Christmas Past, Christmas Present

It was around this time last year, in early November, that my father became ill. The slant of the afternoon light through sparse ochre colored leaves reminds me of those afternoons driving home from North Shore University Hospital on the Northern State Parkway with my mother in the front passenger seat, both of us talking about treatments and our hopes for his recovery in time for Thanksgiving.

As the holiday approached we both reconciled ourselves that he wouldn’t be coming home for Thanksgiving, but hopefully Christmas. On Christmas morning we brought gifts to his hospital room and we opened them for him because he was too weak to do so himself.

I was relieved when New Year’s Day had passed.  At last, the holidays were over. I remember feeling alienated last year in my shroud of grief – like there was a big party going on, but I wasn’t invited.  I felt like I had taken a drug that distorted my vision of the world around me.  The Christmas decorations seemed larger than ever before - too gaudy and bright. The Christmas music was louder than usual - tedious and intrusive. I wanted to be quiet in my thoughts and prayers.

This year is different; I desperately want to be happy for the holidays.  I’ve already found two radio stations that are playing Christmas music.  But every Christmas song I hear reminds me of the sadness I felt this time last year, and I find myself slipping into a listless malaise.  I don’t want to start Christmas shopping or baking cookies or planning the Christmas feast– all things that brought me so much pleasure in years past.

The other day, I tried to order a set of Spode Christmas dishes from Macy’s, a purchase I’ve wanted to make for the past 35 years but always thought was too frivolous and expensive. Seeing those little Christmas trees on my plate every morning and night would surely cheer me up, I thought. But my Internet order never went through – some glitch in their system, I was told.

I know these trivialities will never fill the void that was left in our family since my father passed away. But I’m trying to salvage what could become another melancholy holiday season without my father.  He was the one who brought music to our family and laughter around the table.  He was the one I loved to cook for. 

I remember once catching my foot on a piece of lifted sidewalk and flying into a slow motion fall.  It was such a long stumbling clumsy attempt to catch my balance, arms flailing in all directions, feet trying to outrun the fall. I actually had a split second when my mind’s eye saw this spastic tumble ending with me falling on my face.  I didn’t, though.  At some point my arms and legs coordinated with each other, my balance was restored and I continued walking along as if nothing had happened.

I often feel like I did that day, stumbling along, trying to find the balance again in my life. I’m trying to make sense of all of this.  For as long as I live, I’ll never understand how life can be here one day and gone the next. But as long as there is life, I want to be happy.  And, knowing my father, he wouldn’t want the music or the laughter to end.  He especially wouldn’t want the cooking to stop.

So tomorrow I’ll try again to listen to some Christmas songs, to get in the spirit, to plan my Christmas feast.  Soon I’ll hang some decorations, buy some gifts and start baking the cookies. I’ll do it all with fond memories of Christmases past when the family was whole, when my dad was still here.

My First Dance

I'm taking a writing course at my local library.  We are given an assignment and, since there are 20 or more attending each week, we are asked to keep it  to one type-written page - a very difficult task, but a good exercise in brevity.  Last week our assignment was to write a short story or a memoir piece. I can't develop characters for a short story in one page, so I wrote this memoir piece about my first dance.

It was New Year’s Eve 1965; I was thirteen years old.  Mom was in the kitchen slicing the ham, grandma was pushing bits of anchovy into the swollen pizza dough and dad was mixing up a batch of Manhattans.  When I heard the opening beats and the clear voice of Frank Sinatra singing Fly Me To The Moon, I knew dad had already served himself the first Manhattan and the party was about to begin.

            “Come on, baby! Get out of the kitchen; let’s dance!” he called to my mother, his hand held out, beckoning her for a dance before the guests arrived. As he swung her around in her apron, she threw her head back and let out a laugh and, for a moment, I saw my parents in a different light.  Dad was charming; mom was beautiful, and they were lovers.

            The playroom off the kitchen became a ballroom for the night; our kitchen table was the bar.  I watched as my aunts and uncles were transformed for the evening, from housewives and mechanics, into high society folks.  The women dressed up in fancy dresses with high-heels and black stockings, adorned themselves with large hoop earrings and heavy charm bracelets, wore too much make-up and teased up hairdos.  The men were clean-shaven, and doused with strong cologne.  All traces of dirt and grease had been removed from under their fingernails.  They had on their best suits and ties, pinky rings on some, and as the room heated up, they removed their jackets and rolled up their shirtsleeves to reveal large gold watches.

 I sat in a chair in the corner of the room watching them, mesmerized by their quick dance steps and graceful movements, as they floated across the floor to songs by Sinatra, Louie Prima, Jerry Vale and others.  I yearned for the day when a man would hold me in his arms and move me around the dance floor like that.

My wish was granted when my uncle appeared before me with his hand out, bent over in a bow before me.

“May I have this dance?” he asked.

“I can’t,” I stuttered… “I can’t dance like that.”

“I’ll teach you,” he said, as he pulled me out of my seat and put his strong arm around my waist.  “Like this,” he instructed, placing my left hand on his shoulder, grasping my other hand in his, and pulling me in closer.  His cologne filled my head and a warm tingle went through me as he began slowly, at first, talking me through each step, guiding me with his firm hand gently pushing and pulling at the small of my back.

“That’s it,” he whispered in my ear, “one-two, step-step... You got it! Now we’re going to speed it up a bit,” he said as we began moving in time with the music.

So this is what it feels like to be in love, I thought as my feet picked up on the rhythm and our bodies moved as one. 

On that magical night, where reality and dreams blend together, in that playroom turned ballroom, filled with working class mechanics and housewives playing the part of gentry, I, too, was transformed from a clumsy little girl into a beautiful dancing princess.

Life Lessons Learned at (almost) 60

I will be sixty years old in two years. I can’t believe it myself. There are some benefits, however, to growing old gracefully, especially if you learn a few lessons along the way. Here are a few very important lessons I have learned through the years…

Don’t believe everything you see in the movies…everyone has bad breath and looks ugly in the morning. Don’t worry about it; just roll over and go back to sleep. You can deal with it later.

No matter how much exercise you do, eventually your breasts will sag and your ass will acquire dimples around age 50. If I knew that fact when I was younger, I would have spent less time sweating on the stationary bike and more time sitting on my dimples writing. I might have won the Pulitzer Prize by now.

There is no law written that says you can’t wear the same dress to your cousin’s wedding, your nephew’s wedding and your friend’s son’s wedding. The truth is that, unless you come out swinging upside down from a trapeze in an outfit designed by Lady Gaga, no one - not even your husband - will remember what you were wearing at the last wedding.

Remember how much weight you lost last summer? Remember how you swore up and down that you would never gain it back? Well, take my advice and hold on to those big black stretch pants a little longer, because they may be the only things that fit you when winter is over and you start your diet all over again.

Most people look ridiculous when they dance, so get out there, enjoy yourself and cut loose. Unless you’re dancing like Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers, nobody is watching you.

No matter how much you swear that you won’t become your Italian grandmother with a mustache and flappy arms…you become her. You can’t fight genetics, so don’t even try. Just remember how much you loved your Italian grandmother.

Viagra does not make sex better; it just prolongs it.

Sixty is not the new thirty. Sixty is sixty, and you should be happy you made it this far!

Chinese Love Letters

 As I was rearranging the bookshelves in my office this week, I found some old books that once had a lot of meaning for me – books that I thought I would never throw away.  I turned them over once or twice, wondered, why the hell am I still holding on to these?  and quickly tossed them into a large plastic garbage bag before I could change my mind.  Throwing them away was a real Zen moment of spontaneous action followed by a lightening of the spirit. 

 One of the tossed books was a small spiral sketchbook that I used to practice writing Chinese characters in college.  I thought I was pretty smart in college, majoring in Asian Studies, studying the Chinese language.  I was sure that the world was just waiting for me to graduate so I could go forth and make my mark on it.  Of course I would change the world.  There was no doubt in my mind that I was meant for bigger things – for graduate school, maybe even a PhD some day. 

The application for graduate school at the University of Hawaii arrived a few weeks after I ran into my old flame.  After stoking the glowing embers of our old romance, the flames of passion erupted once again, and two months later the engagement ring slipped onto my finger.  Six months later we were married.  Within two months I was pregnant. 

I buried the University of Hawaii application, along with the school’s catalog, bursting with pictures of paradise, in the bottom of my desk drawer.  Over the next twelve years, I would take it out at various times and stare down at the pages, imagining the other life I had in mind for myself so long ago.

I took it out when money was tight and we argued a lot over the bills and expenses.  I took it out in the winter, when sick children kept me immobilized in the house for weeks.  I took it out with each pregnancy, as my body ballooned out of shape and I felt like my brain was slipping out through my ears, and when life became so boring and monotonous it brought me to tears. 

 That catalog was moved from desk drawers to moving boxes to dresser drawers.  It survived an apartment, three rented houses and two purchased homes before I finally threw it into the trash one day while I was cleaning out my desk to make room for the crib that would hold our third child.  It was a relief to let go of that application.  Right before I tossed it, I took one last look through the catalog and thought those pictures weren’t so great and those happy students walking around campus looked almost as young as my oldest son.  Who was I kidding?  That part of my life was over.

It was harder to get rid of that spiral sketchbook.  I held onto it for another twenty-three years after I tossed the University of Hawaii application away.  There was too much of me in that sketchbook.  The marks on those pages were proof of the hundreds of hours of practicing brush strokes and memorizing strange tonal sounds.  My youthful dreams of a future so different from my mother’s and her mother before her were poured onto those pages while writing the characters of a language that would be my ticket out.

I held onto that notebook to remember a time when I had a mind and dreams of adventure and travel to foreign lands.  What happened to me?  What happened to my mind? - was the more troubling question.  I used to be able to read a Chinese newspaper and now I couldn’t identify any but the most basic Chinese characters in that book.

And then I saw, on a page dated April 1, 1976, I had written a character over and over next to what would become my new married name in just nine days. The pictogram consisted of three sections:  the top portion was the symbol for family and marriage, the middle section was the symbol for heart, and the bottom was the symbol for friend.  Together they formed the Chinese symbol for love.        

            I turned the sketchbook over in my hand one last time, opened the garbage bag and threw it in without a second glance. All my regrets of the past thirty-five years over the person I should have become went into the trash with that little book.  There I stood, fifty pounds overweight, disheveled grey hair flying in all directions, creases forming on my upper lip, unable to remember the name of the book I finished reading (in English!) the night before - definitely not the image I thought I would become back in 1976, on the eve of my wedding, as I practiced writing my new name next to the Chinese symbol for love. 

I didn’t need the book anymore.  The world had never been waiting for me to change it.  Without realizing it at the time, the world had been waiting to change me, to show me what really mattered in life.

As I glanced around my bookshelves and saw the beautiful faces of the family my husband and I had created through the years, I realized that I already had everything in that Chinese pictogram; I didn’t need to practice writing it anymore.

Girl Wearing Pants

The young female technician, drawing blood for my cholesterol test, was grumpy and sullen.  Hoping a little conversation might lighten her mood and, ultimately, make this blood letting a little less painful for me, I asked her how she was.

“I’m tired,” she said, tying the band around my upper arm a little tighter than I was accustomed to.  “I’m going to school at night,”  she grumbled.

“Oh? Are you studying to be a nurse?” I asked cheerfully, hoping that needle coming at me would slide in smoothly.

“No,” she finally answered, tossing the used needle into a red container.  “I’m  taking pre-med -  to be a doctor.” 

I felt a little silly, embarrassed to think that I had dated myself.  In an attempt to explain the slip and hide the generational gap, I explained that when I was growing up, girls were limited to the few “girl” professions:  secretary, nurse, teacher or stewardess. “That was back in the 1950’s and 60’s,” I went on. 

As I was speaking, she turned her back to me and began typing something on the computer, uninterested in my banter, she had tuned me out. The silence in the room told me the conversation was over, so I pressed down on the band aid, as I was instructed, and kept my mouth shut.

Later that day, I  was still thinking about that young female technician.  Her attitude bothered me and stirred a memory that I hadn’t thought about for over forty years. I wanted to go back and finish the conversation.  I wanted to tell her what happened in 1970, during my senior year of high school...

...During lunch one day in January, 1970, we were discussing pants  - and  why we girls weren’t allowed to wear them to school.  It was absurd that we had to wear skirts or dresses to school during the winter.  Some girls, who had to walk to school, would wear pants under their skirts, then remove them in the girls’ room before homeroom. This, we decided, was going to end.

After weeks of hashing it out, a group of  us senior girls finally decided that we were going to challenge the dress code and wear pants to school.  We picked the day and crossed pinkies with each other as a solemn vow to go through with our decision.  No girl had ever worn pants to school.  It was strictly prohibited and we were all stirred up and, to be honest, a bit frightened about the outcome.  Would we get suspended?  Sent home for the day? My friend settled everyone’s fears when she said, “Hey!  What are they going to do to us? Kill us?”

As we got closer to the chosen day, a few cowards dropped out of the group of rebels, but most of us - about ten in all - remained true to our vow.  There were whisperings throughout the student body as the day approached.  No one thought we would go through with it.  You could feel the tension in the air when school let out the day before “pants day.”

In front of my mirror that night, I had a mock trial and practiced defense arguments  that I would have with Attendance Officers about the unfair rules that prohibited girls from wearing pants. I would point to my fellow female students, all of us dressed in pants, and finish with my closing statement:   “What are you going to do to us?  Kill us?”  I decided then and there that I wanted to be a lawyer.  I was very good in front of my mirror.  

The morning of “pants day” I awoke an hour earlier than my normal time.  My stomach was in knots, my face felt feverish, adrenaline was pumping and I was ready for a fight.  I dressed in a pair of navy blue hip hugger bell bottoms and a white blouse. Instead of a belt, I wove a snazzy striped sash through the belt loops, the excess hanging down to my left thigh.  If I was getting expelled that day, I thought I should do it with a little flair.

My mother was a late sleeper, so she wasn’t aware of my outfit that morning, but my father noticed.

“What’s with the pants?” he asked.  

“They’re letting us wear pants to school now,” I lied.

When I got to school I saw that all of my friends had chickened out; every one of them. I was furious and scared.  I felt like the foolish emperor in The Emperor’s New Clothes, strutting down the hall with a spotlight on my back.  I had no time to go home and change my outfit, so I walked with my head up, and pretended that everything was just as normal as could be.  In my head, I kept repeating, “What are they going to do to me?  Kill me?”

Despite all the practicing arguments in my mirror, my mind became jelly and I knew I would be a stammering stuttering mess if  I had to defend my actions in front of a screaming Attendance Officer.

As I passed through the halls, kids jerked their heads around, giggling and pointing for others to see the girl wearing pants.  Teachers stood at their classroom doors, with arms crossed, suspiciously watching the commotion in the hall.  In English class that day, of all days,  I was called up to the front of the classroom with another student to read the dialogue from an Ibsen play we were studying.  

“Nice pants,” the teacher whispered, as I walked up to the front of the classroom.

And that was the only comment from anyone in authority that day. The school officially proclaimed “Pants Day Friday” soon after that, allowing girls to wear pants to school on Fridays only, but, before the year had ended, girls were wearing pants  to school any day of the week.  

And that’s how revolutions are started. 

That year and the next, young women our age were amongst those taking over administration buildings on college campuses around the country, they were marching alongside men to end the Vietnam war, they were speaking out for equal opportunity for women, and for changes in admission policies to allow more women into those male dominated medical schools.

That’s what I wanted to tell that female technician.  I’m not just some old lady from a lost generation.  I once was a young girl who challenged the rules and wore pants to school so that your life would be filled with limitless possibilities.

A Dog’s Show Of Humanity and the MTA Warning

MTA Warning: Don't Get Sick On The Train

It is a noble thing to reach out to those in need.  We all know how to write checks to the Red Cross when the levees break in New Orleans.  There are stories of Americans flying over to Japan to help the tsunami victims.  But what happens to our sense of humanity when someone sitting right next to us needs our help?

Last week, my son felt sick and fainted on the subway.  When he came to, he found his bag had fallen from his hand and was opened with the contents strewn on the floor.  As he bent down to pick up his things he noticed the two women, who were sitting across from him before he fell over, never moved to help him. They were still talking about  the bargains they would find on Canal Street, as if the entire episode in front of them had never happened.

As he stood to get back into his seat, he felt faint again, so he stretched out on the seat with his knees up.  At that moment, an MTA employee walked through the subway car and poked him saying, “Get up!  You can’t lie down on the seats.”

“I feel sick,” my son told him.  “I think I might faint again.”

“If you’re sick, get off the train or sit up; you can’t lie down on the seats,” was his reply.

So he crawled out of the subway on all fours, afraid that if he stood up he just might faint again and fall over onto the tracks. 

“And not one person helped you?” I asked incredulously as he recounted the story. 

Not one.

That same week, my husband called to ask me to pick him up early from the Amityville train station because he, too, felt sick. I saw him weaving from the bottom step of that long staircase down from the train platform, and before I could get out of my parking spot, he slithered down the wall onto his knees. 

I watched men and women of all ages walk right past him as I tried to maneuver the car closer to the curb. As I got out of the car to help him up, I panicked, thinking, how am I going to carry him into the car?

Just then, I heard a woman ask, “Sir, are you alright?”  One woman.  I wish I knew who she was so I could thank her personally.

I watched the Today Show covering the earthquake and tsunami in Japan last week.  They aired a segment on two dogs who were abandoned in a devastated area.  One dog was lying down, obviously injured, and the other dog was hovering over him, stroking him with his paw and occasionally licking the injured dog’s face. 

What a show of compassion and humanity.  Too bad dogs can’t travel on mass transit.






In case you missed the link at the beginning of this piece, you should be aware of the MTA's rules on getting sick on the trains.  Here they are:


If you feel sick, it's best if you don't get on the train. Help can reach 
you much faster if you stay in the station. So, if you feel sick go to the station agent or a police officer - they will help you.

If you become ill when you are on the train, notify the train crew.The train crew has the means to call for medical assistance or the police.

You will not be left alone if you become ill. Someone will stay with you until you are well enough to be on your way or until you are in the right hands. And, during rush hours there are EMTs at various key stations who are ready to help customers who get sick.  Really? Nah, you don't mean that.

Never pull the emergency brake. It will only delay the train and keep help from reaching you.