Tonight

This is ridiculous. It is suddenly summer. Flip flop weather. They've turned on the air conditioning in my building but I won't concede. It's way too early. So my windows are wide open and the sun is pouring in along with the pollen, coating every surface. This is training for Jamaica where i am headed on Wednesday. Tonight at last I took the time to cook myself dinner--baby bok choy over soba noodles. I chopped garlic and ginger. I had a glass of wine and pots to wash when I was done. Sometimes I just can't face another take out container.

My Mom

I always thought my mom was beautiful. Doesn’t every daughter? But she really was! She was tall and slender and elegant, all qualities that I, a short, plump girl with a childish pixie haircut, hoped to grow into one day--the same day I was going to miraculously lose by baby fat, grow six inches and morph into a younger version of my mother.

Many, many years later when I was an adult, still short but not plump and now with a sophisticated version of that pixie haircut, I was in an elevator at the retirement community where my dad had moved after my mother’s death when a woman recognized him. On discovering that I was his daughter, she turned to me and said with great conviction, “Oh, your mother was a stunning woman.” It was more than a statement of fact. It was a definitive pronouncement. And as soon as she said it, I knew it was the best and truest way to describe my mom. Stunning. The word set her apart from other women more conventionally pretty perhaps but lacking her distinctive style and natural sophistication.

Here’s what a stunning woman looks like. I see her first in old photographs taken long before I was born. She is posing for the camera on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, one foot resting on the rail behind her. She is wearing a big shouldered coat cinched tightly around her waist and holding a rectangular bag against her chest. She stares into the camera not smiling (She rarely opened her mouth when facing the camera, ashamed of her crooked teeth.) looking ever so smart and confident. I like to think it was a boyfriend who took that picture.

Then there is a picture taken in Palm Springs during the first year of her marriage. She is sitting, no slouching, on a diving board, her long slender legs dangling over the edge towards the pool. She is wearing a drapey one piece bathing suit--I have one just like it now—looking languidly out to the camera. The photo is in black and white but I am sure those legs are tanned from the sun.

And always there is the picture I have in my mind’s eye. I am a child sitting on the floor of her bathroom looking up at her most intently as she puts on her makeup for a Saturday night out. She is wearing a black half slip and a strapless black bra, looking wonderfully sexy and glamorous to me. Her make up completed, I follow her to her bedroom where we open her closet and carefully sift through the rack of dresses until she finds the right outfit for the evening. Could it be the slinky white halter gown she wore with long elbow length kid gloves. We were both devastated when the cleaner ruined that dress.

Did I think that some of that magic, that stunning quality, would ever descend on me. Is that why I always got dressed in my parents’ room before a big date? How different the image that came back to me when I stared into the full length mirror on her closet door—a short, rounded but not unattractive girl--a chubby Natalie Wood as a boyfriend once described me—cute but definitely not stunning.

Higher Education

I think I well on my way to earning a Ph.D in widowhood. Having just completed Joyce Carol Oates’ “Widow”, I’ve now done all the required reading. What a weird book. The first third of the book when she deals with her immediate reactions and emotions I found oddly exhilarating. “Yes!,” I kept saying. “That’s how it feels. Exactly.” But then she lost me. Way too much talk about the allure of suicide when I was certain that wasn’t going to happen. And then to discover that nine months afterwards she got married again after writing almost 500 pages detailing her mental and physical anguish. But then who am I to be so judgmental. She did what she had to in order to survive.

Here am I at almost the nine month mark of my widowhood. I have no plans for the future except to get through this year. Right now that seems enough of an accomplishment.

Home

My friends call me a homing pigeon, always wanting to get back to my nest. It’s true. I make forays out into the world—weekends in New York, a quick trip to Miami, visits to Jamaica—but I am always very happy,indeed secretly relieved to get home, safe and alone in my nest.

The only problem is that my nest, my inner sanctum, is now a construction site, a mess of dust and boxes and lumber and paint cans. In a perhaps rash and impulsive but what I thought was an absolutely necessary move I am renovating my bedroom, bath and study—remaking what were once shared spaces (Not my study, that was always just for me. Steve had to have permission to enter) into a new space that will somehow confirm, reflect, make final my independent status.

For two months now I’ve been living like a college student in my tiny downstairs guest bedroom. I only go upstairs when the construction crew has left for the day. I walk around imagining what it will feel like when I move back in. I wonder what Steve would think of my renovation. Would he be angry or would he understand? His closet is gone—now part of my study. His sink is ripped out—replaced by a window seat. I hope I will be happy there.

Tennis, anyone?

I got a solicitation in the mail from a scooter company today. Not a kid’s scooter company but the ones that cater to disabled, home bound senior citizens. Is someone trying to tell me something? Maybe that’s why this afternoon, I threw on my sneakers and went for a run down to Penns Landing. It was the first time I’d hit the pavement since last September when I tripped on a broken paving store and smashed my knee so badly I couldn’t wear my skinny jeans for weeks. That definitely made me feel old. So today, I ran very carefully and very slowly with my eyes focused on the pavement the entire time.

This week, I’m scheduled to get back on the tennis court again. Immediately after Steve died, I felt I didn’t have the strength or concentration or even the desire to play and so I didn’t even step on the court for the rest of the summer. I think I’m ready now.

Camp Memories

“I can be bad. I can be punished.” Jake, age 6
“I can be happy. I can be sad.” Ellen, age 63.

I am learning to honor my feelings. Sometimes, sadness will hit me like a wave, leaving me breathless, unable to move. Other times I am happy, almost buoyant, excited by the possibilities of a new life. Mostly, I am not afraid. I know the sadness will pass. I know I can be happy again.

I was happy this weekend. I went to New York for a reunion of Camp Greylock for Girls, the summer camp I attended from ages 11 to 14 as a short, plump girl with a pixie haircut. At Greylock, I felt like I had found my true home, my best friends, my real self. I lived for those summers.

I rushed into the reunion eager to introduce myself again to Naomi Levine, the incredibly accomplished, dynamic and charismatic owner of the camp. I wanted to tell her how much camp had meant to me, how I had looked forward to each summer, how I still remembered so much from those four summers. I was so happy to see her again but, frankly, I have no idea if she remembered me at all. It seems odd to think that although camp had mattered so much to me, perhaps I had not made much of an impression on camp. That didn't bother me. My sense of how important those summers had been to me then and to who I was now was unchanged.

Only one of my bunk mates came to the reunion. We hadn't seen each other since we were 14 or 15 year old girls when she wore her hair in a long dark braid down her back and I stuffed paper into the bras I really didn't need yet. No matter. We sat together and talked and talked and talked. That afternoon I felt like I gotten a gift from the past. Camp had been special and I was too. Someone remembered.