What a spectacular, lovely and unexpected day.  The sun is shining, a warm wind is blowing in the dead of January,  it’s 67 degrees, a whisper of what’s to come.  Spring is tickling my ear and I want more.  It’s mortifying, creepy, and delicious.  If there is ever a day to embrace climate change I’m convinced today is it and it’s time to get out of the house and shake winter’s gloom.

Walking along the paved path encircling  Lincoln Park, I notice all the dead and dying tufts of grass, the tall oak trees canvasing the city-scape.  The empty baseball field, the tennis courts.  There are walkers everywhere.  Some are in groups, others alone.  Some stand in the grass doing calisthenics.  Some perch along the benches that dot the park or recline in the sun on the bleachers. It seems everyone is here today, trying to get in on winter in pause.

The southern end of the park hosts a kidney-shaped pond surrounded by dirty cement and pockets of flooded walking paths.  It is full of dead oak leaves and algae.  Several months ago a young woman died in that pond: beaten, raped and suffocated in its murky brown water.  This poor woman was doing her usual early morning jog before work and had the misfortune of encountering what can only be described as pure evil.  I always wondered what her dying thoughts were, what the last thing was that she saw in that dreary stench, or if it was too dark, too fetid to see anything at all.  Were the fish aware of what was happening?  Did she see them swimming in the distance, perhaps distraught on her behalf?  What about the turtles that call the pond home?  Did they scuttle away from her as she struggled or did they come closer to investigate?   It’s an awful thought, and an unimaginable fate.  Thinking about it brings me to my own mortality and narcissism.  I ponder my fate.

My dog who has joined me on this morning stroll through the park is only interested in smelling all the smells that came before her.  Myriad pisses, wet duck poop, a squirrel’s dropped nut, the metal poles that house the blue emergency call boxes that were installed after the pond murder.  I never seen her smell the flowers.  Always it’s some remnant of someone else’s existence.  I grow tired of her never-ending need to stop and sniff so I tug on her leash.  “Come on, Georgie” I say, irritated by the fact that she won’t keep pace.  I came here to get some exercise, come on.  Let’s go!

As I start to pick up the pace I can feel my stomach protruding over the waist of my jeans.  The pressure is always there in the background, constantly pressing against me.  I think about how later I’ll have to sit at the edge of my bed to take them off, as it’s getting harder for me to balance on one foot, trying to advance the leg of the skinny jean down my rotund thigh, and over my bulging ankles through that too small skinny foot opening.   Once the jeans have been peeled off I’ll note the impression of the zipper, and the detail of the waistband against my stomach.  A reminder of how incapable I am.

Where will I walk when we move to Rhode Island?  Will there be a park that’s big enough to explore, to stride around, so that I won’t feel like a hamster in a wheel going around and around in the same boring circle?  How will this relocation affect my overall motivation?  Will I want to move my body more and drink less?  Or will I swell to 200 pounds and day drink in my walk-in closet?  We’re bound to have a walk-in closet in the suburbs.  It’s inevitable. I think of all the possibilities and I’m reminded of the old adage, no matter where you go, there you are.

Rounding the top of the hill I pass the ornate limestone fountain under construction, perched in the middle of the traffic circle.  The water is drained, its basin in pieces, as the facelift is underway.  Its fabled centerpiece, the mighty Triton has been left undisturbed amidst the chaos.  He sits mouth agape, watching the cars go by.  It strikes me as ridiculous, that the god of the sea would reside in this urban fountain, surrounded by such earthly things.   Triton looks so misplaced, staring out into the distance, towards Newark.  His skin is etched in soot, sullied by the plumes of exhaust smoke from the never-ending stream of traffic.   Oh dear merman, why have we forsaken you?

Perched on high keeping lord over this empty vessel.  No wars to wage, no army to amass, no fear to strike, no ocean to tame, no nebulous deep.  Nothing to do but stand and stare in stoic disbelief as the earth spins.

Yesterday was the third day of sixth grade.  Each of those three days, when I pick you up from school, you have had not a frown, not a smile, but a very blasé expression on your face.  If the look on your face were a sound it would be monotone.  You greet me stoically, and when I ask the obligatory, “so how’d it go today?” your stock answer, these past three days has been, “fine.”  I despise the word fine. It is tepid, and shallow, and useless.

We walk around to the other side of the school to gather your sister, who is smiling and bounds up the sidewalk to greet us.  She has stories to tell about her new teacher, her new friends, and the experiments she is working on in science.  She is beaming.

Once home, you extract a multi-page math homework packet from your bulging, ridiculously overstuffed backpack and tell me it’s due on Monday.  I can feel my heart start to race immediately and I begin to sweat.  I take the packet from you, and turn to the last page.  There are 29 problems, and the last problem has three parts.  I flip through the other pages and see there are more problems that have several parts.  Many questions come to mind.  How long is this going to take?  Should I cancel all our weekend plans?  When does your father come back from his business trip?

“I need help,” you say.  “Well,” I say, “do what you can on your own and then if you need me I will help.”  I try to give the worksheet packet back but you don’t lift a finger to receive it.  You aren’t thrilled with my response.  What you want is for me to walk through each problem, explaining every step as I go,  but I refuse.

Honestly I don’t remember much about math.  I don’t remember how to multiply mixed numbers, or what the order of operations is, or even how to round to the nearest hundredth.  It’s not that I can’t do it.  I just need a minute.  I need to think about it.  I may need to consult the internet.  But there’s no way I can just jump right in.

It’s a depressing thought, not being able to readily solve these sixth grade math problems.  Actually they aren’t even sixth grade problems.  It’s a review of fifth grade problems.  I feel stupid and ineffective as a parent.  I question how I graduated from high school.  In order to prop myself up I remind myself that I was a pretty decent student, save for math.  Math dragged me down, prevented me from being on the honor roll, despite doing well in all my non-math honors and AP classes  over the years.

It makes me cringe to this day.  I suppose I’m mad at myself for not trying harder, or for  not seeking help while I was in school.  I guess my thinking at the time was well, this is the way it is, I have an issue with math, and nobody is good at everything.  In retrospect I know there were several things I could have done to help myself.  But for whatever reason it didn’t seem that important.  And up until this point, I’ve gotten through my life without having to care a bit about exponents.

“I need help, mommy.  I don’t remember how to do any of this.”  You don’t remember ANY of this from fifth grade?  Nothing?  I repeated the mantra about trying on your own first, and then I’d step in.  “Skip what you don’t know, we’ll work on it later.” I knew instinctively, from past experience, that this was not going to go well.

Exasperated, you picked up the walking stick we kept by the front door and started dragging it around the living room, leaving a zig zag depression in the Persian rug.  I refrained from yelling and gently asked you to not run the stick across the rug.  So you started dragging it across the wood floors instead.

“You never help me,” you whined.  I just smiled and said “that isn’t true.”  It went on like this for half an hour.  There were tears and fits of anger, pillows were thrown, pencils were broken.  You told me you hated me and that if you had to choose a parent you would choose daddy.  I really didn’t  take any of it seriously.  I didn’t  react much at all, expect to warn you that you may lose your phone privileges again, which I’m sure enraged you further.

At some point I sat down next to you on the couch and played an online video about order of operations. As I watched, you pretended not to notice.  Instead you kept banging the walking stick on the floor, groaning at the voice in the video, “God, just shut up.”  “Ugh, I hate your stupid voice.”  “This isn’t helping at all.”  But it did help and the things you thought you forgot started to come back to you.  And me.

After watching a couple of videos, and solving a few problems, It was time to get ready for bed.  But there was so much more to do, so many more problems to solve.  “You can do more tomorrow” I said.  You reluctantly made your way upstairs, carrying the walking stick with you, and sat in the middle of the hallway staring at the stick as it lay on the floor.

The walking stick was fashioned from a large branch you found during a hike in the woods about a year ago.  You asked if you could bring it home,  and your dad used his small pick axe to whittle  it into a sort of walking stick.  As you stared at the stick at your feet, I could tell something was brewing.  Was it guilt?  Forgiveness?  Resilience?  Please please let it be resilience.  There, I left you to your thoughts.

Half an hour later you pushed open the door to your sister’s bedroom where she and I were reading together and declared, “I’m leaving.  I don’t want to live like this anymore.”  The walking stick rested on your shoulder  and at the end you had tied a purple bandana, which was folded in such a way as to form a cloth bowl, and using a piece of old yarn, you tied the bandana to the stick.  

You didn’t seem angry. In fact you had a little smile on your face.  The first smile I had seen since school started.  I could tell you were just fishing for my reaction, and perhaps looking for acknowledgement that you had in fact thought this through quite well, and were fully prepared and equipped to run away from home and start a new life on your own.

Your sister and I followed you downstairs and as I surveyed what you had packed in the bandana: one photo each of your grandmother, the dog, and one with you and your sister, taken at a photo studio seven years earlier, both of you dressed in elaborate Christmas dresses all red plaid and silk bows.  Along with the photos you added a dollar bill.

Not everything you wanted to bring fit into the bandana bowl so you tied a plastic shopping bag to the walking stick which held the rest of your supplies:  a change of clothes, bathing suit and goggles, and the book Are you There God?  It’s me, Margaret.  The final bit of luggage you packed was a small bottle of hand sanitizer which you left strapped to the end of the stick, closest to your shoulder, as one would, for easy access.   But the pièce de résistance was the greying stuffed whale that your father had bought for you several years ago.  Whistle the Whale.  You carried him in the crook of your left arm while the walking stick rested on your right shoulder.  I thought to myself this kid has grace.  She wouldn’t last a hot minute on the streets of Jersey City but god damnit I love her for packing this mish mosh of sentimental tween booty.

“We need a picture of this,” I declare,  “I may never see you again.”  Then, staring at your bare feet I calmly stated, “you’ll want to wear your shoes.  Sneakers are best.”  You’re really smiling now, voice lilting, telling me, “yeah mommy I know.  I was going to put my sneakers on.  And you’re right, mommy.  You probably won’t see me again.”

I want to remove the good things you packed in the bandana and stuff it instead with all the fear and anxiety we have, combined, over math, over rules and obligations, over underachieving and overanalyzing, over tomorrow and the next day, and the day after that and next year.  I want to throw in the snark and the sneer, the walls you are building around me and the control I try to preserve as your mother.

We can pack the walking stick and bandana up in the car and drive down to the Hudson River.  We’ll look at each other and giggle as we exit the car,   grabbing the stick by each end as we walk towards the river.  We can make a game out of it, Aubrey, you know the game, how daddy and I used to swing you and your sister by the hands, me on one side, dad on the other, swinging you back and forth, one, two,  swinging the stick higher and higher and on three we can throw it  in the river together, in unison.

That walking stick that’s been sitting idle by the door, waiting to be useful.  We can take it on a journey, its final journey, attached to it the shiftless, toxic purple bandana cargo.  Let’s watch it drown together.  We’ll hold hands, our heads thrown back towards the limitless night sky, and howl with laughter, as the bandana swirls and sinks under the current until it is no longer visible to anyone.

I’ve got them even when I’m warm and bored.  They are just there; my perky little nips.  It’s struck me that some people I know may have this thought pop into their head when thinking about me.  Oh yes Jess, the lady with the perky nips.  Maybe not.  But the fact that people may even think about my nipples when they think of me speaks volumes about my lazy fashion sense and also about how I thumb my nose at all those nipple gawkers who forget that we all have them.

I am currently at the point where, like Serena Williams at Wimbledon, I could give two shits about my nipples.  Where, like Jennifer Aniston, I could go on national television and show my “Friends” to the masses.

It’s true, yes, we all do have nipples.  And as much as I am for freeing the nip, I am not so much in favor of freeing, say, the vulva, or the testes.  I do in fact think we should keep those under wraps.  But as for the papillum I say unveil and let loose, people.

I was a  nipple bearer on my wedding day.  My dress was a tad see-through and yes, the nips were ramped up.  The dress was a lingerie meets art deco number which left little to the imagination as evidenced in the photo below.

I wonder where we’ll be in 20 years.   Will the nipple forever remain a naughty little protrusion that must be concealed?  Or will we be able to walk around shamelessly parading our lady bumps?

You are 11 years old and just finished the 5th grade.  You are nervous, anxious, timid, quiet around strangers.  You prefer to hangout with a friend or two over a large party.  You don’t like it when it’s too loud, like when you are at the movies.  You’d rather watch movies at home, on the couch.  You are terrified of elevators.  There have been tears over elevators.  You’re not a fan of bridges and tunnels, either.  But you’ll cross them to get to where you want to go.  You started 5th grade not wanting to start 5th grade.  This is where you learned how to take notes in class, study independently, create presentations, and make speeches.  It was your speech about being afraid of making mistakes, about improving self-confidence, about effort, that found you at the podium, in front of 200 people.  You were one of three chosen by your teachers and peers to recite your speech.  It was spectacular!  Your words resonated with many of the kids and adults in the room.  I was so nervous for you, sitting in the audience I thought my heart was going to pound its way out of my chest.  Sweaty palms, roiling stomach, it was as if I was the one preparing to walk on the stage.

You are at summer camp now, sleeping away from home for a whole week, in a tent, in the woods, surrounded by a bunch of strangers.  I see pictures of you that the camp posts online and some are candid.  It is in those shots that I see how genuinely happy you are.  Looking away from the camera, at someone or something, sincere, interest piqued, coy, eyes lit up.

Keep on reaching, my love.

We are in the age of #Metoo where we begin to call out, resist, fight and demand more from the patriarchy, where we say NO to sexism, to rape culture, to the poking and prodding and obscenity of violence.  We rise up and say hell no, my body is not for you. My body is mine and mine alone.  I call the shots.  This is a necessary and powerful movement which has and will continue to move society forward and in part help women gain the equality that we so desperately need and deserve.

But we need to tread carefully through this tide and really be mindful about how we set up this new paradigm.  I think we have  to leave space for the artists, the poets, the painters, the novelists who create unbridled sexist, perhaps even misogynistic and stunning works.  I think we need to leave space for the old guys who just don’t get it, for the young guys who are confused, for the bosses who want to bang their secretaries and for the countless guys and gals out there who are just trying to figure out how to use their sexuality.

I feel that we have to do this because, well, it’s concerning.  I’m concerned that in this country we have a problem with grey.  We can’t seem to dig into the center of things, it’s either all white or all black.  But the majority of life exists somewhere in the continuum, in the center, away from the margins.  What I mean to say is yes, there is a major problem with our male-dominated society and something needs to be done about it.  For far too long we’ve let a good part of the population take what they want and act whatever way they want without consequence.  But we need to be able to look more deeply into behaviors, stop generalizing and leave room for human thought and error.

If we take a moment to think about the artist as poet, Charles Bukowski, in my opinion, was a lonely drunk, a wordsmith, a storyteller and a man conflicted.  He wrote some pretty spectacularly poignant stuff, and really knew how to encapsulate a thought in a very base and precise way.  I think he loved women, but felt betrayed by women to some extent.  He was quick to call a woman a whore but equally as quick to profess an imperfect love for her.  It’s precisely this complex cauldron of emotion and thought and action that quite frankly I think we need to pay particular attention to.  I think we can be both mindful of what is wrong, and call out injustice when we witness it; but still maintain an understanding of the fact that not every compliment is an assault and not every critique is an attack.  Some observations are simply that.  Getting asked out on a date is not an act of aggression.  There are changes in temperature, degrees which we must consider.  An unwanted compliment about your appearance is different from an obscene gesture which is different from someone grabbing your ass which is different from rape.  If we are incapable of parsing out these very different actions then we are part of the problem, not the solution.

I’ve heard some pretty black and white statements about behavior, and what should and should not be considered acceptable.  Who are we allowing to define this and to what end?  It’s worth it for all of us to have these conversations, and to not stop until we get to where we need to go.  But let’s do it in a thoughtful and proactive way.

What about art?  What about poetry?  Will we start to impress upon those who create to be more mindful about what messages they send out to the world?  What about Bukowski’s poems, which to some extent portray certain women in a negative light:  thieves, flirts, sluts, traitors, meant to be used up and forgotten?

I believe  we can all learn something from the #MeToo Movement.  But as we struggle to define  what is acceptable behavior, beware The Genius of The Crowd.

The Genius Of The Crowd

My 10 year old will sometimes grab my hand as if she is going to kiss it; but instead lifts my fingers to meet her gaze, and thumbs my engagement ring.  “This one is mine, right mommy?”  she asks.  She already knows it is.  Several years ago when she started asking me why I always wore it, I told her the story of her father, his Christmas Day proposal, and how eventually, when she is much older, the ring will be hers.

It’s the same for my 7 year old.  She knows she will get my wedding band, which is not nearly as impressive, but still sparkles nonetheless.  In the back of my mind I’d always said I’d buy something else, maybe something sapphire, something conflict-free, something beautiful to accompany that band.  Because I want their gifts to be equal.  I want them to believe I tried to make things equal.  I don’t want to play favorites or give them any reason to think I played favorites.  I want them both to have their fair share, their halfsies.  I cut the pizza equally.  I pour the same amount of juice.  Nobody shall have more. Or less.

I often worry about this sense of fairness and equality.    Can they be of different minds and different personalities and can I look at them both with the same eyes, noting their differences, yet loving the equally?  Can this be a thing?  No matter what I do, what I leave them, how I live with them and show them the world, show them love, will they think of me as loving them equally?

Does Fiona’s desire to get 100% on her spelling tests by asking me to quiz her each morning over cereal equal Aubrey’s YouTube cartwheel tutorials which she watched and practiced until attaining perfection?

Does Fiona’s always remembering to pick out a snack for  her absent sister to enjoy later, equal Aubrey’s exclamation after already leaving the store, that she should have picked something out for her sister and feels badly about forgetting?

Does Aubrey’s ability to not be everybody’s friend, and to not care about being everybody’s friend, equal Fiona’s happy-go-lucky, we all need to get along vibe?  Can they both be equally happy and engaged in their completely different ways of existing?  Will I encourage Aubrey to “come out of her shell” and try to convince Fiona that not everybody is going to want to be her friend and that’s ok?  Can I just let them be their own people?

These are my girls.  These are my worries.  Will I leave them enough?  Will I leave for them equally?  Will they be happy?  Will they see the world?  Will they find love?  Will they be empathetic and kind?  Will they both be equally as  happy and in love and empathetic and kind?

The queen of the elves, the white-shouldered beauty.

The city in the summer

the city in the winter

take me to the mountains

take me to the sea.

While I’m gone I’ll miss your fourteen dollar cocktails

I’ll miss your pho and petit kouigns

and your Uber driving me.

But it’s summer now, it’s winter soon.

I like you in between

When your streets are dry and full of life

not lined with mud and shit and ice.

Summer sweat is better spent shining on a sandy beach

not atop a rusty sewer grate.

No commuter busses filled with ragged faces

on their way to air conditioned cubicles along the Hudson.

I’ll see you in September but for now

Take me to the sea.

I want to live three lives  in four seasons.

That would be most divine.

I’ll eat your 3am fried chicken in April.

And kick up your fallen leaves in October.

I’ll walk past your tony brownstones in May

with wrought iron handrails leading to precious hand-carved double wooden doors.

Your peony and ivy window boxes.

precise and exquisite.

But now it is January, so take me to the mountains.

It’s where I like to visit

see the big open sky so blue and starry in the night.

No lights to demystify, no car speakers blaring angry sounds

making my ears hurt for your bullshit life.

For now I sit in my  country cabin, next to a slightly frozen creek.

My fireplace is blazing.  It’s magnificent!

I’ll com back to you in April, refreshed and ready for your vibe.

We’ve all been thrust together at a celebratory business dinner for Mr. Lido, who got the promotion.  There is lobster and steak and the busting of chops.  So many chops to bust at this table for twelve in the back of this suburban steakhouse at the end of a maze of leather booths and walnut four top tables.

Who picked this place, anyway?  And why is it always steak on the menu and why do you have to ask the waitress if the 42 ounce ribeye comes with a saddle?  It’s just a crap thing to ask her, and you are only doing it to it to impress the other folks at the table with your wit, because you think this is funny stuff.  She does not understand the joke.

“A saddle?”  she asks, staring at me for guidance.  Her eyes scanning mine.

“Because it’s so big you can ride it,” I say.  I ruined the punch line for him by answering.  But I had already heard this joke three times previously, as this was not my first time at the rodeo, another business dinner colloquialism.  “Oh,” she says, and laughs a slight, soft laugh while shaking her head up and down, looking at the monogram-cuffed, clean-shaven, bald-headed moron in the bad suit whose silly mouth just made that stupid joke.

“That’s funny,” she says.

I roll my eyes at her and  look long and hard into her clear-blue, bone-tired eyes.  She grins.  I get you, hon.

It’s inane conversation here at this table as we wait for our dinner.

The guy sitting across from me, the boss of the guy who got the promotion, tries to strike up a conversation.  He talks about the hassle of moving into his center hall Colonial in Paramus, near all the shopping, with the low taxes, so convenient to New York City

But he doesn’t really go to New York City.  Well he goes, he goes to The Garden for games and concerts.  He’s been there so many times.  Rockefeller Center, yes of course. Every Christmas.  Little Italy for dinner you know a few times a year.

But not Ground Zero.  He specifically calls out Ground Zero as a place he’s never been.  “You really need to get down there,”  I say.  “It will be heavy.  You have to prepare.”

“Go to the Museum,” I say.  “The museum goes down, down, down.  It’s deep.”  I’m not quite sure what I’m saying or why I’m saying it.  The 9/11 museum is not on my top ten list of things you have to do in New York.  But for some reason, on this night, I insist this guy must get there.

“I know”, he says.  “Yeah.  Totally have to prepare for that whole scene”.

“Absolutely”.

Then I wring my hands, put my knuckles on my chin, remind myself to sit up straight, and take a sip from my water glass.  Again.  Because I’m no good with you at this long table, with all the other gentlemen.  I can’t do this like I care, or like it matters.  And I’m shit out of luck in the liquor department because I have to drive an hour home after this dinner meeting.  So I must stick with the water glass, which makes this whole situation even more dire.  My mind can’t relax, I can’t shake off the strange vibe.  I just keep looking around, smiling, taking my sips.

We are really only here for business.  Just make the business with these gentlemen.  But not in that way.  Think about big deals and promotions.  Think about salesforce.com and maybe recognition from top management.  Just eat the dinner and make the chit chat. There are long, awkward pauses, we have nothing left to say.  He looks for someone else to talk to, perhaps the guy on my right.

The food arrives and we eat which is a reprieve because it gives my mouth something else to do besides talk.  I wonder if anyone else feels this way.  Am I the only one who feels uncomfortable, bored and irritated?

Now the gentleman to my left is trying to figure out if it’s worth it to get rid of cable and switch to Amazon TV.  He is concerned about his ability to watch ESPN.  But he’s tired of paying so much for cable.

He asks me if I have solar panels because he might want to install them on his  house, but only if they can be placed on the back of the roof, because he doesn’t like the way they look.  He doesn’t want anyone to have to see them.  The solar panels don’t look good.

Also, will he get tax credits?

I say I don’t know but I like everything about solar panels.  Everything.

Back to the  30-something go-getter sitting across from me, the I never go to NYC guy, the mid-level manager, who is preparing his team for an ISO audit, and all his people are going through the motions, making sure the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed.  This is important stuff.  It’s being monitored.  He will be judged on the outcome of this.  The work of his people.

I just smile and say, “I’m sure everyone will be amazing.”

“Yeah, totally.  It will all work out.”

“Then you can forget about it and make a day of it in New York City”, I say.

“Yes, I’ll go in with my wife and we’ll see a show or something.”

“You can get a babysitter!”

“Maybe we’ll take a carriage ride in the Park.  I haven’t done that since I got engaged to her.”

“Oh don’t do that, I say.  Those poor horses.  It’s so cruel.”

“I don’t know about that.  They’re horses.  I think they like walking around in the park.”

I feel myself tense up.  My mouth slacks open as if I’m going to say something but I bite my lip instead.  I literally bite my lip and stare at him, my head cocked.  And as we sit on the edge of a serious conversation, and I pause at the thought of turning your polished, manicured face toward an empathetic light, the check arrives.

He winks at me as if to say I know you don’t like to see the carriage horses.  And maybe I get it, Jessica.  I get you.  I’m only busting your chops.  I don’t like to see the horses pulling fuck twats like me around, either.

As we say our brief good-byes, shaking hands, all smiles, I think maybe for a minute you all aren’t so bad.  Maybe you hate the chit chat as much as I do, but you’re just better at it.  You see the end game and make the plays and go home and forget.

Maybe next time we should try the dinner without the chit chat and really engage with each other.  Make a new play, set a new tone, dig into the dirt.  Let’s learn something new and meaningful about each other.  Let’s open up our minds to new realities.

Or nah.

We enjoyed an evening with friends in their apartment.

They served chicken tagine and carrot salad on bright blue ceramic plates.

And red wine in huge crystal goblets.

It was just after the presidential election and the result was not what any of us had  anticipated.

We talked about it during dinner.

“It’s fucking unbelievable, what the fuck” I said.

“Those assholes that voted for him.  Jesus.” I said.

“And  those misogynistic cunts.” I said

I was on the softer side of drunk.  Meaning I had the run of myself but I wouldn’t have been in any position to operate heavy machinery.

It was a lively, intimate evening among four close friends.

We left our hosts with kisses and hugs.  An hour later they sent us texts, thanking us for being in their lives, for the great conversation, for being who we are.

The next morning you told me that I swore too much.  You said that I should leave the swearing to you.  You reminded me that it isn’t very lady-like to swear like that.

I just shrugged my shoulders and said, “I’m stressed out.  I had too much wine.  I needed to unload.”

What the fuck?

The tables will be turned soon enough, and I will say the same to you and you will laugh.  You’ll think I’m being clever and cute.

Next time remind me that swearing too much detracts from the point you are trying to make.  Remind me of the fine line between effect and affect.  Remind me to consider my audience.

Next time just leave my fucking vagina out of it.

It’s true, I’m not very skilled.  There’s nothing I can point to and proclaim, “goddammit, I am exceedingly excellent at that”.   I’m also not very talented.  I can’t sing.  I can’t do calculus.  I’m crap with a hammer.  My repertoire of ways to wow you can best be summed up as meh.

It’s quite the contrast from when I was a child  and I suspected that I’d be good at things.  Like if I just tried to do something, or maybe tried really hard (a few times) I’d  naturally be able to do it, whatever “it” was.  It’s an odd notion to carry around and I’m not entirely sure why I used to think that way.  Perhaps children who are loved and shown that the world is open to them, believe that they can do anything.  And for the most part, that’s a good thing. 

Being an only child, I often played alone.  Or with my cat, Pirate, who was a rebel and brilliant at everything.  She even fetched balls and brought them back to me.  Great cat.  Totally off topic…anyway, my success as a kid wasn’t dependent on the success of others. There was no team or coach or sibling that I played with or emulated.  A lot of my time was spent in the company of me.

That’s not to say I was neglected.  My parents divorced when I was three, and the relationship with my father during my formative years was often strained by his struggle with alcohol.  Let’s just say he wasn’t always present.  I lived with my mother, who dropped out of high school at 15 and graduated cum laude from University at 32.

They were both intelligent, capable people who led lives somewhat in the margins of society.  The traditional trappings and definitions of success eluded them.  They weren’t wealthy, and they weren’t trying to climb any corporate ladders.  They divorced when getting divorced wasn’t commonplace.  There was just a lot of shit to deal with and we all know the amount of time my generation spent with their parents is infinitesimal compared to what typically occurs today.  I was a latch key kid.  So many 70s children were.  I was in many ways the ruler, queen, shaper and dreamer of my own upbringing.  I was left to my own devices and in spending so much time in my head, I created a lot of my own belief system.  The concept of success was mostly shaped by my own understanding and definition.

As a child, my parents never said I could or couldn’t do something.  For the most part  I just assumed I’d be able to, even if I didn’t really want to.   Children typically don’t focus on one particular skill or hobby or interest long-term, without some significant guidance, pressure, purpose or yearning placed upon them.  Usually a coach, caretaker or someone in their life pushes them in a particular direction.  Of course there are extraordinary exceptions to this and some kids just know what they want and are driven with enthusiasm to do it.  But not me.

As I grew into a young adult,  my frame of reference changed as my world got bigger, and I still didn’t yearn to master anything.  There was no burning desire to be an athlete or an astronaut or a chef.  Nothing deep in my heart propelled me into choosing my college major or even my career.  Many things just kind of happened, they fell into place.  This in part was due to my being feckless.  It sounds so strange to say that now, and if I could go back I probably would relive most of my life again with more intention.

Growing up and older, I tended to steer away from trying new things that tested my ability (not new experiences necessarily, but developing new skills) and a lot of what held me back was fear.  Fear of failure, fear of embarrassing myself, fear of commitment.  So the notion that I had as a child, of being able to do anything, grew into this notion that I couldn’t do much or shouldn’t do much of anything because I might not excel at it.  My motto could easily have been just stay the course and play it safe.

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