5 Things I Feel Kind of Sorry About (In No Particular Order)

Seriously.

I try not to live a life of regret. I try to frame the maybe-not-so-positive events that go down in my world as life lessons. This way of thinking makes my therapist very happy and I’m a pleaser so there you go.

However, sometimes I do find myself second guessing decisions I’ve made. Wondering what the fuck I was thinking about in certain instances.

And because it’s the end of August and absolutely nothing is happening in my life – at least that I can write about – I thought I’d share the Top 5 things I’m fretting about right now.

I know, you’re welcome.

  1. Sex With Strangers

I was paying my AmEx bill last Friday afternoon and noticed a charge for theater tickets and was like, “What the hell?” A quick search in my inbox turned up an email confirming tickets my girlfriend and I had bought a few weeks ago, kind of spur-of-the-moment, for an Off-Broadway play that got a great review in The New York Times called “Sex With Strangers.” The two-person show stars Anna Gunn – Skyler White from “Breaking Bad” – and some super-hot, sexy young dude named Billy Magnussen and the review said it explored real vs. social media personas and the struggle for writers to find commercial success while staying true to their artistic sensibilities. So up my alley. “HOLY FUCK,” I texted my gal pal, “We have tickets to see that show tonight!” Usually, if I need to get into the city from New Jersey, I need a game plan because it can be a real pain, especially on a Friday afternoon. But we got our acts together and took a ferry into Manhattan and even had time to spare for a glass of wine and big bowl of mussels at a restaurant bar before the show. And here’s where the trouble started. Here’s where, maybe because of the wine or the pretty sexy show, I got a bee in my bonnet about an itch that I needed to scratch. It had been brewing for a while but the show kind of set the wheels in motion for something that happened later in the weekend. And whether it’s a relief to have scratched at that itch or, like poison ivy, I should have just left it alone, remains to be seen. Well, everything is copy, as a certain hero of mine has said. But the show is at the Second Stage until the end of the month and as long as you don’t harbor a secret hankering for a much-younger man, I highly suggest you get tickets and see it. Maybe just leave your cell phone at home.

  1. Hermit Crabs

Haven’t I made myself clear? Haven’t I told my kids, time and again, I was not interested in bringing anything else into this house that needs to be kept alive? Like, I don’t even own a houseplant. But my third child gets teary-eyed when she thinks of all the pets I’ve allowed her older sister to own/kill over the years. The frog. The mice. The poor guinea pig that slowly fossilized in our basement. It pisses the younger sister off that she never had the same opportunity to torture small creatures. So, now I see – via some videos she’s sent me on Snapchat – that she has righted those childhood wrongs and bought herself two hermit crabs while spending the week away with friends down the shore. I’ve already watched them skitter across the floor of the beach house where she’s staying. I am not thrilled and wonder how long it will take for those things to shrivel up inside their shells the way the hermit crabs we had, like, 15 years ago for the two older kids did. I give them two weeks and they better not fucking smell while they’re at it.

  1. My Raging Narcissism

There was a time when I really knew what was going on in the world. When I’d wake up early each day and read the paper cover-to-cover. But lately, I get up and grab a cup of coffee and immediately start writing about myself in my journal – documenting my weight and daily alcohol intake – while tragedies unfold in St. Louis and Iraq and I still can’t tell you the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite, much less what ISIS stands for. I can, however, report that I’ve lost almost 10 oz. since yesterday.

  1. The Fantasy of the Only Child 

Don’t tell my three older kids, but for some time now I’ve fantasized about what it will be like when they’re all off in college or starting their grown up lives and it’s just me and their little brother left at home. I’d imagine how clean our kitchen would be and all the cool things my little guys and I would be able to do together in the older kids’ wake. But, just like the reality of how things like being a grown up or marriage never quite stack up to how we imagined they’d be, having an only child is far from perfect. In fact, it’s kind of boring. Sure, my house is a little cleaner and he’s happy eating taquitos night after night, but I kind of miss the chaos of all those other personalities. Turns out, I really like having them around.

  1. The Summer of Amy

You’ve heard it here before, how my 10 Days of Fun somehow stretched into my Summer of Amy. How a lot has transpired over the course of the last three months. I have danced and I have kissed and pretty much made up for all those nights home, cooking for kids and working, over the last five years. And although I normally can’t wait for summer to come to an end, am almost pushing my kids out the door for the first day of school, this year is somehow different. I’ve loved having time off from work to screw around on my blog, sit on the beach with my kids and focus on my love life (such as it is). And I know in no time, I’ll be back at work and rushing to make dinners and go grocery shopping and it will all be a distant – fabulous – memory. So, who in the world would ever think they’d hear me say this: I am really sorry to see the summer end.

What, pray, are you sorry about, nowadays? I’m an equal-opportunity venter and would love to hear what’s bringing you down. Misery does love company, you know. 

How to Waste Time on the Internet

We breaded our cat. Thanks, Internet.

We breaded our cat. Thanks, Internet.

If I was good at keeping track of things, which we’ve already determined is not the case, I would probably find that I spend more time trolling Facebook each day than I do actually parenting any of my four children. I fall down so many Internet rabbit holes — clicking on headlines like, “15 Things No One Wants to Hear Men Complain About,” or “9 Excuses to Eat More Chocolate” — that sometimes I forget why I even went on Facebook in the first place (usually it’s to see if anyone has “liked” or commented on something I’ve posted).

So, in an effort to help you make better use of your own valuable time, I’ve done the leg work for you and culled what I think are the top 5 must-see links to help ease you into the weekend.

Don’t expect to be any smarter by the end of it, just slightly amused. Like me.

1. I can’t decide if this Hot/Crazy Matrix video is insanely misogynistic or just plain funny. Whatever it is, it makes me laugh my ass off. And in case you’re wondering, I am totally a unicorn. 

2. The kids and I saw Guardians of the Galaxy last week and it wasn’t until the end that I realized that Chris Pratt was the same chubby dude from Parks and Rec (“Duh, Mom,” says disgusted children). Officially love him and his version of the ubiquitous ice bucket challenge:

3. And because I have been very snarky about all that pouring of ice over heads, much to my children’s disgust, these Ice Bucket Challenge screw ups really made me laugh.

4. To be filed under “WTF”: A woman goes to the doctor complaining of stomach cramps and they find a 38-year-old baby skeleton inside of her. 

5. I am a sucker for videos with babies and puppies so this made me dream that I had a baby and bought it two kittens. Because that’s just what I need in my life right now, babies and kittens. My mind has officially become as vacuous as the Internet.

Gains and Losses

546146_10200649522973652_1130412438_n

Credit: Susan Buchenberger

In theory, you would have thought I’d be happy they were leaving.

I mean, I scored a lot of swag over the last few weeks as my next-door neighbors frantically cleaned out their house so they could pull up stakes and move to Hong Kong this past weekend. They needed to clear out for another family in town who are renting their house while they’re gone.

Here are just some of the bigger items that I am the new – and in some cases — temporary, owner of:

  • Sauna
  • Trampoline
  • 2 paddle boards
  • Potted boxwoods
  • Multiple bags of quinoa
  • Not one but three iPhone 5 chargers
  • Trader Joe’s Frozen Mahi Mahi steaks

This is not to mention the two shopping bags full of frozen and refrigerated items, about 10 bottles of assorted alcohol and one final bag yesterday containing everything from Trader Joe’s popcorn to a new bottle of Nivea lotion and Band Aids that I brought home.

I could have also had a cat, dog, bunny and various houseplants, but I drew the line at anything that required being kept alive. I can commit to quinoa but not animals, nowadays.

Initially, when my neighbor Susan started to offer various pantry items to me as she began clearing out her kitchen to prepare to move to Hong Kong for a couple of years for her husband’s job, I demurred. I was okay in the herbal teas and balsamic vinegar department and felt bad taking hers.

But then she told me how she tried to get another friend to take items from her pantry, and that friend also politely declined, and Susan said to me, “All I could think was: For fucks sake, please just take it!”

She needed us to help take stuff off her hands. It made her life easier.

So I stopped saying, “No,” every time she offered me something, which turned out to be a lot since I lived right next door, making it relatively easy to unload giant things like trampolines and saunas. I stopped feeling embarrassed or guilty for taking their stuff and saw it as something that made the giant move to the other side of the world with her husband and three young boys a tiny bit easier.

But of course, all the Kahlua and frozen Mahi Mahi steaks in the world could not make up for how much I was really losing. I told Susan that as we hugged good-bye in her garage Sunday morning as the giant black van waited to take her and her family and their 17 bags to JFK to fly to Hong Kong.

“You’ve been such a good friend,” I cried as we stood their hugging each other and she hugged me a little tighter and I thought about what an understatement that was. How critical her friendship has been to the quality of my life.

She was a major part of the safety net that kept me from falling to the ground during and after my divorce. She always included my youngest child – who’s 11 and around the same age as her boys – in whatever they were doing.

“Does he want to come over to watch a movie?”

“Does he was to stay and eat pizza?”

“Does he need a ride to lacrosse?”

“Does he want to stay at the beach with us?”

“Does he want to go to the movies with us?”

“Does he want to sleep over?”

It was always so easy and made the transition from stay-at-home mom to single working mom a lot easier.

She never said, “No,” when I asked her for a favor, never even hesitated or made me feel bad. She often asked if I needed anything if she was running to Costco or Trader Joe’s, and gave my family more free cupcakes from the cupcake business she ran on the side, than we could ever dream possible.

And she looped me into her group of friends — who have kids around my youngest child’s age — which helped me not only meet a great group of people but let me find a niche after my divorce and needed to find a place to set up my beach chair in the summer. She gladly welcomed me into her circle and had a spicy margarita waiting when I got there.

Her husband, Michael, was just as good. He was the boys’ lacrosse coach and helped us with the complicated equipment and always made sure my son was on his team, which came in handy this past spring when I forgot to pick my guy up from practice and Mike just scooped him up with his own kids to bring home.

“I literally forgot him,” I texted Michael back in May. “WTH is gonna happen when u guys r gone?”

WTH is right.

When I first told my 17-year-old daughter that our neighbors, whose boys she has been babysitting since they moved next door seven years ago, were definitely moving to Hong Kong, she started to cry. “Not my babies,” she sniffled.

But we knew that the move was hard enough on Susan and the boys without us being all weepy in front of them, so we put on a good face. We talked about how exciting it was, this new adventure, and how they’ll be back in New Jersey with lots of stories to tell in a few years.

In the meantime, for the rest of us, it’s kind of like a temporary death. I’ll miss the day-to-day interactions, the ease of having someone just a few yards away who I can ask to borrow an egg or sesame oil or drive me to the hospital if I’m feeling especially crazy. I’ll miss being able to tell my son to go outside and see what the boys are doing and watching them all play soccer on her front lawn for hours on end. I’ll even miss all the pieces of crap they set up in my driveway as they practiced for their future jobs as professional skateboarders and BMX riders.

So when I walked around Costco and Wegman’s yesterday crying after they pulled out of the neighborhood, it wasn’t really for Susan’s family that I was weeping. They were going to be great. I mean, they already have a trip planned to Thailand in October.

To be honest, I was really crying for me.

Because I might have gained a sauna and lots of quinoa, but for now, I’ve lost some wonderful friends.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michael and LaToya

Sisters, circa 2007.

Sisters, circa 2007.

My siblings and I – especially two of my sisters – look a lot alike. Most of us have brownish hair, Hazel eyes and pretty bushy eyebrows that, if left untended, would grow up into our hairlines. And, other than the oldest of my brothers, we are not the tallest people on the planet.

So naturally, when I began to reproduce, I just assumed that my children would look exactly like my people. It was like we came in one basic flavor. But genetics don’t always comply with one’s assumptions and I was surprised to end up with three quarters of my children looking exactly like their father – blue eyes, long-legged and pug nosed – and one of them looking exactly like my father-in-law, especially since she was as bald as he the first few years of her life.

Now I have two daughters with size 11 feet and who tower over me at just about 5’9″ and 5’10”. I literally stand on my tiptoes in pictures just so I don’t look so weird compared to my two tall daughters. Even my head looks really small when I stand next to those two and not in a good way.

This is me standing on tiptoe and still looking small and weird.

This is me standing on tiptoe and still looking small and weird.

But I always thought my oldest son favored my side of the family – the hair and eyes and bushy brows – despite people always saying he was the spitting image of his father. I just didn’t see it but began to assume I was delusional and that, despite my best efforts, none of my four children looked like me.

Until yesterday.

My younger three are away with their dad at a family cabin in the Poconos and my daughter texted me a picture she’d taken of a framed photo sitting on a table of the extended family, circa 1991 and at first, I wondered what my son was doing in the photo (given he was not born until the following year).

And then I realized it was me. I looked like my son in drag. I was like the LaToya to his Michael.

This was before I started fiddling with things, like my eyebrows and hair color, so there I am with short, dark brown hair and thick eyebrows. I’m only a year or two older than my son is now, so I still have that fuller, baby face and not a stitch of makeup.

I even forwarded the text to my son at work and his initial response was, “Where am I?”

“It’s me!” I told him.

“Haha that’s freaking me out now,” he answered.

I sent the same picture to my girlfriend who was more interested in my ex-husband in the photo, in which he’s looking off to the side with his hands stuffed in his shorts pockets and appears ready to flee at any second.

“That’s some freaky body language,” she noted.

But I can see our son in him, too. Our child inherited his father’s swagger; his inherent coolness. So that’s probably what people see, when they tell me they look exactly alike. They sense a vibe that goes beyond Hazel eyes and shaggy brows.

It’s funny what you end up passing along to your children. The good things – like long legs – and the bad – like cheap Irish skin. I see my own personality and inherent weirdness in some of my kids, but it’s cloaked by big blue eyes and curly hair.

I just feel vindicated that — despite all those months of gestation and all the hard work getting them out of my body —  I finally have proof that one of them is actually mine.

Even though he sometimes acts like someone else.

 

5 Things I Learned From My First Reading

IMG_2002For the three of you left who haven’t heard the news, last week I got to pretend for one night that I was a successful writer.

And it was great.

Some friends had thought it would be fun to invite a bunch of people to come hear me read some of my work in hopes of maybe introducing some new readers to my blog. And plus, it was an excuse to get a bunch of women together to drink wine. Who’s not up for that?

So, they invited a bunch of their friends and about 50 women showed up at a local cheese shop for an event that was billed as “Wine & Words With Amy;” two of my favorite things, all in one room. We stood around and drank some wine and noshed on snacks and then I got up and spoke a little and read a few selections from my blog and then we drank a little bit more.

So fun.

But of course, not everything was perfect. There were a few glitches and things I’d do differently if I ever had the opportunity again to do something akin to it. Herewith, the top five things I learned at my inaugural reading:

  1. It’s all about the party hair. Of course, when a girl like me is faced with the prospect of getting up in front of a group of people to speak, she immediately worries about how she’s going to look. What to say comes second. So, before I knew exactly what I was going to read and then say in between to tie them all together, I had purchased not one but two dresses from Anthropologie and booked an appointment to have my hair blown out by my guy, who helped me channel my inner-Kelly Ripa and gave me mad party hair for the night. Unfortunately, I also probably should have thought about my failing eyesight and had the same foresight to pack a pair of reading glasses for the night so I didn’t have to hold the paper I was reading from about three inches from my face, thus blocking said party hair for much of the night. Sigh.
  2. Expect things to go wrong: Exhibit A. My two daughters were amazing helpers in the day leading up to the event. The older girl helped shlep stuff into the cheese shop and set up and helped do my eye makeup because she knows I am terrible at that. And my younger daughter helped cobble together a platform for me to perch a stool on and had tracked down a tripod to set up our camera to record the event. Yet despite her best efforts – charging the camera and digging up a memory card – once she started filming she discovered the card was full and had to quickly come up with a Plan B. So the resulting videos are kind of cobbled together – because of course her phone died and my other daughter had to pick up where she left off – and not shot from the best of angles. Like, I may have a “Basic Instinct” moment or two, somewhere along the way. Just don’t look down there.
  3. Expect things to go wrong: Exhibit B. After we unloaded all the junk – like the sound system and platform – from our car, I gave one of my girls the keys and told her to go park while we set up. And at some point, I did notice that she’d been gone for a really long time, but was too caught up in the prep and people arriving to really investigate her absence. The girls quickly packed up and left after the reading part was over, and I lingered and then went out to celebrate with some friends. So it wasn’t until the next morning that I discovered the reason for my daughter’s delay in returning from parking the car: she had sideswiped another car in the parking lot, requiring police and subsequent calls from my insurance company. “I didn’t want to ruin your night,” my girl told me, and she was totally right making that call. “I couldn’t sleep all night,” she added, “I felt so sick about it.” And I knew she felt terrible and we’ll figure out how to pay the deductible and I will ignore how ghetto my car is starting to look because, well, what are my options?
  4. I am an attention whore. I kind of already knew this about myself. I mean, I do have a blog and write about a lot of pretty personal things. And I’m a Leo, so being in the limelight is something I just enjoy. But I haven’t always loved getting up and speaking in public, so was kind of worried about that going into the reading. Right before I got up to talk, the owner of the cheese shop gave me some last-minute words of advice about successful public speaking. “Know your subject and be passionate about it,” he told me, and I was like, “Done and done.” I love to talk about myself. So in the end, it was kind of exhilarating and something I could do every night. Methinks I’ve created a monster.
  5. Surround yourself with friends. So, in theory, the event was supposed to be all about introducing new readers to my blog, it turned out to be a show of support from all my friends who already read the thing. And that felt great. So of course, it was easy getting up in front of big group of friendly and familiar faces who only want to see me succeed. Plus a lot of them enjoy all my cursing. “You say what we’re all thinking,” one woman told me after the reading, and maybe that’s why it’s so easy to do what I do. Because we’re all going through the same shit.

Many thanks to all of you who came out and to the many people who told me they wished they could have come. Perhaps we’ll do it again some day because we always need a reason to get out and drink wine.

In the meantime, check out some videos from the night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Summer Reading List

800px-Goulds_Book_Arcade_BookStack

This is totally not what’s happening in my bedroom. That would be weird.

I have a grotesque number of books stacked around my bedroom. Like, I hesitate even taking a picture of the situation, lest you think I am a total nut.

There are young adult books that my daughter has recommended, like Rainbow Rowell’s “Attachments.” Some novels lent by my friend and fellow writer including Ann Pachett’s “The Patron Saint of Liars” and the new Sue Monk Kidd book from another reader friend. There are books on writing screenplays and memoirs and just writing in general, a few by Dani Shapiro (who I actually have been reading lately). Something called “Yoga and the Quest for True Self” that I will probably never get around to and of course, self help books galore – like “The Five Love Languages,” that sounded like a really good idea at the time I ordered it off Amazon late one one night. And then there’s “Middlemarch.” Fucking Middlemarch. It’s like always there, all 853 pages of it, just mocking me since I started reading it on a sailboat in the middle of the Aegean last August. Reminding me of all that I’ve yet to have accomplished.

My Kindle is also not immune to the log jam of unfinished and never opened reads. “The Husband’s Secret” lost me once we found out what his secret was and I only read a few of the short stories, I am ashamed to say, in George Saunder’s “Tenth of December.” I never even started Katherine Boo’s “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” or Elissa Schappell’s “Blueprints for Building Better Girls.” Then there’s Pete Hamills’ “A Drinking Life,” Stacy Schiff’s “Cleopatra” and the third installment of “The Game of Thrones” series I never got around to, probably because I’m so busy watching it unfold on my television. But don’t worry, all three Fifty Shades of Grey books were quickly and thoroughly read because they are the literary equivalent of eating a bag of Doritos in one sitting. Great at the time and thoroughly addictive but in retrospect, kinda unhealthy.

Anyway, not to get all ambitious, but I think this summer is the summer I start getting through all of the reading material I actually spent money on. I mean, if you tallied the costs of all the unread books both physical and digital I have purchased, it’s got to add up to at the very least, a really nice pair of shoes (which is another item I probably own more of than I really need).

So, as part of my plan to spend my afternoons this summer accompanying my little guy to the beach so he can Boogie board his heart out in the cold Atlantic surf with his little buddies, I would like to spend my time reading stuff I already own. Maybe with, like, one exception.

So, I think my top five books to start will be:

  1. “The Patron Saint of Liars,” by Ann Patchett
  2. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” by Maya Angelou (book club selection)
  3. “Tenth of December,” George Saunders
  4. “The Outlander,” Diana Gabaldon (okay, I’m buying this because I’m hot to try the series and love that sci-fi stuff)
  5. “Middlemarch,” George Eliot (because everybody seems to love it and if I can read “War and Peace” I can get through this, dammit)

What have I read lately?  Well, I just finished the recently-released novel “Bittersweet” the other night, which got amazing reviews in Entertainment Weekly and People but left me sort of cold. I was hoping for more of a shocker at the end after the whole build up throughout the novel that, according to Amazon, “exposes the gothic underbelly of an idyllic world of privilege and an outsider’s hunger to belong.”

I finished Julia Fierro’s “Cutting Teeth” last week, which was a fun skewering of a Brooklyn play group that goes off to spend the weekend at a Hamptons beach house and plenty of hipster angst ensures. It’s the perfect smart beach read and kind of made me glad I had teens and not toddlers to deal with nowadays.

What about you? Do you feel bad about all of your unread books or are you better at reading what you already own (maybe that’s my problem, that I always want what I don’t already have)?

And don’t forget to let all of us know what’s on your summer reading list for all of those good people that don’t have already have a queue of books lined up next to their bed or in a cloud somewhere.

Happy reading!

What’s in the Fifth Grader’s Laundry Basket?

photo-29I feel like I spend an inordinate amount of time doing my 11-year-old son’s laundry. Every time I turn around, the hamper in his room is full or he’s just returned from a weekend at his father’s with an overnight bag brimming with dirty socks.

Luckily, his is the only other pile of dirty clothes that’s my problem nowadays, so I don’t really do the laundry as much as I used to. Back in the day, when I was doing all four kids plus my then-husband’s wash, I put a load or two in every day. There was no way around that. But then I threw in the towel (LOL) and told the older three that they were on their own in the laundry department.

So now that it’s just me and the fifth grader, I only do laundry like twice, maybe three times a week, or whenever I run out of exercise bras.

But even though I’m only doing the wash every three days, for some reason, I’m washing what seems like a week’s worth of my little guy’s clothes. There’s no correlation between the number of days and amount of laundry. The load I folded this morning, consisting of about four day’s worth of clothes, contained the following items:

  • 11 t-shirts/athletic jerseys
  • 6 pairs athletic shorts
  • 4 pairs socks
  • 2 pairs regular shorts
  • 1 baseball uniform
  • 1 pair underwear
From left: xxxxxx

From left: 8 pairs of shorts, 11 t-shirts, one pair underwear.

If I didn’t already know better, I’d be wondering what was up with the underwear. Or lack thereof. But one of the upsides of having a passel of kids is having the advantage of history. I’ve found in parenting, it tends to repeat itself.

So when his older brother was the same age, he spent two weeks at sleep away camp and I was especially focused on making sure he had 14 pairs of underwear to see him through. I went to Target and bought a few packs of Fruit of the Loom, labeled them with his name, and packed them for camp.

When he returned home two weeks later, I opened the bag — preparing to be greeted by an onslaught of dirty underwear — and found instead one rumpled pair. The other 12 pairs were still neatly folded. It turns out, he changed his underwear exactly once the entire two weeks, which jibes with the one shower he reported taking during his stay as well.

“Mom,” he told me when I reacted in horror to his disregard of personal hygiene, “did you see how disgusting those showers were?”

That long car ride home was memorable less for all the Amish people in buggies we passed and more for the odor inside the car. Dirty boys of a certain age can be very ripe.

Luckily, it’s because of that older brother that I am confident that my little guy won’t always be so gross. At some point, I have seen that they grow out of it and become nice-smelling men who put on a clean new pair of underwear every day.

And I should be happy there’s just less for me to fold. Pretty soon, his dirty laundry will be his problem and I won’t have to see how many pairs of underwear he’s wearing each week.

The showering, however, will continue to be monitored because no one wants to sleep down the hall from someone who smells like a homeless person.

 

Crossing Over

UnknownI guess I read Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love” when it came out in 2006, along with every other woman of a certain age living in the United States.

I was turning 40, had been married about 16 years and spent my days as a stay-at-home mom with four kids living in New Jersey.

So my life at that point could not have been less like Gilbert’s, who famously wrote her memoir about her year-long journey to Italy, India and Indonesia to recover from her divorce and subsequent meltdown.

But I dutifully read it because that’s what I do, read the books that everyone is talking about. I mean, I even read “Anna Karenina” when Oprah said we should all read Tolstoy because I can’t stand letting pop culture pass me by. Or not doing what Oprah says.

At the time, I remember liking the book. I certainly didn’t take issue with the author for her existential crisis and search for herself. I definitely wasn’t as judgmental as a woman in my book club who declared during our discussion of the book that Gilbert was selfish. “If you’re a mother, then you know what life is all about,” she explained.

That line of reasoning — believing your way is the one true way — is really the cause of much suffering in this world.

Anyway, it’s not that I took issue with Gilbert’s journey; I just got kinda bored during the whole “pray” part at the Indian ashram and was in a rush to get to the good stuff in Bali.

But then things began to change in my life. Or, more specifically, I finally started making some changes.

Coincidentally, the movie version of “Eat, Pray, Love” came out on my 44th birthday and I made an event out of it. My sister-in-law and I took our teenage daughters out to get Tarot card readings and dinner and then we sat way up close in the theater (the only place to sit) to see the movie. I mostly remember loving the trailer for the movie more than the movie, which featured Florence and the Machine’s “Dog Days Are Over,” which I would totally use in the movie soundtrack of my life.

Anyway, while I was on my own, albeit more domestic, journey at that point, Gilbert’s story was still just that. A story with a really great ending. I mean, she ends up with Javier Bardim, for fuck’s sake. Oh. Wait. That part was pretend.

But sometimes, you just can’t see things clearly while you’re in the midst of them. You need distance to get the right perspective on things.

So recently, I was looking for an audiobook to listen to while I’m out and about. I’m okay with sitting in silence, too, but sometimes I am in the mood to listen to something other than my blabbermouth inner voice.

After an extensive search through, like, every audiobook on iTunes, I came across “Eat, Pray, Love” and, having just watched one of Gilbert’s Ted Talks, decided she would be a pleasant person to spend 13 hours listening to and downloaded the book.

Okay, I need you to stop reading this right now and go and download the book, too, so you can be as obsessed as I am with Liz Gilbert. I can’t tell you how much I love her and want to hang out with her.

And I don’t know if that it’s because I’ve done a bit of my own soul searching/navel gazing over the last few years and can relate more to Gilbert’s journey – I’ve now been known to chant — or it’s just that I love hearing her read to me, but I thoroughly relished listening to it. Even the ashram part.

Gilbert’s voice is so warm and full of personality. It’s like she can’t wait to tell you what happens next in her story. I especially loved hearing her speak Italian, describing how the sandwich maker called her “bella” each day and how Italians are masters of “bel far niente” (the beauty of doing nothing).

I listened while walking up a tree-lined path on a sunny spring afternoon as she ate pistachio gelato for breakfast in Rome. I knelt in the dirt and cut back the woody stems of the hydrangeas in my front yard, as Gilbert struggled with and then embrace her meditation practice. And I drove down the New York State Thruway under a clear blue sky while she described just how thoroughly she was adored and loved by her Brazilian lover in Bali. She may have even used the words “unpeeled, revealed, unfurled and hurled” to describe the situation.

I pulled into my driveway yesterday afternoon after a trip to the orthodontist and some errands, and sat in the car as my daughter brought in the Trader Joe’s bags and listened as Gilbert read the final lines of her book. She described how she and her lover carefully got out of the little fishing boat they’d been sitting in, moored off the coast of a remote Balinese island, and as they did, she turned to him and said in Italian, “Attraversiamo.”

Let’s cross over.

And it killed me. It had me so teary and swooning, I had to go back and listen to her read those last lines three more times, just sitting there in my car alone pressing the rewind button.

Because while in Italian, “attraversiamo” is used for useful tasks, like crossing the street, it can also be applied to larger concepts, like moving from one stage of your life to the next.

And I think what resonated for me is that I have, indeed, crossed over. I have moved to a place where I no longer define myself by my divorce. I stand in a place where it’s no longer strange to go places by myself, like dinners and vacations. And most importantly, I have sailed to a place where I know I am ready to open my heart to somebody new. I’m no longer afraid of taking that risk.

Because, as Gilbert so eloquently writes:

“Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.”

I’ve recently spent some time with someone who’s in the thick of a divorce and it’s been a reminder of how far I’ve come. It’s shown me what a big mountain of grief that puppy was to climb.

I have been on a journey, too, even though it’s pretty much happened right here in suburban New Jersey. I’ve come so far personally — traveled so far from the girl I used to be and closer to the one I intend to be — that my imaginary life passport should be filled with stamps by now.

All that’s missing is the Brazilian lover.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Always Be My Baby

Eleven-year-old showing off his handiwork.

Eleven-year-old showing off his handiwork.

One morning last week, my 21-year-old son came into the kitchen and asked if I’d help him make a cup of coffee.

Now, if any of you own one of those newfangled Keurig machines, like the one I have, you know that it’s fairly simple to operate. You open the doohickey and stick the plastic K-cup filled with the coffee into the chamber, select the size cup you’d like and press “Brew.”

That’s about it.

But he’s my first baby. He’s the one who benefitted from having a super-young and enthusiastic mommy who was more than happy to lay out his clothes each night for the next day, trim his sandwich crusts and peel his thinly-sliced apples.

Nowadays, I am hard pressed to even buy an apple, much less peel it.

So I suppressed my urge to laugh when he asked for help with the coffee, but when he proceeded to sit down and start to look at his iPhone, I realized he didn’t really want help trying to figure out how to make coffee. He just wanted me to make it for him.

“Okay,” I told him, “you need to walk over to the machine and open it up.”

I walked him through the whole process and, like magic, he was enjoying a hot cup of joe in no time.

A little while later, his 11-year-old brother came into the kitchen and made himself an omelette.

He got out the pan and heated it over a low flame, cracked an egg into a bowl and added a little extra egg whites from a container in the frig, sprayed the pan with Pam and cooked up his breakfast. He doused the entire thing in Frank’s Hot Sauce and sat and watched Drake and Josh and enjoyed his eggs with some hot chocolate he made in the Keurig.

The differences between the first and fourth child never gets old to me. It always amazes me to see how much the younger child has benefitted from neglect. And how much all my hovering stymied my oldest kid’s ability to WANT to do things for himself, which is very different than being actually able to do things for himself. He’s more than capable.

In fact, he showed me that today when I dropped him off to catch the bus that would take him an hour north to start a summer internship. It’s the kind of gig that requires business-casual attire and behaving like a grown up and when he came into the kitchen for breakfast before we left for the bus, it took my breath away to see an adult standing there at the counter pouring a bowl of Reese’s Puffs.

This is not to say that there wasn’t a fair amount of hand holding going on in the week leading up to his first day at work. We went out and bought some big boy clothes, bought his monthly bus pass and did a test run to check out a big commuter lot where he could park all day for free. Reading the bus schedule also proved to be slightly challenging but then again, what does he know? He’s never had to do anything like this before. The younger kids have benefitted their whole lives from their oldest brother’s firsts — from learning to play an instrument to getting into college — he’s paved the way and showed them how things are done.

So it was weird watching him get out of my car this morning and make his way over to the throng of people waiting to board the commuter bus. A part of me wanted to get out and make sure he was getting on the right one, but I resisted the urge and drove away, watching the back of his new jacket slowly recede in my rearview mirror.

He texted me later to tell me he was on the bus and on his way (thumbs-up emoji). “Thank u for ride and everything else mom (lovey and heart emojis),” he wrote. And I knew he really meant that. The two of us may often bump heads but he knows at the end of the day, I’ve got his back.

I know there’s a fine line between being a helicopter parent and simply helping a brother out. I hope I’m doing the latter. And I know that by the time the little guy heads off into the real world 10 years from now, there will probably be less hand holding involved because he’ll have watched his three older siblings go through that rite of passage.

But I’m getting ahead of myself because after this morning, I’m glad I still am the proud owner of a little boy. Someone who will still just wrap his arms around my waist and squeeze for no reason, sing Maroon 5 at the top of his lungs in the shower and occasionally forgets to use shampoo.

Because it goes fast, people. In the blink of an eye you go from handing your kid a Gatorade to a commuter mug and I know people say that kind of stuff all the time and when you’re in the thick of carpooling and chicken nuggets it just seems like it’s never going to end and then some of it does start to wind down and you’re like, “What the fuck?”

You can’t win.

All I know is that I’m looking forward to picking him up from the bus later and hearing about his day over the dinner I’ll make tonight to celebrate his big day. Because he may have graduated from skater duds to khakis and a dress shirt, but he’s still my baby.

That Time I Became a Werewolf

1024px-Superkuu0372So, I’ve been busy lately with the college kids home and their assorted needs and stitches that came back to New Jersey with them.

Yes, stitches. Don’t ask.

I just feel out of sorts now with folks home during the day and just can’t focus. And coming up with things to blog about has been at the bottom of my to-do list. I’m back to restocking quickly dwindling larders and moving laundry along. I don’t know how I ever held down a full-time job around here.

Anyway, I thought of something funny I had wanted to write about last week but then when the time came to produce, I could not for the life of me remember what that was.

And then I was in Target this weekend (this is also where I’ve been spending too much time and money lately), standing in the bathroom accessories aisle trying to pick just the right basket to corral all the girls’ lotions and potions on the counter in their bathroom, when I totally remembered.

At first, I thought maybe it was just a little warmer in that part of the store and then I realized that the heat was coming from inside me. Hot fucking flash. I looked around at my fellow shoppers — the boyfriend and girlfriend, maybe, about three feet away examining shower curtains — and started to nonchalantly take off as much clothing as possible without seeming like a weirdo.

And it totally reminded me of what I wanted to write about. I had just happened to catch one of my all-time favorite movies, circa 1982, on cable the night before and made this startling revelation; “Holy shit,” I thought, “going through menopause in like becoming a werewolf, with, like, a little less hair.”

Ladies of a certain age, please tell me this hasn’t happened to you at one point in your not-so-distant life:

Tell me you haven’t found yourself sitting there quietly reading a book, or perhaps shopping for containers at Target, minding your own business when out of the blue, you start screaming that you’re burning up and then sweating like you just ran a marathon through the Mojave Desert and need to take off all your clothes. Pronto.

Even my kids can recognize those moments when they see them. I was making breakfast not long ago and felt a flash coming on and quickly pulled off my sweatshirt and started to fan myself with a Reeses Puff cereal box.

“What’s wrong, Mom?” asked my 11-year-old, quietly moving to the other side of the kitchen island. “Hot flash?”

He is going to make a great husband some day.

The only comfort I get in all this sweating is that it’s leading to something better. I’m looking forward to life on the other side of swinging hormones and managing my monthly visit from Aunt Blood. She is rarely a welcome visitor.

I am going to cling to something I read in The New York Times Style Section this weekend that Sandra Tsing Loh, who wrote the new book, “The Madwoman in the Volvo: My Year of Raging Hormones,” says about menopause. 

She says that women finally stabilize hormonally after the insanity of our baby-making years.

“It’s like you lived on earth, and then you went to the moon, and lived there for a while,” Loh says in the Times article. “Now you’re back where you started” — the hormone levels of a preadolescent — “and it’s, like, ‘Welcome home.’ ”

It sounds like the silver bullet to crazy. With a lot less hair.