Best Friends

We are sunken. F. shuffles through the house in grief, his spirit leaden. I follow on his heels, grieving for him. S. was dear to both of us; but he was F’s closest friend. I am sad that he is gone. I am sad for his wife, my good friend, and their children. My heart breaks for my husband.

They were as intimate as two straight men can be. For the last two years they met weekly for long talks over beers. They sat close, forehead to forehead, their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders, sharing their stories.

It was a ritual: F. would hurry through dinner, getting up occasionally to check his cell phone, just to make sure that S. had not called to cancel. When S. became too ill to meet him at their favorite café, F. would go to his house, where they would sit in the living room and talk for hours. In time, the beer gave way to tea. Then water. Then nothing. Just S. in a hospital bed, and F. at his side.

Not so long ago, losing our friends was unthinkable. We were too young. Indeed, S. hadn't even it 50. But now, the people who are getting sick and dying are our peers. They are in their 50s, they have nearly-grown children. They have plans and dreams for the next stage of life. They could be us.

F’s nights are much quieter now. He finishes dinner and retreats to his study. He tries to work, but most of the time he picks up his guitar. From the kitchen I hear him practicing tunes he had learned to play for S., tunes he now plays for himself.

Loss

At first she will count the hours, then the days. Even when the single days turn into double-digits, she will count the weeks, just as she did—as we all did—when newly pregnant; when every few days marked a milestone. Now the fetus is the size of a peanut, a hand. Now the fetus has 10 toes. Now it is sucking its thumb.

It didn’t matter that the weeks became months. We counted them as weeks, digestible strips of time, rows of days that we crossed off the calendar, steps in our metamorphosis.

Pregnancy redefined us, as will widowhood.

But pregnancy is finite. Grief has no endpoint. It does not progress in a straight line. It creeps, it zigzags, it stalls. For every inch forward, there are several more, back.

Now it has been just two days without him. One week ago he was here. Two weeks ago we were singing Beatles’ songs. Four weeks ago we were laughing. 

She will fall into fitful sleep and awaken with temporary amnesia, momentarily light, until reality crashes down.

We held them close, together, and we hold her close, now. And we shudder, knowing that we could be next. Her grief breaks our hearts. And it humbles us.

Getting Steady

Sitting still is the hardest. When I’m anxious or sad, staying in one place is torturous. I need to move. To change positions and scenery. If I change my stance or the way I’m sitting, if I change where I am, then maybe I can shift the feelings that are haunting me.

Vacation—despite the ever-present oppression of family—was, nevertheless, soothing; a much-needed distraction from day-to-day difficulties to which we have returned.

Years ago, I numbed myself to psychic pain. I ate. I drank. I watched a lot of television. Gradually, I woke up and saw that I was actually creating more pain for myself. I started swimming. Then running. That was 30 years ago. The growth wasn’t all linear. It came in fits and starts.

Marrying F. steadied me. Being loved well eliminated extraneous hunger and angst. Since then, I have learned healthier ways of channeling frustration and pain. I’ve come to see them as inevitabilities of living, not as indictments of who I am.

It takes a long time to get steady one’s self. And it’s not fool-proof. Anger and fear and grief still have the power to knock me over. But at least now, I have a better idea of how to get back on my feet.

Faux Pas

His apology caught me by surprise.

“I’m so sorry,” the lifeguard said, as if he’d mortally wounded me. “I’m so, so, sorry.” I stared at him, perplexed. What insult had he thrown at me that I'd missed?

“I’m so sorry, but may I ask your age?”

Was that all? Clearly, he was going to express his shock when I revealed my age. He was going to say that to watch me swim, he could have sworn I was half my age. That not even the teenagers he coaches on the community swim team swim as smoothly, as fast. Clearly he was going to say that to look at my trim body and muscular arms, he would have guessed me to be at least 20 years younger.

“Oh,” he said with a hint of shame, when I said, “I’m 55.”

“Oh,” he repeated, shifting in his chair. “I was going to mention that in the mornings, we have a swim session for seniors. It’s less crowded then.”

The frame froze then. My mouth dropped and hung open for a few seconds. My eyes lost focus, probably because tears were filling them. I swallowed. I reminded myself to breathe.

He’s a kid, I told myself. He doesn’t know. What does he know? To his young eyes, 40 looks like 50 looks like 60. Shake it off.

“Not yet,” I heard myself say, forcing a chuckle. “I’m not there yet.”

Our smiles were awkward. There wasn’t anything more to say. I turned and walked into the locker room, then into the first shower stall, and closed the curtain tight.

Family Vacation: an Oxymoron

We have returned from our yearly summer vacation: one week to reunite with family (F’s), and one week to recover.

Two decades ago, when F. and I were first together, summer vacation was an eagerly-awaited tradition: convening in a cottage on Cape Cod; cooking big, lavish meals, enjoying great wine and staying up late playing games and talking. As the family mushroomed, vacations brought complications—different bedtimes, eating and sleeping habits; a lot of negotiating for a dozen-and-a-half people under one roof.

In 20 years, the ritual has lost its luster. 

Although I enjoy the closeness of family, I am weary of the complications: 18 people are a lot for one house and one dinner table. Meals are raucous (one family has three new little ones, whose whining and crying make pre-dinner cocktails medicinal.) We squeeze together, elbows in each other’s sides. I try to eat as peacefully as is possible with toddlers asking for bites of my salad. It is difficult to savor food among teenagers who eat like lab rats, grabbing seconds and thirds before anyone has finished their first small serving, filling their bellies until they are comatose.

No sooner do the teenagers scarf their dinner, than they vanish to check e-mails and post Instagrams; the adults then have the unenviable task of corralling them to do dishes, which they do feebly, leaving the kitchen a mess. The table is covered with half-filled glasses, strewn with food remnants and half-eaten bananas that draw a cavalry of fruit flies. Stray utensils, cookies and candy wrappers are underfoot.

Meanwhile, the adult children try to reconnect, constantly navigating emotional triggers, buried like landmines in innocent conversation.

I come to the shore seeking peace and restoration. But the older I get, the less tolerant I am of chaos. Perhaps I’m getting cranky in my older age. Or, perhaps I’m beginning to know myself. 

Heartburn

As if deciding which school to commit to (a solid, small liberal arts college) wasn’t enough for one day, E., at the end of the party that I let him throw at the last minute to celebrate—and which got a little out of hand—informed me that he has a girlfriend.

“I’m not a little kid anymore, Mom. I’m a grown—“

He stopped short of saying man.

It's all wonderful news.

It's just a lot to digest in so little time.

Preparing

 “What will you do without me?”

E. is needling me. I have been complaining about his mess or his insolence or his not helping around the house. I pretend to laugh. I roll my eyes, smirk. He smirks back.

.

We have been looking at colleges, meeting with coaches, weighing options. He has another full year of high school, but coaches and players lock up commitments a year in advance. He’s a high school senior, but it feels like he’s leaving tomorrow. The last of the nest.

I’m not ready.

Most of the time, when he’s home, I’m gnashing my teeth at the heaps of mess he leaves in his wake: the dishes, the dirty socks, the wet towels, the gum wrappers, the bowls with dried ice cream, the lacrosse balls and sticks and cleats and netting.

Go, go, go, I think, as I slog through his piles.

Then, after returning from our most recent college visit, the unexpected: I am nervous, edgy. While scrounging for stamps in a drawer, I find a stack of photos. E. is a tow-headed toddler. Beaming. Kissing my face.

He is so young. I was so much younger.

I burst into tears.

Attitude

We've been on the lacrosse circuit all summer: E, me and E’s attitude.

He and F. gradually found their way back to each other. But within a day, E's insolence found its way back too.

F. and I blame hormones and anxiety over college. The stakes are high: By September of senior year, hopeful lacrosse players have offers from colleges. E. has a few already. Still, not knowing where he will end up feeds his anxiety, which feeds his impudence.

Recently, upon arriving at the campus of a college that is hosting a tournament, I awaken E. for directions to the playing fields. He snoozed contentedly for the entire ride. I have been driving since dawn.

“I dunno,” he says yawning, irritated. “Can’t you just drive around and look for someone to ask?”

I am stunned and irked. His first game is in 45 minutes.

“No,” I respond with forced calm. “I cannot drive around. This is your tournament and it is your responsibility to know where you need to be.”

I park on a side street, turn off the car, and lean back for nap. Half an hour later, E. wakes me up.

“I’m on Field 5,” he chirps. 

I take my place along the sidelines with the other parents, and scout for my son. He is nearly indistinguishable from his teammates in his blue and white jersey and spaceman-looking helmet. But I nail him: taking his sweet time to tighten his gloves, walking with the swagger I know.

Warriors

They have been at it for days, father and son.  Deadlocked. Too angry with each other to speak, too proud to realize they hurt.

It began with E’s nasty words. Not excusable, but typical for a 16-year-old male. F. felt wounded, then furious, and rightly so. Who is this child, who we love more than life, who aims jagged words at the jugular vein? Do we blame his adolescence? A testosterone surge?  Or, do we blame ourselves for not having been strict enough when he was a funny little wise guy?

Deep down, E. is a decent kid. He can even be a mensch. But these days, he’s all bravado. Always posturing. Rarely pensive. He’s constantly flexing—his athletic prowess and his will; ever proving to himself that he is strong enough. That he is, enough.

It doesn’t take a magnifying glass to see where so much bluster comes from. But F. can’t see his son’s insecurity, maybe because he has too much of his own. So, instead of shelving his pain and reaching out, he flexes too.

Like battling rams, their horns are locked.

I’ve been at my share of impasses with E. And, for better or worse, I’m usually the one who extends the olive branch first. After all, I remember what it was like to have a parent who stayed angry; and, who refused to apologize. A dynamics take two, and staying angry—however satisfying—seems like a colossal waste of time. It’s also not the kind of life lesson I want to teach.

But I’m female. And, as evolved about gender as I’d like to think I am, there’s simply not as much at stake for me as there is for a male when it comes to laying down weapons first.

F. traveled to a tournament with E. all weekend and the two barely spoke. Before dropping him off at a lacrosse camp for the next few days, F., still angry, at least managed to tell E. he loves him. Predictably, E. said nothing back.

Father and son, cloaked in armor. How will they find each other? How will they find themselves?

Truthtelling

The fireworks are over, and the night falls silent, the air moist and thick. E. coaxes the dog out from under the kitchen table, where he is curled up and trembling, terrified of the July 4^th explosions. I join them for a walk.

When E. and I are agitated, we mobilize ourselves. We drop off our still-shaken pup and lap the block, debriefing each other on the evening. Close friends, a married couple, came to dinner. E. has known them all his life; he has been friends with their kids forever.

Now, one partner of the couple—the dad—is dying. He’s been sick for a few years, and his decline has become poignant.

At 16, E. has experienced more than his share of death: His uncle--my beloved brother--died when E. was in the second grade; a best friend succumbed to brain cancer in the eighth grade. Even then, E. was too young to digest life’s ending, the randomness of it, the finality.  

“I wish I had understood it then,” he says of his friend, who had been diagnosed in the sixth grade. “I wish I had known how it would end.”

I knew that his friend would die, but mother’s instinct, however misguided, compelled me to shield my boy from the truth for as long as possible. E. loved his friend. He was determined that hope and prayers would cure him. Now, he wonders if knowing the truth from the beginning would have steeled him, made him better able to withstand the loss once it came. He wonders if knowing our friend’s fate will make it easier for us.

I think of my brother, sick for 15 years, on the edge of death—and me on the edge with him--for four. I couldn’t have been more prepared. Or so I thought, until he finally died.

E. and I circle the block, processing our respective sadness.

“I have four reasons to not take life for granted,” he says, ticking off the names of four people he knows—including our friend—who have faced death young. “But it’s hard,” he says, reconsidering. “No one is grateful all the time. We forget. We live on automatic.”

We pass our house, the porch light beaming, the front door open, the air-conditioning beckoning. E’s skin glistens with sweat. We take another lap.

Sharing, Part 2

If I had imagined, wished for or planned it, it wouldn't have happened. But there we were, R. an I., having dinner on the half-varnished deck, her asking me about my life, just as E. had done two nights before.

Something in the air perhaps, or the water; maybe the moon.

Of course with her, being older and female, it was different. She wasn't solely the audience. She was a participant. She wasn't interested in only listening. She wanted to reveal.

I took it in.

We spoke of our respective loves and mistakes, of heartbreak and healing.

The memories I shared were long dormant—but for her they were vivid. She tried matching them up with the mother she knows, wincing at the thought of me being with anyone but F.

Then she shared, tentatively, discretely, relieved that she could. I matched up her revelations with the daughter I  know, and did some wincing of my own.

It was tough to not preach or worry; to offer my meager two cents and sit back.

She took in what she could.

Then, she cleared the table.

Sharing

“Tell me about your life,” he said. “Tell me the stuff you've never told me before. The stuff you thought would freak me out when I was young.”

Was this my 16-year-old talking? The kid whose attention span lasts as long as an instagram?

It was just the two of us, cooking and eating a meal together on the half-varnished deck. The conversation kicked up, like a waterspout. He was wrung out and famished after 90 minutes of lacrosse in the blazing sun; grateful to me for bringing him to practice and taking him home. Simply, grateful.

And it got him to thinking: about the kind of childhood he has had and the kind I didn't. I've shared bits and pieces with him and R., over the years. Mostly stories about my mother and her struggles and the fall-out that made it impossible for me to forgive her, even in these 20 years since her death.

But I decided to share a little more. I grabbed a photo album and talked him through my family tree, including the father I never knew. I detailed the events that undid my mother, long before she’d had me. I narrated the pages of her life, from beautiful newlywed to stoic widow to second-time bride to battered woman to batterer.

“Did she every say she was sorry?” he asked, suddenly reminding me of the gentle, tow-headed toddler he used to be.  

“Never,” I said.

“I know you, and you’re a very forgiving person,” he said, trying to see me as someone with a closed heart, someone he has never had to experience.“It must have been pretty bad, whatever she did.”

Of the many lessons I have taught my children, the importance of forgiveness has been paramount.

"Life is short," I have always told them. "Staying angry is a waste of time."

When he was young, he held these pieces of parental teaching like treasure and me, as an idol. I was infallible. I held my mother similarly, before her pain grew out of control and she turned it on me.

Life's disappointments grow us up, revealing the pedestal for what it is.

E. looked at me closely. There was no hiding my frailty, my hypocrisy, my flawed humanity.

“If she’d just said ‘sorry,’ I bet you would have forgiven her,” he said. “I know you.”

We cleaned up dinner and he shifted: fresh clothes, cologne. At the front door, he pulled me in for a hug. "I love you,” he said, before heading into the night.

The Changing Nest

R. is moving out—again. She and a friend have rented an apartment. This is her last week at home.

We had settled nicely back into the rhythm of living together; much nicer than her high school days. The year in college has matured her. Her year away from home has matured us all.

As she leaves, we beam our attention on E., newly-anointed high school senior, whose college explorations are ramping up. It is almost unbelievable that in a year from now, we will be packing him up.

Then it will be just F. and me, in this house, in this life, with the dog.

I’m cavalier most days, bellyaching about how I can’t wait to have the house to myself.

But if I get really honest, and think about the times both kids have been away and I’ve been here alone, I’ll know I’m in for a bumpy ride.

Learning

They spent the afternoon varnishing the deck.  F. said he’d pay them. He’s usually the more generous of the two of us.

He grew up wealthy. I grew up poor.  His parents paid for his college education. I scrubbed toilets to pay for mine. This informs much of the difference in how we parent. He’s easy. I’m tough.

But truthfully, I don’t see how making their life too easy helps them, in the long run.

Not that varnishing a deck on an 80+-degree day is easy. On the other hand, when will they learn that growing up means working harder than they ever imagined?

Maybe it’s my own childhood grudge. But, between the money we spend on gas getting to and from E’s lacrosse tournaments, lacrosse camps and equipment, train fare to and from internships in the city, not to mention voice lessons, acting lessons, Iphones, and first and last month’s rent on a new apartment….

…must we really pay them for varnishing the deck?

Fleeting

The bulging biceps, the deep voice and the new whiskers emerging under the chin throw me off a little. So does the prestigious internship in the city, the deposit on an apartment and nights out that end just before dawn.

E., stretched out in bed, his massive arms cradling his sleepy blond head, asks me to make him French toast for breakfast; while R. coyly accepts my offer to pack her a lunch and drive her to the train.

She has spent the past year fending for herself, independently and capably. He is not far behind. And yet, as school winds down and summer revs up, they soften, let down their guard, and allow themselves to need me.

Who knows why. Maybe they're exhausted and want tender loving care. Maybe they feel, as do I, the curtain closing on this chapter of our lives.

The reasons don't matter. They still need me. And I still need their need.

I make French toast, pack a turkey sandwich, ferry to and from the train. 

All the things that felt so demanding when they were both here full time, now feel like precious, fleeting opportunities.

I grab them. Because in a blink, they’ll be gone.

Priiorities

Maybe it’s because we’re just a year away from an empty nest; or because we’re closer to 60 than 50; or because a dear friend is dying. Maybe it’s all these reasons and more that the days are feeling especially precarious and precious.

We've quit squabbling over who clears the table and who does the dishes. It doesn’t matter if the tilapia was cheaper elsewhere, or if we forgot to take out the recycling.

What matters is making the most out of the time we have, alone and together. It’s about savoring the big picture instead of losing ourselves in the details; maximizing meaning and joy, and letting go of the stuff that leads nowhere. 

Purple Unicorn

Here’s today’s paradox: trying to accept who and where I am, while fretting that I’m not somewhere—or someone—else.

Like two cats in a bag, both impulses are strong and fighting.

I have created a nice freelance nest, with just enough work, income and spare time to write creatively. But when I peruse online job boards, I realize that I couldn't leave this nest if I wanted to.

In his column in yesterday’s New York Times, Tom Friedman wrote that today's employers are not interested in where prospective hires went to school or what they studied. They’re interested in the value they bring to a company, their entrepreneurial spirit, their ability to continuously reinvent themselves.

“Employers have unrealistic expectations,” according to Eleonora Sharef, 27, co-founder of HireArt, a company that screens job hunters for big companies. “They don’t want to train you, and they expect you to be overqualified. They are all looking for purple unicorns: the perfect match.”

It’s no longer enough to be a veteran and much-published writer/editor. I have to have a gazillion other skills, including technology and social media. I have to think in Twitter tweets. And I have to be 30 years younger.

A friend and former colleague recently said that the jobs we would easily have landed five or ten years ago are now going to people who have more of today’s skill set, are smarter, younger and willing to work for less.

On days when work grinds to a halt, when I can’t manage to put two words together or when our bank account dips into overdraft, it’s easy to let stories of whiz kids who have made it big lure me into a cauldron of self-loathing.

I have to remind myself that 30 years ago, my professional goal was not to be a whiz kid or a millionaire or a purple unicorn. It was to be a freelance writer. And, with the exception of a few detours along the way, I have stuck to my plan. That in itself is an achievement.

A Delicate Balance

As infants, they seemed so impossibly fragile: Support their heads. Protect the soft spot. Don’t let them sleep on their backs (or their stomachs?). Watch what they put into their mouths. Don’t leave them unattended on a bed, lest they roll off.

The vigilance was constant.

But it’s now, I realize, when they’re really vulnerable. Out of sight, at all hours, driving with newly-licensed friends, experimenting. Far from my watch.

My nervousness when they were babies was soothe-able: I would pick them up and cradle them close. Feel them breathe.

But as they grow into themselves, my worry runs rampant.

I can’t hold onto them anymore, I can’t be omniscient. I have to give them room or else they will take more than they need. Because they can.

And  I will lose.

They don’t want my absence, and I don’t want their dependence. 

It will forever be a delicate balance. 

Haunted

No parent is not haunted by last week's murder of a college junior in her house at Hofstra University. We don’t have to have known her or her family. Our hearts break for them. And any sense of ease we may have had about our kids being away at school has shattered. This could have happened to any one of us.

As inconceivable as birth, so is such sudden, violent loss, from which there can be no recovery.

R. is home for the summer, and I am newly terrified. 

Last night, hot and thick with humidity, I locked all the windows. And I woke up every hour, checking to see if she—a legal adult who has been living independently in the city for the better part of a year—was home yet.

Just like old times.

It’s going to be a challenge: trying to relax while she is out with friends until morning. I realize this is what she has done all year at school, but she was far enough away for me to be able to shut my eyes to it.

Now, there is no ignoring the porch light that burns until she gets home. 

Flirting

At first, I wasn’t sure if he was flirting with me. 

After 20 years of marriage and a social life that mainly involves other married people, my radar’s a little rusty. Plus, with a still-fresh hip scar and slightly swollen leg, I haven’t been feeling at the peak of attractiveness. Frankly, at 55, I no longer consider myself flirt-worthy. I guess my self-esteem has been on the down slope.

He’s about my age; divorced with grown kids. Pleasant looking. Both of us in above-average physical shape. Neither of us, stunners.

The first time I thought he was just inquiring about my healing hip. It felt thoughtful and good. The second time was brazen.

“Look at that smile!" he said, loud enough for by-standers to hear. "Do you smile like that for everyone or just when you see me?”

I should have been embarrassed, even put off. But my heart beat faster. My smile took up half my face.

I am a feminist: hard wired to reject any suggestion that my capabilities and rights are not equal to that of a man. I detest and will rebuff any demeaning, tasteless or otherwise disrespectful gesture. I’d also like to believe that, as a happily married heterosexual woman, I don’t care about the attraction of other men. 

Maybe it's because I am in a secure, satisfying marriage, where the balance of power is even, that I can enjoy the hokey attention of a man other than my husband who finds me attractive. After all—and as corny as this may sound—I don’t dream of attention from anyone other than F.  

But when it comes along, my ego does a jig. And that’s not politically incorrect. It’s human. 

Growing Old

After a few tender Mothers’ Day texts, E’s mood plummeted.

I didn’t see him for most of the day: When he wasn't with friends, he was cloistered inside his room. I chalked it up to hormones, or disappointment about losing the last lacrosse game of the season.

When I asked him what was up, he said he was tired. I pressed, and it didn't take much for him to remind me that this marked the third year—to the day—since his closest friend had died. The boy’s mother had hosted a memorial brunch for all his friends, which, achingly, fell on Mothers’ Day. E. spent half the morning there.

Digesting death is difficult at any age. At 13--E's age when he lost his buddy--it is incomprehensible.

“It gets easier,” he said, yelling over the music that his headphones were pumping into his ears.

So young and, so old.

Mothers' Day

R. and I spend the afternoon strolling downtown, window shopping, dipping into stores, trying things on. I talk about my creative drought. She talks about studying for finals. We lock arms, hold hands. Like old friends.  

This never happened between my mother and me.

“I’m not your friend. I’m your mother,” my mother would proclaim during our hateful fights, when she was drunk, and I was as nasty and disrespectful as a teenager can be; before she finally lost her temper and smacked me across the face. She never apologized, never considered that she may have been wrong. She just issued this slogan. It was her warning shot: Remember who I am and watch your step.

By the time I was 14, letting my mother touch me was out of the question. We’d be shopping or crossing a street and she’d surreptitiously inch her hand across my back and try to curl her arm around my waist to pull me close. This may have been her plea for forgiveness; her demonstration of love. But the minute I felt her fingers on my waist I’d stiffen and withdraw; widen the space between us and keep walking, rejecting her and reigniting her anger.

I wanted to love her, as every child loves its parent. But she channeled enough pain and bitterness into rage toward me, that whatever love I once felt became a phantom limb; a shard of fossilized bone.

Only now, 20 years after her death, do I think of my mother with compassion, probably because she’s not here.

I’m sorry she didn’t live to see me marry and have children. I’m sorry she didn’t get to know R. and E. or see the bond we have. I’m sorry she didn’t get to know me, the mom, who always apologizes to my kids when I am wrong. I’m sorry, but I don’t miss her.

A fierce clap of thunder splits the downtown sky and the ensuring downpour gives R. and me a delicious excuse to keep shopping. School ends next week and she moves back home for a few months. Our boundaries will shift then, and we’ll needle each other, no doubt. Until then, I bask in her love and the love of my family; a love I'd never imagined.

On the corner, near her dorm, R. wraps her arms around me and says, “You’re the best mom ever.”

Dry Spell

Every writer has dry spells.

It’s hard to know how to weather them. Do I turn my attention elsewhere and take the pressure off? Do I hunker down and push through?

My well has felt empty for weeks. The words come but they get stuck in my mouth. They don’t seem important, or relevant, or impressive. Why should anybody care?

I sit down at this computer first thing in the morning, and I have nothing to say. I pull up my long-stalled memoir, and I feel stuck. I inhibit myself. I can’t get out of my own way. So I am silent.

I fear I am tapped out.

In fact, my mind is jumbled with worry: the fear of never finding (or wanting to find) a real job; the encroaching anxiety over E’s beginning college hunt.

If I were a more disciplined writer, I could remove myself from these real life worries and produce work. Alas, I need a fallow mind. I need to be surrounded by little more than air and trees, sea and sound, for creative energy to emerge.

Yesterday, sitting in the warm spring sun with a cup of steaming lemon tea, I could feel some words come, like a thin trickle of water moistening the parched well bottom. I sat. I watched the birds. I stroked the dog. I didn’t force myself to put them down.

They kept coming. Faster. Rushing.

I grabbed a pen and paper. I wrote a page. Got them all down. Quenched a thirst.

This morning, they stare at me from the page. 

Where We Are

I coulda’ been a contender. I coulda’ been somebody. Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy, “On the Waterfront.”

F. and I pull out these lines when we feel lost and overlooked, like we missed our shot at becoming the stars we’d imagined we’d be; when we realize we’re missing the bigger, more important picture.

Last week, it was my turn. I confess: Not getting the job threw me. I wasn’t sure I wanted it, but I thought I’d have the opportunity to decide. It kept me from brooding about this long stretch of open road that has become my new normal.

“If I had only made different choices,“ I told F. over coffee one morning when I was feeling particularly sorry for myself. “If only I’d gone to a different college, had someone to mentor me…"

“Then what?” he challenged.

“I coulda’ been a contender,” I started chuckling, hearing myself. “I coulda’ been somebody.”

“And you wouldn’t have R. or E or me,” he said, knowing me as no one can, bringing me back to where we are.

It's Over

The job is gone. After telling me I was the top candidate and wondering how soon I could start and asking for three references, they hired someone else. I wasn’t even sure I wanted the job, having been freelancing for them for the past few months and experiencing firsthand their disorganization; but I wanted to be the one to say no thank you.

More important, I wanted to be wanted.

They said it was a very difficult decision that came down to a different skill set, one they needed more than good writing. Of course, they had also insisted that redefining and reposting the job, which they did several months ago, was merely a formality.

All along they assured me that I was the top candidate. In the end, I was the first runner up, like the contestant who doesn't become Miss America.

I suppose I have been spared a time- and energy-draining daily commute, workplace hierarchy and office politics. Even more, I’ve been spared submersion into another organization which, despite its meaningful, nonprofit-making mission, is subject to the duplicitousness of the people who run it.

Self-employment gets lonely, but it spares me the ultimate disappointment of rediscovering that no matter how much I long to be part of something larger, I do best when I’m behind the wheel. 

First Broken Love

Her tears were so large. As she talked, they slowly filled her eyes, turning them into puddles.

I knew she’d been having trouble. I’d hoped against hope that going to college would shift her attention. And it has, some. But the trouble has stayed with her, because it is in her heart.

I never liked the boy, and it’s just as well that I was blind to the extent of their romance, because my inner mama bear surely would have tried to meddle, not that it would have done any good.

She was unable to settle down, flitting about the house, snacking, changing clothes, finding things to bake. When we finally sat face to face and started talking about her life—school pressures, roommate issues—the tears came.

It was all to be expected, I thought, recalling my own fraught freshman year.

Then she told me about the relationship that she’d been trying to end with this boy, and she sobbed.

I suppose this is to be expected too: the interminable heartbreak of a broken first love. 

Still, my girl was wounded, and all reason escaped me. I pulled her onto my lap and wrapped my arms around her, as she buried her face in my shirt and soaked it with her tears.

Night Tears

By day, I am not aware of feeling sad. I am too busy to have time to think much about how I’m feeling.

Maybe that’s why, for the third time this month, I have awakened, crying in my sleep.

Here’s what I know:

The dream that made me cry, like the other two, was about E., except in this one he was a little boy, not an infant. And he must have been sad. Why else would my breaking heart have woken me up?

As it happens, he is sad right now. He just acquired braces, a good two years after most of his peers, because years ago, when he should have been getting them, I allowed a dentist to convince me to wait. 

He is also sad because he has just learned that the horrendously painful surgery he underwent two months ago to implant screws to anchor the braces completely failed and must be redone.

So, not only is he distraught over beginning his orthodontic journey in his junior year of high school, when looking good matters more than just about anything (and dreading the prospect of it extending into college), but his mouth throbs. Plus, in a few weeks, he'll be post-op and swollen.

He was just beginning to emerge from the moody bog of the last two years. Once again, he greets me with a grunt. He is aching and he is angry.

If we do nothing else in this world, our job as parents is to protect our kids from harm and pain.

On the latter front, at least, I’ve let my boy down.

I've been trying to duck the guilt and the sadness, to skate over it, but in the end, it always catches up with me.

Jumpstart

The dust hadn’t had a chance to settle, but we went out anyway, because we’d made plans and because we thought going through the motions might put us in gear, like rolling a stalled stick shift downhill to jump start it.

We found a neighborhood bar and grill and blurted our drink orders before the bartender could even ask us what we wanted.

It had been a rough few days. The bickering had been nonstop. There had been a few skirmishes and one fight, the kind we used to have when the kids were very young and we felt so deprived, each of us resenting the other for not being more nourishing, but both of us too weary to give each other anything.

The drinks made us relaxed and chatty and before we knew it we were having a good conversation and enjoying our meal. Cruising in second gear.

Three women slid onto the stools at t the end of the bar nearest to us. Dressed to kill.

“I wouldn’t want to be back there,” I said to F, “hanging out at a bar with my girlfriends on a Saturday night, hoping to meet Mr. Right. I can’t even imagine dating at this point in my life,” I said. He was half-listening and half-watching the television on the wall. “Frankly, I don’t know how I’d meet someone if I became single.” 

We ordered another round.

Then we paid the check and walked to the concert, holding hands tentatively, silently, staying our course, downhill.

Recurring Dream

I had the baby dream again.

I dreamt I had a baby. I was both in love with the baby and ambivalent about its presence in my life. My urge to protect and nurture it was fierce. My longing to have only myself to care for, persistent.

I’d wager that most mothers secretly feel similarly conflicted. I did when both R. and E. were born: deliriously happy over their arrival and terrified about the shrinking slice of time I would have for myself. It is selfish, and human.

The equation has shifted as they have grown older. My love for them has deepened—if that’s possible—and it is easier to carve out time for myself, because they are rarely home. Yet, the conflict of tending to their needs and to my own still stirs guilt.

Which brings me to the baby dream. I usually have this dream when I’m worried about R. or E, which I was last night.

R. called yesterday, sounding blue, which is practically enough to stimulate lactation letdown. Meanwhile E., who had complained of feeling fatigued before his lacrosse game, had uncharacteristic circles beneath his eyes.

I must have gone to bed worried about both of them.

No matter how old kids get, worry is a permanent part of parenthood; which means that carving out time alone—even psychic time—is always a negotiation.

The more I think of the baby in my dream, needing love and care, the more I realize it was I.

Role Models

As I nudge up against the two week mark without exercise, hair is beginning to grow on my palms.

I can’t be immobile anymore. Walking isn’t enough. I’ve got to sweat. I’ve got to grit my teeth. I’ve got to accomplish a physical feat.

E. gets me. He works out every day. When he’s antsy, he goes to the gym. When he’s angry, he torpedoes lacrosse balls against the backyard fence. Even when he’s too beat to move, he forces himself to lift weights.

I know a thing or two about lifting weights. I was once an aerobics instructor. But it’s been a while since I did any real training. Mostly, swimming keeps my arms I shape.

But I can’t swim until my incision heals. And I can’t hike yet. I can, however, ride my stationary bike. And I can lift weights.

So I started putting myself through the paces with five-pound barbells: lat and chest pulls, bicep curls, triceps pushes. 

E. watched me for a while. He offered some routines and some corrections. He reminded me to breathe. He told me to take breaks.

My arms burned, then turned to Jello.

"How ya doin'?" he asked, concerned about my stamina. "You're gonna feel this tomorrow," he announced, impressed by my insistence on pumping iron 12 days after surgery.

I did more reps.

He cheered me on.

Priorities

He looked at me straight-faced. “I don’t drink alcohol.”

Proudly, I recounted this to the mom of one of his closest friends. She burst into laughter and asked if I also believe that tiny green men live on Mars.

E. has always melted me. Even at 16, when he demonstrates the most dishonest, manipulative or obnoxious behavior and my jaw is clenched in doubt or fury, he wins me over; so much so that, as he left for Junior Dinner, which culminated in a middle-of-the-night Coach bus ride to and from Manhattan, I told myself he doesn’t drink.

Still, I prayed: Let him stay safe. Whatever he does, let him have the good sense to stay safe.

I’m too soft. But right now, life feels too short to spend being angry at my kid for lying to me.

Of course, I didn’t think this way when he and R. were little and the tunnel of high-maintenance parenting felt endlessly dark. When the smallest missteps of toddlerhood or elementary school seemed like imperatives for punishment and moral sculpting; when trekking to playdates and parks and pediatricians left me too preoccupied and exhausted to give any meaningful thought to how different motherhood would feel at 50 or 55 or beyond, when I would be the more vulnerable one.

Now, I’m focused on thresholds: having mourned the deaths of several kids in our community, including one of his closest friends; grieved one of my brothers and witnessed the cancer treatment of the other; adjusted to the departure of R. and anticipating E’s in a year from now.

Days and weeks are a blur, and time is a runaway train. Small infractions are small. I close my eyes and hold my son close, even when he doesn't know.

Relativity

Old men pull wrinkled linen handkerchiefs from their pockets, cover their noses with them and blow. The image comes from my childhood, when I wondered why they didn’t just use disposable Kleenex, instead of returning to the same old rag.

Now I understand, because these days my nose runs all the time—when I’m cold, when I’m tired; after I’ve swum or during a workout; or when I’m doing nothing. I'm told it comes with age, susceptilitiy to allergens or whatever makes a nose drip. In any case, I'm always digging in my pockets for Kleenex or finding them destroyed, balled up and rock hard or, after having gone through the washer and dryer, plastered in long strips, like confetti, to my clothes

.

So lately, handkerchiefs have begun to make sense. In fact, a lot of adjustments to the creeping changes of age are making sense. Like trying to avoid sneezing with a full bladder; being prepared to ask my teenage son to speak slowly, lest his blizzard of words blow by without releasing one identifiable sound; or having paper and pen nearby at all times, so I can write down important information, (hoping I will remember that I have written it down).

I’d like to blame all of these incremental changes on my post-op state and the medications that are keeping the swelling and pain at bay. But, they started long before my surgery. 

Of course, being post-op puts everything in a new light. I’m so thrilled to be walking again without arthritic pain and its telltale limp, that being a little slow, forgetful, deaf or short on bladder control doesn’t really matter.

Foreshadowing

Taking my new hip out for a walk yesterday, I passed a group of familiar runners, all men, all older than I.

"Why the cane?" they asked.

I explained about my hip.

"You look GREAT!" said one of the men, who has seen me hiking the trails with my dog for years. "You'll be back in no time."

I smiled and walked on, hot tears filling my eyes.

It wasn't the first time since returning from the hospital that I'd wept. Queries from two dear friends about my well-being also made me cry. Each time, I was surprised.

When I had my first hip replaced eight years ago, I was 47 years old and on a mission to do everything phyiscially possible to reclaim my life in all its dimensions as fast as possible. I have the same mission this time, but with an emotional fragility that I hadn't felt before.

At 47, getting a new hip is unusual and walking with a cane, anomalous. At 55, it feels like a precursor to a future of frailty and dependence, a bump-up against mortality.

I wept not from physical pain, but from a sense of foreshadowing: when needing help to put on my socks and shoes, or to get in and out of the car, will be typical; when I will grab F's arm not out of romantic impulse, but to steady myself. Inevitable as it is, pondering these aspects of the future is frightening.

I remember being with my mother shortly after she'd received a diagnosis of end-stage lung cancer. We were in the oncology waiting room of Jackson-Memorial Hospital in Miami, where several other cancer patients, mostly women, were chatting with their families. They were all hairless, wearing brightly-colored head scarves. My mother, who was 72 at the time (and died soon after her diagnosis) and always vain about her looks, had not begun treatment. After scanning the room of bald women, she looked at me, and wept.

Seeing the future, whatever decline it portends, brings us to our knees.

This is not to suggest that we peak at 50 and slide steadily downhill thereafter. It is to say that after 50, it is impossible to be unaware of mortality; and because of that, life feels more fragile, more precious.

Being where I am humbles me, and I ponder the future with a prayer for continued good health and strength, and for the wisdom and humor to help me negotiate the peaks and valleys ahead.

Squeaky Wheel

I’m at the age where I don’t care what strangers think of me. I’ve been this way for most of my adult life. But at 55, it’s set in stone. I speak my mind, sometimes too loudly. I ask for what I want, question what I don’t understand and challenge what I find unreasonable. Sometimes, like now, when I’m in post-op pain and feeling angry about being physically dependent on others, I'm brazen. But either way, I don’t care, because wherever I go, I’m usually old enough to be somebody’s mother.

Like the doctors and nurses milling around me in the emergency room, where I languished for hours yesterday afternoon. I had busted out of the hospital early after my hip replacement, and after spending a little too much time sitting at my writer’s desk, my legs swelled.

Post-op legs are tree trunks. They must move every hour to keep the circulation going. I lost track of time and soon noticed that I could not flex my ankles. Fluid and blood had pooled in both legs, turning the one with the new hip orange.

Panic struck. The highest risk for me right now is a blood clot.

So off we went to the ER, where I was quickly ushered into a room and told to wait for a doctor.

They were busy. It was Good Friday, and there were people on gurneys and in wheelchairs much worse off than I. Still, after nearly 2 hours of laying with my legs propped high on pillows, I was getting cranky.

When a woman came to take my $200 (!) co-pay, I said, “I’m not giving you $200 because at this rate, I’m not sure I’m even staying here,” I said.

“Haven’t you seen a doctor?” she asked, trying again to secure my credit card number.

“I’m not paying for care I haven’t received.”

Within minutes, a doctor shuffled in, looking irritated and disinterested, as if just having been awoken from a nap.

How pathetic and wrong is it that the threat of my not spending my $200 in their ER brought the doctor, however reluctantly, to my room?

And what of the rest of the patients waiting for care, not to mention people everywhere, who cannot speak up for themselves? 

Legacy

It almost always happens in a doctor’s office. Is there a history of ____ in your family? Has anyone ever had diabetes or heart disease?

I am quick to recite the illnesses in my mother’s family. Then I am silent.

I didn’t know my father, I offer.

The doctor stares at me, with some mixture of surprise and pity, as I stare at my hands, twisting around each other in my lap.

At 55, I’m still ashamed about my father’s absence, and I don’t know why. It’s not my fault that his marriage to my mother didn’t make it out of the starting gate. 

I don’t know why I feel humiliated when it was she who was belittled and battered. I should feel proud of her for having had the sense to pack us up and leave.

Still, it would be nice to be able to say my parents divorced or my father died when I was young, instead of, I only met my father twice (and that’s because the courts ordered it). After that second visit, I never saw him again. He never even tried to see me.

That could make a kid feel unlovable.

Maybe that’s where the shame comes from.

Aqua Women

Yesterday I had a cortisone epidural to relieve sciatica caused by a herniated disc.

Next week, I am having my left hip replaced.

Eight years ago, I had my right hip replaced.

I feel like an old jalopy that keeps landing in the shop for repairs.

It’s not so much age as it is years of athletics and an unlucky genetic draw that has worn me down. So, I no longer run or cross-country ski. I swim for exercise, because it hurts the least. It also soothes me like nothing else.

For as long as I can remember, water has been my salve. Seeing it, hearing it, touching it. As a homesick child at sleep-away camp, I swam laps in the lake to keep from crying. When my nerves are jangled, when I can’t make a decision, when I’m inexplicably blue, I swim.

No matter how cold or tired or irritable or resistant I feel, I submerge myself in the nearest body of water. And without fail, after the first stroke, I am at peace.

I am not alone.

I swim in a community pool alongside a handful of women every morning, many of them older than I by a decade or more. They are heavier, frailer, slower, more arthritic than I. Some have new hips and some, new knees. Some of them I know by name and most, by their water routines, the way they tread or kick in place.

We are compatriots, bound to our morning ritual. We tote our suits and caps and goggles and fins; peel back layers of down jackets and wool scarfs; toss our hats and mittens; slide off our furry boots. We gingerly tip-toe poolside to avoid stepping down on the cold wet tile floor, and sit along the edge, quietly negotiating with ourselves about how good it will feel once we’re in, nodding to each other across lanes that the water is indeed chilly, and groaning in unison before sliding in. As a rule, we do not chat, because we have a job to do: lapping back and forth, back and forth, like a mantra. When we’re done, we high-tail it to hot showers, whooping and hollering; so deserving, so relieved, feeling accomplished and proud of ourselves.

Funny how, at 55, my role models have changed: no more pining to be a tall, thin, dressed-for-success woman who can sail down the sidewalk on high, stacked heels, I draw inspiration from an older crowd, for whom working joints and a good day's swim are reasons to celebrate. 

Being Here

Now that Obama is tucked into his second term, everyone is already talking about whether Hillary (or who else) will run in 2016. 

It’s like the Oscars. No sooner is the awards show over, then a new crop of movies start the buzz about who will win next near.

When people ask me how it feels to be 55, my knee-jerk response is to say that in five years I’ll be 60.

Like many, I have trouble being here now.

Twist

The human resources director sent me an e-mail, inviting me to attend a second interview. Kudos for them: They hadn’t written me off because of my age.

This time I met with a woman—the would-be supervisor—who had been on the job for all of one week. I couldn’t tell how old she was, but she had to be at least 15 years younger than I. She kept talking about competencies and buckets.

Throughout our hour together, we had unbroken eye contact. Looking someone directly in the eyes usually reveals something about them, something other than what their words tell. But I couldn’t read her.

I suppose that was her job, as an interviewer: to ask the questions and reveal nothing. I suppose it is unrealistic, perhaps even unreasonable, for me to expect more. But that’s what I do: look for the story behind the headline, the person inside the suit.

Now they say I’m a top contender for the job.

Despite my best efforts to champion myself, there is nothing like external validation to put a spring in my step.

We’re nowhere near a decision; still, it's nice to be wanted.

Frosting on the Cake

And now it’s over, although F. insists on making this a weeklong birthday celebration, culminating in dinner out Saturday night, and who am I to turn down being fussed over so?

But nothing will top last night: Home after walking the dog, the table set for sushi (my birthday request) and Chinese take-out, I went to open the closed bathroom door and found R. hiding inside, home from college to surprise me for birthday dinner. And then, a “card” from E., hand-scribbled on torn out spiral notebook paper, so beautifully written and full of love that I couldn’t stop hugging him.

Finally, from F., an exquisite card with just the words I’d longed to hear about our love—his love—20 years into this marriage.

Middle age be damned. It just doesn’t get better than this.

Birthday Blessing

Happy Birthday to me. I am 55 today. I’ve spent the past few weeks dreading this day, moaning over the age, even though I always say that age is just a number and there’s no ducking it. 

But this birthday, before it got here, felt big and heavy. Now that it’s here, it feels surreal.

When my mother was 55 I was 17, in between my kids’ ages. For many reasons that had to do with her being a single mom, we didn’t get along. She was angry and depressed. A smoker and a drinker, sour when she got drunk, which only took one sip of Scotch.

I left for college at 18 and never went back to her house, not even to visit. I swore I’d never have kids. My greatest fear was ending up like her.

But here I am: 55, happily (most of the time) married, with two remarkable teenagers who I love more than life.

As a gift to myself, I’m not going to overthink this one. I am blessed.

Partners

He chipped his tooth on an olive pit, and for a minute, I thought he would cry. He didn’t yell or say much; just went into the bathroom and came out, holding a tiny off-white fleck between his thumb and forefinger. Dinner was quiet. He tried to join the conversation, but spent much of the time staring into space, afraid to eat, afraid that chewing would shear off more of his crumbly tooth.

I forget that he is aging too.

We are about the same age but experience it so differently: Me, with my tweezers, face creams and hair dye; he, with more salt than pepper in his hair and full beard, not a line in his smooth skin, but a growing paunch.

Seeing extra weight on myself horrifies me. He shrugs and has another cookie. I exercise mercilessly, punishing my body for slowing down, for feeling stiff. He takes more naps.

We both forget the names of people we know, of movies we’ve recently seen; I marvel at the random memory loss; he tries to joke about it, but despairs over losing his mind.

He is not one to verbalize sadness or fear.  Mostly, he folds into himself. But chipping his tooth was more than he could bear.

No one has prepared us for this: for being neither young nor old; for the slow decline and creeping deficits that surface like daily insults.

Dreaming Backwards

In more than one dream this week I have seen E. as a baby; a cross between and infant and a toddler; all smiles and hugs, happiest in my arms.

It is probably no coincidence that my mind is traveling backwards in time, the older and closer he gets to leaving home. In a perverse twist, part of me enjoyed nursing him last week, although my heart broke to see him in such swollen, searing pain. His need was naked and raw. He was grateful to have me swoop in every few hours with pudding or ice packs or water, like a hungry baby bird, desperate for its mama to deposit a bug into its wide-open mouth. But as he heals, his softness, like the puffiness of his cheeks, recedes.

Saturday night, in a moment of sleeplessness, I strolled around the house and happened upon him as he came in a little too late from seeing friends. We exchanged a few words and he began to open his arms for a hug. Then he thought better of it.

This is what my dreams are for. 

Impotence Redux

At his 21-year-married mark, my brother Steven said, “Every morning, when J. and I wake up, we look at each other and say, ‘Whaddya think: Will this marriage last?’” Then he gave me his wide, Cheshire cat smile. 

At his death at age 59, my brother had been married 33 years. At his graveside, a few months later, as we blessed and buried his ashes, F. prayed for the gift of a marriage that was as resilient and full of humor and love as was my beloved brother’s.

Of course, Steven and J. had their discord and their clashes. And his 15-year illness, the last four years of which were death in slow motion, tore at their seams. Still, to my eyes, they were a model.

“We fall in and out of love all the time,” Steven had assured me during one of the many times I’d sought his marital advice.

Falling out of love? After two decades or more of marriage? Nothing seemed more improbable, or terrified me more.

And yet, here I am, nearing the 20-year married mark, frightened by the swing of my own emotional pendulum.

Besides raising children, nothing is more difficult than sustaining marital love, especially as aging, illness, and career fray its edges.

We change. Who we were at 35, when passion paved the way for generosity, is not who we are at 55, when self-doubt chips away at acceptance.

We need more, but not necessarily from each other. Our universe has shifted. We still rotate around each other but our orbits are wider. We are growing, aching, questioning in new ways. Our struggles are not about the marriage; fidelity has never been an issue. Still, we grapple with pain that the marriage cannot heal.

F. needs space. I need closeness. F. feels squeezed. I feel threatened.

This has been our dance, always. And for 20 years, we have worked it out. We are not who we were, and yet, we are.

Impotence

E. had his first ear infection at five months of age. It came on suddenly, the fussing, the fever, the plaintive wails.

Our regular pediatrician was off that day, so I rushed to the office of the pediatrician on call. They said they could see him but the office was packed with the doctor’s regular clientele. We would have to wait.

I held my baby boy close, walking and rocking him as he whimpered and we both wept.

I wasn’t a first-time mom. But it had been 2 ½ year since R. had been born, and everything felt new again.

By the time the nurse called us into the examining room I was crying freely. Fortunately, the doctor was generous. She had us in and out in minutes, with a prescription for Amoxicillin in hand. I was wrung out from hours of living through my child’s pain that I could not heal.

Today, E. had oral surgery—four wisdom teeth pulled and hardware inserted in preparation for braces. He is battered and bruised; swollen and sad. And though, at 16, he is more man than boy, his pain wilts me, in my impotence.

The Other Hair

At certain times, and in certain light, I should avoid examining my chin in the mirror.

It used to be that tweezers were all I needed to pluck the occasional wayward facial hair. But lately, a scythe seems more in order.

Luckily, most of the hair is blonde (or is it white?). And it is more like peach fuzz than, say, crab grass. Still, there was a renegade, standing tall and defiant, from my neck of all places.

Surely there must be a spiritual lesson or some wisdom in this somewhere, but this morning, I’ll be damned if I can find it.

Wet Hair

In my 20s, when my sexuality was emerging (I was late) and dreams of romance insistent, I dreaded wet-haired couples.

They were ubiquitous on Sunday mornings, in all the breakfast places, with their fat rolled up newspapers and their gooey afterglow; with their wet hair, which told only one story: that they had just taken a shower together, after having spent the night together, during which they had slept little and loved much.

I ached for that love and it wasn’t until my mid-30s, when I met F., that I found it. In my bliss, I didn’t care about the wet-heads anymore. Sometimes, even F. and I were among them.

It’s been 20 years. F. and I are tight. We anticipate each other’s needs and finish one another’s sentences. We cradle each other. We stir the pot. We kvetch. We meet under the covers (or on top of them), and we are home.  

Long love can be wet-hair love, but most of the time, it isn’t. It is warm and steady more than dewy and electrifying. It is good, but sometimes its goodness pales in the glow of new, undiscovered love.

This defies reason. Good, solid, reliable, reciprocal love is hard to find. Wet-hair is illusory.

Still, when I see it, although I am in-love and well-loved, envy and longing take me by surprise.

Milestone

The interview had gone very well, I thought. I’d gone in ambivalent about leaving self-employment so soon, especially given all the assignments on my plate, and about returning to the kind of schedule that would force me to return my creative work to the back burner. But the more we talked, the more suitable the job sounded. Plus, the would-be boss and I hit it off nicely.

Still, there was the matter of my age.

It was an unspoken but unavoidable part of the conversation: She has three children, six and under. She had just returned from maternity leave. Her youngest—who she is still nursing—is six months old. When we finished the interview, she would have to pump.

Pumping. I remember like it was yesterday. I smiled to myself, old enough to be her mother. I had an eye into her world. But she had none into mine: two children, one in college, the other finishing high school; a career more than 30 years in the making, begun when she was in kindergarten, or earlier. When we finished the interview, I would make an appointment with my orthopedist who says it’s time for a new left hip.

I knew we could get along. I knew I could do the job. And I knew that my track record impressed her. It impressed the human resources director too, who looked not much older than my daughter.

There could be a dozen reasons why I never heard back. Perhaps they knew I would cost too much, or feared I wouldn't fit in. I’m sure it’s neither intentional nor conscious, the discrimination.

That’s the scary part.  

Sleep

Sleep—staying asleep--has become a challenge. The arthritis in my hip wakes me. Or the heat. Mostly, it’s the heat. Even though it is 17 degrees outside.

I turn down the thermostat before I go to bed and open the window before turning out the light but like clockwork, sometime around 3 (this morning it was 1 and 3) I awaken, a human furnace under the covers. I throw off the quilt, then the sheet. Then I strip down. Then, of course, I get cold.

This routine repeats itself until I finally get up to pee. By then it’s 3:30, sometimes 4.

It occurs to me to stay up (and to start a dairy farm, since I seem to have the schedule down) but the thought of making coffee and starting my day this early feels too lonely.

So I crawl back into bed, half-dressed, cooled-off but not too cold, and sink into a deep sleep, completely missing my 5:30 alarm.

This age requires tremendous self-acceptance, not to mention a generous sense of humor.

Skin

Paralyzed in the skincare aisle of CVS: I stare hard at the face creams, as if looking at them long enough will reveal a secret, a youth dew, an elixir to erase 20 years from my face.

I used to buy expensive creams. I believed the more I spent on potions with Shea butter and aloe and wheat germ oil and jojoba, the better my chances of turning back the clock. But I couldn’t afford $90 an ounce. Then I started reading labels and saw that most face creams contain the same stuff.

I also remembered something I once heard: that motor oil offers the same benefits as face cream. And I thought of my mother, whose skin was practically lineless until the day she died (smoking and drinking and lung cancer be damned), and who, for as long as I could remember, gave herself Crisco facials and walked around the house glistening in vegetable grease.

I was a teenager in southern California in the late 1970s, where baking in the sun and wearing little more than Bain de Soleil was just what you did. No one knew from skin cancer or premature wrinkling or SPF, except Mrs. Crisco Face, and who listened to parents anyway.

My skin is soft, but after a walk in 22-degrees, it feels like sandpaper. Plus, the powder foundation I wear makes my wrinkles look like cracks in the sidewalk. The other night, while removing eye makeup, a pinch of skin stayed pinched and pushed to one side long after I’d let go.

Now I’m a skin-cream maven, slathering products all over my face at every opportunity, like over-watering a parched and dying houseplant. The truth is, aside from Botox, nothing is going to give me the tight, lineless skin of a 20- or 30-year-old, because I’m not 20 or 30 years old.

And yet, away from a mirror, I sometimes forget that I am the age I am. When I am swimming or hiking, feeling fit and energized, I forget that my face reveals my age.

When I do remember, I try to look kindly, even lovingly, upon my aging face, with its wrinkles and puffs and sags; to see its lines as imprints of my history; of strength and perseverance; sorrow and laughter; struggle and triumph; of life vigorously lived.

Money

There’s nothing like arguing over money to make a family regress.

I get angry with R. because money burns a hole in her pocket. She gets angry with me because I comment on her spending habits. And F. (ever Mr. Nice Guy), believes that increasing her weekly allowance would solve the problem, which makes me angry with him.

And I thought middle-of-the-night nursing was tough.

I went to college on full financial aid. My mother was a single mom. For my entire adolescence, we lived on welfare and food stamps. Throughout college, I had work study. During my freshman year, I scrubbed toilets from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. five days a week before school started. F’s parents were able to afford his undergraduate and graduate education. He never had to work. Doing well was his only job.

Needless to say, we disagree about how much R should get each week. F. thinks she should have more than enough so she always has cash in her pocket. I think she should have just enough so she learns how to budget. We compromise: R. gets less money than F. would like, but more than I think she needs.

I also thought we were finally done with F. being Mr. Nice Guy and me being the police.

College costs are crushing, especially when campus is New York City. The word “poor” used to go with “college student.” But today—at least in Manhattan—kids go to college with money belts. I don’t know how families do it. More important, I don’t know why families do it. Doesn’t good parenting mean teaching kids to recognize limits? Would we really be doing R. a favor by keeping her ATM card loaded?

R. hates asking for money, and most of the time, she spends responsibly. But she feels embarrassed when low funds prevent her from joining her friends for dinner out or a cab ride. And although I believe that learning to manage money and say no to luxuries is part of her growing up, I am still a mama bear whose first instinct is to protect my child from pain, psychic or otherwise.

Who said it gets easier once they leave home?

Man-Child

S-s-s-u-u-p.

E. is on the phone. Even though he has initiated the call, he sounds put out, like I’ve interrupted him.

S-s-s-u-u-p. It’s the shortest shorthand possible for “What’s up?” or, as E. says when he’s really feeling chatty, Wuzup?

I don’t know what’s up, I say, trying to stifle my irritation at his pathetic phone etiquette. You called me.

Ite. (All right).

E. is a master of the monosyllabic conversation.

E., I say delicately, anticipating his annoyance, I’d like you to walk the dog before you leave for school.

Bet.

Bet. This could mean “You bet,” as in “No problem,” but in E’s universe, it usually means, “Don’t bet on it.”

As a little boy, E. was a chatterbox. He loved to talk about anything. He was always asking questions. He was especially eager to share his feelings: his anxieties about school, his fear of bullies, and his self-consciousness about being chubby. I felt doubly-blessed: Not only did I have a healthy, happy second child; I had a male child who could describe his emotional world and invited us in.

Then he turned 14, and the wall went up.

I realize that hormones, peers and popular culture’s images of what it means to be a man are powerful influences in what feels like E’s verbal and emotional retreat.  And I admit that assigning gender identity to personality traits, like communicativeness or silent stoicism, reinforces stereotypes. The unfortunate reality, however, is that the society in which our sons are coming of age continues to shame boys who are ‘soft’; who display any vulnerability by talking about their feelings.  And try as I have to raise a feminist man-child with nontraditional views on gender roles, the larger culture and its overpowering images of silent, grunting machismo have hooked him.

I’d like to think this is temporary. But even F., who is the gentlest, most communicative and sensitive man I know, is ambivalent about these very qualities that nourish my soul (and our marriage) and that society deems unmanly.

F. recognizes his struggle to reconcile the “feminine” qualities that I adore in him with the “masculine” qualities that society values more. I don’t doubt that part of him is relieved to see our 16-year-old free of this struggle. He says E. is where he should be, cordoning us off from the details of his life and the depths of his heart; and building an emotional moat around himself, so that his eventual separation from us doesn’t hurt so much.

During the perilousness of adolescence, when depression and drug abuse and violence can cut a young life short, I suppose I should be grateful for any words that come my way.