I'm a Hairy Lester

I usually get this way on Father’s Day.

But this morning, after I drug my worn out body out of a hot bath and was slathering lotion on my parched skin, smoothing it in the direction I want the hairs on my arm to lay down, I just started bawling.

Not like I have forearms like Robin Williams or anything, it’s just that the hairs are so, so, apparent! There was no holding it back. Just like the torrential rain which pockmarked my birthday today, the tears were an inevitability because, it was my father Tommy Lester, who gave me these hairy forearms.

Or so I’ve been told.

I have just one photo of Tommy-- black Irish, average height, stocky build, intense brown eyes, like Colin Farrell, with probably the same temperament and proclivity for being a rounder. A rounder, that’s what my mother called the guys who made the rounds at the cafes and beer joints in Northern California where she and Tommy met.

His photo sits in a mother of pearl frame on my mother’s pine sideboard in our family room--a place of probable undeserved honor, along with the urn bearing Pete’s, (“The King of Dogs”) ashes and a comical photo of my mother, my daughter and myself ; three generations of head strong women.

I’ve lived with the gap of never knowing my father, quite adroitly all these years. But in my heart, I’ve always wondered if my attraction to short, rascally guys, and occasional fuzzy ones, (the kids called my last boy friend, “The Hobbit” he was so covered in fur. I call him King James here, not a Biblical reference, but a nod to the 1000-count Egyptian cotton sheets he kept on his king size bed, which were delicious to slide in between, for more reasons than one. And, smart Hungarian/Irishman that he is, he knew they wouldn’t rub his back hair the wrong way) but I’ve often mused that this inexplicable attraction to Irishmen (or bad boys in general, there was a Greek, a couple of Mexicans and an Italian along the way) and subsequent train wrecks with the aforementioned bad boys, stemmed from being yanked away from my father and put on a train bound for Texas at the tender age of three. Shit, moving to Texas was bad enough.

And so, there are these occasional days, like today, when the ghost of that three year old screams in protest at being on a train bound for a place she doesn’t want to go. The weather didn’t help. It was sunstealth versus sunrise on this birthday morn, overcast, with forgiving, swirling hues of grey and white, nary a trace of blue; the perfect palette for introspection --or depression. I’m midway through the breakthrough decade that’s woefully short on breakthroughs. I am tired and disheartened. Where has the time gone? Didn’t I JUST have my 50th birthday two weeks ago? Lauren, who was only 17 at the time, threw me a big surprise party. I had just been laid off from a big deal consulting job, where I’d be writing talking points for corporate CEOs one day and a Governor the next, (the late Ann Richards among the more notable) when the agency for which I worked pulled the plug on the Midwest region. I was never so happy in my life! I had a little-bitty severance and a shit ton of optimism. I was in the middle of writing a screenplay; so the freedom, terrorizing as it was with so little money AND turning 50 AND having no back up, because the ex-husband was in the slammer, the freedom still, was exhilerating. I did some consulting, did some radio gigs, finished the screenplay then took a full-time job, and then, another. And as fast as the parachute ride at Six Flags whooshes down, I’m five years down the road, burning the midnight oil at the college library, writing nights and weekends, hoping, praying, and writing nights and weekends. At the midpoint of my 50s, with so much I want to say and do, with seemingly impossible obstacles to conquer, I am overwhelmed with loss; the loss of time, the loss of opportunity to live the writer’s life I dream of, bereft --at least at this moment. I am 55 years old, Sally O’Malley plus five! I can kick, I can stretch, I clear high hurdles every single day in my 11-hour a day, day job, just to keep this little ship afloat.

It’s what I do, it’s what my mama taught me. “Hard work is its own reward,” she’d say.

Sure, and it keeps the lights on, illuminating the dining room table, where I wrestle late into the night, with these demon stories, trying to trap the words on my Mac, far too often nodding off, slumped over the computer, my coffee turned cold, while the tormenting words fly away. This makes me profoundly sad.

And then, joyous.

Because at least I have them! My words are the most precious gift I possess. Blessed be these words! The words that pop up like wooden Scrabble tiles from the steamy bath on this melancholy birthday, settling on the surface, like a thin layer of soap scum, inseparable, mocking me if I dare attempt to push them aside, from my sight, from my soul, or from my schedule. To ignore them would be like leaving a baby in the road.

And so, I have my words, my devil muses, like a dog barking at the door to be let in. Blessed be my muses. And blessed be my blood. Their names are Nathan, Patrick, Lauren and Sean. I have my blood, I have my friends and I have my dog. Blessed be them all.

And I have these hairy forearms. I don’t know that I’d go so far as to describe them as beatific, but they are mine, after all, a post-pubescent source of consternation and curiosity, a focal point for my longing to know more about the direction from whence they grew. Go west, middle aged woman, go west.

Somewhere in California, I believe I still have a half-brother, a Lester, who can fill me in about my father. Michael was about thirteen when my mother and I left San Francisco. She had decided to reconcile with her husband, even though they’d been estranged for years. She was going to Texas, to be with him, with the round faced, brown eyed clone of the Irishmen with whom she’d had a fling, in tow. This is how she explained it to me fifteen years later, when she was forced to fess up.

“I’m glad that my brothers are all my real brothers, you know?” We’d been talking about some other family’s step-sibling rivalries.

“Well, sissy, we probably ought to talk about that,” she said, “I’ve been wondering how to tell you.” She proceeded to explain that the lanky, lazy, good-for-nothing, “so called” father I thought was mine, really was just a co-conspirator in what I suppose were socially acceptable degrees of deceit in modern American families when illegitimate children were brought into the fold back in 1955.

“You were the product of a fling,” she said, “a fling I had when I was separated from your father. Well, not your real father, but, well, you know, the person who you thought was your father...until now.”

I was a freshman in college at this time and “Wow,” was all I could muster.

But, how wondrous and liberating the truth can be! It answered so many questions in my young heart --about why I never trusted, nor had any affection for the “no count” Whatley dude. (This is how his mother, my fake paternal grandmother whom I adored and who adored me in return, described worthless men, “he ain’t no count” she’d say. However, this description was never applied to her precious, "no count" son.) I keep the Whatley name, because that’s what’s on my birth certificate, and to honor the person who’s carried this name all her life and to pay homage to the Whatley boys, who indeed are my real brothers.

But somewhere out there still, is that Lester boy, somewhere out in California, where I was born.

If he’s still alive.

My mom came up in hard times. She and her parents were on the tail end of the dust bowl exodus from Oklahoma. There was no way to make a living. Plus, there was that little issue of my grandfather Booker, bootlegging whiskey and something about some stolen horses. So they loaded up their truck and they moved with Beverly. My mom, that is-- no swimming pools, no movie stars. The circles in which she ran in Northern California during World War II, were the definition of a blue collar, hard scrabble life-- selling shoes, waiting tables, working in coffee shops with my grandparents, hanging out after work with sailors, merchant marines, cab drivers and bartenders, one of whom became my father. Blessed be her indiscretion.

For, without it, I would not be here, on my 55th birthday today, feeling tired, rundown, used up and just plain scared. Scared that life is passing me by, scared that the back log of words that I have, which can’t find their way into my computer for lack of time to pluck them and place them, will pile up like an overfilled ice maker, with the bar, (my brain, my heart) annoyingly tapping, “click, click, click, click” on the solid mound of unused ice, nagging the occupants of the house, “Hey, use some fucking ice!” I’m scared. Scared that my words will simply freeze like some big chunk of semi-worthlessness.

I don’t think that’s my destiny though. Truly I don’t. I don’t think that’s what the universe or my dog wants. What we want, is to go on a road trip to find this Lester guy before it’s too late. Because let me let you in on a little secret --people die.

In 1983, I was actually in Northern California, waiting tables at Ceasar’s Tahoe for a summer, making bank. I’d gone up there, free rent for a summer, living with one of my best friends, while my eldest son, Nathan, four at the time, went for his first long visit to Arizona with his dad and new stepmom. It was the first time we'd been separated for more than a couple of days, and I could not bear to be without him, so I took off for California to make some quick cash, before my final year of journalism school. (Okay, I had a lot of gaps in my college career: college, marriage, college, kid, divorce, college.) I was 28 at the time, ten years after I’d learned that the dad I thought was my dad, truly was not my dad at all, and the real dad was still alive, somewhere in El Dorado County California. I told my mom I wanted to try to meet him. She told me she’d try to track him down. I didn’t follow up, she didn’t follow up. I let 12 weeks go by and chickened out. I worked and played and partied (one of the Italians I was referring to) and went back home to Albuquerque, where just two weeks later, I landed my first television reporting job and met husband number two, the golden boy, heir-apparent to the New Mexico broadcasting dynasty, and future felon. We got married, immediately started having babies, three “on-air” pregnancies in five years, never breaking my stride on breaking news.

It was actually in the newsroom one night, I was on deadline, about eight o’clock, when I learned the real dad was dead. The phone rang. It was my mom.

“Sissy...” she said.

“Hey, Mom, what’s up?” I asked, still typing on the government issue green, IBMSelectric, state-of-the-art high tech news gathering device of the day. She’d just returned from a quilt symposium in Monterey.

“Well, honey,” there was at least a teeny bit of hesitation. “Well....I found out when I was in California....Tommy’s dead, honey. I guess he passed away a few months ago. I’m sorry, baby. But I thought you should know.”

Yeah, no problem, Mom. Just let me finish typing this story about the flash flood in the Embudo Arroyo and get it into editing and jump in the live truck and go stand in front of the reservoir where the run-off and the drowning victims wash up. Poor damn kids, caught unaware of the walls of water which roar down the mountainside after summer storms, turning the diversion channels into skateboarding death traps.

“Okay, thanks for letting me know,” was all I could muster after this little bomb shell. I guess I could have said, “Well, okay. Let me just hold back this thundering wall of disappointment and regret, which you’ve just rained down on me on a Saturday night, thirty minutes to air time. If I can just finish birthing this story I’m writing, right at this second, maybe on the way back from the live shot, while my photographer drones on about crap I don’t give a flip about, maybe then I’ll stop and acknowledge this ( keeping the metaphor alive here) watershed moment in my life.

“My father is dead,” says my brain, as I scan the dark, desert mesa beyond the freeway, grateful for the cover of darkness inside the cab of the truck as well, and my shooter’s distraction on the two-way radio, as he calls in, “Unit 10 to news base. We’re ten-eight, ten-nineteen," code for wrapped and returning to the station.

“My father is dead,” says my brain as I’m hearing the Police sing, “every move you make, every step you take, I’ll be watching you.”

But he won’t, ever. Never again. Never did, really. Except from afar, through school pictures my mother sent to my grandfather every year, which Booker would take to the bar in Placerville, to show Tommy, so he could see how his little brown eyed girl was growing up, the spittin’ image of her father. So he saw me, but he never came to see me. Shame on him. But, he’d made a deal with my mother on the day she pulled me from his arms at the train station.

“He had tears in his eyes and begged me not go,” she’d parcel out tiny fragments of information decades later. “You were kicking and screaming and you said, ‘I want my Daddy !’"

I suppose I still do. Or the notion of him, or a memory, or a fiber of the one remaining trace of him, Lord knows I have the hair follicles! I don’t regret my mother’s decision to keep me though, babies belong with their mothers. On this day, my birthday, I am particularly grateful for her facing the music, to have me in the first place and having the courage of her illogical convictions. “Love me, love my stray” such is the pact she made when she went traipsing off to Texas to get back together with “no count”, along with a promise that Tommy, would never be part of our lives again. Oh, the deals that are struck over innocent children. But, I know in my heart I was infinitely better off with the tough minded, wicked smart, funny as hell, determined, forceful, often tactless and occasionally loose, woman who was my mother. Blessed be her soul. She did her best with the tools she had to work with, which my shrink always told me was too generous an assessment and my mother recited almost daily as a boilerplate defense. But I admired her backbone. I did not have the backbone to go and find my father when I had the opportunity, that summer of 83, when he was no more than an hour away. People die. We lose our chance. The train leaves the station, the news truck barrels down the highway.

Twenty seven years later, I’m still gunning it down the road, cranking out the content, other people’s words--from natural disasters, to national policy, corporate mergers to collective bargaining, I am a walking, talking word machine. Always bargaining, brokering deals with myself, about the allocation of time for my words, foolishly thinking that there will still be time, at the end of my shift, at the end of my day, at the end of the list of things to do, to get back to it, to get on with it, to get the words out that matter, the words that just might resonate as a ripple of resemblance in some one else’s pond, making them not feel all alone.

But people die. And so will I before I get to all these words at the rate I’m going.

So, today, on my birthday, I’m sending out a message to the universe, I’m letting go with my most ardent desire. It’s freedom, dude. Freedom to get off of this runaway train stoked by other people's stories and get behind the driver’s seat to finish telling my own. Artistic and financial freedom to go where I want to go and write what I need to write, to take my brother Don and my sister-in-law Beverly and Libby, “The Replacement Dog” to California, to try to find this Lester fellow.

Brother Don has pancreatic cancer, but he’s responding amazingly well to chemo. He can travel now, so it’s time to giddyup. He is the only person in the family that I know who knows about the family I know nothing of. In fact, he and my half-brother were about the same age, they even played together in San Francisco, before we high-tailed it to Texas.

Don bristled when I called myself “illegitimate” once. “YOU are not illegitimate,” he said sternly, in a well deserved voice of authority, since had great responsibility in raising me. And then he cried. Jesus, he’s not as Irish as I am! “Don’t ever call yourself that again.”

Okay. So, this is a legitimate request: somehow, someway, oh kind universe, benevolent patrons of writers, friends, Romans, countrymen, literary agents, Oprah, or God almighty, grant me a path to artistic freedom so I can go all the way back to the beginning of A Woman With a Past, to crack this natal nugget. Who knows if the Lester link is even alive? He might be living in a van down by the American River. Or he could be sitting on both halves of a mighty inheritance, who knows? Help me finish this story, and along the way, I’ll regale you in more stories about my crazy past, including; Pete the Pathological Liar, Albert the No-Show Homecoming Date, the Rock Star Who Didn’t Even Give Me Back Stage Passes and the Stalking Step Dad, all this, plus, the search for the long, lost Michael Lester.

I wonder if he’s still around? I wonder if he looks like me? I wonder if he’s a hairy Lester?

Drive-by Yelping

It’s barely a whimper now when we drive by all the old familiar places.

The boxwood shrubs, the cracks in the threshold of the appliance store, the plastic jar of dog biscuits at the barber shop; she had memorized every step, every scent, every stop. There was a time when she would writhe in doggie pain, inconsolable, yelping and moaning, lunging out the window, if I’d turn the corner on Lockwood Ave., and keep on going, no time for our evening walk, no time for revisiting the places which brought her so much joy.

But not last night. Too much time and too many walks not taken has dulled her memory. Last night, she offered only one, short whimper, almost as an after thought.

This made me sad.

“Libby, don’t you remember?” as I reached to the back seat to scratch her golden, silky head. “Have you forgotten? This is the place you love so much !”

She looked straight ahead with doggie determination, eyes focused on the road in front of us, chin up, as if saying, “What’s next? Where are we going?

My dog has turned into me.

In much the same way that I have ignored any reminders of the joy I’ve known in the past, I’m passing through my life these days with my eyes focused on the road ahead, “What’s next? Where am I going?

There was a time when I was not so strong, when I pitched and moaned, aching to go back to my favorite places, wanting to jump out the window of a tall building instead of a car, inconsolable for nights on end. Honestly, it was months and it was ridiculous. Pete thought so too. He was our family dog, during this particular pitching and moaning, box-of-Kleenex-a-day phase of my life. Actually, Pete,“The King of Dogs” as I anointed him, was with me for 14 years, the most trustworthy partner I had in raising these four kids, no doubt. He was our faithful companion, floor show and guard dog. Pete was ultra-protective, wicked smart and devoted to me, but he didn’t suffer whining fools after a point. Yes, even my loyal, 98-pound German Shepherd mutt hound ran out of patience during these spells of nocturnal sobbing. Concerned and sympathetic at first, when my muffled sobs would wake him from a sound sleep on the rug next to my bed, he’d slowly get up on his arthritic doggie legs, (he was ten years old already...) and come to my bedside, nudging me in the back with his cold nose.

“What’s wrong? Is there anything I can do? Rollover and go back to sleep, you have to work in the morning....”

After a few months of this irrational, and in hindsight, completely undeserved grieving over a guy who truly wasn’t worth it, if the tears on my pillow woke him up, Pete would slowly lumber up from the rug, with an indignant, doggie “harrumph” noise and unceremoniously walk out of my room, crossing the hall to my daughter’s bedroom where he could sleep in peace. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so damn pitiful.

I’ve almost forgotten the wonderful times and the wretched times which provoked this prolonged drama, but I do hold fast to my resolve to never go through that kind of heartache again. The memories lay dormant, less pungent than the scents along Libby’s favorite route, until some damn Hallmark holiday comes along to stink up my mind.

I avoided the most recent one, however, and it’s one of the worst. I deftly dodged the emotional stink bomb this past Valentine’s Day and was damn proud of it. Just like Libby, The Replacement Dog, as I’ve anointed her, I looked straight ahead, trying not to notice that everything on the damn planet was dripping in red; from the cupid cut-outs on the elementary school windows, to the red velvet cupcakes in the bakery case, to the lacy push-up bras at Target, I paid no attention to any of it, a single gal with no beau in site, I was hangin’ tough. I showered affection on others, even bought a few token gifts and sent Valentines to my faraway kids, AND stayed on my diet, thank you very much! My daughter bought me a lovely bouquet of flowers and I was fine. Just fine.

Until yesterday. I rounded the corner at the grocery store, and the heart shaped boxes of chocolates, donned in their crinkly, bright red cellophane, had been dumped in the 75% off cart, like so many mufflers in a junk yard. It made me remember, dammit. A semi-sweet jab of a reminder, shattering the Valentines Past immunity I’d built up from eating candy conversation hearts by the fistful, stamped with, “Remain Numb.”

Such is my modus operandi, Remain Numb. It’s my credo, my strategy, mother’s little helper, in never letting these alleged romantic holidays burst my impervious little bubble. It’s a multi-purpose mindset to surviving all manner of emotionally challenging occasions, including but not limited to; birthdays, Christmas, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, my wedding anniversaries, former husband’s arrest and sentencing dates, other people’s weddings, other people’s wedding anniversaries and sitting in my car at stoplights watching couples stroll along the sidewalk holding hands.

“Remain Numb.” Try it, it works.

Unless something smacks you in the face, like a piled up stack of bright red heart shaped boxes of candy relegated to the clearance basket. I paused. I pondered, right there on the special bargain aisle. Sometimes you have to stop and smell the chocolate. To stuff it, (and I don’t mean eating it) is unhealthy. At least thats what my shrink always told me.

“What you suppress, you must express,” he would say, followed by “we’re out of time.”

Okay, okay, So, I’ll express that some memories are worth an occasion whimper, like the romantic weekend I spent with Nick the out-of-towner, the man whom I instantly fell in love with at my brother Garrett’s funeral. My shrink told me this was also unhealthy.

But for a time, it was purely wonderful, especially our first Valentine’s Day, when he flew into town for one of the most romantic lovely, sweet evenings of my life. I baked heart shaped sugar cookies and frosted them in pink, I farmed out the kids to three different moms and bought something pink. I booked a suite for the opening night of a grandly restored, downtown hotel and made reservations at an intimate Italian restaurant, shaved my entire body and took a long bubble bath.

He left me a message before he boarded the plane.

“I can not wait to hold you,” he said. I saved that message for months.

The anticipation was thrilling. This would be only our third weekend together since that bright December day when we went hiking in the mountains of New Mexico, one day after we memorialized my brother, and just two days before the police arrested my ex-husband. Peppered in between the grief and stress, I had spent New Year’s Eve with him in Milwaukee and now, just two weeks later, he was coming to St. Louis for Valentine’s Day. It felt like it had been two years.

I bought a pretty red shirt to wear to the airport, my make-up was perfect, my hair was perfect, my breath was pepperminty and I was lotioned up all over, with brand new, lacy things and expensive, French perfume. We were like two pups wagging our tails when we spotted each other in the crowd on Concourse A.

Embraces like these are the kind you dream about. His shoulders were as wide as a big screen TV, and he swallowed me in his arms, lifting me off my feet.

“I thought it would take forever to get off that damn plane” he whispered.

It was one of the best feelings I’ve ever known.

And it was one of the sweetest nights I’ve ever had. The dinner was exquisite,

(I had the pumpkin filled tortellini, he had the veal) and so was everything else, the red wine, the frosted heart-shaped cookies, the red wicker basket he brought me, full of scented soaps and oils, the decadent chocolates, the crystal chandeliers in the lobby, with giant bouquets of roses on every table, the decadent king size bed in the plush, turn-of-the-century suite, with it’s heavy, brocade bedspread which we promptly kicked to the floor. And later, lying on top of it, a ridiculously sinful indulgence, we ate Krispy Kreme donuts and drank milk from the carton at 3:00 o’clock in the morning.

We were completely unaware of the blizzard whirling outside, until I got up to blow out the candles. I refused to fret about my kids sleeping at their friends’ houses, my ex-husband sleeping in the county jail, cancelled flights, mounting bills, car repairs and college loans or what would become of Nick and I, “What’s next? Where are we going?” and yet, hoping and praying at the same time that he’d say, “I’m moving to St. Louis. I want to be with you.” I was totally in the moment for one blissful night. With Norah Jones singing “Come Away With Me” on the radio, I drifted off to heavenly sleep. in his arms, sated, serene.

We broke up on a clear November morning in Milwaukee, nine months later. After a dozen or so back and forth trips, with him increasingly withdrawing, and me increasingly holding on for dear life, I found my strength, or rescued my pride. I got up one morning, after he’d said, “I just can’t do the long distance thing any longer,” and then added, ”but I don’t want to lose you,” and promptly turned his back to me in bed. As soon as it was light, I got up and out. I never got my shit together so fast in my life! Up and out, packed and gone, in about six minutes flat.

“I’m leaving before it gets ugly,” I said and walked out the door. The only satisfaction I had, was the look of disbelief and profound sadness in his face. I still don’t know how I had the strength to keep on walking. My car was covered in a blanket of screamingly vibrant yellow leaves, the sky, bright blue, like the New Mexico sky on the day I fell so deeply into him. I pulled away from the curb and never looked back.

Although, I did call. Fool that I was, I called. In an empty downtown parking lot, overlooking Lake Michigan, my hands shaking, tears running down my face, I called back to say,

“The lake is so beautiful this morning. It makes me so sad that we are not going to have this day together.”

“I wish you’d come back,” he said. “I don’t want you to go.”

But I had to. I knew we couldn’t bridge the distance or the different lifestyles. A writer, musician, with no children of his own, he’d never man up enough to take on four teenagers who didn’t belong to him and he admitted as much. I knew it wouldn’t work, but my head hadn’t informed my heart. The onslaught of tears commenced at Lake Michigan and didn’t let up until I crossed the mighty, miserable, Mississippi. I was writhing in pain, yelping and moaning for 248 consecutive miles, from that parking lot to my driveway, where, I had to suck it up, pull it together, slap on some concealer, and hit the door explaining to my disappointed kids why mom was home a day early and why Nick would not be coming back.

It took me a full year to get over him.

When you fall in love at 47, you know you have fewer chances of doing it again. Will there ever be another blonde, with eyes as shiny as the sky? Or winter nights, us unaware of storms brewing outside? Or silly pink cookies and satiny pink peniors, the anticipation of love’s tender touch? I do not know. I truly do not know.

But I will concede that time is a healer, this much I can say is true. I’ve moved on, I’ve gotten better, I’m whole, I’m happy, I’m healthy. But, I’m also honest.

The only thing worse than longing is the absence of it.

“Remain Numb” isn’t good enough. It’s not good enough for my dog and it sure as hell isn’t good enough for me. Just like the chocolate Easter bunnies, in their gold foil regalia sit quietly on the next aisle over, surely there is some joy waiting around the corner.

Come on, Libby, we’re going for a walk.

HItting Below the Belt

Back in the 80s, my brother Garrett played guitar in a punk band in La Crosse, Wisconsin called The Mall Weirdos. On the 8X10 glossy black and white, promo pic he sent home to Albuquerque, the drummer’s autograph read, “Just Plain Ward.”

I’ve known a few like that. I seem to attract them like a rare earth super magnet. You know, the kind that can rip pacemakers out of people's chests or make fillings fly out of your mouth?

Arnie the prep cook is a case in point. He was the timid salad and dessert guy at the Pirate’s Cove, a cute little seafood place on the Chesapeake Bay where I was a waitress in college. Arnie had a wandering eye, not as in one who cheats, but as in one who looks like Igor, in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN. A tall, skinny guy, with horn rimmed glasses, Arnie wore his curly blond locks pulled back in a pony tail, tucked inside his hair net. He wore corduroy pants and Birkenstocks, long before they were trendy, just the kind of hippie who normally made my heart go pitter-pat, if it weren't for that thing with his eyes, and oh yeah, I was married. At the ripe old age of 20, I’d already been married for a year. I did not flirt with Arnie. Really. I didn’t flirt with anybody, especially not the incommunicative, frequently grouchy, reclusive salad guy. All I did was be nice to him. That was my first mistake. The other was letting my guard down.

One night, we ran out of cole slaw in the middle of the dinner rush. One can not have fried flounder and hush puppies with no slaw. Arnie was cussing like a mad man, chopping and tossing cabbage into a five gallon plastic tub, back at the salad station when, of course, he sliced off a chunk of his finger. He was bleeding like a son of a bitch. Ralph the manager, ran in the kitchen, with a cigarette pursed between his lips, the long ash dangling precariously over the open wound, wrapped up the hand, sorted through the bloody cabbage on the cutting board in search of the divet, and rushed Arnie to the emergency room. They had to throw out the whole damn bucket of slaw. A couple of hours later, in walks Arnie, his hand wrapped in a giant bandage, and God love him, he continued to make salads for the rest of the night with his good hand. What Ralph thought was flesh, turned out to be a piece of onion.

To show our support for our cranky cook, we took Arnie out for drinks after work. I had to slip in unnoticed, since I was underage, Arnie and I took a booth in the back, while the older waitresses fetched the drinks. After a few, as the conversation got louder and looser, and folks had spanned out to dance or shoot pool, Arnie and I found ourselves alone in the booth, sitting next to each other.

“I want to tell you something," he said.

“Okay...” I figured he was going to apologize for being such as asshole when he was dragging on a Crab Louie.

“I uh...I really like you,” the words in his throat probably throbbed more than his finger did. “And, I think about you. You know?" he looked down at his hand in the sling, so I had no problem knowing which eye to look into. “Like, I think about you. A lot. ”

I didn’t know what to say. It felt really strange and I was a little drunk. I recall cocking my head, slightly to the side, the way one does when they’re admiring a puppy or a newborn baby, as in, “Awwww...isn't that cute?”

And he kissed me. He placed one very tender, scared, heartfelt kiss on my lips. And I let him.

Then, within seconds, I snapped, “OH SHIT!!!!” and said something really lame like, “I have to go now....” making a bee line out of the restaurant, carefully crawling along Shore Drive in my orange, Chevy Vega, to the cheatin’ side of life. Where, when I reached the apartment, I threw up and then I fessed up that Arnie the salad chef had laid a big ol’ kiss on me, to which my husband replied, “I’m gonna kick his ass.” But I prevailed upon him not to engage in any ass kickin' since Arnie was about six inches taller, and there might have been a teeny bit of confusion in the exchange, since I didn’t exactly fight him off....instead, simply making a clean get away and I promised him I’d handle it the next day at work, which I did, by telling Arnie that he simply could not think about me and that he was drunk and his finger was throbbing and we were just going to pretend the whole thing never happened. And I subsequently went to confession and spent the next five years trying to prove to myself, that at least in that one respect, I was not my mother’s daughter, seeing how she’d already been divorced, twice, by the time she was twenty one. I swear to God.

As things turned out, I did indeed do my penance a few years later; having to move back in with my parents, with a newborn baby, when my sailor husband was shipped overseas for 12 months, for what the Navy blandly calls an "unaccompanied tour." That year of him on Midway Island and me in Desperation Gulch, me and my darling baby and my crazy mom, and my sick step-dad and a budding alcoholic, juvenile delinquent little brother, well, Humpty Dumpty never got put back together again, it was the undoing of our young marriage.

And none of that was Arnie's fault. He was just a shy, misguided, pony-tailed, harmless recluse who was a little odd, who took me by surprise in a moment of weakness when I was very young. I should be old enough by now, however, to have seen this most recent mystifying male encounter coming. It was really strange.

And downright hateful.

I fessed up to my girlfriends about this bizarre kiss-and-tell tale at one of our recent wine and soup gabfests. This ain’t your mama’s coffee klatch. We do this in the winter -- a bunch of single gals, divorced, widowed, two dating, two just dabbling and an occasional married chick stops by, just to keep us honest about what can be. We take turns hosting, hot soup, red wine and sympathy. It’s a great way to beat the winter blahs and talk about men.

There was a new face in the mix at our last get together, at least new to me. And after a few glasses of pinot noir, she spilled about her 30-something cougar cub.

“I mean, I just gotta tell you, the sex is incredible. I can’t see this going anywhere, but, can I just tell you ? The sex is great.”

Well, good for her. Friends with benefits apparently isn’t just limited to high school. We discussed our various comfort levels with that kind of arrangement, and she, for one, is pretty darn comfortable with it, for now.

“After 25 years with one man, I just needed to know that I was capable of doing it, well not capable of doing it, you know...”

And we did. Everybody’s entitled to a “get back out there” guy.

Since we were being so honest, I felt the need to share, and receive, some sisterhood sanity. I confided, that, against my better judgement, I had sent one more email to hot-to-trot, Match.com, “Plays Guitar” dude. After I’d told folks (and wrote in my blog) that I had promptly kicked him to the curb after he whispered to me in my girlfriend’s family room that he wanted to rip my clothes off on our second date, (which I thought that was a bit much, a bit premature, a bit juvenile....albeit a tad bit flattering) I had to own up that I had not dismissed him quite as immediately as I had implied.

Truth is, in an after-the-party, lingering buzz, thinking, (how can one still be this naive?) that maybe the champagne had just gone to his head a bit much, and maybe when he isn't drinking champagne on New Year's Eve, (a.k.a. Amateur Night), he might be more acceptable, and maybe it was worth a daytime date to see if he could behave, (or not!) I sent him an email before I went to bed.

Do not EVER do this.

“Thanks for a fun evening. Perhaps we should test the chemistry under the harsh light of day? Maybe go for a walk or check out the Japanese exhibit at the art museum, go for coffee, (do you drink coffee ?) or something like this in the coming days, sans alcohol and dimly lit rooms? And speaking of alcohol, thanks for bringing the lovely bottle of champagne.”

Here is what he wrote back. This is precisely what I reported to the girls that night:

“Most all women I've known love me and hate me, sooner or later...In your case, the hate will probably happen sooner vs. later.....like right now...I find you to be an interesting and intelligent gal and a great conversationalist. So what's the problem? I'm not sure how to tell you this without hurting your feelings, but, only when I'm drunk do I want to rip your clothes off...”

The soup ladies screeched in horror !

“Oh my God, what a dick!"

"I can’t believe he said that! ”

“Who says something like that ?”

“That’s hitting below the belt, that’s just uncalled for.”

“I know” I said, feeling vindicated and not quite as embarrassed as I was when I brought it up. "The kicker is, I got another email from him the very next day, apologizing for his brutally honest email from the night before, saying he was drunk, but that didn’t change the fact that he still was not attracted to me! And then he asked if we could just be friends? ”

They howled this time, with the moral outrage of a woman who’s just been told her baby is ugly. They railed against this idiot, saying that nobody in their right mind would say something like that to a perfectly sweet, non-grotesque, great conversationalist.

“Don't even pay attention to him, he’s crazy!”

“What in the hell did you say back?”

I told them that I exercised GREAT restraint in not replying for days. And then finally, after days of contemplation, (nah, it didn’t get to me one little bit) I took the high road:

David, David, David, (how I'd love to insert your last name here...)

You give yourself airs. You haven't hurt my feelings. Honestly, I was extending the invitation to give you the benefit of the doubt. Thanks for letting me off the hook. I tend to be too nice, it's a character flaw."

Moral indignation or not, it makes me question why I'd even be willing to do that, give this idiot the benefit of the doubt? There's a great scene in the movie, YOU CAN COUNT ON ME, where Mark Ruffalo asks his sister, Laura Linney why she had sex with her boss?

"Because I felt sorry for him," she replied.

I got that. I completely understood where she was coming from, sympathizing with these loner, losers. Whereas some or most women would just flick them off like a piece of lent, I ridiculously try to salvage one grain of decency or worthiness out of them. (I do not have sex with them, as a general rule.) But what is it that makes me want to adopt them as a cause? Why? Why do I do this? How is it that some women, from the time they're six years old, are wired to step over men like dirty clothes on the floor and some of us go around picking up the smelly socks? I must have been absent from school on the day they taught, "How to Not Be a Putz With Guys."

The good news is, I've learned, sister! I took the remedial course through the school of hard knocks and I've learned to quickly (albeit sometimes after one more email) cast them off. I'm getting better at not being nice to them, not feeling sorry for them and being able to discern between those who are harmless and those who are toxic.

Arnie, was just a love-struck, shy, moody, salad chef, who just happened to have impeccable taste in women.

“Plays Guitar” on the other hand, was just plain ward.

It's Fun To Be at the Y-M-C-A

And in my quest to get rid of the excess, I've learned that the locker room is the great un-equalizer.

Whereas some things in life put us on a level playing field, like, "place your feet in the stirrups and scoot on down," the locker room at my local Y is a never ending tableau of what once was, what is now and what will never be.

Most men would be alternately aroused and appalled; I am analytical as I stand in front of the mirror blow drying my hair, smack dab in the middle of a blatant reflection of the cruel continuum of aging. Opposite ends of the spectrum stand on either side. Like the old-time Vargas drawings in Playboy magazine, the gal on my left in simply stunning; picture perky breasts, with perfectly pink nipples. Hard to tell about the gal on my right, as her nipples have gone south, for all of the remaining seasons of her life. If there's one good thing about being slightly-less-than-moderately-endowed, it is that gravity is my friend.

Gal on the left, bends over to dry her hair, straightens back up, her dark blond locks, skimming her bare shoulders. She is, in fact, bare all over. With a body like that, I would be too --as often as possible. Gorgeous breasts, tiny waist, slim hips, long legs --- a few too many ornaments for my taste though. Talk about gilding the lily! She has an earring in her nipple and one in her...well, I can't for the life of me figure out how she works around that particular piece of jewelry.

Not that I'm staring or anything. Women who are naked in the locker room train their eyes straight ahead. If someone walks up to you bare butt naked, no matter what, your eyes stay on their face. But, one doesn't usually have the opportunity to stand right next to a specimen worthy of a Sports Illustrated cover!

Maybe I should just tell her. Maybe I shouldn't try to ignore her flaunting, trouncing and hair tossing. Maybe I should just come right out with what I'm thinking. Would it be inappropriate to say,

"excuse me. I just have to tell you that you have an absolutely beautiful body?"

Probably. Probably just as inappropriate as me saying to the woman on my right,

"my God, how did that happen?" as she pulls up her parachute panties, and slowly backs up, aiming for the plastic bench with the handles, to sit down, catch her breath and put on her socks.

This makes me miss my mother.

Not that my mom was large, far from it, she was fairly trim, and quite voluptuous all her life, a source of competitive pride. She brought me a pair of hand me down jeans, when she came for a visit once. She pulled them out of the suitcase and said,

"These pants are too big for me. But now that I see your behind, I'm not sure you can get into them."

She was tactful that way. And even though she wasn't rich, she had a lot of class, and took great pride in her appearance, heaven forbid that she'd dress like an old lady. She did need help with her socks though, not being able to reach her toes anymore. Seeing the little old ladies at the Y, slowly getting in and out of the pool, walking so carefully, so as not to fall, shampooing with arthritic fingers through fine, gray hair, fumbling for hooks on unreachable bra backs and sitting down with heavy sighs; so much effort just to get dressed. Studying them, through furtive glances, makes me miss my mother so damn much.

Nothing prepares you for how sad it feels to be an orphan. I find myself gravitating towards elderly women in the check out line, hoping one of them might ask me to carry out a sack of their groceries. When I catch a glimpse of a gray haired woman with a blunt-cut bob, I turn automatically, like the rooting reflex of a newborn baby, when the softness and scent of it's mama is near. Loss is a mean spirited bastard, jabbing us at the most random times and places -- something about a person's voice, their silhouette, the shape of their hands, the contour of their eyes, reminding us of the one who's missing, subtle as a sucker punch. I saw a man in Washington D.C. last week, who reminded me so much of my brother Garrett, I found myself transfixed, ignoring the chatter and noisy bus boys. It was like, if I focused hard enough, my memory could laser a layer of Garrett on top of him, like a hologram---and for an instant, one fleeting instant, I might be able to really see him. Even though I could not touch him, I could be in his presence again. Maybe Garrett was there, in that noontime D.C. diner, nudging me, "Hey, don't forget about me..." who knows?

My mother survived loss by not dwelling on it. And she always had a man around to help her make it through the night. She was a magnet for men from the time she was about 14. She was married four times, with many a tryst in between. Even after my step father died, (who lasted the longest with her, 22 years) it wasn't too long before she had Paco.

It was my brother Don, who remarked, "why is it, that I stop by to visit my 63 year old, widowed mother only to find some wetback asleep on her couch, and yet, I am not the least bit surprised ?"

Lest you be offended by my use of the term"wetback" I mean it in the nicest way. Some of our family's best friends are wetbacks. Growing up in Texas and New Mexico, long before the FOX TV's "Border Wars" my gringo family was meshed with the descendants of wetbacks who got the hell out of Saltillo, Mexico before Pancho Villa rode in to take over their hacienda. My stepfather was first generation Mexican American, and let me tell you, I doubt his parents checked in with the INS once they got to Texas. Their seven children, all born in America, went on to become WWII veterans, nurses, engineers, and auto workers among other occupations --and I think they all paid taxes.

Paco, on the other hand, waded across the Rio Grande himself and became my mother's cause celeb. Fifteen years her junior, he stayed with her in one capacity or another, for nineteen years, even up until her death; as her boyfriend, her sixth child, her stubborn pupil, (who never did learn English) her gardener, her maintenance man and never ending source of consternation, proving to be, in the end, one of the truest friends she 'd ever known. When she had a stroke at 82, in the hospital for months, Paco would stop in to see her on his way to work and often late at night. We wouldn't have known, if not for the nurses telling us.

When it was time to go see her at the funeral home, Paco met us at my brother Don's. "Patricio, venido con migo," he asked my son Pat, to ride with him in the pick-up which my mother had filled out the loan papers for. Paco wailed at the sight of her in the white casket, sobbing and crying out loud.

"Bever-leeee.." he cried and laid his head on her chest. It was killing the rest of us to witness this. Then, he stopped abruptly. He wiped his eyes on his handkerchief, blew his nose, patted her folded hands, took a deep breath and stepped away from the casket.

"Okay."

That was it, he was done. It was one of the most gut wrenching, yet comical things I've ever seen; legendary now, in our family history.

And as much as we routinely questioned her judgment, when all was said and done, my 82 year old mama left behind four kids, ten grand children, six great grandchildren and a lover turned lifetime companion weeping at her funeral. A man who loved her with all of his heart. I think, "gee, I should be so lucky." She probably thought, "there's three more where he came from." Unlike her daughter, who is confident in all things except men, my mother had not one gram of self-doubt with the male species. Much like, I suspect, the flouncy, bouncy blond exhibitionist in the locker room. My mother thrived on the adoration of the many, I'm seeking the affection of the one. Just one. One good man. Surely there's got to be one left somewhere !

It sure as hell isn't "Plays Guitar" the New Year's Eve mauler. Wait til you hear what he said to me...

A Dose of My Own Medicine

Well boys and girls,

The reason I called myself a hypocrite for being , in my own words...
"a fearful blob of discouragement" the other day was partially because I wrote a treatise a few years back on how I would steadfastly "refuse" to succumb to fear. Those bold ass statements have come around once again to bite me in the ass because I was not, at that low ebb, living up to my own words --hence feeling hypocritical.

But I guess you could say,

...sometimes we just get down.

Understatement of the year, huh? Hell, I can even say understatement of the decade, we're less than a month in.

But I have devoted so much of my writing to overcoming, coping, surviving, that "victor, not victim" shit, that when I'm racing through that dark, narrow log ride of fear, I'm ashamed to admit it. I am afraid to yield even one molecule to that seeping doubt, which spreads like kudzu vines in the south, wrapping their steely sprouts around my mind...

"maybe I won't make it as a writer, maybe I'll never lose this twenty pounds, maybe I won't meet a great guy and fall in love, maybe Obama won't be able to solve all the world's problems, maybe I'll always be broke, maybe bad things will happen to my family... (as if divorce, bankruptcy, a child with an incurable disease, job loss, loss of a brother, two other brothers with cancer, dad in the slammer for sex crimes, having to scoop up a dead possum in the yard with a shovel cause their ain't no man in my life to help me run the farm!!!....as if this isn't enough?)

But I've drunk the Kool-Aid. I've read enough books about the power of positive thinking, "The Secret", the Bible, I've even smudged my house to dispell evil spirits. My friend Michelle says "your word is your wand" meaning what you say will surely come to pass. And so I will share with you the words I wrote five years ago, when I was at a critically low ebb, and I will try to take a dose of my own medicine.

I call it Loafers From the Sky and I wrote this in April 2005.

It’s been a bit of a rough go.

In the past five years, I’ve gotten divorced, been laid off twice, and filed for bankruptcy, once. My ex-husband came out of the closet and then went in-- to prison, for various and sordid sex crimes. My eldest son was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease, which wrings out my heart every time it twists up his gut. I lost my brother, unexpectedly, and met the love of my life at his funeral, even more unexpectedly, and then painfully learned that bad timing can trump even fate. Through all of this though, financial and professional peril, life and death and life altering events, the sweetest joys, the most devastating sorrows, through all of this drama, I’ve steered the mother ship. I have four children--who are now practically grown, the youngest is fifteen. They are wise beyond their years. And they are wise asses, incredibly funny, resilient, remarkable and ordinary in the very best ways possible.

After my most recent lay off, which is more terrifying than the last one, since I am now the sole provider for this “little family that could,” I was heading back from an appointment with my tax guy and I called a good friend to ease his mind that I was solvent, for at least a month. I’d scheduled an appointment with the taxman right away--knowing I was going to need the tax refund this year more than ever. After he’d filed my taxes electronically, in about fifteen seconds flat, saying, “sorry, you have fewer deductions and more income this year, so your tax return is considerably less than last year. And, sorry to hear about your job loss. That will be $300 please,” I headed out to the car, grateful for the promise of at least some money coming in. I called my lawyer friend, who counseled me through the first lay-off.

“I feel like I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop,” I whined.

“Darlin', it’s already dropped,” he chuckled.

“Yeah, but somebody’s got an unlimited supply of loafers,” I fired back without hesitation.

No sooner had I uttered those words than I thought, “WAIT!” Do over. I need to rethink this.

I was NOT set upon this earth to be the poster child for hard luck stories. I am not a lifetime member of the “Tragedy R Us” club. I am reminded of the baptismal vows we recite every time a baby is sprinkled with holy water, “do you reject Satan and all his empty promises?” and we solemnly affirm, “I do.”

And, I do.

I say this now, for the record and for all time: “I reject you, tragedy. I mock you, pain and loneliness. I denounce you, lifetime of sadness. I challenge you, fear.”

Because my life is not about fear.

Fear of the bill collector, the tax accessor, the car mechanic, the disease merchant or the devil. Fear of the sometimes screaming, aching, violent loneliness that stands at the edge of my mind,wagging its hateful finger, saying, “you will always be alone, you will always be alone, YOU will always be alone.”

Because I am not.

I have the bill collectors.

And my children, who share my blood, my dreams, my perverted sense of humor, my journey, my neurosis, my triumphs, tragedies, my money or lack thereof, my car and my dog.

And I have my friends, who humor me, love me, scold me and cajole me so that my life is not about fear.

It’s not about frantically, desperately proving my worthiness on paper, retrieving every morsel of written communication I’ve ever earned a dime from to parade in front of prospective check signers, hoping that soon, very soon, they will be dumping my data into their data bank, so I can, once again, live the good life of automatic deposit. Nice, as that may be, my life, my time on this planet is about far, far more than this temporary Titanic.

My life is about love.
absolute boundless love, selfless and selfish love --
the flicker of desire, no matter how fleeting, and being brave enough to feel it.
friend love, the “I’ll carry the torch and help you through the dark” or
“I’ll hold the flashlight while you connect the jumper cables” kind of love,
and the eternal flame of maternal love, from mine and to mine, with the bedrock truth that this brand of love stands for all time.

And peace,
my life is about peace.
The peace that comes from understanding that my time on earth is not about fear.
It’s about the wisdom and grace, the humor and compassion which cascades and covers us in radiant warmth, when we share our human condition, helping us laugh to keep from crying, because we are indeed, not alone.

I am not alone.

The cable guy is at the door and he wants a check.

So, I wrote that five years ago. My mother has passed since then. Pete the 14-year-old "King of Dogs" has passed and we have Libby, "The Replacement Dog" now. Indeed, we have a new health crisis with my brother Don, I've dated a few more duds and I'm mostly broke as a joke. But the friends remain ever strong, the kids--phenomenal. And here's why I'm not feeling so scared tonight:

• I have three new offers for Friday night movie dates.

• My friend Kit says next time he's in town, he'll pour the wine while I drive.

• Linda says, "just eat cookies."

• Amy's on the prowl for men for me to date.
  

• My friend's dad Rene' is back from Haiti, sad, but safe.
  

• My friend's son Michael, is making remarkable progress and they'll bring him out of the coma in coming days.

• My brother Don's cancer is responding AMAZINGLY well to the chemo. His tumors have shrunk some 90%.
  

Who am I to be afraid?

Who'd Sign Up for This?

Can you hear me now?

I know it's been a while. But everything I've had to say the past couple of weeks has been so downbeat, I figured I'd give you a break.

And even though I appreciated the sweet comments from Anonymous on my Christmas Eve story, in which he compared my gesture of Peace, Goodwill Toward That Man, to Leonard Cohen lyrics, "...that's how the light gets in," I'm not feeling very illuminated right now.

The new decade has gotten off to a dark start -in the world and in my heart.

The magnitude of human suffering in Haiti makes 96% of our lame complaints seem trivial to the point of, anyone who's caught belly aching about routine hassles should be sent to Haiti to dig through the rubble with a spoon. Yet, all things being relative, the crisis that impacts us the most, is the one which hits closest to home. I have two good friends who've had family members narrowly escape death in recent days --the kind of thing that makes me rush home for a group hug with my kids and my dog.

One friend's step-dad was near the epicenter of the earthquake. He's Haitian, but has lived and practiced medicine in St. Louis for decades. He still goes to Haiti every year to take medicine and supplies to a small clinic he operates there. He was unaccounted for, of course, for some time after the earthquake, to the terror of his family here. When he was able to report that he was alive, he was far from well, as he had immediately turned his attention to administering aid to the injured, which must be like putting a turniquet on an elephant with its head chopped off. After several days, his relatives there insisted he get out of Haiti. With escaped prisoners roaming the countryside, they felt it unsafe for him at his remote clinic. He is 86.

Another good friend has been keeping a bedside vigil in the ICU, where his 23-year-old son remains in a coma from a terrible car accident. They believe he must have hit a patch of ice on the freeway, his car spun around and was hit head-on by another car. The impact pushed his vehicle up on the guard rail, where it teetered, dangling off the edge of the overpass, dangerously close to falling to the deck below. Can you imagine seeing that video over and over again on the TVs in the ER, where they'd been escorted by the police who came knocking at the door at 2:00 A.M.? But, thanks to God and medical miracles, he's making steady progress everyday. It will be a long and difficult recovery --with many issues yet to be revealed, much less, resolved.

Now, one might (emphasis on "might") argue that instead of bad luck, these people had good luck; the 86 year old doc survived the earthquake, the fact that the 23-year-old is still alive is nothing short of miraculous -- one could say they're lucky-- if they're feeling all spiritually jiggy with it.

But I'm not. Not this week, not right now. The bastards have got me down. (Don't even get me started on politics) Between my brother battling cancer and close friends who are going through so much pain and fear, the world just feels damn hateful. The dingy gray sky, which has doggedly hung, with fits and starts of misty rain and fog, over the St. Louis skyline for the past week is the same color as my mood: dingy gray.

I was driving to the movie Friday night, alone. I couldn't find anybody to go, so I went by myself. I do this more often than I care to admit, part of my schict you know, being impervious to feeling lonely. Besides, when you go by yourself, you can scarf down popcorn, you don't have to share it and you don't have to worry if the other person likes the movie or not. Of course, there's nobody to hold hands with either.

So, I'm driving along, quite literally shrouded in fog, and that narrow passage felt like my life, my path, my journey. Barely able to see five feet in front of me, there was darkness, misty rain, and danger all around. The local cops are like cockroaches along the baseboards and I had taken my glass of wine in a Dixie cup from the house. So I was on the lookout for the fuzz -- and praying. (Don't worry, I see the paradox here, but believe me, I was not intoxicated. I had stopped at home to change out of my work clothes and let the dog out. Who wants to throw out a perfectly good glass of wine?)

I'm driving and I'm praying. You know, that short one which goes; "please, please, please God."

I was praying for my friend's son, praying for the people of Haiti, praying for my own kids' safety, praying for my brother. But I felt like a hypocrite because I was praying from a place of fear -- a sniveling, cynical, weary, fearful blob of discouragement.

My mother would be ashamed of me.

Not that she was a holy roller, but because she had a backbone of steel. Right after Rick was arrested, when the enormity of the responsibility piled up on me, usually when I was folding a pile of laundry in the basement, I’d call my mom and ruin her day.

"So what's going on?" she'd ask.

A thousand miles away, we both knew she couldn’t fix what was wrong. She couldn’t fill in the empty spaces with a solution or a blank check or a cure, when I’d pause during the conversation and she knew my silence meant tears. I’d take a deep breath and attempt to disguise the sound of my snotty nose. No matter, the burden of what I was dealing with at that given moment traveled instantly across four states, like a pus-filled lump in the phone line. She couldn’t pop the blister and she couldn’t fill the void; her heart was simply broken for me, as mine was broken for my kids, having been dealt such a hurtful blow by their father. Hesitating, trying to hold back the tears, she'd nudge me, “go ahead, honey” and I’d keep talking. I'd say all the things to her that I could not say to anyone else, not anyone. And then, when I was emotionally spent, calmed down, my pressure valve relieved enough to make it through another day, she’d add, “you can’t get tired now, baby.”

So, maybe that's it. She's not around anymore to allow me to vent and recover, to tell me "you just gotta keep on keeping on."

Who then will step in to cover my vent? It's times like these which remind me that "little Miss Impervious" ain't so tough. Wonder what dating site I'd go to, to find someone who'd understand?

Alas, the Excess

Quick! Somebody call 9-1-1!

I’m stuck in the dressing room at Macy’s with a boa constrictor “body shaper” squashing my boobs and it’s not moving up or down !

I’m as serious as a heart attack.

How in the hell do women wear these things? I’d gone into the foundations dressing room with about 15 of these various "enhancers", (the artist formerly known as "girdle") to see if I could rein in some of my girth for an important client meeting the next day. I’d bought a new sweater and a sassy short skirt and I didn’t want to look like Homer Simpson.

I was lucky to get out of Macy’s alive.

How in the hell do women wear these things? I tried on the kind which are just bottoms, which is like stepping into a garden hose. It holds in your gut and poofs out your butt. I tried just the tops, which smooth out the bra roll, and prop up your breasts, much like wearing a hot water bottle. Then, I tried the “all in one” which theoretically you put on over your head, then smooth it all the way down, over your “excess” and then hold in place with a handy little hook and eye fastener in the crotch. This keeps it from popping back up like a window shade pulled too tight.

This, friends, is where I got in BIG trouble. I swear to God I thought I was going to be forced to call the Macy’s clerk to the rescue (if a person could find one) to help me out of this damn contraption! Except I couldn’t stop laughing. I was laughing like a fool, laughing out loud, all by myself, the only woman in the fitting rooms. Laughing like when you’re on a scary ride at the amusement park, laughing in the face of danger, because I had the enhancer wadded up under my arms and I couldn’t reach between my shoulder blades to yank it down. And with the back stuck, of course, the front was stuck too. If dressing rooms had cameras, I could have been an instant, global YouTube phenomenon. Think about your wettest, tightest one-piece swimsuit on the hottest, most muggy day of the century, and maybe you’re nine months pregnant.

Okay, my belly doesn’t quite look like that. It’s not that solid. It’s more, you know, jiggly, which unless you’re Santa Claus, is not particularly appealing. And in my continuing quest for love, (and to look ten pounds lighter for an important pitch meetingthe next day) I figured what I couldn’t fix over a few months, I could fix with $50.

Apparently not. It’s back to the gym, back to the diet, back to the same damn January resolve I've had for years! Better than facing asphyxiation from your girdle though. I'm standing there in the dressing room, with the body shaper snapping me in the face, as I finally tug and pull it back over my head, thinking, what in the world would you do on a date? If you went to the ladies room, the guy would be sitting in an empty restaurant by the time you secured that hook and eye crotch closure. What would happen if you’re casually drinking a glass of wine, you cross your legs the wrong way and "boing" the damn thing snaps? Even more frightening, what happens if it's "the night?”

You’re back at his house, you go into his bathroom,

“I’ll be just a minute....”

Then ten minutes later you’re screaming for the jaws of life.

“HEY! HEY! I NEED SOME HELP IN HERE!!”

Or, you simply attempt to extricate yourself the spandex torture chamber on your own, desperate combing through the new fella's medicine chest in search of baby powder, or Vaseline, knowing full well that the increased anxiety over not being able to get out of your girdle is making your body swell up like someone’s guilty finger after they snuck on someone else’s engagement ring!

I threw caution to the wind and didn’t even wear control-top panty hose for my date on New Year’s Eve. Nope, I wore a short dress, leggings and boots, none of which came off at any time during this nice respectable date, with a reasonably respectable guy. It was my second date with “Looks Like Paul McCartney With Grey Hair and Plays Guitar.” New Year’s Eve is a precariously bad night for just a second date, but he was game and so was I, neither of us wanting to be the odd man out at somebody’s party, come midnight. This time last year I was paired up with another single mom having dinner with a married couple, friends of ours. Grateful as I was to not be a total loser on New Year’s Eve, I vowed that would be the last time I'd be another woman’s safety date on the second most significant date night of year.

No such angst this New Year's Eve. Guitar Man and I went to a party given by one of my best girlfriend’s, who has been seeing her on-line beau for about 14 months! Success can come from Internet dating! So can weirdness. In a true moment of the perils of on-line personals, we stepped into her living room and she exclaimed,

“Oh my God! John! John, right? I know you!”

To which he replied, “Wow....I know you, too! Where do I know you from.....?”

It was slightly awkward. I’m thinking for a second, then leaned over, whispering to her sister,


“Has she had sex with this guy?”

To which her sister busted a gut, because we both knew this would be most unlikely for her sister, the good girl. Still, the question hung in the air for a moment, like fish you fried two days ago. Imagine showing up at a party thinking you’ve just drug in someone’s Match.com reject! Can the world get any smaller? Even with 20,000 flavors to choose from, isn’t it amazing how we tend to gravitate toward that comforting, familiar, plain-old-vanilla who lives right around the corner?

Turns out that’s precisely where he knew her from, a neighborhood coffee shop, where he'd hit on her a few times.

“But she didn’t want to go out with me,” he confided later, making me feel worse, like I was stupid enough TO go out with him. (This would be verified later.)

They’d also bumped into each other at a couple of parent/teacher conferences as well. Both avid gardeners, somehow they’d struck of a conversation over the kind of grass you don’t smoke. I find this reassuring, that it’s still possible to meet someone somewhere other than the Internet, although the only people I ever met at parent teacher conferences were pissed off teachers.

Practical as it may be, the proof of partnering via the Internet remains to be seen. Guitar Man and I did have a nice time -- we laughed, he was at ease with everybody, conversant and engaging. We drank champagne, and kicked off the New Year with a nice kiss. It’s when he said, “I’d like to rip your clothes off” that it became a bit much.When do men grow up? I ask you? When do some men grow up? I suppose I should be flattered, I didn’t have to spend $50 on a body shaper.

He was a bit much all the way around though, really. Anyone who has Beanie Babies on his dashboard and asked if I had any weed on our first date, well, what can I say? I was giving him the benefit of the doubt on the second date and, okay, I'll admit it, I was a wee bit desperate. We rang in the New Year and I promptly set him out, just like the Christmas tree and the leftover cheesecake I kicked to the curb.

It's high time I got my house in order -- my youngest child is twenty years old and the "baby weight" excuse expired about 19 years ago. A gal can’t feel truly confident about this whole dating deal if she’s toting around twenty extra pounds. You can't really hide it, of tuck it, or stuff in or squash it. The hard, cold fact is; the reason women buy rubberized garments to reduce their buns and hide their rolls, is because they’ve eaten too many buns and rolls. I know this. Who on the planet does not know this?

So, with the conviction of someone who's just been spared a hanging, I am declaring war on my fat. You may mock me six months from now, but that’s okay, I’m putting it out there. Me and my excess are going back to the gym. And this time I have real incentive. My eldest son is getting married next fall. I met the future in-laws last month and dammit Gumby, they’re thin.

I’ve got nine months to look dazzling, instead of avoiding the wedding photographer like someone with the croup. And who knows? There might even be a man in the picture.