasionally dodged the police when they were called about the rowdy, disrespectful kids. I once mentioned this activity to my father assuming he would find it fair retribution for his being ostracized. Instead, he found my actions reprehensible and unsportsmanlike. From then on, I never divulged to him my participation in anti-war protests that I was attending with more and more regularity. No ice at those assemblies but plenty of grass.

My father, a dentist by profession, had a penchant and a real talent for writing poetry—more specifically rhymes. His work defied classification because the work had the passion of an ode and the humor of a limerick. The poems were always personalized; my father would write about Joe or Joan, who recently broke 100 on the course. Or, as a man of his time, he would rhyme about how his wife neglected her homemaking duties to beat him at a game of golf. His favorite subject, however, was himself. He would preface a poem’s recitation by saying something about his golf game never improving; it only got verse. He wrote hundreds of these and he frequently published them in the club’s newsletter or he recited them at the scores of social events held at the course – a tournament, a round robin, a crab or spaghetti feed. The poems were so popular and so plentiful that my dad engaged the work of a cartoonist to illustrate the words and created a book (which remains unpublished not for lack of his trying) for his own amusement. Incidentally, he did the same with a book dedicated to bowling (!) and one for tennis. My own lack of enthusiasm at the time regarding this tome had to do with the countless hours I spent typing and retyping and then typing once again each and every poem. Every time the poem was adapted to commend someone else shooting par or commiserate about missing a putt or losing the ball in the rough, there were no cutting and pasting. There wasn’t even white-out. The poem was retyped. His secretarial support consisted of me, our typewriter and two white sheets of bond sandwiching a piece of well-worn carbon paper. There was always a last-minute deadline that had to be met. As my father’s girl Friday, I was behind the scenes and the silent but always reliable assistant. He was forever grateful for my skill set and what he supposed was my enthusiasm. I did it because it made him happy. And, if I finished typing them quickly, I was even happier.

And, then, one day about 5 years ago a new friend came into my life. She grew up in a house adjacent to my father’s country club. Her parents were also members of this golf course, and we suspected that our parents must have known each other. All of them, her parents and mine, were gone now but she had retained oodles of memorabilia from those days of their membership; I had not. She brought me a newsletter that had a photo of her exquisitely attractive parents on the cover and inside there was a poem by my father. The pleasure it brought my father while he was writing that poem, the happiness I felt typing it for him, and remembering his glee when he saw the poem published was not unlike the pleasure I have sending out this and every blog I write. I even get to type it myself–without having to insert a sheet of carbon paper in the printer.

It’s not about the love of golf that my dad imbued in me; he allowed me to witness the pleasure of making others happy and how satisfying that can be.

That’s the sweet spot,

Categories: Writing

Forty Winks

Posted on November 10, 2017

I read that Martha Stewart gets by on 4 hours of sleep. Lapses in judgment about stock shenanigans and the frequent berating of her underlings notwithstanding, she does all right on just a few hours of sleep. Nocturnal omissions can also be said of Jay Leno, Tom Ford, Kelly Ripa, and Donald Trump. If there ever were an argument for the benefits of getting a full 8 hours of shut-eye, let the latter individual prove my case.

I’m not sure when my own inability to sleep through the night began. I’ll blame menopause for the first wave of insomnia. Once that ditch was dug, it was quickly filled in with worries about money, children, their children, and nuclear war. Like a rubber mallet to the knee, once a reflex is stimulated in the monkey-mind quadrant of the brain, there’s no relief. Where there was once rest, there is now torment.

As a teenager, I would toss my adolescent bones out of bed on Saturday midmorning and drag myself to the kitchen cozied up in my fluffy powder-blue slippers and Lanz floral nightgown. There at the Formica counter, I would fix myself a satiating breakfast of a Pop Tart or two and a 16-oz glass of whole milk. Finishing my meal, and making sure the toaster was once again unplugged, I would shuffle back to bed for brief and indulgent nap hastened by both a sugar crash with a carb chaser.

Now, and mostly only when I travel across time zones landing in foreign lands and beds with pillows that either feel like cement slabs or foam-covered bowling balls, I require pharmaceutical help. A small dose of something prescribed can get me through the night. The downside is that come morning when clouds part and bluebirds chirp, I languish in a depressed mood over my morning coffee longing for the addition of a Pop Tart.

Recently, a friend offered a bit of THC in the form of a piece of paper to put under my tongue. That made sense because the thought of lighting up a joint in the middle of the night seemed like maybe I had gone rogue. And, enjoying an edible with cannabis tucked in like so many chocolate chips might be difficult to assay or at least to rely on in terms of an accurate dosage.

This gift coincided with spotting of an SF Muni bus whose entire side was plastered with a brightly colored ad reading: Marijuana is Here! Seeing it once was ironic but passing another bus festooned in the same manner a few hours later that same day was as weird as a scene in a Ground Hog Day loop. I would file this experience under, “If you live long enough…”

Long before there ever was a motif identified as a Ground Hog Day loop, I was going to occasional Saturday night parties held in the all too frequently parent-free suburban home of one of my friends. Invitations to soirees such as this increased once the word was out that you had scored some grass and were bringing it along. The misguided kid who brought his own Ripple in a bota bag slung over this shoulder like a Basque shepherd may have thought he figured out the key to popularity but he lost out to his classmate who had a Ziploc bag of seeds and stems…and rolling papers. If I were able to wrestle a joint from some bogarting pal, and I inhaled, I found that my shyness and my insecurities evaporated in that sweet-smelling smoke. I could imagine myself as the life of the party. I doubt I actually was but everyone else was so stoned, who could tell…or care?

Just a few decades later, and through the miracle of science and especially grow lights, the essence of marijuana could now be titrated to the exact nature of the result you wished to procure. So that is why on my nightstand of today, I have little squares of paper with a whisper of THC that can target the sleep-deprived neurons longing for relief. On my nightstand of yesteryear were my pink princess phone, an AM/FM transistor radio and a half-eaten Pop Tart. It’s hard to keep up…

Here’s something else that has been suggested to me to alleviate sleep deprivation: napping. However, I have strong feelings about giving into sloth; napping, be it of the power variety or not, has no appeal to me. My association with naps is a complicated one.

My mother was a napper. She was told by her cardiologist that she had to nap. Compliance was the only option for her as it held the promise of life itself. But, as if to thumb her nose at the viability of such an innocuous prescription, she chose to nap on the living room couch and never in her bedroom. This inconvenient truth was barely tolerated by the other members in our household: me, my dad and our dog, Bonnie. Truth be told, my dad wasn’t around very much during mom’s naptime but Bonnie certainly was. I must have been in school most of the time, as naptime certainly coincided with those afternoon hours. The memories I have of her lying on the pumpkin-colored three-cushion, button-tufted sofa were probably those belonging to the waning hours of the day when I was just home from school. And, always on the weekends.

It was during her naptime where I learned varied and valuable lessons. This was education not possible in the classroom or on the playground but essential training and preparation for my emerging adolescence and eventual adulthood. I am not at all certain that my mother chose to recline in the center of our home as a kind of ruse—we thought she was sleeping but she was more than likely surreptitiously observing us (Bonnie and me). This would be my forever-way of imagining her looking down on me after she died…which she did not too long after this ridiculous form of health care failed her. Failed us. Her head always rested on the end of the sofa farthest from the front door so that she was able to face both the door and the entrance to the kitchen. Both were the portals that a teenager and her dog were likely to pass through at any given moment.

And, as she napped, at least in the spring of 1965, she listened to the radio that was always tuned to Lon Simmons and Russ Hodges as they announced the SF Giants game. Her radio was a Mother’s Day gift from us and found its permanent perch—despite its portability–on the mantel on the opposite side of the room from the squash-hued couch where my mom reclined. The radio was a trifold battery-run elegant and modern device; the radio bits were housed in the middle and the tweedy-upholstered speakers flanked the controls.

AM radio was the means by which the Giants stayed in our hearts and in our house. The cries of “Bye Bye Baby,” were the only times my mom would bolt from her supine-ness and applaud. Like a little girl receiving her favorite ice cream cone at the fair, she was ecstatic. The announcing would subside in volume and excitement, and she would again take to her reclining position just like a balloon losing all its air and floating back down. Lon and Russ were the nearly daily visitors she invited in and their presence kept her company and filled the room with life just as her own was seeping away.

My mother’s naptime was also the first time, but certainly not the last, I discovered the power and the glory of civil disobedience. It was in that very living room, alongside the orangey settee where I first went on strike in a picket line of my own making.

I had my limits and my dignity and both were being stretched beyond endurance. Unfair practices were being lobbed in my direction; demands too unpalatable to rectify in more familiar ways had reached their tipping point. Simply said, I refused to go to 7th-grade Cotillion. This rite that suburban aspirational mothers hoped would teach both their sons and their daughters how to ascend the rickety, unreliable rungs of social mobility was a sham and a degrading experience for those of us whose thick waists and badly cut hair ensured a sure-fired plummet off the ladder of popularity. Nobody ever asked me to dance. I wasn’t going to subject myself to this humiliation again. Did I mention we had to wear gloves? Enough was enough.

Taking a coat hanger and straightening it so that it could be used to stab and secure a piece of paper on which I printed in HUGE BLACK LETTERS: “I WON’T GO. I WON’T DANCE WITH A SCHMO.” That was on one side. The other side was more clunky, I think, in retrospect: “THERE IS NO WAY I WILL DO WHAT YOU SAY.”

I know. Harsh.

I paced while Lon and Russ called the game. Back and forth, in my silent protest, I trod the carpet hoping that my mother’s weak but always sympathetic heart would take pity. She, of working class upbringing. She, a democrat. She, a northerner not from the country club set but from an army-base background. In my tortured and desperate mind, she would surely give in to my demands. Instead, she complimented me on my rectitude and told me that if she didn’t get some rest, the doctor (and my father) would be upset with her. And, therefore, with me too.

It wouldn’t be the first time that guilt proved to be an effective means of altering my behavior.

During one afternoon nap, I was traversing the well-worn route from my bedroom to the kitchen in search of a snack…could have been another Pop Tart for all I know…and my mother’s pillow and rumpled coverlet lay on the couch but there was no trace of her. The ballgame wasn’t playing on the radio, and Bonnie appeared too comfortable to be at all interested in the whereabouts of her usually dozing companion. Alarmed, I walked around the house calling out to my mom and hearing nothing in response. And, then I heard the twinkling of the garden gate’s bells that had been tied to the picket post to alert my napping mother when the mailman came down the path to deliver the mail. There in the inky blue outdoors of the late afternoon skies, my mother stood next to the bells—shaking them as she leaned against the gate. Alarmed, I ran to her watching her literally fade before my eyes. She said that she didn’t have the strength to walk back inside by herself. Nor, it seemed did she have the power to call for help. Could I help her, she whispered. We walked arm in arm, my mother and me, and I helped her assume her familiar position on the couch as I gathered up the coverlet and tucked it around her thin frame.

Even as a young girl, I knew that she knew something that was impossible to say with certainty. She tried, though, and I will be forever grateful for that. As I gathered the folds of the blanket around her she softly said, “It’s not time yet. You still need me.”

By the next summer, it was just Bonnie and me who would listen to the Giants when my dad reminded me that there was a game on. He had moved the radio to the sun porch, and the dog and I would bathe ourselves in shafts of warm light as Lon and Russ announced the game. Their voices seemed to cut through the fog at Candlestick Park as they broadcasted Jesus Alou catching a high fly–dropping out of the soup that was the grey, goopy sky there.

My dad was too preoccupied to even think about enrolling me in another round of Cotillion; my etiquette lessons from then on were to be ones I copied from my betters—or at least from the more popular girls. On the other hand, as the 1960s rolled on, my early training as a protester, did come in handy. I doubt I would have had the social life I did at Cal Berkeley without my flair for making provocative and rhyming anti-war signs. Who do you think came up with: “HELL NO. WE WON’T GO!”

But, napping is something I cannot bring myself to do. Cat naps, power naps, caffeine naps, polyphasic sleeping, shut eye. Not for me. Not even shutting one eye. I try my best to remain vigilant hoping to hear the promise of those twinkly bells on the garden gate.

It’s exhausting to keep watch–I can tell you that.

Eyes wide shut,

P.S. This week in à la mode, learn all about Snappy Marty, my husband’s new photography blog that showcases his talent at capturing the big story, the small irony, the grand gesture, and the tiny detail.

Categories: Writing

Working It Out

Posted on September 1, 2017

Albert Einstein was once asked how he would spend his time if he were given a problem upon which his life depended and he had only one hour to solve it. He responded by saying he would spend 30 minutes analyzing the problem, 20 minutes planning the solution, and 10 minutes executing the solution.

I operate in a completely different way. This is one of a myriad of ways in which I am nothing like Albert Einstein. Except for my hair, which can resemble his, when I wake up.

In other words, I jump to conclusions and operate at about a 75%-success rate. This gives me the confidence to think that, in most circumstances, I have a better than 50/50 chance of figuring out stuff.

Unless I can’t. Like last month, for example.

Most mornings, I wake up early and head out for a hike by daybreak. I have to drive to the trailhead, and there is only one route to take. So, I drive the same few blocks, listening to the same world-weary NPR newscasters trying to voice a smile as they deliver the daily bombshells of what I consider to be real and mostly depressing news. During the summer, as it is now, my suburban streets are even more quiet than usual as my neighbors head out to their summer homes or other envious destinations. In any case, I’m awake enough to be behind the wheel, sufficiently caffeinated to be headache free, and greased up with enough sunscreen to leave traces of the stuff on my steering wheel.

Then, I see him. He’s an old man, and by that I mean even older than me. He has a lovely straight back and his head is topped with a thicket of grey curls. He is not wearing a hat, but a fashionable hoodie. He looks to be a denizen of the neighborhood, comfortable in his surroundings, owning the moment, heading on his way and staying on the sidewalk. Jaunty. A morning guy.

Although his countenance was intriguing, he caught my eye for another reason. He was, at this hour of 6:50 a.m., eating (and relishing) an ice cream cone. It was not the ice cream cone that comes wedged into a box of six. Nor was it the single cone that one might find languishing among the yellowed ice chips housed in the liquor store’s freezer—the kind of cone where the paper is stuck to the contents either from moisture or staleness, or both. The morning guy is eating a bona fide cone. You know the kind: An ice cream cone with a scoop of the creamy, cold stuff that has been shaped by an ice cream scooper. An ice cream scooper that presumably was held by a real, live person doing the actual scooping. But, where did he get an ice cream cone at this early morning hour? I have lived here for almost 40 years. I know of nowhere he could have purchased this. Furthermore, it seemed as though most of his treat had yet to be devoured. So, I further deduced that it couldn’t have come from a distance away.

By now, I’m way over my Einstein goal of a 30-minute analysis of the problem. I’ve been obsessing over this for weeks now.

I see the man again, with his exquisite ice cream cone, on the next two consecutive days. But, despite my daily hikes, I have never seen him since.

I wonder if Einstein knew how to spell conundrum without having to look it up.

I love doing crossword puzzles because they offer such a satisfying way to find solutions. Completing them (or not) is my way of appreciating how the world works, and that offers me some comfort. The life-lessons I’ve come to rely on include:

  • Don’t force it.
    Here’s an example: In today’s puzzle, the clue for 21 Across was a four-letter word for “One of the friends on “Friends.” I had it as Joey. It wasn’t until 3 hours later when I revisited my still incomplete puzzle that I realized it was Ross.
    As a result of my epiphany, I filled in 21 Across and every square that butted up against those 4 little squares then fell so gratifyingly into place. Smooth and satisfying. Not to mention that I found reassurance knowing that it only took me 3 hours to remember all the main characters on “Friends.”

    Whatever happened to Chandler, I wonder?

  • Come back often.
    Except for the Monday New York Times crossword puzzles, which I can do in one sitting (again about 75% of the time, which is equal to my above-mentioned jumping-to-the-right-conclusion success rate), if I just get up and move around and come back to the puzzle, I see things entirely differently. Also, I remember that I need to actually get something else done. The dishes, for example. A shower is important too.
  • Commit.
    Do the puzzle in ink. Take a stand; fake it until you make it. These adages give me confidence. I can feel both puffed-up and proud of my 75% accuracy. Also, pencils are for perfectionists. If you need the reassurance of an eraser, you need to get out more. It is also true that a writing implement deemed a “lucky” pen can help one’s crossword-puzzle-solving acumen. This theorem is 100% accurate, by the way.
  • Seek help.
    Don’t be afraid to ask your spouse or your neighbor or the guy sitting next to you in the coffee shop for assistance. Just the other day, for example, I asked my husband, Marty, for help with 15 Across, “Charles or Ray after whom a chair is named.” Marty offered Barcalounger. I’m not sure if he can’t count or if he was giving me a hint for his upcoming birthday. Charles Barcalounger? See Rule #1 above.
  • Find an App.
    When all else fails, the Internet won’t let you down. My favorite go-to is rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com because you not only find the answers to the puzzles that you’re pulling your hair out trying to complete, you learn so much more from Rex, who is a genius. I know this because he says he is. Additionally, you discover by reading the comments of others that you are not alone in your ignorance. Be strong, though. You also learn that a ton of people are a lot smarter than you.
  • Enjoy being alone.
    It’s the only way, really, to get through a crossword puzzle. It might be nice to get cozy in your husband’s Barcalounger and find yourself that lucky pen, remembering to have your device handy to access your App. You can convince yourself that you really are adept at figuring out things. Who’s going to know (or care) otherwise? I doubt Einstein was a sharer.

And, when you do figure things out, make sure you gloat on line, and go get yourself an ice cream cone…at any time of day.

Categories: Writing

M (OM) A

Posted on August 11, 2017

When I travel to New York City, which is quite often for someone living in California, I pack the usual necessities along with a few luxuries and a lot of cute clothes for my young grandchildren who live there. Also, it’s critical to bring the most stylish but comfortable shoes I have in my closet. This last item being a nearly impossible feat, if you will excuse the pun. Comfort can be diametrically opposed to style especially where footwear is concerned. Boot season is, therefore, my favorite time of year to hit the streets of Manhattan. It’s hard to go wrong with galoshes.

Regardless of the weather, the most important item on my packing list is a New-York state of mind. From the minute the eastbound flight attendant asks me if I want more cawfee, I start to ratchet up my mindfulness quotient. I become more present, more aware, and more attuned to my surroundings. So, by the time I’m collecting my luggage from the baggage-claim carousel, I’ve managed to wedge myself in between two Hasidic men who are poking each other’s lapels and arguing in Yiddish. I’ve pushed away the SUV-sized stroller (baby being held by mom… what am I, an animal?) belonging to an oblivious family of four, and jockeyed my way to an enviable position at the rotating belt of bags. With both hands on my hips, my elbows define my wingspan like the raptor I’ve become.

I get to the airport’s taxi stand with my Google maps already pulled up because I know I have to implore the driver to take Atlantic Avenue instead of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway so that I can keep the meter under $60 as we drive to Crown Heights, Brooklyn. He feigns any knowledge of English, but I’m on to him.

This is all to say, I’m geared up. My circuitry is sufficiently wired; my attitude is what I would call vigilant. Bring it on, New York.

On my most recent visit to New York, however, I was not staying in Brooklyn; I was not visiting my grandchildren. Instead, I went to rendezvous with an Australian friend of 40 years who was meeting me there. My friend and I had planned many activities that included events I usually cannot avail myself of due to time constraints or impossible subway commutes during rush hour. Even my pointy elbows are of no use when the trains are packed like staples housed in their brand new box.

At the Museum of Modern Art, on the first Wednesday of the month, the museum opens at 8:30 a.m. to members. Naturally, for us members the admission is free–the only catch is that in order to be the first one in the galleries at 9:30, there’s a pre-admission requirement to attend a class led by a knowledgeable, often renowned meditation teacher. I know! This was blowing my mind. Guided meditation in MoMA along with a few other intrepid souls early on a weekday morning? A small price to pay to be in a gallery filled with the artist Robert Rauschenberg’s enormous and startling paintings and sculptures. I’d have the place to myself, relative to any other time of day at MoMA. And by myself, I mean with only about 75 other people. In New York numbers, that’s empty.

For those of you who visit Manhattan, you know that unlike leaving your house and walking, say, 50 feet to your car, where you presumably take complete control of the auditory pleasures of your radio or your phone and where you can adjust the temperature to your own taste, when you leave your hotel or your apartment in New York you leave behind your autonomy too. There might be a crowded or at the very least a forever-in-arriving elevator to the lobby; perhaps a polite doorman or maybe no doorman but an annoying neighbor who doesn’t hold the door for you. There’s a cab to hail, a Lyft driver’s progress to keep tabs on, or a subway seat to vie for on a delayed, airless subway. If the latter, like it was for my friend and me on this particularly humid, summer’s day, there is also an 8-block walk just to get to the subway station. So humidity be damned, you’ve got to hustle.

There were another 8 or so blocks to get from our arrival station to the museum itself. And, so, naturally we hadn’t allowed enough time for all the commuting malfunctions that inevitably occur. Incidentally, if you DO allow enough time for shit to happen, it never does and then you arrive too early and have to find a place that makes a reasonable cappuccino in order to kill time. Personally, I find $10 for a coffee and pastry worth every cent if the air-conditioning is working and there’s a place to sit down inside the café.

Overheated, overwrought, and late, we scuttle through the museum’s revolving doors and I flash my membership card at the receptionist. The art museum is oddly quiet and anyway, we’ve entered through a portal that is not the usual one for its daily admissions. I find myself disoriented and trying desperately to retrieve both my confidence and my curiosity in order to not bail. After all, I’m sweating and it’s only 8:40 a.m. But, I remember that I’m headed to fuckin’ meditate. So, let’s do this.

Then, I hear it: Gongs and chants played through a loud speaker. And, like any good musical arrangement, the bass line was there too but in the form of deep murmurs from people situating themselves. My friend and I drift through security (yes, security) as we follow the mystical breadcrumbs to find our location. There in the atrium—the same atrium that hosts preposterous performance art or enormous sculpture exhibits, or even tables set for the occasional evening’s donor dinner—are about 450 little butt hammocks filled with rear ends of all sizes. These portable seats are reminiscent of those perches people bring to their child’s soccer game: small and clever roosts than allow the audience to refrain from sitting on the floor. Huge speakers are pendulously hanging from the ceiling, and I see these are the source of the auditory bombardment. There are a few big screens, too, that make the space feel like part sports event, part Beyoncé concert. A pragmatic usher points to a couple of empty chair slings and thus our butts, too, are planted in position along with the rest of the atrium’s humanity.

Suddenly, the music and chanting cuts out and in its place, I hear our speaker introduce himself. Now, I am grateful for those oversized screens because I can see our leader—a handsome, early-50ish-aged man in a dress shirt and navy blue puffy vest. The first thing he says is this: “I apologize for the chanting over the loud speakers. If they had asked me about it, I would have told them no way in hell do I want to hear that.” Or, something to that effect. In any case, I was in love with this guy. Dan Harris, my new crush, goes on to tell his story of what led him to meditation. At this point I refer you to his podcast: “10% Happier with Dan Harris.” I promise you’ll learn more. He then introduces his own meditation guide and teacher who proceeds to lead us in our Quiet Morning meditation.

And, this is where I start to hope that something more entertaining—like Beyoncé—will appear on those large screens and divert my attention. As I’ve mentioned, I’ve groomed myself for this trip to New York and now as I sit in this butt sling in the middle of a cavernous, iconic and familiar space smack dab in the middle of Manhattan Island…a place that took me 16 blocks and one jostling subway train to arrive at…a room filled with heavy-breathing strangers in an array of fashion statements from black business suits to blacker yoga pants, I am beyond distracted. I’m ferklempt.

And, I drift. With the help of my breath, as suggested by our meditation guide, I’m following my inhalations and my exhalations. I’m being told that I’ll notice my mind wandering and not to admonish myself. I’m encouraged to close my eyes and to simply be. I’m being asked to notice…and suddenly I do notice! I notice that it’s 1969 and I’m in the funky yet oddly welcoming, shingled two-story house somewhere near the UC Berkeley campus with a rose on my lap and a white handkerchief in my right hand. I’m seated on a large, poofy cushion that is situated on an Oriental rug of many faded colors. There are wispy puffs of incense streaming from two wooden sticks stuck in a brown-and-green hand-thrown ceramic mug that has been placed on the dusty windowsill to my right. In front of me is my personal guide, a bone-thin young man—older than me by maybe five years—shirtless, shoeless, and underpantless beneath his linen draw-string pants. And, in my left hand, all wadded up, is my $75. Cash.

The Transcendental Meditation House was where my best friend and I were introduced to the concept of meditation. Our first gurus probably were The Beatles who met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of TM, in 1967 and then in 1968 traveled to India for further enlightenment. My friend and I, however, were more limited in our abilities to seek spirituality especially considering we each had to borrow the $75 from our highly skeptical parents.

On the pillow, in front of the half-naked cute guy, we were given our own mantra. Our secret, personal password to nourish us and enable us to go deeper into our minds. You know: relax and float downstream, etc.

I was then instructed to place the rose I was now clutching near the incense. I did as I was instructed. The mug holding the incense sat adjacent to a framed photo of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Furthermore, I never ever breathed a word about my secret mantra. To do so seemed to violate all tenets of meditation etiquette. Besides, we promised. And, after all these years, I cannot tell you what the purpose of that handkerchief was. I am fairly confident, however, that the $75 went straight to the cute guy. And, I’m absolutely positive that I never paid back my father.

Opening my eyes again, I see with some relief that I’m still in New York and that my purse is still by my side. I watch the big screen and notice that some people are beginning to stir while others are snoring; I glance to my left and observe my friend as she sits in her mini-chair with Pilates-perfect posture. To my right, a woman is checking her texts. Her posture is lousy, and it makes me sit up straighter.

A gong is played. The guide encourages us to gently open our eyes and find ourselves in the present moment.

I’m so past the present moment, I’ve collected travel miles. Time travel will do that. I’m already anticipating how I’m going to get my friend and me out of this holding area and into the Rauschenberg exhibit in the most expeditious way. I am beginning to feel like I need a cup of coffee, and I’m wondering if the museum’s café is open yet. I’m also worried that I might need to figure out how to collapse the butt sling.

But before I leave the atrium, I text my old high-school, Berkeley-meditating friend to see if she can remember her secret, personal mantra given to her all those many years ago. Because, and probably due to the 20 or so minutes of quiet meditation I had just experienced, I suddenly remembered mine.

On the way out of the museum’s atrium, I hear my phone’s ping indicating she was responding to my text. As it turns out, we both had both been given the exact same mantra.

 
The present is a gift, but do you still need to write a thank-you note?

Categories: Writing

Face Off

Posted on April 21, 2017

I recently visited New York and was so busy there with my super-sized days, I didn’t have a chance to see the recently opened Broadway show, “War Paint.” The production tells the story of the rivalry between the cosmetic magnates, Helena Rubenstein and Elizabeth Arden. It’s on my ever-growing to-do list for the next visit.

Nevertheless, reading about the musical triggered memories of my own connection to the world of makeup or lack thereof. As I rode the train from Brooklyn to Manhattan one soggy morning last week, there to my left and across the pole-pierced corridor that separates the bench-style seats on the subway sat a young woman deftly applying her mascara.

Recalling my own makeup application that very morning, complete with magnifying mirror, Q-tips, glasses on to see/glasses off to swipe, and the resulting mediocre results, I was captivated by both the young woman’s steady hand and her lack of shame. Her proficiency with the mascara wand while seated in a lurching, swaying subway car (not to mention the jostling seat mates) resulted in not one single smudge on her flawless porcelain cheeks. Then, she applied her lipstick. To both lips. I emphasize this point because, sporting only one skimpy lower lip, I’ve long coveted a full-mouthed face. My upper lip always had a predisposition to thinness, but as I’ve aged the thing has faded into oblivion as much as it has into memory–like so many other formerly desirable and fully formed body parts: perky bosoms, for example. Or, slender thighs without roadmap-resembling spider veins. Did I mention that my fellow passenger applied her lipstick without a mirror? I was awestruck.

I grew up at a time when watching my mother dress, I counted the days, weeks, months, and years until I too could hook my stockings as she did—a nimble one-handed technique that latched her hose to her garters. She wore a white suit of boned armor under her shirtwaist dresses called a girdle that sucked her bits up and in, compressing her intestines to her spine. And, in her handbag she carried a jeweled compact that seemed like something Cinderella’s fairy godmother would have included in the swag bag along with the glass slippers. This dainty but indispensible item had a rhinestone sparkly top and a smooth, silver bottom. When opened, the peachy-colored pressed powder within lay beneath the teeniest and most delicate powder puff. The sound the dainty accessory made when my mother closed it (again, with one hand) had a satisfying click that indicated all systems go: bridge of nose powdered to remove the shine, teeth free of debris and lipstick. Then, she attended to her lips by first examining the remains of color before beginning her artful maneuvers. The gold-and-black tube, fished out from her often enormous–other times uselessly demure–handbag, was opened by pulling the top off with a satisfying thwump. Starting in the center of her taut upper lip, she drew the stick up and over to the left corner; then, she repeated this to the right corner. Application to the bottom lip was more of a back-and-forth swipe—a couple of times. Before closing the compact, there was a pressing together of her lips with a kind of rolling motion to ensure that the waxy product was in place. Further insurance was often necessary in the form of a nearby napkin, which was sacrificed for blotting. Teeth were once again bared like a lioness as my mother did her final mirror inspection. Her compact was then snapped shut and replaced in her purse. Lunch or dinner was now over. It was time to go.

Incidentally, this routine was repeated in our home when my mother heard my father’s car drive into the garage at the end of his workday. Instead of the purse compact, the hall mirror was used. The crooner and housewives’ heartthrob, Jack Jones, captured her nightly ritual perfectly when he sang, “Wives and Lovers.” While the lyrics might make you renew your long outdated subscription to “Ms. Magazine,” it was middle-class reality in the suburbs of the late 1950s. Perhaps, this explains the high rate of alcoholism among the women in my neighborhood.

My mother’s favorite lipstick was Revlon’s Cherries in the Snow. Who knew, upon research for this blog, that this too was the go-to choice for the author and eventual suicide victim, Sylvia Plath? No matter how intellectual, or despondent, or both, I guess, lipstick was her hope in a tube. She also reportedly had very full lips, but I digress…

About once a month, my parents and I went to visit my father’s eldest sibling in Oakland. My Aunt Rose was the first of 5 children to arrive from Russia—at the dawning of the 20th century—carrying her already overly used satchel (pogroms were among the first frequent-flyer motivators) and sporting a sign which dangled from her 7-year-old neck. This unbecoming necklace was bestowed on her at Ellis Island. It read: “Stockton, California” and was to be her long journey’s destination. Her various siblings soon followed as was the well-worn path of many an immigrant. There were no aliens then just alien experiences and unfathomable circumstances. Some weathered these travails through luck or connections or money; others, like my family, plodded through the filthy, teeming streets and made their lives into something enviable. Along the way, though, familial relations were strained and often severed. Religious traditions were at times observed with reverence but often discarded when the temptation of assimilation was too seductive. Money was shared when possible, but usually there wasn’t enough of it to divvy up.

Rose, however, married well and she and my Uncle Max raised two children in a part of Oakland where the backyards were large and lush. Each child had their own bedroom, and the home’s living room furniture was expensive enough to warrant keeping the crimson velvet drapes drawn so there was no exposure to sunlight. Ever.

Our drive to the Shermans’ lasted about 45 minutes and always took place in the evening. We arrived for cocktails and stayed through dinner, dessert, and a hand or two of bridge. For this reason, I never recall our departure because I had fallen asleep in my cousin Vera’s childhood bedroom upstairs. My father carried me out to the car when it was time to go home. It was late enough to have won a rubber of bridge; early enough to avoid helping his sister with the dishes.

My aunt’s home was filled with fringe-hemmed couches and chairs, plush and upholstered with buttons and scratchy top stitching. The main staircase had a shiny, solid wood banister the width of which was wide enough to accommodate my bottom on its dare-devilish slide down from the second-floor landing to the marble entry. In the home’s first-floor den was a green-felted surface atop a card table intricately inlaid with colorful stones in raised mosaics of clubs, hearts, spades, and diamonds. Aunt Rose’s home was a treasure trove of tactile delights that provided endless moments of diversion for me.

For my aunt’s daughter Vera, her daughter-in-law Claire and my mother, their pre-dinner but post-cocktail diversion was equally gleeful. Or so it sounded and looked to me. Rose’s daughter, my first cousin, was a grownup whose age was closer to my mom’s than mine. This was also true of Claire. Rose, being so much older than my father, who himself was 13 years older than my mother, was more akin to a grandmother as I think about these events now. So, to my mother, she must have seemed more like a mother-in-law than a sister-in-law. I tell you this because what happened next, each and every time we visited, had little to do with Rose. Aunt Rose would greet us with wet, sticky kisses and in her thick, nearly incomprehensible Yiddish-infused English she might say, “Dahlinks!!! Vhy dun’t you come in, set dun your tinks on the sofa. Velvel (my dad’s name), did you get everysing from da makchine (car)?”

And I scooted off but not before watching my mother hang up her coat and then open up her handbag to reveal her newest shade of lipstick. This was my mom’s way of bonding with her two contemporaries with whom she had nearly nothing in common—not in style, nor heritage; not in religion, nor in interests. Her peace offering was her lipstick and in this arena, my mother was a goddess who came bearing information and, better yet, presents–from department stores Vera and Clair felt excluded from. Were these stores too expensive? Too pretentious? Probably just too hard to get to–of these 3 women, only my mother drove. She often gifted the ladies their own tubes of luxurious tubes of paint: thick, glossy sticks in shades of mandarin orange, deep magenta or subtle lavender. As time moved along, the early 1960s hosted palettes of frosted whites and opalescent pinks—the modern shades were snickered at but quickly applied.

Off to the tiny and aptly named powder room the ladies scampered to share the same tube of lipstick–or to gawk as they applied their own paint. In the tiny space, they giggled and communed. If I were within earshot, I would attempt to reconcile grownup women being as silly as I was with my own adolescent friends. I was observing what was possible within the world of women. I felt their anticipation and their joy and most of all their female camaraderie. Thusly madeup, for often the addition of powder or rouge was called for, they exited the cramped space leaving remnants of color on their lips. Sometimes, though, their lips were wiped clean before emerging for one of Rose’s bowls of borscht. The soup was nearly the same color as their shade of lipstick. Maybe Chanel’s, “Beet Red”?

It was at my aunt’s home where I first heard my mother rhapsodize about her newest discovery: Cherries in the Snow. Only she was able to pull off the color of that fire-engine red lipstick. Fashion sense and curiosity could get a woman to the cosmetic counter, but it was her unmitigated sparkle and panache that made the sale.

Visits to my aunt’s house decreased in frequency as my mother’s health took a turn for the ever worse. And, after she died, my father had less and less desire to see his family. A shame, really, because the diversion and the company would have been good for him…and for us.

It was nearly a year after my mother died, when we once again made the trip to the enchanted forest that was my aunt’s home. But, now I was older physically, and certainly spiritually I was raw and unraveling. The fussy living room furniture did not fascinate nor distract me. The fringed skirts dangling from the couches and chairs belonged to the fingers of children now—not to dour adolescents. I was, however, a dutiful companion to my father and as such I accompanied him to the Sherman house, however sullenly.

Upon our arrival at the Shermans’, both my cousin Vera and her sister-in-law flew at me as soon as we entered the foyer. While Rose jockeyed in position to plant her lips on my cheek, they scooped me up and removed me to the den making the excuse to Rose that they needed some girl-talk time. I was numb. Being with anyone in these recent months after my mother’s death was hardly diverting, but revisiting a familiar place, one that almost smelled like her, was nearly intolerable. I was walking on recognizable turf that was too quickly morphing into quicksand.

It was after one such visit, on the drive home, when I reached into my purse to retrieve my hairbrush. I pulled down the car’s visor so I could make sure I combed my bangs into a straight window shade of hair that duly covered my eyebrows mimicking the Twiggy look of 1966. As I placed my brush back into my purse, I felt the enormous void of space within…where my wallet should have been.

I cried out to my father to turn around at once. My Mary Quant trifold wallet, I said to him, must have fallen out at Rose’s house. He asked me if it belonged to Mary Quant why did I have it? Fathers! I told him that Mary Quant was the designer of the wallet; I was the owner. Remember? Mom bought it for me! How dense could he be? We returned to Rose’s house, to the foyer, and to the little tufted loveseat where all incoming purses were laid. The wallet wasn’t there.

Inside was my library card, my paltry sum of babysitting money, and some form of identification that predated a driver’s license. Within the folds of the wallet were two treasured photos of my mother: one of her in a luscious, shimmering-green brocaded hostess gown complete with lime-colored pants. The floor-length hostess coat had a thigh-high slit in the front to reveal the silky pants on her legs as she crossed them while sitting on our living room couch. The other photo was of me, as a little girl, tightly hugging her. I’m holding on to her as if we both knew she would be leaving too soon. It was meant to be a playful and not an ironic pose, I’m sure.

In the years that followed, I began to practice driving by chauffeuring my father and me to the Shermans’ house. Eventually, I had replaced the Mary Quant wallet with another and it was now the protector of a driver’s license, a few more dollars, and a photo of two of my boyfriends. My aunt’s house, however, seemed captured in the tangles of time. Nothing changed. The borscht had been simmering on her Wedgewood stove for years and years. The dining room was usually filled with the same supporting cast of relatives, but the conversation became more strained with 1970s political tirades by me, resulting in tongue-clicking disapproval by my uncles; my father was increasingly hard of hearing. My responses to him were often more shrill and certainly more forceful than, in retrospect, seemed necessary.

One evening, when the tension seemed to tug at my neck and stiffen my jaw, I excused myself rather abruptly and ascended the stairs without asking permission. I found Vera’s bed again and lay there in the dark listening to the now-muffled voices of the relatives in the dining room below. Years had passed since I had been in this room, and it seemed just as I remembered it. The dresser still stood by the door; but now it was no longer too high for me to see its surface. I reached out to grasp one of the perfume bottles that was placed on the dresser right next to a hairbrush with its captured hair from Vera’s scalp, I guess. There sat three framed photos: two of Vera with her husband and one of Vera with my mother and Claire. The three ladies, my mom in the middle, arms around each other sitting in Rose’s den—at the inlaid card table. As I reached to pick up the photo, I saw my Mary Quant wallet…the one I had lost so many years before…tucked behind it. Along side my wallet was a tube of Cherries in the Snow lipstick. Here before me was an altar to my mother. Someone else, besides me, had loved her. Some other female missed her regal style, her heady laugh, her kind and generous spirit. Someone else needed to hold on to her—to be reminded of her. I hadn’t thought of her as anyone other than my mom, and her absence was not just my loss.

I knocked over the tube of lipstick as I grabbed my wallet and opened it up to retrieve those two photos of my mother, which I carry in my own wallet to this day. Placing the wallet back where I had found it, I carefully positioned the lipstick tube next to it.

I looked again at the framed picture of the three women, holding each other while intently looking at the photographer. It was not a spontaneous shot. Instead it was carefully posed, and my mother is holding up her gold and black tube. The portrait is of three women wearing the same shade of lipstick. This photo too was meant to be playful and not ironic. Cherries in the Snow? I imagine so. Clearly, only she could pull off that color.

Do I have lipstick on my teeth?

Categories: Writing