Craziness

Today in the NYTimes, my daily bible, there was an article about psychiatrists formally recognizing  grief as a psychiatric disorder.  Part of me said, "Oh yeah!" This is true.  Grief has made me crazy.  And then the other part of me said, "Oh no!"  This is false.  Grief or sadness is a natural, human reaction to loss.  Don't call me crazy if I howl at the moon. 

I don't do too much howling at the moon.  I've tried it and it doesn't make me feel better.  But I can understand the impulse to just let go and sink into the sadness.  Just like I always know there's an option to not get out of bed.   But then I do. . .with pleasure. 

With pleasure and anticipation that something good, something fun, something worthwhile is still  ahead of me.   Is that crazy?  I don't think so.

Role Model

I always say that I have no model for being a widow.  My mom, my model for so many things, died before my dad.  l never saw her cope with the loss of her partner or try to build a life on her own. But that's what my dad had to do.  And he did it with such courage and dignity.  Only now do I have a sense of what a devastating task that must have been for him, the quiet, silent partner in their marriage. She was all personality and charisma.  He was steady and solid and content to follow where she led and to live in the spaces she created.

My father's inner life was always a mystery to me.  When I was young, I
imagined his silence held great depths of feeling.  When I was older, I
was not so sure.

And now whenever I am feeling particularly alone and fragile, unsure whether I can face the challenges of my new life, I think of my dad with love of course but also such admiration for what he went through and how he managed to live with his loss.  He never complained.  He never told me what he must have been feeling.  He spared me his pain.  He got through each day as best he could.  He was the bravest man I ever knew.



 

Back in Business/Stunning

Thanks to Brian, I have finally figured out what why my blog had disappeared.  The entry below is what did it.  For those who missed it, I am reposting. (Is there such a word?)

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

Many, many years later, still short but no longer plump and with a sophisticated version of that pixie haircut, I was in an elevator at the retirement community where my dad lived after my mother's death.  A woman standing near us recognized my dad and on discovering that I was his daughter turned to me and said with great conviction, "Oh, your mother was a stunning woman." As soon as she said it, I knew it was the best and truest way to 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 an old photograph 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 at her waist and holding a rectangular bag against her chest.  She stares into the camera without smiling and looks ever so smart and confident.  I like to think it was a boyfriend--maybe even my dad--who took that picture.
Then there is a photograph taken in Palm Springs where she and my dad spent their first year of marriage.  She is sitting, no slouching, on a diving board, her long slender legs dangling over the edge.  She is wearing a drapey, one piece bathing suit and looks lanquidly out to the camera.  I know her legs must be tanned.


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 bra, looking wonderfully sex and glamorous to me.  Her makeup completed, I follow her to the bedroom where together we open her closet and carefully sift through the rack of dresses until she finds the right outfit for the evening. 

Did I hope that some of that magic would ever descend on me?  Perhaps that is 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.  There I was--a short, rounded but not attractive girl, a chubby Natalie Wood as a boyfriend once described me--cute but definitely not stunning.

Let's Meet for Lunch and Make Some Noise

Body Awareness

I went to opening night of the Wilma tonight.  The show is "Body Awareness."  It's a terrific play--well crafted, funny,  poignant, incredibly well acted and well directed and, to top it off,  it was written by a 24 year-old playwright, Annie Baker.  (She's all of 30 now.)  I sort of felt the same way after reading "White Teeth" by Zadie Smith.  She, too, was only 24 when that book, her first, was written.  I wonder what gave these women the confidence and the discipline to do what they did so early in their lives.

It's hard not to think back to when I was 24.  I was all over the place, had no idea what I wanted to do, what I was capable of.  I was married and that was about my sole achievement.  But even that seemed ragged and incomplete, a work in progress, a constant drama.

Sixers!

I went to the opening home game of the Sixers tonight.  I was so excited I made Giuliano pick me up at 6 o'clock so we wouldn't miss any of the pre-game show. 

We didn't and it was great.  Then the Sixers won handily and I really concentrated on following the players.  I kept thinking about Steve but it didn't make me sad.  He would have loved the whole experience--the hoopla, the game, the commentary.  "They're really going to be fun this year," I could hear him saying.  And he would be right. 

Go Sixers!

Primary Bullshit

I am so disgusted, revolted, turned off and just plain BORED STIFF with all the Republican primary fuckery.  It's getting hard to read the newspaper in the morning without feeling like a huge joke is being played on all of us.  I mean how can the media take seriously this pack of lunatics running around Iowa spouting the most ridiculous and ignorant things.  This is material for the Onion, not the New York Times.

I know I live a sheltered life, far away from the cornfields of conservatism, but I just can't believe that there are people out there who actually believe that Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachman, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and Mitt Romney should be President of the United States.  The whole thing is a circus dreamed up by some two bit promoter to sell newspapers and TV time and any one who pays attention is a fool.

I, for one, have left the stands.   

It's just not exchanging fleece lined boots for flipflops that makes a sojourn in Jamaica so wonderful.  What can be more chill that taking a walk on the beach in the late afternoon with Biggins, Wilbur's beautiful and mellow Jamaican brother. 

And then to come back to yet another gorgeous Jamaican sunset.