Another Country

When I was a really little kid, men wore hats.  They also wore ties, usually black, and crisp white shirts with dress pants.  Most men had the same haircut my father sported at the time; short on the sides and flat on the top.  Women wore a lot of dresses back then and they wore little white gloves when they went, "downtown."  Despite eating a lot of casseroles with questionable ingredients and smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, all the grown-ups seemed like they knew what they were doing.  They were adults in every sense of the word.  They were in charge.  They had it figured out. Or they would; if you'd just give them a minute, goddamn it.  Men in white shirts and black ties got us to the moon.  And back.  I remember it well. 

They're dying off; that generation.  My parents are gone and so are a lot of their friends.  My mother, a few years before she passed said, "You know, I sometimes wonder if my friends think I'm in Hell since I haven't shown up in Heaven yet."  

I'm sure they were pleased when she finally arrived. 

It's another country, the past.  A foreign land you can't visit anymore; like Cuba.  A place people of a certain age lived that's somewhat similar but also very different than where I live now.  I see reminders of the old country and it makes me feel lonesome for home that doesn't exist.  I never was one for forward, future thinking.  Even if it did have jet packs.  Even if I got to be an astronaut and eat as many Pillsbury Food Sticks as I wanted. 


I'm ten years old and I'm with my family driving to church.  I'm sitting in the middle seat, next to both of my parents.  Someone has put soap into the fountain over at The Fountains apartments.  Again.  Great billows of fluffy white foam fill the corner of Slater Avenue and Bushard Street.  It looks amazing.  I suspect my brothers had a hand in this but I say nothing.  If they did do it, I think to myself, I wish that they had taken me along.


I'm thirty-five years old.   The girls are in the backyard playing together in the inflatable swimming pool.  I can see them from the kitchen where I'm washing the breakfast dishes.  It's a bright, sunny summer day.  I can smell the sunscreen I put on them all over my shirt.  Coppertone.  I smell like the summers of my own childhood.  I turn the handle on the faucet down slightly so I can enjoy listening to the girls giggle and splash.  


I'm seventeen years old and I've told my parents that I was spending the night at my friend's house but I'm really with my boyfriend.  It's one in the morning and we're at Naugles.  I'm having the Mexican Salad and a Coke.  I'm hoping that we don't get in accident or do anything stupid that will get us caught.  I don't feel even remotely sorry about lying to my parents and I don't want to have to fake up feeling sorry to them.  


I'm three years old and I'm sitting under my mother's hair dryer.  She has put Dippty-Do in my hair and used her prickly black hair rollers.  I've probably been sitting there for 3 minutes and already I'm bored out of my brain.  She sees me fidgeting, crouches down to me and sings, "Would you like to swing on a star, carry moonbeams home in a jar..."  



I'm nine years old and I'm biking home through Fulton Elementary School.  The sun is setting and the grass is freshly mowed.  I can smell it.  It smells like spring, and California, and recess, and happy possibilities.  For the rest of my life, whenever I smell cut grass, I will think of this moment.  As I pass the baseball backstop, I hear the whoosh of the sprinklers come on.  I'll get home before it's officially dark.  I'll sit at the table, on the bench next to my brother Greg.  We'll have ham and potato casserole.  Weber's bread and butter and glasses of Jerseymaid milk.  A night much like a thousand other nights in my childhood.   


And that's how life goes.  A lot of the time life feels like nothing special but you can't see it while you're in the midst of it.  You're too close.  When you stand back from it, when it becomes out of reach, you learn how wildly precious it is. 

Beautiful

A couple of months ago, a good friend tagged me in one of those, "Do this and tag others" Facebook assignments.  I was suppose to find 5 pictures of myself when I felt beautiful, post them, and tag friends so they'd do the same.  I think the concept was supposed to be about feeling good about yourself and passing the feeling-good-about-yourself feeling along.  That's a lovely idea.  People should feel good about themselves.  It's mentally healthy.  I didn't participate in the event, though.  I don't recall a time I've ever felt beautiful.  

I'm not sharing this fact as a means of fishing for people to tell me that I'm beautiful.  Not to be rude but what anyone happens to think of my looks is trivial to me.  I look like me.  The me I got in the genetic lottery; something I had no control over either way.  Some days, I spend more time on my appearance than other days, but by and large the overall look is pretty consistent.  It's me.  If I post a picture of myself on social media, it's either because think my appearance is in line with the idea of what I think I look like, or it's better than that idea.  Rest assured that for every photo posted there's a couple of hundred other photos of me that will never see the light of day.  That's vanity.  I'm getting old and thus more ego-dependent on ambient light.  Meh.  At the end of the day, both the best and worst photos of me look remarkably similar; it's only a matter of degrees.

But feeling beautiful is another kettle of fish, isn't it?

I read a lot of the "feeling beautiful" posts from friends and acquaintances in an attempt to get an understanding of the assignment.  Most listed their feeling-beautiful-feelings in relationship to their children, husbands or families.  Some posted pictures of their dramatic weight loss or other personal accomplishment stories.  Many posted pictures of their wedding days.  All were lovely photos and I thought that the women looked beautiful in them. 

But me?  Feeling beautiful?  Sorry.  Still not ringing a bell.  I adore my children but they don't make me feel beautiful.  Fortunate?  Proud?  Grateful?  Happy?  Blessed?  Yes, to all of the above feelings.  Beautiful?  No.  I'm just not seeing a connection there.  And while I can say that I think looked pretty on my wedding day back in 1990, I don't recall feeling beautiful.  I felt nervous.  And in love.  It was a good hair day, though.  I do remember feeling happy about that.  

I can honestly say no man has ever made me feel beautiful because they're in a romantic relationship with me.  I've felt loved and cherished and appreciated and lusted after and a bunch of other things but, beautiful?  No.  The beauty of me (whatever the hell the definition of that intangible quality is) is something I'm bringing to the table.

Really, sit down.  I got this.


I thought I'm supposed to take some pride in my appearance as a sort of...I don't know...social agreement; like bathing regularly and not losing my temper whenever I feel like it. 


I ran a half marathon felt proud of the accomplishment.  I also felt like I had been beaten with bat. 

Beauty wasn't on my radar that day.

I lost 15 pounds and looked stronger and visually better than I do now, having gained 8 of the pounds back.  Did I feel beautiful?  Not really.  I felt like me.  Just stronger and slightly thinner.

I wonder if I'm missing a feminine something that could explain this failure at feeling beautiful thing.  I say, "feminine something" because I don't recall seeing a single man participating in this event.  I don't think most men have "feeling beautiful" moments.  Men have kids, spouses, wedding days, accomplishments, and dramatic weight loss stories, too.  

Maybe I can chalk it up to being raised with boys.

Maybe I'm not paying enough attention. 

Maybe it matters.

Maybe it doesn't. 

At all. 

Lizard Queen

I have a friend that has turned into an acquaintance.  Not because we've had a falling out or anything dramatic like that but just because I don't see him every day at work anymore.  He's changed locations and moved on.  It's the normal ebb and flow of people that come into and out of a life.  I still see bits of him on social media but we've kind of lost touch, as people do.  His name is Steve.  And he's sort of a mystic-type person.  You know, the type of person that drops information all over you based on whatever the universe, or God, or whatever is telling him about you.  I adore Steve but I tend to take this sort of thing with a grain of salt.  Because I'm rational and shit.

Back in February 2013, when l had just been handed two ginormous soap-opera-style, What-The-Fuck-is-Happening-to-My-Life events, he told me rather casually, that I should probably start mentally letting go everything.  Everything.   Because I was just starting in on two years of loss.  His reasons for this prediction was as follows:

1) In Chinese Astrology I'm a dragon and this is my Chinese Astrological dragon lot and

2) Because that's what he was seeing for me anyway.

"You shouldn't think of these losses as necessarily bad," he said.  "That's thinking of loss in terms of western thought.  You should think of it in Asian terms; Yin and Yang.  Balance.  Deconstruction making way for new construction.  The phoenix rising from the ashes.  The lizard losing it's skin.  But, yeah.  You're going into a two year season of loss." 

Had he told me something fortunate was headed my way I'd probably be a lot more accepting of the prediction.  Everyone likes to hear happy or flattering information in regards to their future.  But a two year shit storm?  I'll take a pass, thanks.  I decided that beyond the fact I don't believe in astrology to begin with, if I did, common sense dictates that Asian astrology belongs to Asian people and since I'm not Asian, it wouldn't apply.   There!  Done.   I can't be expected to keep up with an entire world filled with local superstitions and regional belief-system whatnot.  What does seeing a shooting star mean in Norway?  What about in Borneo?  Would I have good juju if I moved my bed to the other side of the room if my bedroom was in say, Pakistan?  What about red shoes in France?  Cheerful accessory or invitation to disaster?

My friend Julie yells at me when I leave my purse on the floor because it's considered bad luck to do so in the Philippines.  "Your money will drain out," she says.  Again, this rule applies to people in/from the Philippines.   My grandmother had a bunch of superstition rules, too.  And I *hate* that I remember them.  Did you know that if a bird flies into your house it means that someone is going to die?  Of course someone is going to die.  Because someone is always going to die.  We all are going to die eventually.   And I hate to break it to Julie, but I suck keeping track of my cash and it doesn't matter where I put my purse.

I don't have time for this nonsense. 

But despite rational thought, the losses continued.  Within the last two years, I have lost five significant relationships.  The kind of relationships that tether a person to a life and an identity.   The ones that explain who you are, where you belong, and that give comfort to you when you're in the midst of losing your shit; literally and figuratively.

One. By. One.

Gone.

I've got the burnt down to ashes part down.

The phoenix, I'm still figuring out.









 

International Me

Despite the fact I've worked for an airline for a dozen years, I had never traveled internationally.   Oh, I have the special icon on my employee badge that looks like a postman delivering a pizza which gives me US government approval to roam into Customs and Border Protection at will.  I'm also permitted to enter international aircraft and pull stuff off or put stuff on flights.  But lacking a passport, I wasn't permitted to actually go anywhere.    My fellow co-workers, who will travel the wide world just to kill a couple of days off didn't consider the family day-trip to Tijuana I took as an 9 year old as a legitimate trip outside of the US.  Tijuana, back in 1974, was more like South San Diego with Chiclets gum.  Of course, these days no one would dream of taking an 9 year old American girl to Tijuana.  Unless you were planning to sell her for drugs or something.  

Last New Years' Eve, between reading really depressing non-fiction and watching clips of the movie, "Gravity," I decided that I needed to do at least one, courageous, adventurous something this year.  Getting a passport and going somewhere, anywhere, would be the courageous, adventurous thing.  Six months later, with the year half gone, I took a really lousy passport photo and headed off to the post office to start my journey being a courageous and adventurous person.   

At first, I wanted to go to Paris.  I thought The Lovelies would enjoy that.  I booked a room at a charming boutique hotel right off the Champs de Elysees.  But as the weeks ticked by, I had second thoughts.  I don't speak French.  Oh, I know some colorful French-Canadian phrases but nothing useful like, "I'm bleeding, please help."  My French-Canandian grandmother was a pretty grumpy lady...what if they're all  like her?  Getting to France would take two non-revenue flights which would mean sweating out getting three empty seats on two different flights.  In the summer.  What if we get stuck in Charlotte, North Carolina?  For days.  Then what?  

Virgin Atlantic has a non-stop to London out of LAX.  One flight.  To a destination that speaks my language.  Plus, I've known a number of English people and they're pretty friendly.   I cancelled the hotel in Paris and booked a single night at a hotel close to Heathrow.  I decided we'd go and just figure it out when we got there.  We would travel like gypsies.  So that's what we did.

Of course, had the trip been carefully planned, we probably would have seen and done more things what with having an official itinerary to stick to.  But we got to walk around the city and be tourists, visit the Science Museum because that was first on Cassandra's list and walk the crosswalk on Abbey Road because that was first on Sabrina's list.  We rode buses and the tube, went on the Jack the Ripper walking tour over on the East End, ate lousy food that had dollops of mayo for no justifiable reason, and sat outside the hotel bar every night drinking and chatting.  It was a wonderful trip.

Had my mother been alive, she'd have had kittens over my non-plan, vacation plan.  My mother was fully organized in every facet of her life and even in the most innocuous setting, she could conjure up at least six potentially deadly scenarios and would gladly share them with you.  For example, she was very concerned when, a few years back, I went to New Hampshire alone.   New Hampshire.   "You're going alone?  Jesus Christ, find someplace safe to stay," she advised me, as if I were going on special assignment in a hostile country. "Don't talk to people.  Don't tell them that you're traveling alone.  Don't forget to lock the door and keep the TV on when you shower."  

Driving to LAX, with The Lovelies in tow, I thought, "If I can pull this off...out, there, and back; I will be a rockstar.  No matter what stupid things I do in future or whatever self-loathing nonsense I happen to be chattering in my head, at any given moment, for the rest of my life, I will be a rockstar.  Forever. Remember this: A rockstar.  

I am a rockstar.