Fall-back

My son was born the first week of November... accompanied by the urban score of Election Day, the NYC Marathon... the first seasonal cold wind, the crush of dead leaves underfoot and the shocking afternoon darkness on the first Sunday of standard time setting. Each passing year I am overwhelmed by the nostalgia of parenthood. Our children cannot understand how we annually celebrate their arrival... how the indescribable agony of childbirth announced that we were splitting ourselves in two... how we sang silly songs and blew out candles but in our heart was the future soundtrack of an unwritten Roy Orbison ballad.

Even with photographs, it's difficult for our kids to understand the young, naive woman who was their mother, the novel intimacy of harboring a growing human inside a body whose power we'd maybe only recently absorbed. In my case, I was fulfilling a callow promise I'd made to my husband-- to have his child, despite serious reservations.  Our courtship had been brief but intense; 'no one will ever love you the way I do,' he repeated as he showed up in airports, intercepted my daily itinerary, flew transatlantic until he was broke, waiting for me to nod my head while he begged, on one knee, for me to become Mrs. British Journalist.  

So when my husband strayed, I tried to brush it off-- he was insecure-- he was dramatic; it would fade. I waited it out, remembering the pleading oaths he'd sworn... and then the surprise of pregnancy. I grew up quickly... held out hope, suffered. It wasn't so much the demise of the marriage as the betrayal of something in which I'd let myself believe. I talked to my growing stomach-- confessed, confided.  I'd agreed to define myself as part of a couple... and now the definition had become smeared-- obsolete... wrong. I no longer knew who I was or even where, having transported all my instruments and gear to the UK.

We urban dwellers learn to sleep through sirens... but the subdued quiet of a West-London 3 AM was more than I could bear. I returned to my city where the noise drowned out sorrow, the autumn rain camouflaged  wet eyes, and pounds of candy corn took the place of whiskey. I got up on smoky stages looking like a balloon and played my blue bass.

Who am I, I wondered, as I walked November midnight streets of Manhattan with a baby carriage? My exhaustion was overwhelming but did not translate into sleep. I felt hollow without my maternal stomach, traumatized at the act of separation and terrified of the task of raising a person when I no longer recognized the skin I was in: someone's mother... a nursing machine, one-half of a couple whose future was a puzzle, whose past was maybe just a terrible mistake-- a con job?

Thirty-six years later I woke up today after setting back my manual clock, having watched the last game of an entertaining World Series I would never have enjoyed had I not raised a sports-obsessed man. The apple fell far from this tree. I began the day with a radio interview; somewhere in the world people were hearing my music... it was shocking, in a way.  Somewhere I was still a musician-- a songwriter, despite this waking image of my life as a kind of huge parchment game-basket with thousands of lettered tiles leaking out in piles. 

Last week I watched a documentary on dying.  It was distressing-- horrifying, dismantling.  Again-- who are we, creatures who frantically train our bodies and minds-- run errands and break hearts... when we are all headed for the same unappealing and painful fate? 

Savoring my free hour after the clock resetting, I noticed Sheryl Crow was on PBS with a less-impressive Jason Isbell, conversing about her songwriting and playing samples in the grand hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art with an exceptional sound system and a rapt sophisticated audience. Jason's accompaniment was annoying.  She is very polished-- even with her pancake make-up and false eyelashes... she can sing. I pondered her lyrics 'If it makes you happy, it can't be that bad.' Is this art? Am I bitter?  The last gig I played I went home on the subway with $60. I considered walking 5 miles to save $1.45. According to the internet, the starting range to book Sheryl Crow is between $300,000 and $499,000.   I remember meeting her, many years ago-- juggernauting along with her endorsements and rockstar hookups, following her dream on the road while I was wheeling around a baby. Not that there is a musical comparison. And after great success, Sheryl has more or less purchased motherhood.

I've noticed my son's friends are beginning to have grey hairs.  This ages me. His very boyish former science teacher greeted me in the street the other day... 'Did I recognize him,' he wanted to know, sheepish about the fact that he was now fifty-something? Are we judged by the way others see us?  I remember well, after a high-school musical performance, my mother asked 'You think you're good? This is high school!' These were my parents... maybe I over-processed their judgment which was skewed by the fear that their daughter might make the terrible choices I've since embraced.  

Tonight in the early dusk the sidewalks are littered with trampled discarded marathon signs and placards. Some of the runners were still limping along Fifth Avenue nearly twelve hours after the starting gun-- some falling short of their goal, some failing entirely.  I'm almost relieved another November milestone is over. Tuesday the mayoral elections will pass, and then it will be my son's thirty-sixth birthday.  He will celebrate with his friends; I will not share my nostalgia and current malaise... he seems to be happy with who he is at the moment-- not to question or doubt, not to empathically suffer along with ill friends and neighbors the way I do.  He will enjoy spending his money eating and drinking. He does not think about his absent father whom he barely recalls, and he certainly is little acquainted with the dark streak that marks my heart like a cross, like a wound. 

Meanwhile, hearing my own song 'Black Bells' on a radio show reminded me I am consistent if nothing else, and not ashamed of what I have produced, although I could always be better. Hard to judge oneself, and if one doesn't exploit social media, there is little access to external judgement or assurance.  Am I happy, in the Sheryl Crow sense?  Do I regret? No... maybe...  I endure these phases-- the doubt and black moods a lifetime of creativity, intermittent betrayal and suspension of belief have guaranteed. They are my 'material', for better or for worse, 'til death do me part.  If I choose, I can hear the sirens, but have learned-- Daylight Saving or Eastern Standard-- to sleep with them. 

Ergo-nomics

Last week my son turned 25.  This prompted an uninspired shopping expedition which these days consists of a whirlwind tour in and out of various Soho 'label' stores, me getting a crash course in trendy fashion, the mid-20's consumer culture, a hands-on introduction to several moderate luxury items I've browsed online.  I'm always hopeful that by some miracle of fate and season there will be a single pair of leather boots or J Brand jeans or that Montcler jacket at 95 percent discount-- an irregular, a close-out, a mid-season return.  The reality is we both generally end up hungry, exhausted and humbled-- as though we've been allowed the briefest glimpse of paradise but no entry.

My French god-daughter and I once went on a day-long spree during which she tried on every dress, coat, ensemble, boot--- up and down Madison… twirling and deliberating, strutting like a princess, and ended up happily eating $1 hotdogs in our thrift shop jeans and leather.

My son doesn't have that gene.  He has sophistication mixed with ghetto values that want to own these things.  An iphone 6 on an entry-level salary doesn't phase him.  His college loan debt does not bother him.  His closet of discarded label-clothing is no argument.   Debt is his back-door man.  My lectures and principles are tap-water through the platinum sieve of his fancy.  The better man in him knows these material things are transitory.  But so is life.  My brain is my largest asset; his future wallet is his.  This year he hates John Varvatos.  I view that as progress.

I've had the same gynecologist since I was a college freshman.  We have developed this rapport now--- he has seen me through the important phases of womanhood and sexuality.  I've been a loyal patient.  He generally is non-invasive and non-judgmental-- asks little.  But as he approaches retirement, he has begun this tradition that we go into his little office and we talk-- no longer about sex and childbirth and clinical things--- but about life, the books we've read-- the death of the New York intellectual, why plastic surgery is perceived by a patient's friends as a disappointment-- etc.  He likes me.  I have a brain, he says, with an irony that tells me he doesn't often encounter this in his young patients.  It is irrelevant that I haven't had the kind of economic success he'd predicted for the precocious Princeton girl with the long legs and enormous vocabulary.  I had 'married' my career priority and surprised myself by my own eccentric ability to manage the city on a starving artist's income.  We have this professional intimacy and I trust him; he values me as a patient and I generally see him every year around my son's birthday-- Election Day-- marathon week.  It's a ritual I will miss when he finally throws in his speculum.

As I leave his office, I am vaguely consoled that there is no real emotional hangover from my failure to dazzle my son with a gift.  He deserves to be dazzled-- but is approaching the age when he will indulge himself rather than take the proverbial food from his mother's plate.  Besides, I gave him my iPad.  It was an extravagant gift from a super-rich lawyer to acknowledge the volunteer work I do.  I confess I've never used it.  It's not a brand new one, but he liked it.  It's a pretty good present, with another year of Applecare still on the books.

I walked to and from the doctor's office; the weather was mild and I saved the $5 metro-fare.  Coming through the park, I was thinking over our discussion about the subjectivity of sexuality, and I stepped on a $20.  $20.  In my pathetic world, this is life-changing.  Maybe in some households on the other side of the world-- -even the other side of town, this is also a windfall.  But in the Soho Bloomingdales, this was a useless bill.  I'd browsed $400 shirts, $600 lace-up boots, a really nice jacket for $2,600, and $500 jeans.  Everything seemed just so sad to me…there were a couple of young men in there buying-- some overdressed mothers indulging their sons… and 2 pairs of rap-star posers with every single symbol of fashion status including designer tattoos… commentating and handling the scarves and belts.  It's not about the quality, my son explained, who had generally worn the Century 21 belts and Syms parkas with sportsmanship and style-- it's the fit.   A similar observation had been made in my gynecologist's office, which elicited a subdued chuckle from the wise doctor who had authored, in the 1970's,  a cutting edge book called 'Healthy Sex'.

Outside Bloomingdales, after our fill of Soho labels and the kid-in-the-candy-store thing, 2 of the girls we'd seen inside were trying on handcuffs and being shown into a patrol car.  One size fits all, I remarked.  My son gave me that look-- -after all, I'd bailed him out a few times during teenage years.   The amazing thing was, he'd only stolen things he didn't really want-- like they were for someone else… some kind of warped pride in that.  Besides, he always had those rich girlfriends who shopped for him at the Prada and Armani store.  But even that got tired.

My friend has a high-end art gallery.  Last week she hired an outside consultant for an in-house gallery retreat which was a 4-hour meeting during which the consultant told her the place was dysfunctional and she failed to communicate and acknowledge her employees.  They were too disheartened by her attitude to fight for their opinions.  For this advice she paid $12,000.  I gave her the identical analysis 2 weeks ago on the phone, for nothing.  But without a price tag it was useless.  Consumo ergo sum.

I still refuse to give in.  With my $20 I bought some groceries, 2 great books at a thrift shop, a fantastic vintage ceramic tile as a new-baby present, a lotto ticket, a homeless guy's hotdog and coke, and I tipped my local Starbucks barista $5.  He gives me great coffee every day and charges me for a refill which is free.  $20 would not get my son through half a day.  When I die my greatest asset will go with me.  No, at this moment I can't afford to fix my teeth or have my bass re-fretted; I can't afford my son's shoes or a new iPad.  I still have no cellphone. But I will get what I need, as will my son.  He may even get what he wants, which is not necessarily what he needs, as my gynecologist and I know, and which he will learn when he really needs to know this-- when he finds a Moncler jacket or a diamond Rolex lying in his path and he decides to leave it there for the next guy.