And Away We Go

Hey there blogreaders,

     Wondering why I haven't been writing anything new and exciting for your reading entertainment? Wondering what is going on to keep my fingers from tapping out a new blog? Wondering what the heck I'm alluding to? 
    The answer: I've been off and running - first to Philly and then to NYC, visiting friends, family, and foes. I'm sitting in my hotel room as I type these words, trying to ignore the deep, coughing voice of the guy in the next room, who seems to need to shout into his cellphone for at least thirty minutes each morning and evening. I've considered asking for a different room, but since I'm sure the insulation is terrible in all of them, I'm gritting my teeth and bearing it for the second day in a row.

    Wait. I just had a great idea. I'll plug my iPod into the iHome sitting next to the wall, and blast ABBA until he shuts up. I hope he enjoys listening to ABBA'S Greatest Hits as much as I am. 
     Hee haw. Oh my, this act of retaliation was an original stroke of genius, was it not? I'll let you know.

Freeze Frame

Two years ago I had trouble sleeping at night, because I was more often than not overstimulated by the intensity of my day-to-day teacher-student involvement. I was exhausted and crazed from paper-marking and curriculum creating, and cross-eyed from emailing drafts back and forth with demanding students who believed that if they attached a paper to my email I would remain online 24 hours a day to help them revise it. I chose to be at their beck and call, maybe because they begged me to be or probably because I was as needy as they were. I liked making myself available to help them perfect their writing, but I didn’t like how I turned myself into an editing machine who marked up their narrative drafts, paragraph by paragraph (and sometimes word by word). Back then I believed that was the only way I could meticulously guide them through the writing process, kick them up a level, turn them into more polished college-level writers. I have no idea what they believed (except that they all deserved A’s). I used to believe that spinning wheel would never stop. 

Fast forward.

I retire from teaching, but I’m still exhausted and crazed. I continue to get so revved up I have trouble calming down enough to easily fall asleep. The spinning wheel slows down, but lately it speeds up again as I spend time thinking about my two closest West Hartford friends, whose wheels no longer turn. Thinking about them makes me feel future phobic, but I try to project myself forward, even though merely thinking about my future freezes me in the present, just like back in 1978, when I tried to read Gail Sheehy’s Passages past the chapter chronicling my age group (I was 30 when the book came out), and I was unable turn the page, because I was too afraid to read her predictions of what future me might become.

I know - I should be thrilled to be present me, but lately I’m not as thrilled as I could be. Yesterday I imagined I'd feel better if I could see my future projected above me on a huge movie screen, right before the final credits begin to roll – encapsulating my progress before the house lights turn back on. Today I’m not so sure.

I wish I could feel less frozen, but it's hard to thaw unless I am looking back at what now appears to me to be my brighter past. In 1978 I was one year away from moving from Philly to relocate in West Hartford, CT, three years from having my daughter, and four years from starting my children’s bookstore, Kidlit. A few years later, I'd written a few novels and published some articles (I never published the novels, though). I taught part-time, and sat, sat, sat through youth soccer, baseball, and basketball games (and even wrestling matches). I walked an hour a day for exercise with my friend until we couldn't walk together anymore because she died from cancer (1995). I lifted weights to keep my arm flab from turning into Grandmom Rose danglers. I took up spinning to keep my heart healthy. I talked on the phone to my friend, who died the next morning. (9/7/09 - If only I could turn back time.) A few weeks ago I became a grandmother, and I read aloud to my husband (who always reads aloud to me) from the two detailed journals I kept of my son and daughter’s first year of life.

I know, my roll-back-the-sands-of-time self needs to stop living in the past. It's just that I feel safer when I spend time there looking at old photographs, reading old journals, hearing old stories or jokes, and reconnecting with old friends. As long as I scroll backwards, time becomes neat and tidy. One and done. Not scary. Predictable. 

I am trying to move ahead,  I am, but it's hard, because whenever I do, I swear, my soul becomes psychedelicized. 

There's A Hole In The Bottom Of The Sea

Monday was a holiday, but the geriatric painter guy came anyway, and scraped, sanded, destroyed, and hummed from 8-4. When he first arrived, I tried to explain to him how I needed him to put up plastic to seal off the rooms from the paint dust, which he half-heartedly attempted to do. Only he didn’t tape the plastic down, and it billowed each time he moved around the hallway, which spread the dust even more thoroughly throughout the house. He doesn’t speak much English, so I stopped trying to communicate my anti-schmutz ideas and gave in to the paint dust falling where it may (which happens to be everywhere). I have to say this is the worst house painting experience I’ve had since the mentally ill painter guy painted my kitchen 12 years ago and refused to finish the job until I lied and discreetly told him I was having my own mental health issues.  He finished up in no time.

The word “discreet” brings me back in time. I’m 10 years old, and visiting my aunt and uncle in Manhattan. They run a ticket agency, which I don’t really know much about (but I met Ed Sullivan there, and he shook my hand). What I understand is that they have access to free tickets to musicals and movies. I get to see Oh, Captain, which bores me, but stars Tony Randall, who is very funny; a few years later I see Oliver, which is loud, boisterous, and veddy British. I miss out on seeing Oklahoma and West Side Story, but get to spend one afternoon by myself in a theater watching the movie Indiscreet, starring Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant. I mistakenly think it is titled In the Street, and I am unable to follow the plot or figure out what the heck is wrong with the characters. I have no idea what the word means, but 51 years later I finally do.

I have been ordered not be indiscreet or write about what’s really eating a hole in my heart, stopping it from calmly going on. I’ve been warned that if I disclose what’s tearing at my heart, I’ll either be sued or shunned like an Amish defector (or West Point cadet). Therefore, I force my fingers to type fluffy stuff, like how oil paint fumes give me migraines. (Yes, I have one now.)

You should know that I hate being hogtied by my fear of indiscretion repercussions. I wish I could blow the real stuff inside me in the wind. Unfortunately, my marred and scarred by mole removal lips must remain sealed. For a blabbermouth emoter like me, my gag order is hard to swallow. The quieter I have to stay, the more my issues try to reclaim a space in my leaky heart, where they have trouble sticking like glue, like birds of a feather that stick together. 

So, because I can’t write what I also love to refer to as the truth, I have to write fluff, which spills out of my keyboard like a tipped over bag of goose feathers. My resentment and upset at having to remain permanently discreet have driven me so crazy I convinced myself I could somehow disguise the truth by hiding it between the lines Yeah, I know that’s as insane as thinking that walking between raindrops keeps us dry. But I am no longer lying, like I did with the psycho painter guy – I have issues, and bottling them up is making me fester.

I know that “loose lips sink ships,” which is why I can’t open up the floodgates and spill any more beans. If I do, I’ll turn into the original human Titanic. Splish fricking splash.

Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone

One of my pseudo daughters called yesterday to say she was feeling sad, so I agreed to run over and commiserate, even though that meant leaving the painter guy alone in the house to snoop, steal, or turn on the heat gun and burn the house down.

As I drove through the sunless drizzle, I let my sadness wash over me like the rain washing over my windshield. It was A’s first day by herself since her mom died. She told me that she stood outside on the deck and cried for about ten minutes, shouting out her mom’s name and yelling as loudly as she could that she missed her and wished she would come back. I know I’m only a mom substitute, but I since didn’t want her to keep feeling like a motherless child, I offered to play the piano while she played along on her violin. We slowly limped through a Schumann song together, even though I haven’t played the piano in over fifteen years. Afterwards, she played me some Bach on her violin, while I closed my eyes and luxuriated in the melody. When she was done, we went into the kitchen, leaned over the counter and tore apart a pomegranate. Since I haven’t eaten one in ages, it was a new and exciting experience for me. As we picked out crimson seeds, sucked off the juice and spit out the remains, we traded stories, exchanged a few tears, and soon came to realize we both felt a little better.

I felt so useful and productive that I offered to load up the trunk with the six bags of food A no longer wanted in her mom’s pantry, so I could drop them off at the town food bank. The woman at the desk was delighted at my generosity, until I told her why I had so much food to donate. Why do people say, “I’m sure she’s in a better place, now” when I tell them my friend is no longer alive? How is death a “better place”? I think of it as emptiness, a black hole of nothingness. I didn’t say this to the well-meaning woman, but I wanted to shout it at her. Where’s that death manual when I need it?

I had to force myself to return to Disasterville, my paint dust-covered hellhole. When I opened the back door, loud music hit my ears. It was blaring from the painter guy’s boom box, which he must’ve brought in when I left. He was humming along as he expanded his path of destruction. He only works until 4:30, so I had exactly six more minutes of loud music and humming to put up with. You can’t imagine how happy I was to stop hearing Don McLean belting out Bye, Bye Miss American Pie, one of my least favorite songs of all time.

At 4:30 on the dot, he turned off the radio and started taking his supplies outside to his car. As soon as he was gone, baby, gone, I swooped down and cleaned up his mess. I cleaned until the cows came home, because there was paint dust on every surface imaginable (and even some that were unimaginable).

Just think, I get to do this all over again on Monday, Tuesday and forevermore. I’ll keep you posted on my lead paint absorption rates and doorknob hunting adventures. 

Joy to the fishes in the big blue sea.

She's Come Undone...

The painters are here, scraping and making a mess out of the water-damaged closet in my former computer room. Tomorrow they’re going to sand the ruined downstairs hall and get it ready for painting. That means I’ll be dealing with even more mess and stress. Joy.

Oh, no, no, no. I don’t do well with strange painters, intrusive home repairs, mistakes, strong smells, or disruptions. I become anxious and out of breath. Hyper alert. Fearful. Distrustful. Schmutz-crazed. Undone

The painter marched in early this morning, filthy shoes on his feet, paint cans swinging from his arms. The cans were filled with paint I’d told him to buy, but I’d told him to buy the wrong color. He and his dirty shoes had to stomp back outside and drive to the paint store to replace it. Damn.

Before he left, he told me that whoever painted the room used the wrong type of paint (latex vs. oil). I got so overheated and upset about both my color mistake and past poor choice of a housepainter that I had to strip off my fleece in front of him. Yep, I’ve turned into the New England Stripper. Ta da.

One of his painter guys unhinged the damaged closet door and leaned it against one improperly painted wall, but didn’t put anything between the door and the wall to protect it from being scratched. I inwardly screamed, and outwardly ran out of the room. Aargh.

I noticed that the so-called drop cloth he’d put down under the wall-scratching door and over the rug to catch the sanded paint flecks was the size of a washcloth. This means that paint flecks will cover my previously clean rug. Teeth gnashing ensued. Gasp.

Another painter arrived, reeking of stinky deodorant, making my upstairs smell like him. I can’t breathe in without smelling his damn scent. Migraine time, buggedy buggedy buggedy shoot. Ouch.

I know they’re going to make mistakes (because, hey, I made one already today), but I’m not looking forward to cleaning ‘em up. I hate feeling out of control, imposed upon and worried, as well as at their mercy, but them’s the breaks. Sigh.

I’ve lost the sun, haven’t I? Bazinga.

Help, I Need Somebody...

My computer mail program has been acting up for the last three days, which means I haven’t been able to send or receive email. Since I’m never going to give up email and turn into a Luddite, my latest computer malfunction has unhinged me. What has made me the craziest is watching that annoying little ball endlessly spinning, spinning, spinning next to my gmail mailbox, signaling that all’s not right in MacMail Land. I tried to fix it on my own, but failed each and every time. This meant that I had no choice but to call and try to understand those dreaded voices at…dah dah dum dum…tech support.

I realize there are far more upsetting things going on in the world right now that trump my blip-on-the-radar email glitch, but my blip is what I’ve chosen to obsess about today. Why? Because as long as I stay focused on it I can stop myself from thinking about all the other upsetting things that are going on in my life. Fair trade, wouldn’t you agree?

This morning I sacrificed my abs and gluts, as well as my inner peace, and instead parked myself on my tushie, the portable phone jammed up against my deaf ears. For over three hours. I talked, talked, talked to a variety of tech support people from all over the globe. One tried to fix the problem, but he gave up and handed me off to a different one. That one couldn’t fix things, so she transferred me to another one. That didn’t work, so I ended up calling back the first number. Then I got cut off and had to call again. By the time I was done, I’d talked to more than five different people.

Because I never crossed the same person twice, I had to calm myself down over and over in order to rationally re-articulate what my problem was. My brain kept threatening to seize up and short-circuit, but I forced it to keep it spinning like my defective Mac icon.

Why does talking with tech support turn me into such a crazy wackadoodle? Is it because I have to work so hard to interpret what the various and sundry techies are saying? Is it because I have to make multiple phone calls to solve each problem? Is because having to interact with faceless support people makes me shake with pure and utter fear that I’m never going to get no satisfaction? Is it because their fix-it solutions sometimes crash my computer and I’m convinced it’ll never work again? Is it because merely talking about my blips makes me hold my breath and forget to breathe?

I wish there was a computer Mommy out there who’d rush to my side, wrap me in her expertise, and offer more than a tech supported carrot-on-a-stick Mac-band aid fix. Or a computer wizard best friend who’d intuitively know all the right buttons to push, the right cache files to trash, the right something-or-other to tweak to get me up and running in no time.

Oh, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds! (I’ve been asked to stop cursing, now that I’m a grandmother.)

Baby, Baby, Sweet Baby...

I know I’m not the first 61 year-old woman in the universe to become a grandmother, since there have actually been a zillion, bazillion moms who’ve turned into them throughout civilization. But at 10:30 this morning, when I was elevated to that new parallel universe, the one where my granddaughter officially lives, I believed, I truly believed, that I was the only grandma in the entire history of the world to ever feel such joy.

I would like to believe that turning into a grandmother - a delirious, delightful, happy, peppy and bursting with love event, if there ever was one - is so special that nothing bad will touch me today. Take that, M.C. Hammer.

Shower The People You Love With Love…

My bloodhound nose caught a familiar smell while it was walking outside with me this morning. I pointed it high up in the air, sniffing, sniffing, sniffing that yummy smell, just like a pointer puppy, and was instantly transported back in time to a place I’m way too old for and will never go back to again: camp. Camp was my home away from home for part of each summer in the 1950’s and 1960’s, my safe haven. Pretend to breathe in that campish smell with me as I return, like I often do in my imagination whenever I need to feel better (which I do, oh I do do do).

            Look, my dad’s car is inching its way down camp’s narrow, dusty, woodsy road. As it pulls into the parking lot, watch me dive out the door like I’m entering a swimming pool filled with warm water. Feel that welcoming We-Love-You-Sharron, Oh-Yes-We-Do atmosphere suck us up like a powerful vacuum cleaner. Can you hear it announcing with its smells that we’ve returned to that magical world of woods, water, mosquitoes, campfires, songs, camp friends and adoring counselors?

            Walk with me to the MOP, the Make Out Place, where I once dragged poor Peter Linton, who wasn’t ready to make out, let alone be alone with me. The MOP, that supposedly secret place where you could hunker down among the bushes and kiss each other a few times before being spied on. Watch the kids standing on the roof of the youngest kids’ bunk as they watch the kissers. Laugh as I crawl out to the cheers of all the little girls from my sister’s cabin, who call out my name like I am a conquering hero, emerging from the trenches.

            Wake up with me to either a loud, gonging bell or reveille played on a trumpet. Watch me reach for my glasses, which lie on top of my wooden orange crate, then cover your ears as I start talking a mile a minute. Empathize with me about the time I wet my bed, when I was much too old to be doing such a thing, and was so afraid of being found out that I told my counselor I wanted to go home. Hear her tell me that Alison Lee wet hers, too, and watch us become instant pee-pals. Check out my impetigo that was once so bad I had to visit the scary crone, Helen the Nurse, who held me down so she could scrub off my scabs. That she thought this would make me get better is still a mystery to me, but bear with me as I put up a screaming fight each time she scrapes my arms and back with her nail brush.

            Watch me canoe, swim, water ski and then swim some more. Run around with me as I play Capture the Flag with flour bombs that I love to throw at the opposing team. Be my partner at the square dance and enjoy that ancient record player scratching out those old timey tunes. Can you see me in the dark? I’m flirting with the boys as they bow to their partners, dosey-doe and allemande left. You know, we had real callers, sometimes, along with a tall microphone that stood outside, connected to speakers. A thin man and a short, square-dance-skirt-wearing woman stood beside him, calling out each dance move.

            Sign up with me for the Ping Pong ladder, which I always wanted to climb to the top of, but never did. Play tennis with me on the terrible, rutted courts and cheer me on as I win the girls’ doubles tournament, my first time playing for real.

            Sit outside on KP duty and peel potatoes with me in front of the screened-in kitchen. Help with Set Up and Clean Up duties, even though I remember washing the dishes more clearly than I do setting the tables. 

            Join me in singing songs throughout the meal, like, “Here’s to the cook, the cook, the cook. Here’s to the cook, the best of them all. She’s merry, she’s jolly, we like her by golly” or “Oh the Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord, for giving me the things I need, the sun and the rain and the apple seed, the Lord is good to me.” Scream out, “Here’s to Sharon and the way she does the hula hop. Here’s to Sharon and the way she does the hula hop. Here’s to Sharon and the hula ho-op. Sharon is a social flop, she can’t do the hula hop” and wait for me to get up and gyrate wildly in front of everyone. Notice how there’s only one “r” in my name, because I didn’t add the second one until I was much older. Or better yet, shout, “Happy Birthday, hunh. Happy Birthday, hunh. There is sorrow in the air, people dying everywhere; but Happy Birthday, hunh. Happy Birthday, hunh” as we celebrate someone’s birthday.

            Stand in line with me at the One Utensil meal, where we will pick one out from a big box as we enter the dining room and eat with it, even if it is a potato masher or a rolling pin. Celebrate Backwards Day, when we wake up to taps, wear our clothes inside out, walk backwards and eat dinner for breakfast. On rainy days slosh through the puddles with me in bare feet, with a poncho slung over us to keep us dry.

            Hear me tell ghost stories at night. Watch me practice kissing with my pillow, write letters home at rest period, get mail from family and friends, read with my flashlight after lights out, then sneak over to the boys’ side to shortsheet their beds. Adore each cookout, canoe trip, Color War, Carnival and Last Dance, where we will wear dresses and make finger sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Sing with me around campfires and on the steps of my bunk. Watch me learn to play the guitar by practicing the strum to Jamaica Farewell on my counselor’s back. Allow me to include you in the camp skits that I wrote the words to. Play the guitar with me some more and cheer me on as I learn new finger pickings. Memorize all the words with me to every Joan Baez album.

            Rip open a Care Package filled with food I am never allowed to eat at home, like Kosher Salami, Cheez Whiz, Cow Cheese, Peanut Butter and Ritz Crackers, which I love to eat late at night, while my counselors are out (until a skunk finds our food and ruins that secret pleasure forever). Watch me shriek with delight the day my brother’s best friend sent me that gigantic envelope filled with gum that we aren’t supposed to have, but somehow, no one notices. Hoard it with me for the rest of the summer, and make gum wrapper chains out of the empties, like I do. Admire them hanging on the wall next to my bed.

           Weave zillions of lanyards, as if you had repetition compulsion. Work on a new creation each day, attaching one end of it with a pin onto a shoe or the end of cut-off jeans to finish as we sit around, talking, waiting for dinner or lunch to start or free period to be over. Learn the box stitch and use as many different colors of gimp as you can to make each and every lanyard stand out.

           Quick. Whoosh back to reality with me, because that’s it for today. 

           I want to thank you for returning with me to that safe, loving place where people loved me, they really loved me (yeah, I’m channeling Sally Field) and I wasn’t unlovable, like I often felt (and still sometimes feel) at home.

           I know, I agree with you – it was awfully brief, but that’s all camp memories are – quick trips. Ahh. Things are gonna be much better, right, James Taylor?