Rebellious Thoughts of a Woman

Lessons of the Road

Since the summer I have been teaching my younger daughter to drive. She took her first baby-driver steps driving between rows of parking spots in a huge, empty lot. Then she drove around quiet residential neighborhoods until she could confidently turn on the turn signal and steer at the same time, and I wasn’t constantly slamming on my imaginary brakes. But when we went out into the streets of the real road world, I learned more about other people than I did about my daughter’s driving ability.

In the most public of places we act as if we are in the most private of places, revealing far too much of our personalities. We’re not just surreptitiously picking our noses in our cars—on the whole, we’re selfish and mean, with only the occasional glimmer of kindness.

At first, when the 35mph speed limit was beyond her capabilities, she was constantly honked at, tailgated, cut off, and given looks-to-kill. For goodness’ sake, the girl was trying to drive carefully and all she got for that was an endless line of virtual middle fingers. The worst offenders were, no surprise here—everyone. Who made us all the Grand Patrollers of the Road? Are we all emergency room doctors about to give birth?

But worse than arrogance and impatience is the fact that my daughter no longer thinks the people of the world are law-abiding citizens. How many people has she seen break the laws she studied so thoroughly to pass the “written” test. Folks, we’re going through red lights and stop lights as if they are road spam. We speed and cut each other off and race across double yellow lines because, well, because we want to. The impression that I conveyed to my daughter that the world was, on the whole, a fair and decent place has been trampled. She now doubts everything I ever taught her, except to definitely not pick her nose.

Last week, after she had been yielding for quite some time at a busy intersection to no avail, she asked me why people speed up when they see she is trying to get in? What does a mother say to that, except the absolute truth as I have come to see from the passenger seat: People are selfish, they just care about themselves and getting whatever advantage they can, however insignificant. I had thought that the driving lessons would focus on maintaining distance from the car in front of you, always checking your mirrors, and never glancing at the cellphone, but no, this was the reality that presented itself.

But the other day, thank goodness for that day, there was hope that the world I had explained to her might exist on some streets. She was in the middle lane, signaling to get into the right lane. Three cars sped up, because, well, they could, and passed her. And then, at the light, the woman in the car to our right asked if we want to turn into that lane and that it would be okay. I will add that she was a refined-looking, long-retired woman wearing beige suede gloves. Maybe the manners of days by gone aren’t all gone. And just perhaps, after my daughter has experienced what it’s like to be at the receiving end of both possibilities she will elect to drive and live with civility.

What do we get from our behavior? According to the US Census Bureau, in 2009 there were 10.8 million road accidents and 35,900 deaths. We lose property, we lose limbs, we lose livelihoods, we lose people, we lose a sense of community.

And what are we teaching our young? Sure, it’s a pain to wait at a light when no one’s coming. And it’s annoying that you need to drive at the speed limit when you’re such a good driver and you really really need to get where you’re going. Not to mention those tailgating speed demons who force you to move over, for what? Just so you can wait behind them at a light?

When does it stop? When do we decide that all of the rules apply to each of us, all of the time? It’s not just about breaking rules, it’s about breaking the threads that hold a society together—the threads that create a society.

Have we become islands in our little pods?

How Personal of a Personal Day

I took a personal day today. I just couldn’t take one more day of the routine. I couldn’t take one more day of everyone before me. I couldn’t do it. I needed some time to not care about anything--everything.

It was, obviously, supposed to be a “me first” day. And it was, when I contemplated it. For the few days leading up to the decision to take this specific day and then for a few days after I set the date and arranged for a sub, it was my day. I thought about where I would go for lunch and what I would buy with the $100 Hanukkah gelt (money) from my mother: shoes or shirt, or even both. And I wondered where I would spend the time before and after those activities. And it was lovely, this leisurely way of thinking. I was anticipating my day off as much as a teacher looks forward to summer vacation.

But then I realized that I need to bring my car in for service and it would be better to do it today than on the weekend. And then I remembered my credit card bill; it was high, not from purchases now hanging in my closet or on me, but from living life and going on vacation during winter break to visit Kenny's mother and my daughter on the other coast. So I decided I could survive without any new things. And the refrigerator, well, I teach on Tuesday nights after a whole day of teaching, so the leftovers had already been finished. Someone would need to make dinner, and since I’m the only cook in the house, it would be me. Why not make something nice, make the delicious, multi-stepped, Maltese squash pie that Kenny’s mother makes? So there was the supermarket, the cooking, and the cleaning up. Oh, and since I had spent the whole weekend providing feedback on essays for seniors, I hadn’t had time to provide feedback on the essays the freshman had written, I needed to get those done—since I already have a backlog of essays to grade this weekend. So instead of reading, writing or staring into space while I waited for my car to get fixed, I worked.

Still, I managed to get in lunch at a Mexican restaurant, picked for the frozen margarita that could accompany the meal, and the proximity to the house.

And then I went home and napped for an hour and a half.

And I talked with my older daughter out in LA, and my mother in Florida, and I took Poops for a walk in the rain. And I just finished reading a book.

I guess it was as personal a day as I could have.

I’m already anticipating taking another one in March; it’s a month with no days off--too much routine. Personal day. If this is how personal it can be, I say it’s worth it: the combination of me and them, the inability to only tend to myself, or, perhaps, that is utterly what has come to be personal for me.

My Father

My father died on December 21st two years ago.

Since that time the unbelievable happened: we continued to live. It’s not hard to recall the intense pain and loss we experienced—experience. At the time it seemed inconceivable that life could continue when he was no longer with us. How is it that we are here and he is not? The power of that thought was overwhelming and guilt-inducing.

But, life does go on. Millennia of loss with life going on. That joining in with generations of mourners was what made me understand that I, too, can go on.  

I still have the seven-day Yahrzeit candle that was lit when we sat shiva for him. I still have a voice mail message from him—from two months before his death, days before he found out that he was dying of esophageal cancer. And I still have an intense feeling of missing an important component in my life. That’s what comes, I guess, from his having been such a kind, loving man—to his family and everyone he knew. A quiet redhead.

Maybe this sense of him that does not leave me nor can it leave me is the stuff of which ghosts are created. An image of the person—physical and internal—who passed, who was loved and whose loss is always present.

My mother said that he spoke to her in their bedroom after he died.

Death. A part of life. It would be nice if it weren’t so. Thank goodness for internal flashbacks and the recollection of images and words and gestures and even sense of person from days of fullness. Thank goodness, indeed, for my father having been my father.

Thanksgiving 2011

It’s Thanksgiving, but we’re having pizza and beer for dinner. Tomorrow we’ll celebrate Thanksgiving. Do I need to be surrounded by family to prove that I have what to be thankful for? And do I have to serve the requisite main course and sides and desserts (okay, the apple pie is ready for consumption tonight) and conversation-round-the-table about what we’re thankful for to make this a thankful day for me?

My boyfriend/partner is getting the pizzas. It will take him at least an hour at the frozen pizza section in the supermarket to pick out just the right pizzas. Luckily they close early today. On pizza and beer Fridays we always have two frozen pizzas: one veggie and one mucho cheese-o. But he will take his time thinking about which pizzas I would prefer tonight. The decision will be made by him making experienced-based assumptions about my taste buds today, not definites about himself.

It is the two of us, and Poops, everyone else is in absentia.

My older daughter is at college on the other coast. But the ticket cost is not the reason why she won’t be here. No, she’s there celebrating with her boyfriend and friends. And I am thankful and grateful that she has found a place where she is happy and people with whom she finds herself blossoming. I’ll never forget the mother stomach-lump that developed in an instant when her first grade teacher told me that she never smiles in class. And she has always been a solemn child. The curse of the bookworm, perhaps? Her happiness, from whatever distance, is to rejoice in.

And my younger daughter. Well, it’s her fault that we’re having Turkey Day tomorrow and not today. A friend invited her to celebrate Thanksgiving with her family. Maybe they feel sorry for her that we’re divorced and her father is not around and that it’s just Kenny and me here on this family celebration day, or maybe they are thankful that their daughter has such a wonderful friend. I decided that Thanksgiving should be more about her happiness and gratitude to two women and the homes they make and make her feel comfortable in rather than sticking to the calendar (besides, we don’t watch football and we don’t Black Friday shop), so she’s with her friend’s family today and us tomorrow.

And my mother down in retirementland is going to the movies and then for a non-turkey dinner with a couple that doesn’t make her feel like the lonely widow. The holidays really are the hardest for her; there doesn’t seem to be a before and after, just a before, with my father—and the way it should be, not this being alone business.

My brother. A bit of aggravation there just to make sure that the subterranean theme of how families can be dangerous to one’s health is maintained even if Thanksgiving is not; he did not invite us to his family’s Thanksgiving Day repast. Granted, they’re five hours away, but I used to do the drive, even when it took nine hours in only-stop traffic. That is until I decided one year that I’ll wait for my invitation rather than invite myself. So here I sit, at home and not in Thanksgiving Day traffic since the invite never came.

Thanksgiving. Yes, I’m thankful that the people in my life seem happy and well-adjusted and purposeful. And me, I’m happy that I’m not stressed about cooking, because what kind of pressure can I have doing it a day late?

And I’m also thankful that at 50 (or 49 twice in a row) I feel healthy, I feel wise, I feel pretty, and I feel.

Happiness and Thanks to You All!

Why Do I Talk to My Mother?

Sometimes when I hear the Vaudevillesque ringtone I set for my mother’s calls I roll my eyes, press “Quiet,” and continue with my life. At other times, before the “answer phone call” instinct evolves into reflection and a pass on answering, I answer the call. And then, after the starter wave of information about her day, I wonder how I let myself be tricked again.

It’s not that I don’t get along with my mother or even that I dislike her, but I’m tired of the “world-revolves around your mother” conversations that we have. Sure, there’s the occasional “So how are you?” and “How are the girls?” but if I venture into an answer beyond “Fine,” I find her attention span diminished. She’s bored hearing my response or, and this is worse considering that her life and mine have never had anything in common, she’s done it/knows it/anticipated it, whatever “it” may be, from her place in sunny Florida.

I have learned that I need to accept that these calls are about her, they are not about me—that time has passed. I know that I’m not a young woman first stepping out on her own who needs all the concern and compassion she can get from her mother to shore herself up against the cruel, cruel world, but, seriously, isn’t my mother supposed to care more about me than the chicken she got at Costco that she’ll freeze in individual servings for when she’s in the mood for chicken?

Her loneliness is understandable. My father passed away almost two years ago. She went from having my father by her side to listen to her every critique for fifty-four years to having her distracted daughter via cellphone. One thing is clear: my father was more patient than I had ever imagined because, surely, she has not recently discovered the need to digest her day’s minutiae in talk. No, this must be a habit that she has transferred from my father to me. Before his passing, her calls had the endless detail of things of absolutely no importance, but the calls and the details weren’t endless, and, on occasion, there was a point. I had received the pearls that were gleaned after going through the mire with my father. Besides, she didn’t have as much time to chat since she needed to keep my father entertained with her non-stop talk show.

All that aside, there’s just so far compassion can take you when you hear the deliberations taken to go or not to go to tennis, and then to go or not to go out with “the girls” (who are all in their 70’s and 80’s) for breakfast after tennis. And to hear for the unknownth time that friend A doesn’t dress as nicely as she does, and that friend B thinks that restaurant A is good but she knows that it is not. Yes, I know, my life isn’t a fount of excitement, but at least I generally have a sense of audience and refrain from providing ad infinitum details ad infinitum times.

Unfortunately, I generally check out of our phone calls; I just can’t take the tone and substance of those conversations. Really? Does it matter? And that makes me feel bad. But I just can’t bring myself to focus on her monologue; it needs an accompaniment, like TV viewing needs food.

Maybe the point is that I had hoped that at some point from the time I became aware of her conversational limitations (at about fifteen) to now to have found more to my mother than she has revealed. But I have not. Is that why her calls are so hard on me? She is the sum of the details, and I need to accept that and stop expecting: voila, your philosopher-mother is on the line.

She is who she is—and she does a darn good job at being who she is. No, she is the best at it. No one does it better.

So here’s to you mom: You are who you are, fully. And I apologize for not having valued you before. Maybe at some point you’ll pause and I can tell you that. And if not, I will try, I will, to honor you for who you are—in all your glorious detailing. But maybe during shorter phone calls.

A Year of Mourning

For the past year I have been in mourning following the death of my father on December 21, 2009. (According to the Hebrew calendar Friday the tenth marked one year since he passed away on 4 Tevet 5770.) For this year I didn’t wear jewelry; traditionally, someone in mourning wears black, but I knew that there was no way I would be like a little Italian or Greek widow for a year (it had taken me long enough to stop wearing plain black or white as part of regaining enthusiasm for life after I exited from my marriage), but I did want to outwardly recognize my status of daughter-in-mourning. It felt good, if good can be used in this way; perhaps, appropriate as in: for me it was the appropriate thing to do to honor and commemorate my father.

One day I put on earrings in the house, just to make sure that the holes hadn’t closed up.  It felt so weird—and wrong. Once I committed to a course of action, any deviation felt wrong. I noted that the holes were open, and then immediately took the earrings out.

Yesterday my younger daughter asked me if I would start wearing jewelry now; I said that I would start again after Tuesday. I didn’t realize that she had even heard me when I told her how I would be mourning her grandfather.

I’m pleased with what I did. For a moment I wondered about not wearing jewelry again, but then I realized that that would, in some way, negate what I had done and lessen what it meant for me. So next week, when Kenny and I go to San Francisco for a few days, I plan to look for a necklace (and perhaps matching earrings) to mark the end of this official mourning period (in Judaism, the child of someone who dies is supposed to be in mourning for one year) as well as to be a different kind of reminder of my father, and my life—and how life continues even when it seems so full of tears [teers] and tears [tairs].

A year ago I was in tears curled up on my bed, unable to sleep and now, now I tear up, but that is all. It is so upsetting and unsettling how we move on with our lives. Last year I couldn’t fathom how the life around me goes on as it had before—untouched—as if nothing significant had happened, and now, now I am part of that movement of life. Granted, there is a missing part of my circle, but still I am within the flow part of the ebb and flow. Even my mother seems to be moving; while I am not sure if it is forward, because what is forward, really, when talking about living your life without the love and life of your life by your side, but she has not turned into a caricature of a widow sitting for hours on end with a cold cup of tea unable to do things for herself. After all, she did give the “looks could kill” look of a true New Yorker to a neighbor who told her to get out of the street when my mother was waiting for the Super Shuttle van to pick her up—it came an hour late—at the end of her visit here last week.

But I do feel guilty in some way because my life has progressed in such a lovely way, yet my father is not here to be a part of it. I guess that is the hardest thing about losing someone—that they aren’t a part of your life any more. Yes, I know, when you think about that person it is keeping him alive, but, really, it’s you keeping them alive, it is not them being alive. And so there is a frozenness to my memories, to my life—before my father died and after.

How do you envelope mourning into your life after the intense ache of surprise and loss is over? And is it mourning or is it something else? Is it sorrow? Is there a word that covers this here and not here quality that one experiences when a loved one dies? I don’t want to check the thesaurus because this is not a word hunt—it is a feeling hunt.

Surprisingly, there is also a fullness to how I feel since there is a sense that I am living or experiencing my life for myself as well as for him—acknowledging what he might have thought or said or reacted or hoped for. There is also, though, a sense of guilt that my life has moved on, that it has changed. I know it is wrong to feel that way, but that pricking is still there, calling my attention to my here and now, as well as my then, when he was still here as a shoulder and a counsel.

It is such a complicated business this respect for self and this respect for those we mourn. 

During my year of mourning a friend’s father passed away, an acquaintance’s mother-in-law passed away, and my father’s older sister was operated on for having the same kind of cancer that he had (esophageal). And my father’s younger sister was in a car accident. And my older daughter no longer speaks to her father since he insulted her and hurt her in ways I thought were only reserved for me. And a kind and loving man has entered my life so that he sits round the dining room table with me every night, and wakes up with me every morning. And I have lost weight and am finally pleased or settled with how I look and where my life is. And I have had students respect and not respect me. And my younger daughter has been sweet and bitter towards me. And I no longer talk to my brother because I got tired of always calling him and I got hurt beyond the desire to invite more hurts that he didn’t find it in himself to see me as a part of his life.

So my life is big and little, as it was before.

And the world is still on its axis, spinning and rotating and circling.

My father died last year on December 21st; it is now December 18th. The week before he died he and my mother called to say that “it’s not good,” so my younger daughter and I flew down to Florida to be with him. We were with him for three days, leaving the day before he died.

We cried in the chapel during the funeral service; and we cried in the cemetery as we shoveled and threw in fistfuls of dirt over him within his pine box coffin; and we cried during the Shiva service; and we cried in private.

You mourn the passing of a loved one by doing the rituals and by creating rituals and by receiving his presence within the forward path of your life. 

You mourn someone by still loving him within the newness that comes from living.