Wo-manicure

I have my mother's hands. Purely a physical rather than a metaphorical comment, the observation followed me throughout adult life. Deny as I might, as I grow older I wonder if even the increasingly prominent roadmap of veins is identical, like a fingerprint.  Watching my hands on the piano or laptop keys, they are so like hers it is alarming.  My face in the mirror-- the undeniable genetics of bone structure, expression...  I see her. The similarities are uncanny... and yet the buck stops there.

On Friday afternoons my mother had her beauty day.  She went to a salon called Ila or Isla-- many of her friends were there-- aunts, etc. They shared a hairdresser called Eleanor-- a bleached blonde with a kind of ducky upsweep who wore pancake make-up and orthopedic shoes.  Eleanor's cutting tools moved like Edward Scissorhands' and she managed several coiffes simultaneously.  Between chairs, tools were soaked in medical troughs of turquoise liquid that smelled like sulfur.  Everyone was bound up in rollers and curlers and metal pins, and sat under enormous heavy drying hoods like aliens while another set of women did manicures. 

As a small child I had to sit through this beauty day. I hated the stench of hairspray and the women chattering, and Eleanor didn't particularly like children. But there was a gift shop next door where a basket of tiny porcelain animals sat by the cash register. At five or ten cents, I could choose one for each hair-day; my little menagerie grew. One fateful afternoon I was placed in a booster seat in Eleanor's station and my long braids were transformed to imitate a shoulder-length cut with bangs my mother tore out of a Seventeen Magazine spread. I hated it, and unbelievable as it seems, I have returned to a salon only once in my life. 

Much to her horror, I have never had a manicure.  To this day I have the excuse of musicianship as the 'basis' for this, but it is also a choice.  My generation grew into puberty casting off bras, refusing makeup, embracing our natural bodies, only to find ourselves now in a world of extreme cosmetic sophistication and a ubiquitous standard of self-care we could never have predicted.  On every block it seems there are multiple nail boutiques and salons packed with women and a number of men being pampered.  I could never imagine having my feet handled by strangers--massaged, soaked, dressed, polished. It terrifies me, like a kind of public intimacy that is on display behind a storefront. I don't get it. 

The vintage scent of my mother's hands is palpable, nine years after her death. She'd clean our noses after our bath and the residue of polish and  cigarette-ghost was part of the nightly ritual. When I visualize my mother she's always on the telephone... one of those old black rotary things with the curly coiled wire. Her lovely hands with the red polish and a cigarette... as she talked and laughed with the receiver cradled under her chin so she could multi-task... sew or wash dishes or bake. She was chronically attached to another world-- a friend, maybe-- she was a girls' girl. I was so often an interruption and had to win her attention.

One traumatic night in particular comes to mind today... I'd been playing at a friend's house... one of my mother's preferred companions for me... a girl from a fancy private school-- an only-child with the name of a car who lived in an enormous house with a circular driveway.  The dining table where we lunched on Wedgewood dishes was enormous. Her Mom's hair was flipped and sprayed into a dark helmet; her father was an older man who smoked cigars.  We always played in her room.. she had pink toy horses and amazing things.  But she also taught me about sex.  She secretly read me texts about body parts and masturbation.  Dog-eared books were hidden under her mattress... where did she get these? I came home feeling guilty.

So this one night I went down to the kitchen and waited in the half-light while my mother-- her post-prandial work done, sat-- cigarette in manicured hand, on the telephone... gesturing to me to go upstairs... but I stayed... mesmerized... feeling confessional and confused.... I could not go to bed.  At last she finished speaking and gave me that look. I tried to tell her about the book. She literally did not reply.. she pointed the one perfectly painted nail toward the door and I went, feeling more sheepish and confused and guilty because not only had I committed some sort of sin, but I'd also violated my mother's privacy.

I learned not to confide things to my mother; years later I found I was a kind of self-judging pubescent prude. Not sure what she expected of me, I was eventually liberated from familial standards.  She loved to sing and was very shy but played the piano with a kind of finesse. And while she never came to a single gig or listened to anything I did, she made comments on my fashion choices or lack thereof... and continued to side-eye my bare hand.  In the end she had dementia, and all vanity and sentimentality evaporated. No one rescued my old artwork or my little beloved porcelain menagerie but I choose to think she secretly approved of our manual 'twinning'. 

Two of my boyfriends have told me they loved especially my hands. And they serve me-- they can draw a little, paint a little... they finger the bass and guitar the way I intend... I am grateful.  But my feet?  The rigors of ballet as a girl, the hazards of pointy rock and roll boots and vintage stagey footwear that didn't quite fit have taken a toll. I'm not proud. Several years ago I dated a jazz musician who obsessed over my feet.  I hide them-- I mean, the beach is one thing, but I'm not featuring them. Still... he claimed to love them.  He nagged and nagged outside of manicurists' shops for me to have them 'done'.  I refused.

One night he got me a little tipsy... we went to bed-- I passed out and woke up to find he'd painted my toe nails black.  I was horrified... angry.  He was overjoyed and couldn't stop celebrating my damn feet. Admittedly they looked edgy and cool in my platform sandals. But there was something Rosemary's Baby-like about having been foot-ravished while I slept. The polish eventually wore off, along with the relationship. 

Today I criticized my son.  We have open boundaries as far as emotional discussions but physical criticism is a little off-topic. Looking down at my ropy old hands, I immediately regretted my comment, and while  I think our bond is tough enough to weather this, the discomfort was familiar. I am not my chaste mother, although I have inherited her graceful fingers and a different brand of stubbornness.  For an instant I remembered the toe-painting-- and how it was really a kind of sexy tribute-- an unpredictable intimacy I failed to appreciate at the time. My mother may even have approved. And unpainted as they are, fretting and picking and tucked into a metal slide, I will somehow always have her hands. 

Odd-i-sea

Recently I got an email from an old friend-- well, we shared a job-- she replaced me and discovered I was the only 'ear' qualified to comprehend the insanity and challenges required by her daily agenda.  So we had a kind of bond.  This was more than thirty years ago.  I remember I introduced her to a man I knew-- she was the kind of woman anyone loved to date-- fun, smart, well-dressed, just edgy enough to appeal across the spectrum.

But suddenly-- well, she'd changed her life, moved across the country, again... approaching 70, blurting out that she'd messed up-- failed to find her calling, maybe-- that perfect relationship that eludes most of us. It was a moment-- and I am privileged to be on the receiving end because I do see how some of us spend decades following tangents, under the illusion that we are 'in the moment', aligned with some karmic rhythm... maybe in love with another fun loser, deciding yes, we can be a back-up dancer at the age of 40, or a master chef, or a fashion designer.  It's all spread out there, when we are young-- the choices, and we are at the edge of a vast river of time that seems utterly infinite, and some of us just want to inhale the scent of water, sense the passage of time-- watch the clouds reshape, the inevitable miracle of sunset... it goes on.

Bob Dylan at 85 mentioned in a recent interview that 'Time stands still while we move.' Not original-- there are  umpteen lyrics going back millennia but he does have a kind of 'authority'.  What he says seems to matter... it percolates and becomes 'word'. Maybe that's what my friend misses-- a certain  lack of impact.

I met a young woman last week who plays bass-- she has a Spector which undoubtedly cost her more than I've ever paid for an instrument... but I mentioned Lou Reed (Spector endorsements by his musicians) and she had absolutely not a clue. Icon-- cornerstone... absolute blank.  Okay.  She's Korean... but still... is it my bad to expect young musicians to have some classic rock referential? 

Christopher Nolan's Odyssey will undoubtedly introduce a whole virgin generation to the classics... the way Oppenheimer maybe reminded us that horrific world destruction is only a button away. I'm not sure I want to see the new film-- I hate watching bloody recreated battles and heroics and super-heroes.  But I'm the minority.  The Charles Laughton Hunchback of Notre Dame caused me to vomit up my dinner at the age of 8.  My son grew up seeing movies like Hostel as date-night fare.  

But what do we expect?  We who studied and read and digested historic literature and the sequences of Kings and empires... now see a generation that values the present above all else.  And supposing they are right-- in terms of physics, and the Time-Stands-Still theory, this is it. And we are infinitesimally unimportant in the universe.  Our lifetime is meaningless.

In my early thirties,  I had that cartoon on my refrigerator-- the one with the well-dressed woman looking at her shopping list and captioned 'Oh my God! I forgot to have children!' When I got home from giving birth to my son, I took it down with irony and a tiny sliver of regret.  And it was only the merest quirk of fate that motherhood happened-- an unrehearsed moment, a rogue sperm, etc. 

Conversely, how many times do I beat myself up for a negative scenario-- if only I'd taken a night off, maybe my daughter would have been born healthy... or obsessing over that woman who fell into a manhole.. if only she'd parked inches away?  It goes on.... we move, while the moment sits there.  Daily choreography presents itself so that we encounter random adventures-- me, just a half hour ago, with my bag of yesterday' bagels... and a homeless man, right there outside the store-- his head on a table, outside in the heat and the wildfire-polluted air... people on the sidewalk wearing masks, and there he was-- sweaty and dirty as though he'd been in a fire himself.  The bagels were clean; he was hungry... it was perfect.

I have many friends of all kinds; some torment themselves daily that nothing they've done was ever enough while some seem to gloat and float in a clueless contingency of confidence.  Some are psychologists-- psychiatrists... who have totally abandoned the concept of compassion. They do not see or hear or fathom that they might be missing the machinery of emotion.  Perhaps that makes them professional.  

So to my friend... I am the quintessence of unprofessional, unclaimed, unacknowledged, unrewarded.  I suppose the rhythm of my life is such that I cannot even make an assessment-- negative or positive.  Aside from regrets about my daughter, some missed opportunities surely-- maybe I expected less.  I've also listened to plenty of stories.  They interest me.  I care.  I have learned that the reasons people choose for their trouble or outcome are not always the essential reasons.  So many failed relationships.  I have strings of ex-boyfriends and non-boyfriends.  When one is in a relationship, other men feel 'safe' around us-- they confide, they open.  There are women in this life-- who change men... it could be the way they feel-- their skin, their scent... it is irresistible. Some men discover this too late.  It's sort of a magic thing... it happens. Few possess these women.  The metaphor of Helen... 

I have no clue what Christopher Nolan will do with Homer. But the metaphors always obsess me. I am not sure about Gen X or Y or Z... their frame of reference seems so limited. It used to amuse us that Jay Leno interviewed people on the street whose knowledge of current events was non-existent.  Now this seems epidemic. But does it matter?  Me, an aging old relic with shabby clothes and way too many books... still unable to assess my own existence beyond the simple math of sharing a bagel with a homeless man. 

Saturday's Child

Black Friday for me has the sense of mourning-- of a Bloody Sunday or post-apocalyptic temporal hangover day.  I'm certain some psychologist invented the retail version just to pry us all out of our post-prandial malaise, and gear us up for the next profit-generating holiday adventure.  God forbid we should lie around regretting things we might have said to our table-mates, or feeling sorry we ate so much or not enough. As a child I couldn't wait for the holiday to be over.  I sampled other families' traditions as an invitee in my college years and discovered they all seem to leak similar petty rivalries and bitternesses once the alcohol seeped in.  

Now that I've passed the long wonderful years of rock and roll Thursdays, Hendrix tributes, celebratory post-gig turkey sandwiches on-the-go at 3 AM, then the maternal/extravagant hostess/chef fantasy, I've whittled it down to a one-handed count.  Deleting the dysfunctionals of my immediate family, barring random overseas guests or surprises, the bare essentials are my son and Mice Elf, as Sly called it. As my son becomes more and more of an admirably ambitious man, intimate occasions are few and farther between. With my life continuing to shed its former frenzied activity layers, these evenings have become more emotionally saturated.  

While I think back on the myriads of holiday meal hits and misses... one or two fights with a boyfriend who manipulated me into foregoing family visits... a few crises... I try to minimize the nostalgia.  And while my son lives just across the river in Greenpoint, it doesn't diminish the fact that I feel terrible saying goodbye.  Maybe people shop like mad to block the sense that time like a rushing city pedestrian has passed another block and we are on our way to the Christmas finale and the interment of another year.  

This morning I tried to walk into a department store-- was greeted with some slowed-down version of Silver Bells and left with tears streaming. Pathetic, I scolded myself.  Yes, it's been a year marked by grief and loss, but these things accelerate as we age... we are supposed to expect this. My son uncharacteristically took the day off for a short trip with his current girlfriend.  Today I am thinking they are already on the way back, and she, like me, will be sad and missing him.  Life is filled with events... and they all too quickly become our past.  For those of us who are genetically dark, any comings and goings are sad. I recalled today a trip to the shore with an ex-- we were so deeply connected and yet so mismatched. Everything hung on this weekend excursion... the tension was unbearable, and the premonitory sense of an ending undeniable. Afterward he wrote a song that said 'I am in our room waiting here for you to come and change my mind'.  I could not do that, nor was I inclined to.  I could only think of the seventies song Motel Blues where Loudon Wainwright begs some young girl 'Come up to my motel room and change my life.'  It somehow seemed more passionately convincing. 

It doesn't help that I'm currently reading Niels Lyhne-- one of Rilke's very favorite books.  The language, even in translation, is rich and soulfully descriptive and the overwhelming sentiment of deep-seated nostalgic grief is palpable.  The author, Jens Jacobsen, died at 38, and struggled with the looming diagnosis of tuberculosis for twelve years.  Last week I finished Lucky Per-- another dark Danish novel of both enlightenment and despair.  In Scandinavia grief seemed a kind of status quo... the darkness is an assumption; I feel embraced in a way-- less alone.

A week ago Saturday we were all so saddened by Tatiana Schlossberg's piece in the New Yorker.  Nothing worse than the prospect of a mother losing her child.  The Kennedy family saga is emblematic of American grief-- their personal casualties are statistically and emotionally overwhelming.  And there seems no end in sight.  

Thursday morning I walked across 92nd Street where I once worked in a townhouse, selling art to the privileged.  I knew every building-- the neighbors-- the Mason-Smiths and the Paines... old American names-- a former Manhattan dynasty--  all passed now.  For a brief time we rented an extra office on the same block from a wonderful couple... Lester and Pauline Migdal. I was in my twenties and Pauline's daughter was a thirty-something brilliant architect who was dying of cancer in Switzerland.  There was some very early camera technology available so that from her high-tech Swiss office in the 1980's she was somehow visible as a shadow-- a silhouette-- to her mother. On 92nd Street I sat with Pauline drinking coffee and silently (no audio) watching her daughter slowly deteriorate. I had not yet become a mother but witnessing the longing and inevitability deepened my capacity both for maternal love and for sorrow. It is a small comfort today that Pauline has passed on, with her terrible grief.  

The loss of my baby girl whose place at the table only I can see left an indelible scar. It further opened my capacity to empathize with these mothers.  Every single human loss is wounding to someone... every one of us has had a mother... and for those in my generation, we miss ours terribly. But the sorrow of losing a child is something unbearable; their fragile suffering, unimaginably painful.  Back on 92nd Street, my future was an open kaleidoscope. Death was a very tiny numerator in the fraction of my life.  The Mason-Smiths had a colorful chef who suffered from a chronic throat ailment... he turned out to be one of the earliest victims of the AIDS crisis.  There was so much more mourning to come. As we go on, the dark memories compete with the light. We are the only animals cognizant of our own doom; some of us struggle with this deadline; others confront it head-on-- some by taking it into their own hands.

The future has an inevitability; the specifics are unknown.  We hoard moments-- we hoard things-- some of us hoard money.  Maybe it makes them feel safe. I hoard memories but am aware that the hub of my brain has sprung leaks and things have seeped out.  When I opened my copy of Niels Lyhne there was a receipt in there from 1992...  I remembered buying this at a used bookshop on the Jersey shore for $2.00 with my 2-year-old sitting on the floor looking at pictures.  I remember Tom Verlaine showing me a copy of maybe this very translation in the proofs section of the Strand the night we discussed Tranströmer. 

They come back with clarity, these lost weekend moments.  My daughter was still a possibility-- not yet conceived. That same year I cooked a goose supplied by my Scottish friend Lena whom I cannot find somewhere in the south of France. She writes me a postcard with no return address. There is a wisdom there... at some point all of us will have no return. For now I am without bargains or seasonal purchases but officially thankful; I will ride the downhill to the end of the year-- into the next which at some point seemed an impossibly distant future.  And that, too, will surely pass.

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. 

What We Miss

To distract myself this week, I'm reading Annie Ernaux.  Turns out it's neither distracting nor particularly shattering.  It does remind me of this nagging voice begging for my own solution to memoir.  We're on a kind of cusp, at this age, where things surface like 8-ball messages, and one fears this will be the last appearance in the cranial integuum. The palimpsest sensation, Annie calls it, conjuring Proust-- uncontested master of the medium-- who never won a Nobel prize. 

I want to go home, my mom repeated over and over in the depths of her dementia.  I am beginning to understand this more as I adapt and re-adapt to a culture which increasingly relies on media for memory. One neither remembers nor forgets; it's all on Instagram. My older friends often post their small accomplishments, as if soliciting accolades they are no longer winning... musicians craving applause from their home studios and bedrooms. I try to be amused.  Like memoir, there is a boundary between resonance and sentimentality.  I still demand a certain level of creativity from myself and fear falling short. 

Thinking back over years with a predominant audio/visual memory, I separate personal eras by rooms-- by apartments, the series of homes we have as an urbanite.  I can still 'see' the nursery where I spent my first two years in a city apartment.  My psychiatrist friend finds this extraordinary; most of the 'frame' is attached to a moment of frustration-- wanting to climb out of my crib to join my family in the hallway. So it's primarily an emotional memory; the visual is something I reconstruct from looking around me, as though it's a photograph.

For some reason today I remembered the first weeks with my son; I'd come back from London, expecting to return, but ended up stuck here with no money, no job... shocked and unprepared for motherhood in a moment when post-natal syndromes were not discussed. On my own, I found a decent job, toured the day-care options.  On the upper east side there was a well-reviewed sort of nursery-- with kind women, clean facilities. Rows of hospital-style cribs held sleeping infants in their little happy pajamas... it was cheerful and peaceful. But suddenly I became maternal... I panicked. The idea of dropping my tiny son every morning to this strange 'home' seemed just wrong.

So I left... I cried, sat in a church pew asking Jesus what I should do-- temporarily living on a dollar bag of yesterday's doughnuts or rolls I picked up at the local Genovese store (how I miss it)-- to support my little family. Somehow I managed... wheeling a carriage up and downtown, getting up once a week at 5 AM and taking a commuter train to leave the baby with his Grandma for an 8-hour shift, returning at the end of the day... I was a little like that TV commercial with the waitress apologizing to her boss for her child, promising it would not happen again. And I was exhausted.  At night I did bass gigs to keep my sanity. Occasionally I dragged him to songwriting sessions and even studios.  Not ideal but we survived. 

I imagine not just my own childhood memories but his... where would they have been had he spent the first two years in a sterile room with twenty other infants?  Would he have become a basketball player? I doubt his little brain would have been the impressive street-smart product of extensive itineraries around the city. 

It occurs to me, watching the constant parade of young parents with their prams and strollers, how the technology has changed everything.  It is simpler to 'watch' one's infant with a caretaker, to access help in an emergency... and also to yield to the temptation to use the phone-- to chat, to respond-- to shop... order food, watch a movie... anything.  In my time I had only the baby for conversation-- I talked, sang to him-- I read Proust, incidentally, out loud.  It was the language-- the sounds... it didn't matter what I said-- it mattered that it was the two of us... a kind of dialogue. We bonded emotionally... we were stuck with one another. We went to the park and played. As he grew he followed our travels on the subway map and learned to read by navigating station signs. He was extraordinary and I loved every minute of those trying and sleep-deprived years. There was a phrase Annie used (trans.) referencing the use of 'life' in her writing: 'we drained reality dry'.

In this era of autism diagnoses, of blame games for learning disabilities, etc... we rarely look at our technology habits as a culprit. To me, there is an epidemic attention deficit; I rarely feel that conversational palpable intimacy... people are texting or receiving or making notes or looking at something. I don't see how children have not adapted to that by becoming less responsive, less investigative.  Babies too often hold tablets and phones and amuse themselves with a screen rather than a sandbox.  Maybe it's an urban thing... but I see it everywhere.  And I talk to babies; I love them. But society is chronically distracted. 

Dementia seems the complement to autism... the denouement of awareness and focus.  As a precursor, I am noticing adults failing to 'see' things... sensitive to being criticized but rarely able to access their own self-perception.  We are visually hyperconscious but socially a little myopic.  We miss things... how can one possibly sustain this statistically staggering screen time and the emotional connections daily life used to present as normalcy?  Random conversations, meetings, discoveries.  Meditations and daydreams. Unanticipated moonrises and spontaneous sunsets... that feeling one has lived a lifetime in a single spectacular unpredictable analogue day.  Where have they gone? 

I rue the time I spend texting on the phone my son makes me carry for safety... but it is mostly turned off. Some of my friends get annoyed that I do not answer calls unless I'm home on my landline and it's a genuine 'call', a conversational visit. Texts are deceptively two sides of an actually one-sided dialogue... I can't shake the feeling that increasing phone-use equates to missing life.  Thinking of giving it up altogether.  Digital memory is not the same, and forgetting is all too allowable when we feel the false security of instagram and Facebook records of moments.  The meaning and quality of memoir will surely change; I feel the urgency to transcribe what I recall; whether or not there will be audience is another quandary.

La Recherche des Chaussettes Perdues

The other evening, skimming through a drawer in my son's old room, I came across an infant sock.  In a Proustian moment, I was sucked into one of those emotional 'rivers' of the past. The tiny sock was decorated with charming colorful train cars, but like something one no longer sees. I could recall with some clarity how this was the first article of clothing that seemed to engage my baby boy at three or four months.  He'd stare at his feet particularly in this pair of socks... wave them around and coo.  No other pair-- no matter what color, pattern, picture-- had this effect, like a magic lantern-- they sparked him, gave him a kind of obvious joy.

But one day, as babies do, he must have over-enthusiastically kicked or pulled or randomly peeled during one of our marathon walks through the city... and a sock was gone-- missing. I retraced our steps, frantic... with that new-mother passion, but no success.  There is some statistic somewhere, surely metaphorically speaking, about how humans spend six months of our lives looking for lost socks. That day added significantly to my total.

Perhaps because he is my genetic offspring, he somehow processed the loss... and while I still put the single train-sock on him, and it evoked the same cooing and chirping sounds of obvious happiness, I had to pair it with a blank. He looked at me; he gestured and seemed to even speak in baby gibberish. There is something not quite right, Mom, he wanted to express... something is missing!

One of my all-time favorite photographic essays is Nicholas Nixon's ongoing visual chronicle of the Brown sisters.  Featured in the New York Times several years ago, these are a series of group portraits of four sisters-- taken annually and chronologically-- through their lives. We see them as girls, then as young women, then slowly aging-- shifting positions subtly. We read on their faces their increasing maturity, their deepening texture and complexity, and their tiny sorrows and difficulties.  Maybe because the elder sisters are around my age, I see myself in their composite. Of course in this era of AI, one can digitally age a face in seconds. But nearing fifty analogue years of 'chronicle', the project grows more and more compelling to those of my generation.  

Having weathered both the standard griefs of a normal life as well as the unexpected losses of recent years, I can't help a sense of dread that one year a sister will be gone-- and like a gap tooth in a formerly joyful smile, it will be all about the one who is 'missing'.  This is the reverse poetry of later life-- like the negative space of a photograph or the shadow which replaces its source, it is the absence that concerns me.  And I can't help imposing my emotional prejudices and narratives-- reading in their faces a break-up or abandonment-- of pain or suffering-- current and future illness.  There must be a dark one afflicted with some inherent unhappiness, a conflict or secret issue.

But they all seem so healthy... and so blessed in their sisterhood, their loving and tiny brushes against one another-- the gestures and casual affectionate touching.  Both posed and unposed, bravely facing the camera in a sort of womanly and familial solidarity... despite the passage of time, the disappearance of youth, one cannot help but envy.  Even the oldest, who is first to display the facial ravages of natural aging-- well, we know she is the fulcrum... especially loved by the photographer, her husband, whose compositional embrace is the 'extra'-- the 'other'-- less visible subject. 

What we don't see, what we supply-- the loves, the children-- the careers and informational details of these women who we implicitly trust-- and maybe one more than the others.  For me I am compelled by the eldest-- her womanly soul, her maternal-ness.  She is slightly ahead of me in years, has outwardly changed herself the least (even her hair is quite the same)-- she who in her graceful aging is deeply long-loved by her husband, to the extent that the gestalt of the sisters became part of their intimacy.  

A near-fifty-year marriage is like a sort of sea.  The extremes-- the shifts, the rhythms and constant motion-- the storms and dramas, thrashings, drownings, and then the future goes on with or without.  I never managed to log enough in either of mine to complete a journey; they were rather like crossings or explorations.  A little landlocked and seasick, I disembarked before they fully revealed. Contemplating the Brown sisters, the rich chronology of lives, I feel a bit remiss.  It's not exactly regret, but like my baby son sensing the lost sock in his underdeveloped intellect, you are not exactly sure but something seems to be missing.  

More than anything, ironically, it is the unseen which I 'see'-- the omnipresent photographer who understood the joys and the tiny sorrows, through all the ages he had known.  And for knowing-- for recognizing love, for somehow creating a future out of the present, and documenting a past which touches us all.  God protect the Brown sisters, I say to myself almost selfishly.  It is something to believe in-- something solid and real, bright and fading, old and new.  

I doubt my son would remember the tiny sock, if I showed it to him... nor would he have the sentimental response, if I tried to impart the narrative, or the patience to listen.  Sometimes I think he has taken a practical reverse life-lesson from me who has spent an inordinate amount of time searching for lost things, for sensing the missing even before it disappears. But maybe that is a clue to our lives-- that we must love what we have, here in the present-- even the small things, before they are washed away by the seas of life which will have their way with us all, in the end.

The Ground Beneath My Feet

For maybe seventeen years, from my 27th birthday on, my home base was a modified studio apartment in a converted factory building.  I call these my bachelorette years, despite the fact that I was married (twice), changed countries, became a mother; somehow this was where I ran, came back to roost, escaped, convalesced. When I first moved there, part of its charm was the Mobilgas  flying horse directly outside my front window.  Like a magical hovering hallucination, it witnessed and blessed my love affairs, my joys and sorrows, guested at my parties and celebrations.  At a point the horse was removed and a multi-plex theatre was built.  So there was still the rear window, where a sapling tree had grown tall enough to graze my sill and bring morning birds to sing to us in bed as we slept against the cracking interior brick wall of an old chimney. 

It was a cool old building, and because the apartments were like small lofts and recently re-purposed, it was mostly populated by young singles-- artists, several fashion models, a pair of Rockettes, a stripper, two drummers, a hair-stylist... photographers, drug dealers. My motley friends and rock musicians were comfortable hanging out there, crashing there, getting high with the English hipsters down the hall, smoking on someone's balcony or sunbathing on the roof.  It felt in a way more like a dormitory than a building.  We had the best parties that often spilled out into the hallway where neighbors were only too happy to open doors and spread the cheer.  

On Wednesday I went down to that neighborhood to preview an auction of great old rugs in what used to be a loft space but was now tarted up like a department store.  I barely realized I was in my old neighborhood-- the street was stacked with multi-storied new constructions that looked crowded and crammed and airless.  My old back window would have been hemmed in-- our little sill-sparrows, the maple tree-- would have been displaced.  I walked up to Second Avenue-- the old supermarket-- A & P, then Sloan's, I think it was, then maybe Pioneer-- and now a sprawling Chase bank.  My son's old school was sheathed in scaffolding and netting... even the movie theatre called Beekman was being demolished.  I remember there was one huge modern apartment building which stood out... now it looked a little aged and dated-- dwarfed.  Back then there were cyclical recessions; money was a little different.  Yes, there were some affluent couples... but their luck changed and at our state-sponsored pre-school we were often all in the same boat-- crumbling marriages, unfaithful husbands, Visa problems... buying each other cheap bags of chips or sharing ice cream among the kids.

I remember sitting on a stoop with an English woman who'd had two babies in rapid succession.  The children were adorable, but I was shocked to see they lived in this pricey high-rise with almost no furniture and a mess of clothing, toys, dirty plates and cups everywhere.   I remember the toddlers so well-- Harley and Alison. Almost like twins... they were unwashed and wild, tough and spirited, and their mother seemed to have aged twenty years in three.  Her husband had lost his job... one of those things... we young mothers spent long hours sitting on sandbox ledges, pushing swings, exchanging woes and intimacies.  Where are they? Who will remember them?  It has been some thirty years since I sat on the wall outside that building, astonished at the reality of what I'd imagined to be a charmed, rich life.

Forward to the rugs-- old, handmade things of great beauty.  The online catalogue was spectacular and shining.  It always touched me that the makers-- not just artisans but artists-- colorists-- took years of their life to create something that would be walked on.  The metaphor of hand-woven carpets is a kind of poetry. So I wandered through the newly-renovated space like an explorer... hung and lined with yards and yards of these patterned wool tapestries... and somehow, without the online photos-- they became what they were-- just rugs.  They were living, used... old, walked on... things of beauty but humble and quiet.  The price tags were obscene.  If they could speak, they would have been ashamed.  

At some point in college my boyfriend and I decided to make a rug-- we would design and execute a hand-knotted creation. We looked in museums, bought a book from the Cooper Hewitt.. and I spent many nights turning pages, inhaling the colors and patterns.  It was difficult; we were overwhelmed with studies and jobs and we abandoned our project.  But in my 120 year-old apartment, I have one of these rugs of similar vintage.  It was owned by others before me, and it occurs that it will go on living when I am gone.  It is a thing of great beauty and soul-- the colors, the small discrepancies and mistakes woven in intentionally by a person who lived perhaps in a colorless landscape without flowers or trees, and yet created a rich, rich tapestry of floral and chromatic mastery.  These rugs I assume were the gardens of desert cultures-- their windows and decor.  

During the pandemic, I occasionally took a photograph... and a piece of my rug would appear, like a magic vision. It is always, unlike me, photogenic; it steals the stage, even in a tiny corner.  I know all of its regions; I imagine the maker.  When I write it is here.. when I play music, when I turn out the lights... it is still here.  Unlike a garden, it asks for nothing and never fails me.  I do cringe when my son visits and occasionally spills a little whatever... but they are resilient, these old things.  Organic and uncomplaining. Voiceless, perennial... humble, rich, quiet and like a magic lamp maybe replete with more story than I can ever write, in this room we share-- my witness, my companion, my elder, urban floor-garden.

Trusting Santa

When my son was a baby, he was a little unusual.  Being pretty unprepared for motherhood, I didn't really read the proscribed handbooks or solicit advice.  I did have to attend the postnatal fathers' class in hospital, where they give you life-sized dolls to practice diapering skills.  I was sort of a rock and roller... I figured I'd listen, and improvise, as we do-- stay 'in' the moment.  

So I took home a pretty well-behaved infant who, like all, have their crying jags and colicky nights.  The top of the clothes dryer in the laundry room seemed to help... and one sleepless night as I put another dime into the machine which rocked infants just the right way, I looked my 3-week old newborn in the eye and assured him, "There are just so many things that could be bothering you, and I am going to figure it out."  It was a promise-- a vow.  It made us both feel better and he seemed to physically relax.  Such is parenthood-- leadership in general. The sense of being protected is ninety percent. And there are maternal instincts... you somehow put yourself in the path of oncoming danger.

Just before his one-year old Christmas, some posh friends of mine got us invited to a little Cartier store Christmas children's reception, where they show off tiny trinkets and juvenile jewelry gifts.  I'd never set foot in the place, but they convinced me it would be a great little opportunity for my son. The refreshments were something else.  I was virtually near-starving in those days, and the little party favor bags were filled with coupons and gift cards.  We scored.  Their Santa, seated in a bling-laden sled on a platform, was Afro-American.  My little boy sat on his lap, and seemed to converse comfortably.  He knew little about presents, but we enjoyed ourselves and went home with seasonal Yuletide cheer. 

The following year, he was newly two, and his vocabulary was impressive.  We went to see the Macy's Santaland-- waited on the immense line I'd waited on many times as a child.  When it was near his turn, he informed me that this was not the real Santa-- because the real Santa has a dark face.  I was confused, and explained that Santa had to send out his helpers to make lists for all the children because he was busy packing the sleigh.  So he thought about it for a minute, and then up he went, onto Santa's padded lap, in the styrofoam and glitter display with the angels and reindeer... and was really a little insulted that Santa asked if he'd been good.  Of course he was good; he was the best-- honest, innocent, kindhearted and unafraid.  He looked quizzical, and I of course gave the double thumbs up.  And then-- the question all children are there to answer: 'What toys do you want?'  I could remember so vividly asking Santa for a horse-- not the stuffed kind but the kind that would live in my garage and ride me to school every day.  That-- or a Stutz Bearcat, neither of which was ever on the menu in my house.  

But my son, at 25 months old, looked the fake-bearded man right in the eye and referring to himself in the third person as he did, said... 'He's trusting Santa'.  Santa had to ask him to repeat himself a couple of times... then said that in all Polar eternity, this was the first time he'd heard such a reply... and the tears were rolling down his red cheeks.  He gave my son a great big merry hug, told him he would surely have a happy Christmas, and took a break.

We had not so much in those days-- the two of us learning about each other, spending every moment together exploring the city-- the subways, playgrounds-- anywhere with no admission that was interesting.   He worried about the children in the shelters-- shared toys... brought birthday cake to the men living underneath the 59th Street bridge whom he knew by name.  He insisted on leaving extra cookies for that Santa who wept in his presence, and we kept our tree that year until March-- until it became a fire hazard and a twiggy eyesore in our studio apartment.

We had a wonderful homey Thanksgiving this year.  We bonded and ate and watched football.  On Black Friday my son ordered the clothing he wanted for himself.  I didn't bother reminding him how rightfully he no longer trusted Santa, or his mother whose gift-giving abilities are disappointing.  His beloved towers came down when he was 11.  It changed him-- a coming of age.  In God We Trust says the US dollar, or the representation of the dollars that we put in envelopes for holiday gratuities.  I don't know if 'trust' is what I feel for God, nor would He expect this of us when He fails to appear or even manifest Himself when we are distraught or ill.  

Despite the failures and cancellations and griefs... we all do go on, somehow... with something that resembles hope-- or faith-- or optimism.  We wake up and enter some kind of future with our Starbucks and our Dunkin Donuts.  We go to work and put pennies in the proverbial till of our old-age pensions; we accept our vaccines and put on our masks and for the most part accept the fate that is stuffed in our stockings and socks every day.  We go on.  

Few people ask what we want-- they shop excessively,  and except for the newly engaged, have little success in pleasing loved ones. The return lines are massive... the retail statistics feed the fat Wall Street profiteers and the wealthy among us seem to trust the economy, rather than Santa.  Still, the charities go on and on... people do give, and donate, and deduct, and adopt animals.  There are good Santas and bad ones.  They are multiracial and multi-gendered, I have already noticed. Most of them are paid; it's not a safe job, in a pandemic, and like tree-selling, it's a little humiliating. Few of them weep, and none believe in themselves.  The system, like many of our hearts,  is broken... but still we will embrace the decorations and celebrate the myths and fables, and mark another year with some kind of grace,  Amen.

Closed Captioned

For years I exercised at the Y... mostly nights when it was underpopulated.  There's an older woman... maybe 90-something now...  although she seems much younger.  I'd seen her for years, just before closing, dressed in street clothes, on a seated stretching machine... usurping this sole piece of equipment.  Maybe she showered there--- I'd noticed people that slipped in and out for various hygiene rituals; I avoid locker rooms.  But perhaps at home they must share a bath... they don't clean... I don't know... but back to the woman... her name is Lois or Gloria-- for a time she had a male companion who waited for her on a bench, with a newspaper... at 11 PM... but he must have died. 

She often tried for some reason to speak to me... as though we were old friends... would offer her 'place' on the little machine... once gave me Carnegie Hall tickets she wasn’t using (she is a habitual concert-attender)... and I think I didn’t go… it was useless trying to explain I was working… impossible to converse… she's absolutely stone deaf-- has a sort of shortened language, like verbal stenography... with gestures.  Otherwise she spoke to no one... only me... as though we shared something; she'd look at me with this sort of anticipation-- the way children look at their new teacher at the beginning of a term-- with innocence and trust, as though she has something to do with their fate. It was uncomfortable. What had I done?  What did she believe? Once or twice I'd say something and she'd muster some total non-sequitur, some bizarre inane remark to assure me there was no conversational understanding whatsoever.  

When my fiancee was deported, years back, I briefly began to swim at the Y... laps, ovals... crawl then back-stroke, staring at the ceiling, weeping, unseen.  There is a swim-culture among older women-- I absorbed this and it stopped me... but no Lois or Gloria in a bathing suit.  Just the street clothes with the oversized track shoes the way older women cater to awkward feet.  

During the pandemic nearly every night, like grief therapy... I ran the upper Central Park loop, most of the time counter-clockwise, finished up on the reservoir.  I'd soliloquize, weep, talk to Alan wherever he was... When I looked east on the final lap, she’d be there, at 90th Street, perched on the stairs, watching the sun set behind the El Dorado across the water... among a small crowd mostly with phones, taking pictures… but she just looking… hands in pockets... alone. She’d wave.  I must have logged 500 sunsets by now… she, too. Most old people stayed home from fear, but she was out there… winter, summer… like a human landmark… like a mother, like a ghost.   I kept my distance... waving distance.  Masks make lip-reading impossible— not that she ever did much of that, either.

On Thursday I wrecked my finger... the sort of injury that will most likely heal but it was a random kind of bad luck thing.  To distract myself I circled the park as usual, wearing a new splint and ran into another night-time Y exerciser on his bike.  We walked together until way past dark... and just as we parted company, there was Lois-- on my block this time-- giving me that raised-eyebrow childlike look... I tried to introduce the two; they had zero mutual recognition and there was obviously no dialogue... she making those broken-word non-sequitur comments and gestures... just an odd intersection of three. He's a writer; I sketched her verbally for him, like a Dickens character.  Twain. Maybe she'd been on the reservoir, late... dawdling on her way home to no one or nothing.  

I worked at my gallery job today… still fucked up about my damn finger… went to Chelsea afterward to see a (great) show that was closing… stopped in Tribeca downtown, then remembered some friend sent a ticket to his show at Damrosch Park… (the injury sidelined my fragile 'plan'...) so I’m on a 1 train and realize it’s 8 PM… passing Columbus Circle… I get off, walk toward Lincoln Center.. there are lines, people waiting… but they usher me right in.. and suddenly that woman… Lois or Gloria...is yelling my name… jumps the line… says she’s with me… and sure enough my ticket is for 2… they have these reserved ‘pods’ of 2 seats… so I take her in… I’m alone.. and she wants to move up… she can’t hear... she’s telling me about the performance (?) … and the music starts… it’s completely my friend’s gig… she has no clue.. she’s deaf as a stone… sitting there… WATCHING the music, gesturing to me… it’s insane… was apparently on line for something that didn’t exist... But the night is beautiful… I'd played there a couple of times… the sunset, the buildings… guests at the Mandarin Oriental leaning on their windowsills, people on balconies… acoustics are crazy… sound carries… and a woman selling merchandise comes over to greet me… Lois gestures that she can’t hear a thing… waves her away… but keeps looking at me as though she’s waiting for a dialogue… something...

Anyway, after two musical pieces I started to think I was hallucinating… I'd been up fretting (the emotional kind, lol) all Friday night.  Or dreaming... she was like a human hawk sitting there… like a shadow… like a symbol.  It started to freak me out.  I’m reading Álvaro Mutis… contemporary women on ships sleep with Napoleonic colonels… ghosts… so I left.. took a crosstown bus and I guess she stayed in my pod-seat.  

On my block the streetlamps were turned off; it was dark... it's late summer.  I feel 'omened' by her, although I suspect my hand will be fine, and maybe she is a kind of angel.  Maybe I was really alone at Damrosch Park.  I kept looking at the stage set-- a kind of wavy cloud-like sort of backdrop.... it looked so absurd against the expanse of evening sky, like a tiny moment in the context of infinity. She'd been annoying me-- just her presence, her childlike 'anticipation' as though she wanted me to look at her.  Coming inside I remembered how I'd get home after working at night when my son was little... and just sit there in his room, inhaling the scent of children... I wondered if anyone had ever sat at her bedside, radiating that mother-love.  Maybe it was mean that she creeped me out and rude that I abandoned her but I am also reminded that finger or no finger, the world at my age is beginning to wind down-- or grow, I'm not sure which-- and suddenly the 500 evenings are like an old deck of cards... plus one, because without a plan, we'd apparently shared another sunset.  

Losing My Accent

It's been years since I watched a DVD on a television screen; my player is one of those VCR dual purpose machines that is no longer even patch-able into any viable system.  But recently I figured out how to connect my computer to TV, and as a test, I used an old video someone converted to digital.  So there I was, 30 years ago, puttering around a former apartment which in itself brought up a major nostalgia wave.  I loved my 'bachelorette' pad-- the compact but cool bi-level loft with the brick wall and the balcony where I'd hosted rockstars and journalists, wild parties, intimate candlelit dinners, rehearsals, recording sessions, baby showers and toddler play-dates.  Where I'd gone from vinyl to tape to cd, from Smith-Corona to Microsoft, from art consultant to bassist, historian to songwriter, 20's to 30's, single to married (and repeat...)...

Suddenly this woman who coyly shielded herself from the cameraman and then with candor dropped the charade was devastatingly familiar... and yet so far away.   I suppose since I've ignored the whole phone-culture, the selfie-obsession, the instant i-Movie phenomenon... I'm missing a couple of generations of self-documentation.  But thanks to the thoughtfulness of a visiting friend with a video-camera, a few 'slices' of my life-as-a-mother were recorded, along with some footage of me at the age of 9 playing Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.  Where the little girl in the sailor dress seems like some random animated doll-puppet, the young mother at home with her baby-boy was this woman I wanted to know.  It was as though I suddenly understood what men found appealing all through those years-- this casual grace, an unstudied sense of style... black hair pulled back in a cheap barrette, strands of hair falling like a shadow across a face I recalled like an old actor in her prime movie.

I've never been a mirror-worshipper-- rather a mirror-avoider.  There is a time, however, in nearly every girl's life where she makes this leap from awkward adolescence to some kind of swan-hood-- a moment where her body makes sense-- whether it is in a dance-class, on a sports field, drawing a picture-- acting-- suddenly you are a coherent 'being'; your parts work, your brain works.  You cease to be a duckling and you are given a glimpse of your potential-- your power.  For some of us, the accident of physical beauty provides either a motivator or a hindrance.  For others, the confluence of emotion and intelligence and action just seem to synch up and suddenly we are 'real'.  A camera can either confirm or contradict this perception; of course now, there are so many digital manipulations available, one can't really trust a photo.  Sometimes it took that moment where we were chosen for a part-- a team-- a friendship.  That boy we crushed on suddenly looks at us as though he's seeing for the first time... or some amazing new girl in your class wants to be your BFF, with blood signatures and clothing exchanges and vows.  It feels good.  We are validated.

In the video I could feel that validation-- a confidence, a confirmation...  her smile, her speech-- the calmness... as though life was a slow river and we had all the time in the world in this lovely boat of love and relentless gifting.  Even the baby could feel it-- he was relaxed and easy, and the way mother and son touched one another was so lovely... with trust and a profound sense of family.  I was absolutely mesmerized; the idea this was my 'self' was both exhilarating and devastatingly poignant.

My friends and I have come so far.  So many have veered off the road-- passed away from illness or accident or suicide.  Many have dipped into the lowest emotional depths.  Aging is difficult. Personally, I do avoid mirrors but being a working musician, I see the photos-- the craggy shadows and lines I do not cover over.  I see myself as a tree in winter--- the same branch-arms that once were dressed in lush green are now craggy and stiffer.  They have yet to break off-- I find a kind of brittle strength in these years, but my old beauty is missing.

Looking at the video again, I remember I had two lovers at the time; one was tall and southern- -the other was young and slender and European-- a musician, like me.  The young musician moved in and for several years we maintained a kind of family... but this ended, and he returned to his home.  There were other lovers, other roommates... the southern man and I are still close friends although there have been distances between us.  I can remember his face-- he reminded me of a young Gregory Peck and it took my breath away.  Now he is nearly as craggy as I.  He often brings me lunch and we take trips together.  Today he mentioned how he hates his southern accent.  For me, it is part of what I love--what remains.  Every once in a while he slips up and says 'si-REEN' or 'GUItar' with the accent on the first syllable.

Recently I've been interviewing kids for my alma mater-- mostly young women and many of them recent immigrants.  They are altogether so anxious to 'lose' their accents and become fully integrated American girls.  I look back at the young woman I was 30 years ago and understand why my Mom nagged and nagged me to make better choices while I laughed and smiled and waved her warnings away... all these years later I see how she understood that the 'accent' of my womanhood was something I would eventually leave behind.  Time is on your side for oh-so-long... until it isn't.   Which is not all that bad, I will testify...  wishing a heartfelt 'carpe diem' to my readers.

Light Sings of Wear

The cost of shipping has increased.  On a personal level, the cost of mailing has become a burden.  The art of letter-writing has certainly fallen into a sort of category of eccentricities.  I have tried hand-deliveries where I can; to include a tiny memento or scrap in an envelope raises the financial bar and punishes me with a kind of fine.  Postal rules are confusing and discriminatory-- they favor neatness and conformity; I am interrogated at the counter with queries which, if you are a poet or  outside-thinker, scrape at your deeper conscience.  We are condemned to technology.

Tomorrow would have been my mother's birthday.  I know that I loved her, despite her flaws and bigotries, her failure to understand things.  She fell somehow outside technology; even to see her driving a car seemed unnatural.  I grew up loving the number 27; it was sacred and while the presence of my father on weekends could ruin my day, I only knew I could not live without my mother.  The excitement of Halloween always included plans to surprise her.  One thing I am grateful for: she appreciated my handmade gifts and actually wore some of them.  My father seemed uncomfortable even opening a box from me.

Adult Halloween is another anomaly.  Of course, when your children are young, you fuss and carve, you bake and pile, hold little hands on the sidewalk or stand guard at your front door, cooing over neighbors and schoolkids in disguise. If you are a musician, you put on a mask and witch's hat-- a cape and fangs--- then you watch other adults in fantasy-outfits winding up on a dance floor, becoming characters for a night.

Thirty years ago, I went into early labor.  I prayed I would not give birth on Halloween, knowing how children feel gypped being born on a holiday.  I lay on a hospital gurney, watching the heartbeat of my son who had clearly outgrown his womb-home; I had ghoulish bruises on my ribs from the size of that baby.  Happily, they sent me back home where I waited until Election Day... but coming back that night from the old Lenox Hill Hospital, I felt 'costumed' as a mother-- more prepared to remove than embrace it.

In the early difficult months of single motherhood, there were several deaths in my circle.  Having no budget for caretakers, my baby sat or slept through several funerals.  He even had a little outfit-- people gift you these things when they are born-- which was dark and serious.  It was sitting at the back of St. Vincent's, reciting the Lord's Prayer, that I began to feel the enormous comfort of holding an infant-- the bond, I suppose, that forms despite all of your confusion, your lack of preparation and the awkward intrusion of 'schedule' on a musician's life.  It was there-- listening to the sounds of grief, sensing the permanence of loss, that I lost my disguise and became a mother.

My son will soon turn 30; my mother would have been 95 tomorrow.  95--  one of those numbers she loved to see on my school papers; I often brought her that pleasure, as a good student, but it only created the sort of expectation that parents in those days held like a gun to our heads-- the one gun I did not fear.  I have a new book now; the last one was published just in time to place it in her long-fingered hands and see maybe a small glint of recognition at the cover photo.  Maybe not.  We hold these personal myths closer as our future grows shorter.  No one is there to 'grade' our adult work... even criticism has become something one buys into; marketing has replaced the art of reviewing and prioritizing.

Last night I read some Kafka.  The myth of the tormented genius sometimes exceeds the work.  I often think Franz in this culture might have been a gaming addict.... but surely the technology would have distracted and diluted the passion to create-- allowed people, as it does, the illusion of connection in the reality of isolation.   Here I sit at a keyboard in the dark, backlit by the strange blue light my mother (and Kafka) never knew-- the ease of publishing, of sharing, provide a certain comfort.  Still my pile of library books on the old farm-table, candlesticks and wood, lined pads and ink-- an uncarved pumpkin of possibility in my pre-Halloween solitude, with the city in my window like the massive bag of tricks it is-- the pack of dogs-- the never-ending parade.

Post Post-Partum Post

Walking in East Harlem today, summer Fahrenheit beginning to assert in the city mix, the uptick from air conditioner exhaust... a young mother with one baby in her arms, another at her side tugs at her tank and points toward a bakery.  'Did I tell you to shut your mouth?' and she whacks him-- hard... across his ear... his little face scrunching into a silent wince, tear-tracks clearing a clean line down cheeks stained with a long-day's soot and play-dirt...

Babies are little heat-machines... any woman who's carried inside or outside well appreciates the relief a stroller allows, cumbersome as they can be on public transportation.  And children are simply overwhelming-- especially when echoes of your old carefree life creep in like passing car-music-- some 5-inch heels you crave in a store-window... your baby-daddy taking just a little more time to pick up the Happy Meals...  and all new mothers know the shock of cataclysmic hormonal changes--  swimming in estrogen as you are during pregnancy, small issues ride over you like candy... but suddenly you are sweaty and cranky and exhausted and your front door feels like a prison gate.

I noticed this week Alanis Morissette doing the talk-show rounds-- maybe some promo for a coming album... proudly pregnant and bringing her rock-star confessions about post-natal depression.  The Queen of TMI whose well-produced radio-ready emotional cries occupied a generous portion of the 90's airwaves... now the spokeswoman of depressed new mothers.  Who else--Cardi B?  Brooke Shields a few years back?  The society of botoxed, fashion-elitist, nannied, chauffeured, and all-around privileged-- now earning talk-show and book-income as conflicted mothers.   Somehow this high-profile whining doesn't move me.  Even Khloe Kardashian, publicly humiliated by the father of her new baby-- deals with billionaire motherhood.  I salute you, Khloe-- victim of the same insulting behavior so many of us have passed through.  You are a role model.   But my hot friend today with the two babies and God-knows how many at home has no glam squad.  What she does have is food stamps and a place to live in the Projects, unlike some.  What she does not have is help.  Tutelage.  Someone to listen to her. NEI (Not Enough Information).

When I had my son I was already 36.  My career had taken a positive turn-- my record was doing well in the UK-- I had a huge deal on the table-- and then I found myself pregnant-- unplanned, unwarned... with a young husband who pleaded and begged and promised to become the Mister Mom every working woman dreams about.  Okay.  I toured-- I performed-- I wrote, I signed deals, made promises.  The baby came-- my husband, as was his custom, was drinking heavily.  The doctor threw him out of the delivery room and I met my son for the first time as I was to live most of his childhood-- alone.

Okay... many, many dramatic episodes as only the finest British actors can play them... in and out, drunk and sober, on his knees, on planes, on telephones-- with and without flowers... and I found myself back in New York with a baby-- the ultimate heaven-blessed gift of nature-- a healthy, perfect, adorable little boy-- and a heart-splitting slam of psychological claustrophobia that felt like a perpetual car-crash.  Unwilling to share with anyone this sense of abandonment-- failure-- inverted joy, whatever... I wandered the streets of my neighborhood at night with my stroller-- up and down-- in and out of 24-hour stores with my little sleeping bundle... trying to walk myself into exhaustion... but when I returned home, I couldn't lie down--- I couldn't listen to records-- it was too memory-soaked-- or even watch television-- it was like being assaulted.  Reading was impossible-- when it rained I'd talk on the telephone, or move us up to the laundry room where I'd count headlights on the wet asphalt outside and wish I was a passenger.

One night I was so exhausted I was maybe hallucinating, worrying I'd neglect some crucial baby-caring task-- and I wheeled us into a Mental Health clinic.  I need to see someone, I said.  The intake process was weeks.  I am not going to make three weeks, I announced, and while a nurse carefully lifted the baby into competent arms, they sent me upstairs to the facility director who told me he thought my thyroid was completely out of whack.  The diagnosis-- an educated stab in the dark and a kind of pretext-- gave me a little relief... and just confessing to this stereotypical Psychiatric Neurobiologist with a bowtie and a theory... was therapeutic.

What they did not diagnose then was this postpartum depression or postnatal or whatever biological or emotional havoc these things wreak on women.  Coupled with my missing husband and a disintegrating marriage, an abrupt change of lifestyle-- I was used to playing in clubs, hanging out until dawn--- wilding and feeling like an uncaged animal.  Or after breakups-- tough days--- you'd go out to a bar, listen to other people's issues, drink surrounded by good music and flirt a little with a cute bartender who reassured you the future was going to be so much better than the present.

I survived... no meds, no prescriptions--- a few sessions with a therapist while a nice intern played with the baby through a glass door... and of course I never had the urge to hurt my child... I loved him all the more, never drank, never left him even for a second-- I nursed my own wounds and failures into a scar of motherly fortitude and managed somehow, through free clinics, $1 bags of doughnuts, and Goodwill stores, to get through the challenges of babyhood.  Yes, Alanis.  No herbs or oils or mountain retreats.

So I am less sympathetic to the whining celebrities on television-- with their perfect makeup and clothing, looking like cover plates and talking about their tough life... while a gorgeous husband, a team of nannies and assistants waits at home with a clean bathroom, freshly washed crib linens and perfectly mashed organic baby food.  Walls of sympathy for Beyonce and Cardi B-- more than I earn in a year for an appearance to raise awareness of this syndrome.  Did my mother and grandmother not suffer?  Surely this is not new--- what is new are the meds and treatments which earn some people money.  The public whining-- the celebrity confessionality which fuels Instagram and social media like nothing else.  Tiny tragedies-- nothing bloody or gory... just infidelities, rehabs, breakdowns-- that kind of thing.  A little postpartum retrospective, to give some credibility to the perfect image.

Motherhood is hard; single parenthood is long and relentless.  Even when you are sick, there is no relief.  And when something wonderful happens, there is no one who claps their hands with you.  I was a mature woman.  I had no money, nor public assistance, but I had some experience.  For these young unprepared girls without role models there is little comfort.  They have traded their girlhood and their freedom for a dream of family that mostly deteriorates with time.  Every day we hear about abandoned children, hurt and abused children.  I try to understand the sorrows of the mothers-- not to condemn them.  There is help, but not really.  You are in this or you are not.  God save the society that disallows abortions and thereby fails to protect children from suffering future neglect.  I know very few women who have not made these difficult choices, in favor of a life.

It is Pride weekend.  When my baby was young, a gay couple moved in down the hall from me.  They were very handsome and very much in love but withering and sick with AIDS.  They were also so kind and loving... they loved the baby so much and came often in their pajamas just to hold him.  One died and the other threw himself off the balcony; I missed seeing this by seconds... but I will remember them especially on Sunday... two men who somehow empathically understood my mothery loneliness-- they embraced me with the baby and the future they would never have, shunned by their families, but enviably with one another in an eternal bond... they healed me like nothing else, and I cared for them as I could, in vain.  I cannot write this song... and my son is a grown man now.  Even the memory of my sadness has a kind of nostalgic sweetness that never shows in those baby photos.  And unlike the little boy who was slapped today, my son never had to worry that it was his fault... that he was wrong... in any way... because he was just so 'right'... and that is a blessing.  Amen.

Where There is a Will….

The passage of relative time is a perpetual surprise for me; the pool of my past is filling so quickly with years… I can remember well when it was near-empty and the sense of  'brink' was like a permanent slow companion.  Looking at images from yesterday's women's march I remembered how I lived around the corner from Jackie Kennedy in her young widowhood.  She came in and out like a movie star, was civil but not very friendly to neighbors.  Still, despite her aura and the unequivocal celebrity status that seemed somehow to protect her, she was visible and often took taxis like anyone else.  She'd occasionally sit by the Central Park zoo with her children or a friend; people seemed to respect her privacy, from sanitation workers to other socialites.  After all, she was part of maybe the most important American story of her era… and she'd moved on-- she'd stepped outside the drama and assumed life as a regular woman.  She had children-- she had a job.

My mom was close to her age, and like all American women of that generation, she was influenced by her style: the hair, the hats and sunglasses-- her tall, understated elegance.   But what so many of them had in common was this silent acceptance of their husband's infidelities.  My own father's were not as flagrant or exciting; they were not even always centered on other women.  But there was a sort of pact these women kept-- a tolerance for behaviors that undermined and insulted their dignity in some way… and yet they carried on. They had their hair done, their nails manicured,  they met friends for lunch and took taxis to meetings.  They volunteered at schools-- they played bridge and shopped.  But they exchanged few complaints about their marriages.  They were committed, they were locked in.  My own mother feared being alone and made so many concessions I both disrespected her submissiveness and admired her stoicism.  It was the other version of #metoo:  I'm a wife and mother-- my husband doesn't treat me the way I deserve, but I have a sense of dignity.  #metoo.

In the wake of the current epidemic of accountability and blame, of revelations of abuse, I think about the variations and B-sides of the trend.  My son tells me about men-- athletes he knows, who avoid fun and flirtation because they are so targeted, like starlets, by predatory women who plot to cry monster as soon as they entrap.  It's like a reverse #metoo.  And how about the betrayals-- those of us whose husbands cheated, slept with our friends and sisters-- our beloved life partners… and we left-- we had to leave-- the pain, the humiliation was intolerable?  We were not Jackie O or my mom, but women who needed to save our children from marital tension and reinvent ourselves.  #metoo.

On Jackie O's corner, when I was 20-ish, a beautiful boy used to stand between 5 and 6 every evening. I'd return home and he seemed to stare at me.  I thought maybe he was a stalker, or just waiting for a ride or a bus.  But one day, he left me a note… a love note.  He smiled while I read it… and waved.  I ignored him... but gradually he came closer… he rode the bus with me, did funny tricks and made me laugh.  He had this beautiful long blonde hair and different colored eyes, like a huskie.  It was inevitable that we would consummate this little flirtation… it was passionate and innocent.  Without clothes, he was angelic like a boy-- it went on for weeks, until my boyfriend came back from wherever he'd been… Later I learned he was only 17.  I'd actually committed some kind of violation of a minor-- this romantic little game we'd played out of pursuit and conquest.  I could have been prosecuted in some scenario as a predator.  #metoo.

I grew up a little sister.  I followed, worshipped, loved and occasionally feared my older sister.  She was conniving and manipulative; like all first-borns, she'd been the little princess and then had to share.  I gave her anything she wanted, to win her affection and maintain her trust.  I was loyal and lied for her.  She was often in trouble and I wanted to help.  At a certain point, she turned on me-- maligned and backstabbed and betrayed.  She wanted to regain her territory and I retreated-- moved on.  It's an old story-- either fight it out, tooth and nail, or find another place.  I made friends, created my own family.  I missed my mother-- her stoicism and old-school devotion to the fictional hearth of family.  She missed me, too.  Toward the end of her life, I couldn't stay away, despite the threats of my sister.  My mother read my heart and confided her fears and regrets and sorrows.  Now that she has passed, I have to manage the harsh consequences of my lack of involvement in their legal arrangements.  I am marginalized and passed over-- misunderstood and-- again, betrayed.  It is painful to receive this, and yet I know I must 'eat the document', as they say.  I find I am one of a legion of naive family members who are the victims of competitive siblings and a kind of justice of greed.  I am a sentimental party, and I will lose my right to inherit any thing of beauty to keep my mom close to me-- around my neck or on my dresser.  There are many of us, and we seem to be women without men to assert our rights with a loud, combative voice.  A 'will'… the document is called.  It seems to have none.  A won't.  #metoo.

We've lost children, we've been sick and no one showed up-- we've survived without child support, or any support… #metoo.  We've made mistakes with our children, and we've had no one to share in the joy they have given us…#metoo.  We grieve alone, we are misread, underacknowledged and passed over.  We grow old and have to make difficult choices… we remember the victories, the losses, the insults-- the love and the sex and the confessions and the lies, the satisfactions and the frustrations, the fresh beginnings and the hopelessness of the tide running out.  And yet we are still here-- me, my friends, my work… the legacies which may or may not mean something when we are gone… another kind of will.  I do…#metoo…

For several days I have wept out loud watching excerpts of the US Olympic gymnasts describe the disturbing abuse they endured under the guise of medical treatment.  This is not a new story, but the courtroom testimonials are devastating.  The #metoo movement has revealed that the greater majority of women have been subjected to mistreatment in one form or another.  When it targets our entire life's focus-- our dedication and dreams, our passion and talent-- it is that much more heinous and difficult.  I kept silent when I was attacked and threatened by a producer who had invited me to discuss the music I wrote which he had described as brilliant,  only to find he had another agenda.  It was humiliating and traumatizing, and I carried it in silence; I paid a price, and survived.  But what bothers me in the case of the gymnasts-- they were children.  Were their parents completely unaware? Their perfect proud mothers whose dreams were being realized by the prize-winning performance of offspring-- did they fail to rock the boat, did they disbelieve?  Did their daughters keep quiet because they feared disappointing their parents?  Can children actually be raised to keep these dangerous 'secrets' with their moms?  I know I was.  In the 1960's this would have fallen on deaf ears.  My sister acted out in ways that were beyond disturbing, but no one seemed to want to take her for help.  My own father suffered from paralyzing depressions and manic periods, and no one wanted to speak.  I asked to visit a shrink-- to discuss this-- and my Jackie O-esque mom ignored my plea-- what if it went on my perfect college transcript? For the siblings, friends and parents who fail to blow whistles, who worry about consequences and selfish ambition and fail to observe and protect their children… shame on you... #youtoo.

So while I am now excluded from family money because the truth-- awkward as it might have been--was my blood sibling,  I will always choose not to ally myself with the guilty.  Attached as they were to their agenda, they not only neglected to protect, but punished me.  I forgive my mom; she herself was marginalized and disrespected often, and did not have the courage to do anything but enable.  Here we are, horrified at the testimony of these young athletes… and failing to protect so many children in our midst.  We elected a president who is not only abusive to women but ignorant, bigoted and hateful.  What message is this sending?  My mom reached out to me late in life-- she confessed and apologized, opened her heart.  I will love her and miss her forever.  As for the rest of them.. there is karma, but there is also great injustice in the world; we can only try to leave a legacy of truth and compassion going forward… #metoo... our work has only just begun.

Exchange

I live on the edge of two neighborhoods… on the cusp, on the border.  It suits me.  I am close to the park and short blocks from grand homes and institutions.  I am also two blocks from the projects.   Across the street from me, my neighbors have an East Harlem zip-code, although I'll wager all of them have a better income than I do. Personally I spend most neighborhood-time going north and east-- past the projects-- exploring bodegas, playgrounds, small bakeries and shops, listening to languages besides English, browsing among vegetables and fruits used in Mexican recipes,  reading labels in Spanish.   Even the Christmas decorations have a different flavor.

At this point in life, I am spending more and more time alone.  I walk; I think; I soliloquize and invent… I may even talk to myself.  I wander-- down strange and familiar streets, into places; when I am alone my ear is sharper-- I hear things outside and inside my own head.  It''s as though I dare myself to become lost in my own city--- to lose myself, to become someone else, in a way-- like a character in my own story… a kind of odd controlled schizophrenia; I leave my house and turn left and suddenly I am anonymous and unknown.  I blend in and I am simply a woman.  No one greets me or looks at me… I am free, in a way-- unencumbered and clear.  It rests me… it provides my blank canvas.

I think I've always craved some kind of solitude-- even the kind you have in a group.  I like people but am reluctant to commit myself to any society that excludes me from other choices. Maybe it was my dysfunctional family (we all have them) and their failure at honesty-- but I never feel that I completely belong anywhere.  Even marriage felt odd to me-- it required my husband convincing me this would be a good thing… and besides, I'd be making someone incredibly happy and giving up nothing.  It seemed to make sense.. and I got to cross another border-- to belong to two countries, as I chose-- and that suited me… but the boundaries of marriage never felt right to me.  Maybe I was a terrible wife, but other women encroached on the walls of my own marriage-- my husband failed to protect me, and I left.  Motherhood was quite another issue-- but I was still someone's daughter, someone's lover, someone's sister… I could still live between identities, go from neighborhood to neighborhood-- play in bands and enjoy my son's basketball games with pride.

It's possible that solitude gives us clarity… in my case, the acceptance of my own penchant for straddling borders--- for being two people, in a way-- the one who walks and the one who observes--  the speaker and the listener.   At my age, I notice I am more blunt, more honest.  I say things directly; occasionally I offend people.  I see my own peers walking around clearly burdened with their pasts.  We have all experienced so much; for some, they are stooped with the weight of it, fearful that little will happen in coming years to balance or complement their life.

My son's friend asked me to help him return a ring he bought his fiancée a few years back.  It's such a beautiful thing-- it's vintage-y and unique.   He lost his Mom recently, and maybe that somehow altered him; he also knows I've returned rings and changed my own mind many times.  It doesn't bother me and I've never really regretted much in my life; it all seems to have brought me to where I am, which is not a bad place.  There's a book of poems I remember reading: Loving a Woman in Two Worlds.  I've always loved that title… as though this is the way I've lived.  Returning the ring-- dealing with the receipt and the agreement and the salespeople… it all seemed so absurd that this intimate, personal decision we make gets so 'handled' by so many people-- the processes-- the invitations, and name changes-- the paperwork and vows and all the guests and witnesses-- the home-buying and the furniture choices… and suddenly it was as though I was so close to my own relationship thresholds-- maybe in the very same store where my fiancé  had bought the lovely ring that had felt to me like a 25-pound weight.

It took my son's friend 5 years: maybe 2 to really believe he'd made the wrong choice, and 3 more to actually find this ultimate closure.  Finality.  He has a new girlfriend now.  When we get older, some loves we realize were addicting, or consuming, or manipulative-- or they looked like someone else, or they reminded you of something, or your best friend talked you into it… or whatever.  And then some affairs look absurd and like some kind of period of insanity.  And after it all, after a lifetime-- there are those moments that shine-- through time, from the half-light of this moment, back to that one… there is still this beauty-- something right and true… and we feel lucky, even though we never held on, that we felt this way.

We have so little present-- all of us.  Just this nanosecond of awareness-- the rest is just a movie-- an invention.  So few of us take the time to appreciate these tiny things we are holding at this moment only-- unless we are on the verge of loss.   We mourn at funerals, we bathe in morning light when we are aware our days are numbered-- we love those we can no longer see, and we miss what we no longer have.  Handing over the ring, I was aware someone else's moments were in my hand briefly--- even the feel of the box-- I could imagine how much it must have meant at the time, and he'd spent many multiples over what was appropriate ('in over his head', as he put it)… but there it was, becoming an item in a shop window for someone else to give their loved one, to become part of someone else's story.  I felt empathetically unburdened.  These symbols never had much credence in my lifetime, as I've said… and the truly spiritual instances of the meaning of marriage are more like star points in the dark liquid sky of my own history.  But then again, I am someone who likes to cross borders, to travel between worlds and rooms and to inhale winter evenings and mix them with older constellations and lyrics I have surely misread or mispronounced… and I emerged, on my way back toward Harlem, to the song of the melting snow, me stepping every block from past to present to future, between worlds.

Skin Deep

When I was young, I had perfect skin.  It meant nothing to me-- in fact, it had absolutely no currency in my life, was sort of an albatross that made it nearly impossible for me to become a punk-rocker outcast-type.  My older sister had acne.  She also had a slew of boyfriends and hiked her skirt way up when we left the house for school.  I wanted her skin.   She hated me for mine, and I would have traded in a second.  Acne would make me look older-- as would braces on my teeth, I thought.  People commented on my skin-- aunts and cousins--- the doctor.  When I went to buy make-up, even as a woman, the cosmetics salespeople would remark-- why do you need make-up?  You have perfect skin.  Lloyd Cole had a song about this.  I did nothing to deserve it-- ate plenty of chocolate and fries and smoked cigarettes-- but it remained, as it was.  Beauty's only skin deep, my mother used to say, and despite my flawless facial surface, I still believed my sister was way more attractive.

In the office of my Primary Care physician, a woman sits at the front desk and does intake.  The right half of her face is horribly deformed, as though it was burned or blown off in an explosion.  She is in her late 30's and it's tough to look at her.  She has no functioning eye or mouth; the left side is marked with some kind of warty growths, but somewhat normal.  Her voice is steady and courageous and sweet; if I were blind I might imagine her as beautiful.  I commend my doctor for hiring her because she is unsettling, physically.  As for her dignity-- I cannot say enough.  She is well dressed and stylish from the neck down.  Her hair is neat and pretty; her hands are lovely and efficient.

When my son was born, he was adorable and perfect.  I couldn't stop admiring him, especially since I felt I didn't deserve to have this baby; I hadn't planned this, and my lifestyle for the first 3 months of pregnancy was a little crooked and a-maternal.  His infant skin was so tender he couldn't tolerate any animal products-- wool, fur-- anything besides soft natural cottons.  It was as though his surface was a metaphor for my heart; here I was-- a new mother-- a protector-- and suddenly I felt stripped and raw and on the verge of not just tears but utter emotional collapse at the slightest hint of tragedy or sadness.  Maybe this is what they call postpartum depression.  I was a single mother and utterly enchanted with my baby; there was absolutely no room for self-inspection or analysis.  I was too busy trying to remember all the little infant things I had never learned and too absorbed in managing his care while I worked and kept my life on the level.  But in caring for another being, I learned the depth of compassion.

As a young woman I fell in love with a black man.  Our attraction had nothing to do with color, and his strangeness had more to do with cultural rather than racial differences.  Sometimes at night, I awoke and admired the beautiful contrast of his dark, strong arm draped across my body.  His skin had a different feel and smell and taste.  In those days, some people in some locales didn't appreciate our marriage and our presence as a couple.  The differences fascinated me; in the end we separated, but we both learned things about appearance and acceptance.

My skin is no longer perfect; few things about me are pretty; we enter the autumn and winter of our lives and our human foliage begins to fall away.  Many of my women friends fight this process with injections and treatments; their medically-enhanced beauty is truly skin-deep and temporary, but it suits them, and it doesn't bother me.  Nor does the economic ability to do such things.  Money, I have discovered, is a little skin-deep as well.  It is temporary and may create a sense of security, but people still get ill and have accidents and mishaps, and while they may be comfortable and well cared-for, their lives don't seem to be more valuable.  They do give more to charity-- as do people like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, etc… but this kind of billionaire philanthropy seems a bit skin-deep and cavalier-- it is acknowledged and rewarded, but do they suffer or sacrifice to do this?  They all seem to drive expensive cars, live in enormous houses, collect things and wear rolexes.  They do little more than balance their tax burden, while being applauded for stunning generosity.

As for my friend who is ravaged by cancer, she grows thinner every week.  Her skin is translucent and stretched over the contours of her face in a way that is startling. She resembles an anorexic; her once long, graceful limbs are spindly and twiggy;  the bones of her knees are knobby and prominent beneath her loose pants.  I feel I can see through her skin into her soul; her veins are greenish and sickly.  She is skeletal and taut-- both old and young, like an underdeveloped fetus.  She walks with bitter resignation, daring anyone to comment.  I told her she looked pretty the other day; she had on a purple knit cap and her features were feverish and her skin was flushed from the cold.  She was furious and screamed at me… this is not a word that applies to her physical or mental state, she warned me.  Do not use this language in my presence.   I wept-- I am not tough-- I am permeable and fragile.  I wear my heart everywhere; without tattoos, my skin betrays me, my tears are ready and I am unarmed.  I will not tell her again that she has acquired this sort of porcelain-doll facade-- and while her eyes have lost their spark and are glazed and empty from pain and the drugs, there is a kind of quiet holy dignity in her long-suffering expression-- and after all the treatments, the side-effects and the rashes, ironically-- she has perfect skin.