Berries and cream please.

Child One did not like me when we first met.  Child Two takes every opportunity to remind me of this.  It gives him great pleasure.  “Maybe,” Child One said to me last night, ”it was because you tried to serve me strawberries with balsamic and basil instead of sugar and whipped cream.  I was only ten.  Who serves a ten year old their strawberries with balsamic?”  I remind her then she was not exactly a typical ten year old and already had a remarkably sophisticated palate.  She considers a moment, agrees and says perhaps she’ll try it again soon.

This observation did not come out of nowhere.  We had come home late from a movie, both starving, and I’d whipped up a quick dinner of scrambled eggs with shaved ricotta salata and sautéed baby zucchini with fresh sage.  For dessert, she grabbed a nectarine from the fruit bowl and asked if I thought it would be good.  “Better,” I said, “with a drizzle of thick balsamic and some chopped mint.”  That’s when she wrinkled her sweet nose and reminded me of the berries.

Once or twice, when the reminder comes that Child One did not, in fact, like me when we first met, I suggest that perhaps her not liking me had nothing to do with me.  She did not like the girlfriend that came before me (nor did I for that matter), or the one before that.  I suggest that perhaps ANY girlfriend who would come into her father’s life would not be received with open arms – that the girlfriend would be a threat to her own relationship with her father and a threat to the possibility that Sig Other and Ex Wife would reunite.  Child One dismisses this without a thought, “No,” she says, “I didn’t like you but that’s not why.  Maybe because you were bossy and I was afraid of you.”  She pauses there.  I agree with her.  I tell her I agree with her.  And then she continues, “But now I’m sort of bossy too and I love you so much!”  We laugh and leave it at that.

But I know – I will always know – why Child One didn’t like me.  I know and will always know why, even now that she truly does love me, she will remember those first years as difficult and fraught.  No child wants a third parent.  No girl child wants a woman to threaten her special relationship with daddy.  No boy child wants a woman to take his mother’s place.  These delicate relationships – the tenuous spiderweb dance we do as blended families – take constant attention – constant observation – which child is comfortable – which is feeling insecure – which is taking advantage, and which simply does not like balsamic on her strawberries and would prefer a simple serving with sugar and cream…

Buy you a drink?

As the 45^th year rapidly approaches, I find myself increasingly frustrated with my own physical limitations.  In sheer defiance of aging cells and waning hormones, I want nothing more than to kick-start my sex drive and recapture the vivacity of my 30s.  I wouldn’t mind ironing out some wrinkles and subtly lifting parts of my anatomy, but really I’m much more focused on revving up my energy level and turning up a slightly dimmed porch light.  I want this for myself, I want it for Sig Other, I want it for my marriage. 

So what’s a girl to do?  Where is the magical elixir meant to rocket body and soul back a decade?  In search of answers, I went to various shrinks and doctors, had hormone checks and blood work done and started talking to girlfriends of similar age.  My malady, it turns out, is not at all unique.  And there is no magic pill, no special formula.  Almost every woman in her 40s feels the exact same way – we like the idea of sex.  We just like the idea of sleep more.

But surely this has to be resolvable.  Surely, I can overcome.  And so, a hit and miss combo of potions and pills, trial and error have become part of a life spent trying to recapture something I likely wasted years ago.  Mornings now begin with massive handfuls of vitamins and supplements, washed down with a vile shake of protein powder, super greens, flax seeds, chia seeds and a magic potion called “maca powder” which is meant to kick start the libido.  I try to work out regularly and fail miserably as something else (anything else really) always gets in the way.  I’ve seen shrinks to determine what deep-rooted pathological disturbance is clearly hampering my sex drive.  But frustratingly, head doctors, vagina doctors and general doctors all agree – there is nothing wrong with me.  I love my husband.  I’m attracted to my husband.  I like sex.  I’m like sex with my husband.  I’m just tired.  And middle aged.  And overworked, overwhelmed and overscheduled.  Even more frustratingly, these shrinks and doctors and soothsayers all have the same advice: make a date night, check into a hotel, get away for the weekend.  Are they kidding? When would I possibly find time for any of those things?  Sig Other and I are lucky enough if we get to spend one whole day on the weekends together.  Between his travel schedule and mine, between schlepping children and realizing our precious time with them is ticking away, between being engaged in the world in a way we feel both responsible and life affirming, WHO HAS TIME FOR DATE NIGHT?  Add to this the special cherry on top of my particular situation: a career spent sublimating my femininity in a business gone deaf and blind to women of a certain age.  I am neuter – a sexless dame in a young man's game. 

I never understood women who were offended by wolf whistles and catcalls.  One of the things I miss most about living in New York is walking down the street and getting a look or a smile or even a whistle from a construction worker, a truck driver, a guy in a three piece suit.  I don’t mind having a door opened for me.  I don’t mind a jeer every now and then.  I’m a girl and want to be treated like one.  I am certainly the girl at home.  Sig Other is flawless in his recognition of my femininity and never fails to notice, to compliment, to support me as a woman. 

But every now and then, a girl needs to feel cute to someone other than her husband.  Every now and then we need to be reminded that we are sexual objects to someone who still finds us mysterious and alluring and doesn’t know what we look like when we sleep or that we snore or don’t look cute when we cry at bad movies.  Every now and then, we need a flirt.

So it is with great gratitude that I send a thank you to the young man who offered to buy me a drink in a bar – who wasn’t daunted that I was waiting for a male friend, or that I’m married or that I’m much, much older than he and who, in spite of my protests handed me his card.  I will find him a girlfriend – an age appropriate, single girlfriend – as a token of my appreciation.  But he will never know that, at least for a day or two, he was much, much better than a cocktail of maca powder or a facelift could ever be…

LET YOU KNOW MONDAY...

“My stomach really hurts,” Child Two declares as he gets into the car.  Its 10:30 on a Saturday night and we’ve just picked him up from the third in a series of what is known as the Bar Mitzvah Circuit – the social season for the tween set.  Every private school kid in southern California inviting every other private school kid to his or her bar or bat mitzvah.  They don’t all go to the same temple or even the same school.  And these temples are not close together.  Like every other activity in a Los Angeles child’s social calendar, there’s a lot of schlepping - weekend after weekend of driving to the temple for services, back from the temple after services, to the party in the evening, picking up after the party.  On and on, an endless cycle of sweaty, nervous hormones in khaki pants and blue blazers – an endless cycle of pasta bars and photo booths, of disco bands and empty dance floors. 

“My stomach hurts,” he says.  “No,” he continues, “it’s more like my kidneys.  My kidneys hurt. “  He pauses and then, “Actually, I’m vibrating.”  Child Two did not eat a bad piece of sushi.  He did not hit the dessert table one too many times.  And he wasn’t stealing sips from the grown up’s table.  No.  Child Two had just asked a girl out.  His first girl – the girl he’s been pining over since the beginning of the school year and the most sought after girl in his class. 

For thirty-five minutes – the time it takes to drive from the temple at the beach all the way to our house in the valley – we hear, in detail, the blow by blow of the approach – what he said, who was around, the specifics of the physical manifestation of hormones and nerves as only a love torn twelve year old can describe.  And what does she say?  This vixen, this whore?  “I’ll let you know on Monday.”  Monday!  Seriously.  A 48-hour wait for a twelve-year-old boy who has worked up the nerve to ask a girl out.  Torture.  

He proceeds to tell us what it would mean if she said yes.  Apparently, “will you go out with me” means more than just a date.  It means a date AND it means you’re now a couple.  So we spend a few minutes talking about what they’d do together (I suggest a movie, he counters with “we should start slow – I’ll take her to the Coffee Bean”).  And we talk about what it would mean if she says no (social suicide, everyone will know about the rejection and there’s no one else to ask out for the next six years).

 

When we return home, Child One is there with a gaggle of her friends – all seniors – boys and girls who had their own experiences on the circuit and who listen raptly as Child Two shares, once again, the story of exaltation and humiliation.  The boys offer up congratulations and words of advice.  The girls high five him – tell him how cool he is.  And Child Two trundles off to bed still jittery but a little more sure of himself and with a little less of a stomachache. 

Now, we all know what “I’ll let you know Monday” really means.  Nothing good ever comes with a delayed response and an answer on Monday.  If something is exciting, intriguing, enticing, you jump on it right away.  If you need a moment – if you have to sleep on it – if you delay the inevitable until Monday likely you are just cruel.  And so I hate her.  I hate this little twelve-year old bitch I’ve never met.  Just as I imagine I will hate girl after girl who might disappoint my sweet boy.  But I’m so proud that he asked – so proud that he had the presence of mind, the confidence and the balls to approach a girl at all (much less the most sought after girl in 6^th Grade).  And now I’m buckling in for a year full of Saturdays, and battening down the hatches for the rest of the tweens, the dreaded teens and what I hope is a future of more yeses than Mondays…

Sorry...

It turns out that the best way to start writing again is simply to start writing again.  The 45^th year approaches rapidly and I realize I’ve abandoned computer for pursuits all work related.  And while work is a flourishing and happy place at present, my inner life may be atrophying at a pace too rapid to notice.  Certainly I am less interesting at a dinner party than I was in the blog prolific days of the 43^rd year and when hours were spent contemplating navels and books and articles rather than screenplays about superheroes and monsters.  Still though, Child One and Two grow and remain fascinating fodder – the world of being the Evil Step challenges daily and Sig Other remains the present and entertaining love of my life.  So I will attempt, in spite of the continued onslaught of work, to return to The 43^rd Year, as I approach my 45^th…

We got in!!!

One thing I may have failed to mention as we waited for Mr. Tufts (or Misters Brown, Amherst or Barnard) is the unique and perhaps misguided way in which we, the collective parents of Child One, felt that WE were waiting to hear from colleges.  So much so, in fact, that we had to discuss the rules as they pertained to incoming mail.  And even though we discussed said rules, I felt quite sure that I would find myself home early from work on one of critical days, and if I should find myself wandering toward the mailbox I care little about and pay almost no heed most of the year, and IF I should happen upon an envelope from one of the many fancy, high-end universities Child One applied to, I MIGHT, just might, be inclined to open said envelope despite rules of normal acceptable social engagement that suggest I respect Child One’s right to open her own mail – the mail addressed to HER that holds information about HER future – not mine, not Sig Other’s, and certainly not Child Two’s. 

But that was just silly.  There was no scenario in which said mail was to sit, unopened on a countertop for an hour or perhaps more while Child One meandered around from school to friend to whatever activity struck her at the moment.  There was no scenario in which I would have been able to tolerate our collective future hanging in the balance whilst a simple piece of flimsy paper floated between us and our future fantasy.  And I certainly could not, and would not, accept that it would be somehow inappropriate for me to open an envelope which holds the future of Child One.   And so very strict rules were laid out to which Sig Other and I were sworn to adhere.

But of course, the rules were made only AFTER a specific breach – a breach that occurred innocently enough, but which revealed all there is to understand about applying to college in the modern age of parenting.  A few weeks ago, Sig Other made an urgent call to me in the office.  He asked me if I was sitting down and I, anticipating news of death or disease, was quite pleased to hear the drama was simply that Child One had been accepted to one of the schools of her choice.  This acceptance came much earlier than we were meant to officially hear from any college and quite out of the blue.  Sig Other told me that he was looking through the mail and noticed a rather thin envelope addressed to Child One from one of the colleges in question.  “And you opened it?” I asked rather harshly.  “Of course,” he replied, “it was a thin envelope so I assumed it was a note saying we’d made an error on our application.” 

And there it was.  A statement so innocent and yet so loaded.  “Our application.”  Not the application of Child One.  Not an application made by a young woman trying to determine her future on her own.  Rather, an application made by Child One, by Sig Other, and I suppose by Ex-Wife and me too.  WE all applied to college – several really.  And WE all were waiting to hear from seven universities until just recently. 

Now we’ve heard.  WE got in some places and got rejected (yes, I said REJECTED) from others.  And now we wait whilst Child One ponders and weighs her decisions.  Now we wait and try hard not to influence too much in one direction or other – recognizing that this is HER decision, after all.  Not ours.  Our future hangs in the balance with her but she alone will decide where she’ll go to school.  I can only cross my fingers and hope its one simple plane ride away…

Waiting for Mr. Brown...

Or Mr. Tufts, Wesleyan or Amherst.  Or really any one of the fancy East Coast colleges Child One applied to.   This is the moment for highschool seniors everywhere to experience anxiety, stress and fear.  And for parents of highschool seniors – particularly those of us who are, perhaps, a little too involved in the lives of our children – to wring our hands, soothe furrowed brows and act as if we don’t share the anxiety, stress and fear.  And this is the moment when I remember all those moments at the end of last year – all those moments when we struggled through the dread disease, “Mediocrity.”

Child One periodically came down with Mediocrity during the application process. Mediocrity doesn’t manifest as a fever or vomiting, but is often accompanied by sniffles and tears. Mostly, Mediocrity is accompanied by conversation about college – where she’ll get in, where she won’t.  Of course, not getting in to a particular college is known as “rejection.”  Which, by very definition, means that getting in is equivalent to “acceptance.”  And since Child One is applying to schools I could only dream of at her age, acceptance to any of them feels like something with very little relation to mediocrity to me.  But I don’t breathe Child One’s rarified private school air and I don’t occupy her self-motivated, driven, competitive shoes.  And so it doesn’t matter one bit that I would be happy with whatever school she goes to.  It doesn’t matter that Sig Other is incredibly proud of her no matter what.  What matters is that somehow if she doesn’t get in to the top top top of her choices, she will feel like a failure.

Of course it is true that of the seven schools, one is considered better than the other six.  It is also true that neither Sig Other nor myself expect her to get into said school.  And there is one of the seven that is, of those very high-ranking, very specialized schools, that could be considered to be sort of at the bottom of what is still a tippy top, fancy-pants list.   When Sig Other and I ask Child One what would happen if she got accepted to the last of the very elite seven, she answers that she will feel mediocre.

A quiet beat follows her response and a look passes between us – between two people who have spent their whole lives working hard and feeling mediocre – two people who have very little interest in belonging to clubs that would have us as members and two people who strive to constantly be more – more successful, more interesting, more interested.  And we start to laugh.  Child One is sort of indignant so we explain.  We didn’t soothe or chide or pretend that we didn’t understand.  We do understand.  All too well.  So we say, sort of simultaneously, “oh shit – we did it to her.”   Somehow the gene – the “I’m mediocre” gene - passed biologically through her father and perhaps through the ether from me, leaving Child One stuck in a world in which she’ll never be quite good enough.  I’m not sure it’s a bad thing.  I’m not sure anyone who I admire ever feels completely and totally up to snuff.  But it sure sucks watching your kid – your brilliant, hard-working, beautiful, ambitious, shiny kid – suffer ridiculous breast-beating insecurity and know that somehow you couldn’t break the cycle – couldn’t end generations of mediocrity on her behalf. 

I’m hopeful Child Two will escape it.  He’s oddly incredibly pleased with himself most of the time.  True he has moments and bouts and can’t help comparing himself to his sister, particularly now that they’re in the same school and her shadow looms large over him.  But I often catch him looking in the mirror and sort of winking at himself.  And he mostly speaks with the confidence and maturity of a kid far beyond his age.  It isn’t an easy road, the one in front of him.  Between Sig Other and Child One, he surely must feel the pressure to succeed.  But hopefully we’ve given him enough room to be different, to be his own dude, to define himself in his own way.  And since so far he’s chosen to veer away from every road his sister has travelled (she rides horses, he can’t stand them, she played piano, he chose drums), perhaps the road of mediocrity will elude him.

In the meantime, Sig Other and I will wring our hands and wait by the mailbox...

The wind began to pitch...

The house to switch.  Child One and I, on our own with Sig Other far away across the country, huddle safely in our abode as unseasonable wind rattles the windows and shakes the doors.  It’s crazy out there.  I imagine myself as Dorothy – battened down in a house rocked by wicked witches and wacky winds.

I’d say its an October wind but for the fact that its March.  A Fall wind makes LA weird and a little sexy.  But it’s March. And so I’m feeling rather upside down.  Fall wind blows crazy hot air, keeps dogs up at night, stirs the restless from their beds, keeps the anxious on edge.  This is the wind that Southern California owns – the Scirocco of the continental US.  But tonite is different – wilder, colder, more unusual – an unpredicted storm blowing through and keeping us up on what should be a cozy night.

Crazy wind has always kept me up.  Child Two, more sensitive than most to others’ moods, noted early on that wind makes me cranky.  “Uh oh,” he’d say, “its windles.  Not good,”  And I’d know he was talking about me and my moods.  He’s right of course.   Wind has always make me cranky, put me on edge, upended my sleep, my mood, my sense of well-being.  Its as though somehow I believe that wind is a sign – a harbinger – of some unbelievable doom. 

But no such doom came tonite.  Not for Child One and myself.  We are snugged in.  Alpha and Beta seem unperturbed by the turbulent air.  Were it truly a storm I imagine the two of them upended by anxiety – running to and fro, back and forth around the house and howling in even pitch with the whipping wind.  And yet they display no such angst.  Beta Dog is snuggled sweetly beside me, head on pillow and arm thrown across as though reaching for me as Sig Other would.  Alpha lays quietly on her couch – queen of her domain and blissfully unaware of the chaos around her.  They, the both of them, are blessed with deep sleep rather than deep thoughts – one being an incontrovertible inhibitor of the other.  I envy them simplicity and bliss.  I envy them their zen.  I remain awake – Dorothy on a windy eve, hoping my house doesn’t fall on a wicked witch but liking the idea of new red shoes.

I’ve not written in months – been buried in work and in life – happy but unavailable – to my computer, to my family and friends, to myself.  So here I emerge, like a groundhog looking for my shadow and finding only an unseasonable tempest – I’m likely to disappear under ground for longer than I’d like but happy to poke my head out albeit briefly.    And for once, I’m grateful for the wind, grateful to be kept up, if only for a moment, and given the time to write…