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My Own Personal Fashion Week

Oh the days of walking by Bryant Park, feeling fashionable. Strutting the cross-over strut. Swiveling the shoulders. Whatever I was wearing. Being in the midst was enough. I was mod. I was chic. I was it. I had it. 

I still have it, sort of, but it is not the same. It is not the same when you can’t walk by Bryant Park at lunchtime, when you are 26, and can tell your editor that you were out “scouting” or “researching” or being enterprising, somehow. Oh, I was just being enterprising. Fashion Week in New York is a nifty thing. Of course, I never participated in it on any professional level, other than the aforementioned private sidewalk modeling, but it was nifty anyway. It was distinctively New York. Sort of like the Stage Door. 

I do not take part in fashion these days, on any regular basis, other than to get dressed in the morning. Which, I should be honest, might not qualify, given my sartorial selection. T-shirt, shorts, flip-flops. In cooler weather, T-shirt, shorts, flip-flops, sweatshirt. Tres chic, non? Mais oui. When you’ve got it, you’ve got it. 

My children nominated me to be a candidate on “What Not To Wear.” They took my photograph. Put on your oldest shirt, Mommy. And look pathetic. Snap snap. They have not heard back from the show’s producers, but they are confident that I will snag a spot. Just look at your closet. The truth is, I do not go into my closet anymore, except to add to the give-away bags on the floor or to haul out the box with the small electronic appliance accessories. I do not often need an extra phone cord, but sometimes. Other than that, I do not retrieve a garment from the closet. They are all old and silly-looking and they do not suit my lifestyle. I do not need to put on a blouse with a ruffled neckline and pink platform sandals to sit at my desk in the enclosed former porch that is my office. I do not require an orange blazer, either, in the enclosed former porch. I should toss everything out.

But this week, as an homage to the goings-on back home, I have had my very own Fashion Week right here in Texas. I have upgraded the T to a V-neck, without writing on it. I have worn pants, and even a necklace. And shoes. I have applied under-eye concealer. They use that a lot on the runway. And, I have felt fabulous. Together. Swank. It. Will It last? I do not know. I have been a little uncomfortable in the shoes. And the necklace bangs on the computer keys and the oven door. But it has been useful. I have felt the connection, sensed the psyche, joined the people at the Park. I am with you, yes I am. Watch this…I’m strutting to the mailbox. Cross, cross.  Swivel swivel.

 



Listen To This

So…my kids come home from school and ask about the speech. My eighth grader tells me that her English teacher wanted to show it, “but wasn’t allowed.” She rolled her eyes and confirmed that we are a country that advocates free speech. Right?

We figured that their other teachers might have liked their students to listen to the President, too, but “they would probably lose their jobs.”

Imagine that. Thinking that your teacher could be fired for supporting the idea that kids should work hard, do their best and stay in school. 

We watched the speech, which I had recorded. They thought it was great. We talked about how it was relevant for all kids, no matter their personal situation. They applied the ideas to their own lives.

Thank you, President Obama, for a heartfelt and critical message, even if we did have to stay up late to rewind it.


Right-Wing Conservatives Should Drop Out of Sight

I am appalled by the continued efforts by right-wing conservatives to manufacture lies, rally ignorant supporters and oppose every great thing that President Obama was elected to do. 

The latest campaign to denigrate the President’s message to schoolchildren, a message that he has not yet given, is repulsive. Disrespectful to the office. Damaging to children, who now think it is okay to ignore remarks about doing well in school, setting goals and achieving something in life. Do these people really think that kids don’t model behavior? 

 Every four minutes, one high school student decides to drop out of school. The graduation rate for the country…that is, kids who complete school…is just 69.2 percent. Interestingly, of the five to six states who will not air the speech on Tuesday, three of them are below the average. In fact, one of them, Georgia, can be proud of the most drop-outs in the nation. Florida, with its vociferous GOP leader, comes close to the bottom, with a whopping 59 percent of teenagers getting a diploma. Woohoo. Make Mama proud.

Here in Texas, also on the “Oh my God he’s a Socialist don’t show the speech, and he’s black, too” list…67 percent of high school kids actually finish, still under the embarrassingly low national average. And in Dallas, we just learned that we are on the top of one very important list…the most repeat teenage pregnancies in the country. Yay for Dallas. Such distinction.

I would venture to say that the kids who drop out of school and have babies do not have much parental supervision at home. The ones who do have guidance at home probably don’t need to hear the speech; they hear it every day at the dinner table. Though hearing the message another time, from our President, is hardly a bad thing. The speech could make the most impact on the first group, though….I’d be curious if those parents, if they can be found, would really mind if someone stepped in to help. 



A Confirmation for Single Moms

Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court confirmation should be inspiration for single parents. Many people are quick to presume that children who are raised in a single parent household have less chance for success than kids who live in a two-parent family. As with any demographic group, there are instances of both, naturally. Most important, though, there are factors other than number of parents affecting both success and failure. People don’t seem to realize this.

Judge Sotomayor’s father died when she was nine, leaving her mother to raise her and her younger brother, who, by the way, is a physician and university professor. Mrs. Sotomayor bought a set of Encloypedia Britannicas for their apartment in a Bronx housing project. Circumstances, good and bad, exist; I believe it is how you manage them that determines your outcome. The child who lives in a mansion but must mow the grass. The child who learns value watching a mother work three jobs. All good.

I do not define myself as a single mother. And my kids are not “children of divorce.” I am a mother. They are kids. We are a family with a story. The people next door have one, too. My girls have the same drive, goals, expectations from me that they would have had had their father been around. They don’t have the fancy knapsack, but they wouldn’t have had it, anyway.

Here are a few others who probably didn’t have the knapsack, and seemed to have turned out pretty well without it: Bill Cosby, Ed Bradley, Alicia Keys, Audrey Hepburn, Mariah Carey, Michael Phelps, Bill Clinton, Lady Bird Johnson (who was raised by her aunt), Alexander Haig Jr., and oh yeah, Barack Obama.  

Congratulations Judge Sotomayor. Go get ’em.



How I Spent My Saturday Night

If you skipped dinner, you could use your meal card later that night and buy chocolate chip cookies. The big kind. You could get six.

A few times each semester, my pal Barb and I chose this nutritional option. We always felt skinny the next day, oddly.

“I can’t believe we did that,” she’d say from her dormitory phone.

“But I feel like a twig, do you?” I’d reply, twiggy already.

“I do!” Barb had legs like bamboo skewers.

We’d crack up, the way you do in college. We have been friends for the 26 years since graduating from Brown, sending birthday cards that tout our youth, catching up through the phone wires and in person, even, despite the miles. We did the news together on campus radio, sitting side by side at a desk. Rip and read, and now the weather. Once, something was funny and I couldn’t contain myself. Laughing came easily to us, though it was not desirable on air. I slid my half of the copy in front of Barb before she caught the wave, and escaped to the fire escape. It is cold in Providence in February, three flights up a steel ladder. 

Early in our professional careers, we found ourselves at tiny television stations in Mississippi and Vermont, reporting the goings-on from shrimp boats and cow fields. Barb had to be her own photographer, too, setting up the camera, hitting the button and walking into the frame to speak. She slipped on the Burlington ice and wound up in a cast and crutches. Still, she had to haul the tri-pod and walk into the shot.

Barb never picked a boy to marry. I picked one, who turned out not to last. The other night, Saturday night, I put on my pajamas at 6:36 in Dallas, Texas. It was early, I knew, but it was the legitimate end of the day. The girls were with their father. I stay home when they go. 

“If you’re home, call me,” read the email. “I’m not doing anything.” How could she not be doing anything? She is on 69th Street. If I did not have to live in Texas and were home in New York, I’d be doing a lot. Such a lot.

Anyway, we hit all the subjects. The guy, also from college, who she likes, loves, who just can’t muster an every day thing, though he likes, loves, her, too. Her Dad, who is 84 and ill, and mad about it. Her Mom, who does not tell Barb everything, Barb thinks, or know everything, because maybe she doesn’t want to.

“I’m afraid about the end,” she says.

“The end is bad,” I tell her. “Do you want to hear my end?”

One day, the oxygen tank sits in the corner, just in case. Then, maybe, it comes out at night.  A short time after, it is pulled to the top of the stairs. At some point, and without acknowledgment, a longer tube gets attached to the nozzle, one that stretches to all corners of the house. Ultimately, the blood is dark when sugar levels are tested in the blue bathroom. A request is made to go to the city, the hospital. Morphine swirls to the ceiling above the bed, taking with it a life.

Barb wanted to hear. “Your dad was too young,” she says.

Then, she switched the topic. We talked about her dining chairs. She found them online, but was told by a midwestern salesperson that someone was testing them out. If the person rejected the chairs, they would be Barb’s. Turns out, crazily, that the tester was also a former classmate of ours. She and Barb were acquaintances, nothing deep. But after two and a half decades, when you both want the same mid-century modern seating in your grown-up apartments, you call.

“I left her a message thanking her for sending them back, but I never heard from her.”

We weren’t big fans of the coincidental chair shopper, thinking she was sort of  snooty, at 18. So, Barb thought the lack of response made sense. Then, I told her that I heard she had breast cancer. Maybe the message was left at a bad time. Maybe she didn’t have whatever it would take to make the call back. Maybe she couldn’t tell the story again. Or, perhaps she counted time, and there were other people to phone instead.           

I wonder what our classmate chose instead, for her dining table, if she chose, even, or if she used old chairs, or brought in desk chairs from her kids’ rooms or folding chairs from the back closet. Who were her guests, then, anyway. They would sit on the floor, to be sure.

I would think that Barb’s table has a different feel to it now, after our telephone call. It is almost too prosaic. Walk in my shoes. Sit in my seat. They are swank and sophisticated, no doubt, and entirely perfect for the gathering of friends or for just the eye. Clean lines. Simple. Now imbued with misfortune, question, and hope for the girl who passed us on the campus Green, well-appointed and maybe just shy.

“We are all the same in the end,” says Barb. Trite, but true, really. She used to think her ‘boyfriend’ was untouchable back then, before she knew him. And illness, the instant equalizer.

We said good night. It was a rich way to spend it. I walked into the kitchen and opened the pantry cabinet, finding the box of chocolate chip cookies. I took out two. They were the small kind, but they tasted extraordinary.

            

Hang On a Sec, I Have to Crash

Today, hundreds of pages of research on the dangers of cell phone use by drivers will be released. It seems that the studies, conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, an agency of the Department of Transportation, were completed in 2002-2003 but never made public.

Reports say the information, which shows enormous spikes in fatalities and accidents caused by people who talk on the phone when they drive, would have “angered Congress,” according to a piece in today’s New York Times. Not to mention the cell phone industry people. Chatting drivers are four times as likely to crash as responsible ones, whether they have two hands on the wheel or not, according to the study. They react as if they had a blood alcohol content of .08. In 2002, 955 people died and 240,000 accidents occurred because someone couldn’t wait until they got home, or pull over to the side of the road, to make a very important phone call.

Seven years ago, it was estimated that six percent of all drivers are occupied on the phone at a given time. I bet that figure is much higher today.

Where we live, you will be ticketed by a police officer if you use your phone in a designated area surrounding a school. That is something, but not nearly enough. When the law was first enacted, a car was stopped on every block.

HANG UP YOUR STUPID TELEPHONES. 

That is all I have to say.

What a Party

Turns out, Fern has a thing for bracelets. She was already wearing a few on one wrist. The one my daughter made was a welcome addition. She loved it. Put it right on. She asked my older daughter if she were an artist, since the card was so beautiful. She made the letters extra large, congratulating her on reaching 100.

The place was packed, apparently. All of the residents were there, in the dining room, in their wheelchairs or standing with walkers. Some went over to Fern to wish her a happy birthday. One started to, then forgot what she was going to say. Fern’s son (the girls thought he was about 75) sang for an entire hour, with a pianist. My daughter said that Fern sat and watched him, her hands clasped under her chin, smiling. Her grandkids (my age) were there, too, with their own children. 

They had cake and ice cream, sugar-free. My kids set up the room, brought the guests downstairs, served, made sure everyone had spoons, and then moved around the furniture when the party was over. The grandkids thanked them for coming to celebrate Fern’s special birthday, and for helping in so many ways. 

They said they had a fun time. They felt good that they made the presents. Important work, and I think they realize.


Big Day

My daughters have been volunteering at a retirement home for about six months. They go on weekends, holidays and now, with free summer days, on afternoons when it is too hot to be outside. In Texas, you stay indoors between noon and four, if you can.

They love old people. They think they are cute. Charming, and funny. They point them out when they see them, particularly the couples. I’m not sure when the fascination began, but as soon as they were old enough, I called around to various homes and found one near our house. The girls have helped with manicures and parties. They have delivered mail, wheeled wheelchairs. They have hung calendars up in rooms…too high, too low, perfect. Served juice. Handed out menus… a highlight.

Yesterday, they got the July calendar, listing all of the events planned for the month. There were word games and wine and cheese, memory exercises, outings to the movie theatre. Today, there is a birthday. Fern Ives is turning 100. They will not miss today. How often do you get to attend such a celebration.

“She doesn’t look 100,” they said.  “There are younger people there who look much older.” We figured out that if you are still around at 100, you are probably doing pretty well. Hence, the youthful glow.

The other night, my younger daughter strung a bracelet for Fern. She used beads with letters printed on them and spelled out her name. Put it in a box and wrapped it, with green paper and a pink bow. My other child has chosen to make a card. I am curious to see what she writes. Later, they will arrive early. Big day.

Here Comes The Bride

In West Palm Beach the other day, a 93 year old man married an 89 year old woman. Ebenezer and Monica. They have known each other for 20 years. She was widowed twice; he, once. They were each lonely, living alone, according to the article in the local paper. So, they got married. 

How nice to have the ceremony, invite the guests, celebrate. Many older people might not go to the trouble. I like the festivity of a wedding. 

Congratulations, Ebenezer and Monica, and all best for many happy years ahead.