I Love You.

My father once wrote a note to me and signed off with, ‘We love you.’  I still have that note or at least the photo of it.  It was the closest he ever came to saying, ‘I love you,’ or so I thought.

We just weren’t a family that said I love you.  My father died in 1994 and very gradually the phrase began to seep into our vernacular many years after that.  Today most of us have said that to each other, but still not all.  

Today during yoga class a memory of my father surfaced.  It started as a memory of how I made $50 when I was about 18.  Our neighbor hooked me up with the opportunity.  There was a boy about my age who needed a ride from Scarsdale, New York to Long Island.  The family was very, very wealthy and the houses were mansions.  The boy seemed depressed and barely spoke during the ride.  As I was in this very relaxed state, lying on the floor in yoga class, I contemplated the whole experience.  Until this moment, the memory was just the boy, the $50 I earned, the drive and the mansions.

Today another aspect of this memory took front and center stage.  My father, who had six kids, chose to ride with me.  He let me drive.  He didn’t want the money.  So why was he with me? My father was a psychiatric social worker.  He was a humble, probably introverted person.  During the drive that day, he managed to engage that depressed boy in a little bit of conversation, in a way I certainly couldn’t have at the time.  My father seemed so brave taking that task on.  How wildly talented he was with these mad interpersonal skills!  That's what I was thinking at the time.  

Now, on the floor in yoga class, I contemplated what he did that day.  He took probably three to four hours out of his day.  Simple math tells me that he went W A Y over my allotted daddy/daughter time, being one of six. 

He was protecting me.  He gave me this time, not because I asked for it, but because he wanted to ensure my safety.  I wasn’t scared, it was our next-door-neighbor who set this up and she knew the people well, but I guess that wasn’t enough for my father to be sure I was safe.  This was before GPS telling you turn by turn how to get from point A to B, maybe he was worried I’d get lost.  Maybe he heard the description of this troubled boy from the neighbor, and his experience with troubled children as a psychiatric social worker caused him to err on the side of caution. 

I may not have heard I love you in words from him but I hear it loud and clear now from his actions that day.

Thank you dad,

I love you too.

She Looks Better Than ME!

"She looks better that ME" is a qualifier that IS a compliment coming from someone half your age, not from someone who is your age.  This is the latest trend torturing my age averse brain.

At a party last night, a group of about six of us were talking when one man recounted a story about me to the group.  We live on the water and one day while in my boat, passing his house, I had a chat with his house guest who was in the backyard.  My neighbor told the group at the party that his house guest told him about my boat-by visit, and he described me as a young girl of about 25-years-old.  I gleefully told the group that this story was going in my gratitude journal.

Then his bitch common-law wife or whatever she is, added her contribution to the story.  She said in an attempt to identify who the house guest was talking about, she asked if the woman he was talking to was in her sixties, the decade of life she assessed me to be in.  Me and a couple of other people present gasped at the assumption.

She went on to pour more hot lava into the crater of hatred I now have for her by saying, "What?  You look great, I always say that you look better than ME," as if to imply I was much older than her but keep myself up nice.

We are the same age.

Here's what has been dominating my thoughts since:

• First, I looked up her age online. - My hatred of her solidified.
• Why does everyone think I'm older than I am?  I dress young, work out all the time and have a hot body.
• Maybe she associated me with her next door neighbor who is in fact in her 60s and has a hot body.  This is my favorite mental massage/masturbation.
• How can I devastate her as much as she devastated me?
• I'm going to church in a couple of hours reminding me to take the high road.
• How do I take the high road in such a way that God devastates her for me?
• She is oblivious to the stupid, thoughtless, insensitive things she says and does all the time, maybe I could just feel sorry for her instead.  
• Her live in boyfriend cheats on her all the time.
• No, that's not enough.  Clearly she is someone who tolerates that.
• The universe does have a way of breaking the psychic knees of people who knowingly offend me, and usually in a much harsher way than I would have wanted.  Can I count on that again universe?  This time, I think I'd just be grateful and not find whatever you decide to do too much.  I'd put it in my gratitude journal right under the 25-year-old compliment.  

The Easter Bunny and The Count

I once spent the day with Count Roffredo Gaetani. His date was a 25-year-old Swedish model who appeared in that months Vogue magazine. My future husband picked them up in the West Village (where ALL the models live) before picking me up in Yonkers, where I lived.

They were both impossibly tall, stunning, and interesting. In the few hours we spent in the car driving between Yonkers, New York and Limerock, Connecticut, the two of them conversed non-stop in the back seat in several languages while my future husband and I seemed to have already run out of things to say in the front.

By the end of the day I literally had a headache from their blinding beauty and interesting-i-ness. Roffredo went on to date Ivanna Trump before his early death in a Ferrari in Italy, no doubt a convertible, while rocking a scarf.

At the end of the day, we were heading to the Tarrytown train station to drop Roffredo and his model off to put them on a train back into Manhattan. There were a few women sitting at the station and they took one look at the statuesque duo and cupped their hands over their mouths as if they had just witnessed God almighty, THAT is how impressive these two were.

On the way to the train Roffredo spotted a Mexican restaurant and wanted to have dinner there. It was one of my favorite places but I was secretly happy upon discovering the restaurant was closed that day. I was happy because their jet-setty glare coupled with the fact that my future husband 'surprised' me with this trip, only allowing me 20 minutes to get ready - - not nearly enough time to load on the necessary ego fortifying make-up, hair, and clothes and to compile a list of conversational topics & tidbits to not feel like an ugly idiot next to them was exhausting. I felt like a slug with a salt cloud drizzling steadily above me all day.

As we drove away from the restaurant toward the train station, the back seat got very quiet. After a long pause Roffredo said, “I bet they had delicious enchiladas.” I can still hear that one sentence in my head in his sexy Italian accent.

Roffredo was a count, and nephew of Gianni Agnelli, the richest, most influential man in Italy till the time of his death in 2003. Roffredo dated a string of gorgeous models as well as Ivanna Trump and at the time of our outting was starting to build his own empire one Ferrari dealership at a time. Still after that day, in spite of contentious power struggles and deals between Roffredo and my now past husband, the thing that first comes to both our minds when Roffredo's name comes up is, “I bet they had delicious enchiladas.”

There was something so cute about how disappointed Roffredo was. Maybe that's why this moment, that one sentence lamenting the enchilada he would not have, is the imprint he left me with. He was the embodiment of what every man wished to be/have and every woman wants in a man - - he even greeted women with, “Hello Miss” as he kissed your hand with nary an eyeroll in sight.  Still the void this missed enchilada created in him made him an every man right then.

There is just no telling what your lasting imprint will be in anyone else's mind. I see people all the time on Facebook putting tremendous effort into presenting a certain image when it's clear that their imprint is 180 degrees away from that image.  I wonder what mine will predominantly be, and if my father is surprised at the one he left behind...

My father's biggest imprint in my mind is Easter.  At 23, while living in a tiny apartment in White Plains, I woke up Easter morning, looked out of my tiny window to see a big Easter basket sitting on top of my red Hyundai. I'll never forget that feeling because it was just as exciting as any Easter morning as a child when I would suspend my then* rudimentary understanding of physics to gleefully accept that a bunny rabbit hopped into my house with six Easter baskets, each about three times his/her own size, in the middle of the night before finishing his/her deliveries to the rest of the children of the world.

My father was a psychiatric social worker who taught me how to analyze dreams. I learned because he would patiently analyze mine whenever I asked. He would analyze them and explain how he did. That is a very valuable tool I still treasure but it's second to Easter. My father would take all six of us kids to the beach on summer weekends to give my poor mother a break. All-in-all he was a great father. I really miss him, especially on Easter Sunday.

He'd answer any question and typically hand us a book along with it. He tried to teach us lessons and was a stickler for no elbows on the dinner table. He taught us all to drive. I'm sure as a father he had some sort of a Top Ten list in his head of the skills, morals, knowledge, habits, etc. he wanted to impress upon his children by word, example or both. I wonder if he had any idea his biggest imprint would be his job as the Easter bunny. I guess the reason his Easter duties stand as his number one imprint is because although he left many valuable imprints in my mind, Easter is one he left in my heart.

* It's still rudimentary.

Black Don't Crack Rosie!

"Can I ask you a question?"

When I hear that my heart drops because I know what's coming.  The woman* asking this time takes her place in Zumba class right beside me.

Why don't I just answer, "NO!" ?

Would that shut people up???!!!


THIS IS SUCH A RUDE QUESTION!!!    S H U T    U P !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Does anyone ask anyone else how much they weigh?

Now today, there was a fleeting moment of bliss because my deflection of choice today was, "How old do you think I am?"

She answered, "31."

My gleeful reaction caused the woman to say, "Ah I nailed it!"  At that my glee reached its' pinnacle for about one second.

Now I really get into Zumba and we were just starting class.  This was great because it cut the chit chat off and it was a distraction from the flurry of thoughts that follow even a blissful moment like this:

• She was obviously being kind, how old does she really think I am?
• Will she become obsessed with finding out for sure?
• Did I put my last name on the sign in sheet?  Ever?
• Will she ask again?
• Is she watching me during class and thinking my skin looks older than 31?
• Will she tell anyone else my 'age' which will cause them to challenge that?

*In hindsight, the fact that this woman is black makes this a bonus compliment.  I guess Rosie don't crack either!

My Worst Nightmare...

Girls weekend… it was great until we all got in a car and went to the bank.  In the car were five women from our 20s to 50.  We were in line for the drive up window.  Three cars in front of us, three behind and the lines weren't moving.  I felt the subject turning to age.  Some of the women were fond of repeating their age, and saying things like, 'The older I get,'  A L O T so the warnings were all there.  Still, we were three quarters of the way through the weekend and I was optimistic about getting through without being asked.  Then it happened.

It felt like one of those movies were a military squad is in enemy territory, about to get blown up by an IED.  The windows were closed, enhancing that feeling of the world being silenced as all objects in and out of the car begin their projectile in ultra slow motion and I found myself wishing I was the first item to disintegrate into a billion pieces while being thrust into the air.  My friend, who knows how I feel about this subject, was pushing me to answer…  a betrayal on the level of Judas.  

I got through this one by offering to reveal my weight.  That did the trick.  No one wants to talk about their weight.  Later something beautiful happened for the the second time in my life.

That night at dinner, the youngest among us told a story about her own experience with ageism.  She was at a function, having a lovely conversation with a woman perhaps twice her age when the woman asked her age.  She responded perfectly by asking, 'Why?'

If possible, that is the ideal way to handle being asked, 'How old are you?'  For me it's difficult to say without the multitude of emotion that goes along with it such as fear, anger, sarcasm just to name a few, becoming glaringly apparent.  This woman seemed to deliver it perfectly.  Still she said as soon as the question was out, she felt a shift in the conversation.  The lovely conversation they were having was over.  Now she was silently labeled as a daughter or a kid.

I was grateful that she told this story.  It reminds me that labeling someone based on their age, whether it be young, old or somewhere in between, always stings.  

When A Good Friend Strikes You With The Question

Some of the best friends I've known for decades accept my age-o-phobe-icness and never bring the subject up.  Maybe they looked it up themselves but never let on or treat me any different now that they know my age.  That's ideal.

Yesterday a very good, new friend asked, "How Old Are You?"  I made my usual attempts to dissuade her nosiness but she persisted.  My first response was, I'd tell you but I'd have to kill you to which she responded, 'So kill me.'  Then I made the HUGE MISTAKE of asking her to guess my age and she guessed way older.  It's very hard to recover from that.  It's the same feeling as when a child draws a picture of you emphasizing your worst feature, it's just how they see you.

I'm a few* years older than the nosy friend, and so is her husband.  So after I told her my age, leaving me like a balloon popped by the pin prick of a question to hurtle across the yard, into a tiny pile of tattered latex, she then said, 'Oh, you're the same age as Nick - - but you look MUCH younger than him (even though she just guessed I was older than him.)  Here's the surprise ending to this incident - -  HER countenance changed.

Was she disappointed that she could no longer put me in the 'mother'** category and now had to see me as competition?  I don't know for sure what her change was about but it wasn't about me.  Somehow knowing my age made her feel bad.

So people, just STFU when it comes to age because everyone loses.


*A few is such a great word because no one actually holds you to meaning literally three.
**Something I will do if a person is six months or more older than me.

On The Bright Side Of Molestation...

Stephen Collins, a popular actor, was recorded admitting to molesting children.  He only admitted to molesting and/or exposing himself to three but one woman, now 54-years-old, said that he had molested her too.  I felt a surge of happiness because she's older than me.

#ShamefulWin