Naked
Every Wednesday at 5-o’clock, Ruby has swim class. Once her thirty minutes of floating, leaping, belly-flopping and retrieving pink plastic rings has elapsed, it is our routine to head for the locker room and change her into her “soft pants.” This has proven to be a giant effort because while I’m trying to get her wet clothes off and her dry clothes on, she is involuntarily frozen in place like a zombie, transfixed by three 8-year-old girls who are also changing—secretly, beneath towels pulled around their bodies like cocoons—at the same time each week following their swim team practice. Oh, how her eyes swirl when these little girls tramp through the locker room in their swim caps and racer-back suits, dripping wet, shivering and hugging themselves on the way to the showers.
Ruby stares at them as I wiggle her swim suit over her bottom, around her hips and down to her ankles. She stares as I dry her naked body with the mostly wet towel, as I coach her like I might an invalid to step into her underwear (if I remember to bring them) and then into each of her pants legs. Meanwhile, the girls completely ignore her—with the exception of a slight smile offered by one on the very first day of lessons—while they gossip about other kids and prevent any accidental exposure of their privates.
As I’m pulling Ruby’s clothes across her sticky skin, watching her rapturously watching them, I’m aware of the already-in-full-bloom body image issues being modeled not 6 feet away from my daughter. And I’m reminded of 7th grade gym class. And my teacher, Mrs. Allen.
At nearly 6-feet tall, Mrs. Allen was an imposing figure. She wore white tennis socks, white leather athletic shoes and pleated navy blue Bermuda shorts, always with a cotton tank top, usually white. She might wear a wind breaker or warm up pants if it was cold, the kind that made a wooshing noise as she walked. She was big boned and thick-kneed with a voice like ball bearings and short, curly brown hair that looked like it had been plucked from a mannequin head circa 1977. I used to watch for wig confirmation, to see if it would slide around when she scratched her head, something she did often when she wasn’t handling equipment or managing fitness tests.
Whatever our activities, each day at the end of dreaded gym class, we were required to take a dreaded shower and then, to prove it. Mrs. Allen would lean against the doorway of the shower room with a clipboard in her hand, inspecting each girl for shower evidence. I don’t know where I’d learned to be self-conscious but, like the other girls in my class, I wasn’t about to get naked in front of anybody, which of course makes it fairly challenging to shower. But, like the other girls in my class, I managed my way around the requirement quite well.
I wrapped myself in a white towel, tucking it at mid chest like I’d learned from my mother, and I did the hokey-pokey in the communal shower like the rest of the troops: Stick one leg in, then the other. Stick one arm in, then the other. I’d splash some water on my chest, shoulders and face (sure, actual showering would have been less effort but this was equally convincing and less…nude). Then I’d show Mrs. Allen the necessary proof to be freed for a day. I was 12 years old.
Later, as a dance major in college—a situation that sometimes required full costume changes not just backstage, but in the wings—I had a very difficult time unlearning the don’t-get-naked-in-the-locker-room rule that had defined my self-loathing since junior high. I’d hidden and hated my body for a long time and that didn’t just magically come undone. And now my four-year-old is learning, from girls only twice her age, that she should be embarrassed and ashamed of her body.
Raising a daughter is treacherous. Short of stripping off my clothes in the locker room every Wednesday, I’m not exactly sure how to combat this message or if anything I say will be half as cool as what those girls do.
Rounding corners
I woke up this morning and declared that I have diabetes, given all the weird symptoms I’m suffering since coming home from Positano. Sam took that moment to laugh in my face and remind me of the severe jet lag I’m experiencing. He could be right, I suppose: I have been drinking rivers of water to make up for the mere 3 ounces I consumed over the past 10 days. And I thought red wine, Prosecco and limoncello would hydrate me and make my skin glow. Instead, I have puffy eyes, dry mouth and have to pee 17 times each night. It’s sexy, I tell you.
My goal had been to post photos every day while I was gone, but I took so many of them that trying to process and then find the time to post was just too much. So I’ve worked on organizing my favorites and have put some on Facebook. I will upload all of those (and more) to Flickr when I have time later this week. In the meantime, I can’t help but offer a few more glimpses into this sigh-inducing place.
I went sauntering as often as I could and it was the many nooks and crannies I loved the most. The ceramics and cobblestones and shockingly green moss made this very old place so vibrant, it hummed.
There was beauty in the smallest details.
And in the kind, generous people.
As Ron Carlson might say, “How many views are there of Positano? About a jillion.” And each one is more heartstopping than the last. Some feel like a proclamation.
Others feel like a secret whispered by a lover into the curve of an ear.
Is it any wonder I found myself weeping—at times, sobbing—several times every day?
I’m supposed to be a writer, a person who can use language to describe a place. But I find myself lingering over clichés, falling into a wind-blown, head-thrown-back, one-shoulder-bared Harlequin trap. And this is to say nothing about John Steinbeck, who already wrote about it so brilliantly as to render my meager attempts an embarrassment. The delete key has been my good friend these last days and for now, my pictures will have to tell you how I feel about Positano.
But I will say this: Magic doesn’t describe this place. I think accurate description requires the invention of a new word. Any suggestions?
Uh…that was awkward
Ruby had already buckled herself into her car seat when she realized she’d forgotten the drawings for her teacher. I ignored the urge to say, too bad, kid. We’re late. Chalk it up to a lesson learned about having your shit together. (God, how I love my fantasy life.) Instead I channeled June Cleaver, set my travel mug in the cup holder, dashed back into the house, grabbed the three sheets of paper she’d worked on with her dad and headed out the door.
Ten minutes later, Ruby was handing her pictures over to Miss Sarah. “This is a castle,” I heard her say. I was distracted by her little friend G. who was hurrying to peel away his shoes and socks so I could see how beautiful his pink toenails looked. “And this is Miss Carlee as a princess,” Ruby continued her parallel conversation. I told G. that Ruby’s dad likes to have his nails painted, too. “He likes purples and blues and greens and sometimes sparkles! How cool is that?” I asked him. His mother seemed embarrassed but also relieved at my reaction.
“Thanks for saying that,” she said.
“I’m not making this up,” I told her. “He’s artsy.”
Just then, I turned to see my daughter handing her teacher this:
He’s artsy, alright. He’s 8th grade, trapper-keeper, boy-doodle artsy.
Down there in the lower left quadrant? That is a naked person bending over with an asterisk for a butthole. Up above that guy are two formerly androgynous people drawn “without clothes!” per request of the child. Since Sam decided to make these two clowns G-rated—unlike the blue muscle man bending to pick up a dumbbell—she who is obsessed with all things penis, grabbed a sharpie and filled in the blanks. And then there’s the scary monster thing with hair made of lightning bolts, a squiggly smile and a Sonny Crockett 5 o’clock shadow. Notice the sharpied-on boxer shorts with the open fly. I’m not positive, but given the severe focus of conversation in our home lately, those are either tampon strings or urine running down his leg. Could just as easily be one as the other.
Of course, the upshot—I always like to find an upshot— is that the child is accurate and has some fairly impressive fine motor skills. But back to pre-school.
I saw the drawings and gasped. Then I stammered. So much for having my shit together. I hemmed and hawed and grabbed the paper with less subtlety than I would have liked. “I’ll just take this back home,” I said, withering. “Ruby’s in a phase…she asked Sam to do it and…um…well, we don’t do everything she asks…I mean…she did it.” I was selling out my man and my kid. I was losing credibility. I looked back and forth at the teacher and G.’s mother, apologizing, swearing that we do not normally sit around the house drawing wieners and sphincters. Princesses with giant breasts and “nibbles,” sure. But wieners and sphincters?
No siree.
Normally, we prefer naked dancing.
She is sixteen going on seventeen
I woke Ruby this morning, got her dressed and then told her that I needed to rinse her hair in the sink so that I could poof it out a bit. Revitalize it. She started to cry a really slow, dramatic cry and continued until we had her head turned upside down under the faucet. At that point she only whimpered.
When she was all done with a head band in place—two minutes later—she ate her breakfast and watched a little Noggin. I passed through the room on one of my many trips taken while getting ready to leave, and stopped to tell her how brave she was to let me wet her hair (which was completely disingenuous because there is nothing brave about getting water on your hair and she was mostly crying for effect, but I figured a little positive reinforcement would bode well for tomorrow and anyway, it couldn’t hurt to take her seriously).
“You did such a good job letting me rinse your hair, Ruby.”
“I cried,” she said.
“Yes, you did. But you pulled it together and your hair looks great.”
“I cried because I was really stressed out, Mama.”
Wha…??? “You were stressed out, honey?” I tried not to laugh but it was sort of adorable.
“Yes. And what I wanted you to say was, ‘Ruby! I love you!’”
“Well I didn’t know that. I thought you wanted me to say that less because I say it so much.”
“No, I don’t want you to stop saying that because it makes me sad and it really stresses me out.”
La famille
Le pere
et la mere
et la fille.
C’est une artiste.
It just sounds so much better in french…as if it isn’t magnificent enough already.
New ‘do
I began these Zulu knots (or Bantu knots or “Chinese boys”) last night, but started too late and had to finish tonight. Though time consuming, it’s a very easy style to do.
The hardest part is, well, the part. Or, rather, the many parts. And more than that, the combing of the sections. Ruby isn’t so down with the comb out. But when she wears her purple princess dress, she has Super Brave Magical Powers.
With the help of some deliciously scented Tui Hair Oil, my Fearless Princess looks more like an African Queen.
What are you doing this weekend? How about next?
If you live locally and are dying to find out more about sin that takes place in the corners of an ordinary day, please come check out this art show. It just so happens that six of my photographs were selected for display. I know: It’s shocking that any of my work could be considered sinful in the least.
The artist’s reception takes place on Saturday from 3-5 p.m. Come say hello. My standing rule applies: No tomato throwing. This show is in a private residence and I would hate for the owner to have to clean up the splatters.
Over lovin’: Trying to mother from the middle ground
“You know I love you, right?” I adjusted the bow on Ruby’s sleeping cap as I tucked her into bed.
“Unh-huh,” she said. Her eyes were closed and the sound of her acknowledgment was stifled by the presence of her thumb in her mouth. The sound was a pasty gurgle, as if she had pudding in there.
“And you know Daddy loves you,” I said.
“Unh-huh.” Sucking, sucking, eyes still closed. I wanted her to look at me, but she wouldn’t budge. I could practically feel her telling me to bugger off.
“Mama and Daddy love you like nobody’s business,” I said, closing in on her face. I felt myself morphing into the badgering Jewish mother who gets talked about in therapy and begrudgingly visited at holidays.
“Unh-huh,” Ruby said again.
She was ready to be left alone, and I knew it. But there’s this thing called self-control, and I had none of it that night. Anyway, I had to make up for earlier-in-the-day parenting indifference. Being euphemistically challenged, I moved in close so my breath touched her earlobe: “We adore every bone in your body, little girl. You’re the world to us. You’re Mama and Daddy’s angel.”
Could I have been any more annoying, you might ask? Oh, yes. Without question. I could actually have been about 1,400-times more annoying. It’s a mother thing.
“Unh-huh, unh-huh, unh-HUH,” Ruby fired off in rapid succession.
And with that toddler version of the pre-teen eye-roll, I saw myself in the future as an overbearing, don’t-forget-to-use-the-bathroom-before-your-solo backstage mother. I had become my mother-in-law, who, back in the day, before we had a child for her to focus on, used to come for visits and stare at my husband. Just—-stare at him. For days. It was weird.
Suddenly, I needed a martini and some steady middle ground.
I’d parented from the other end of the attention spectrum that morning when Sam and I took Ruby to visit her new school. It was the Friday before she’d be there full-time, and the plan was to drop her off for two hours as an acclimating exercise. We’d been talking up all the pluses of this Big Girl school for weeks—that the Trolley goes by every 15-minutes was the toddler equivalent of granite kitchen counter-tops—and she’d been right at home during a previous stop in. We had high hopes that were simply begging to be dashed.
In perfect form, Ruby was clingy to us and standoffish to everyone else. She was pouty and dour. But at the advice of the teacher, we ignored her pleas to go home and peeled ourselves away. I would say it was like Sophie’s Choice, what with my urge to grab her and protect her and run from the building forever. Only, a part of me could not stop thinking about pancakes, and I’m pretty sure breakfast food never occurred to Sophie in her moment of reckoning.
We watched from a window as Ruby stood alone at the side of the sandbox, kicking listlessly at the ground, her hair clips jiggling each time her toe made contact. None of the other kids took much interest in her. Most were oblivious, and those who did take notice simply rubbernecked as they pedaled by on their tricycles. Really, I couldn’t blame them for keeping their distance. While no parent wants her child to be the odd man out, my kid didn’t exactly parade her glee and enthusiasm for launching matchbox cars into each other at high speeds.
When we finally rescued her, she crawled into my arms and immediately went limp. Wouldn’t you know it, the child was en fuego. As in 104-degree-fever en fuego. It was, as parenting moments go, quite a startling revelation: We were those people, the ones who all the other imperious parents tsk-tsk. Like that poor woman in New York who dropped her arguing daughters at a strip mall and drove away (she’s my hero), we made the faux pas of sending our kid to school—the new school!—with what very well could have been swine flu. Well played, Belfers.
One could argue we should have known she was sick when she crawled back into bed that morning and passed out for an additional hour, highly uncharacteristic behavior for a 3-year-old. But we’d chalked it up to a psychosomatic thing, and there was no way she was going to feign illness to get out of her first day of school (such shenanigans will come later). This show had to go on.
And on it went, child protective services be damned. We strapped our ailing girl into her car seat and did what most other parents in our situation wouldn’t do: We drove straight to The Mission for breakfast. There was still that unresolved pancake hankering, and even Ruby in her stupor had a taste for The Mission’s delectable blueberry/blackberry pancake.
Of course, she slept on my lap while Sam and I gorged on our food, and when she didn’t eat hers, we ate that, too. Then we ate her side of bacon, ordered a round of coffee refills and two mimosas. Just kidding. We didn’t order mimosas. That would have been self-indulgent.
We paid the bill and shuttled the child home to some Tylenol and her bed. I tucked the blankets under her chin and planted a single kiss on her forehead in a tender but non-smothering manner. There was no adoring fanfare or desperate enumeration of all the reasons I can’t stop loving her. As mothering moments go, I’d momentarily found the right balance. It wasn’t too much. It wasn’t too little. It was just right. And it was fleeting.
Because then I sat myself down next to her bed and stared at her as she slept.
(This ran in CityBeat on April 29th but I forgot to post it. Mostly because it isn’t one of my favorites. But here it is, nonetheless.)
I told him once that I don’t blog about my friends
Tomorrow morning, while I sleep, my friend Rich is going to kiss his wife goodbye. I imagine he will linger a little longer than usual at the bedside of his (hopefully) sleeping toddler son and the crib of his six month old daughter. Then he will catch a flight to North Carolina where he will spend an uncertain amount of time preparing for a deployment of an uncertain amount of time. My friend Rich is going to Afghanistan.
On Saturday night, Rich and his wife, Diana, had a few friends to their house to say good-bye…
…and while Rich isn’t a hippie, I have to admit I was a little stunned by the new, shorter haircut. I couldn’t help but run my fingers over it when he stepped into the hall to greet me. When I say he’s not a hippie, I mean that only in the physical sense because, really, he’s a hippie with a crew cut. The man ran naked on election night and what could possibly be more hippie than running naked through the streets on election night?
You see, Rich is a tree-hugger extraordinaire. I used to bump into him at the farmer’s market on occasion (before he was hypnotized into thinking the ‘burbs were better than the ‘urbs) and he was always weighted down with organic fruits and veggies. Diana finally put him on a budget because, untethered, he would blow their monthly grocery allowance in one evening. The man has no self control when it comes to being green: He drives a Prius, and he loveslovesLOVES Al Gore. I think he might just have sex with Al Gore if doing so wouldn’t get him kicked out of the Navy. Then again…
Rich is a uniquely special kind of person with an unusual blend of wit and naiveté. He has an unassuming innocence that I always find refreshing and sweet. His hugs are strong and generous and sincere. His eyes shimmer when he smiles and he throws his head back when he laughs, face open to the sky. Rich is wholesome and endlessly positive. All of his sentences end with his voice in an upward lilt. He is the nicest—absolute nicest—guy I have ever met. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person who feels this way about him. And yet.
He has a mischievous streak that makes him irresistibly endearing. Last summer, he blew my mind when he launched into a spontaneous version of The Aristocrats. I’d never heard Rich say the word “fuck,” much less “pussy.” Certainly, I’d never heard him say those kinds of words as they pertain to a grandmother and a donkey, but use them he did. And those are the G-rated words he used in his storytelling! Rich was a poet that night, a weaver of tales, a builder of imagery. He was very, very naughty and, well…I do like my friends a little naughty.
He and our friend Steve riffed off one another seamlessly, making the story progressively more absurd and obscene until the group of us listening was practically drooling over ourselves with laughter. Without question, it was the raunchiest joke I’ve ever heard in my life.
Despite intentions, Rich didn’t get around to the joke the other night. The evening was filled with laughter but there were also some tears. Mine came in private moments while reading emails he’d sent home during a deployment to Iraq in 2004.
Diana had placed all of her memorabilia–the scrapbooks, the emails, the pocket guides–out on their coffee table for us to browse. “It’s a different world,” he wrote. “Nothing I really trained for.”
It was all personal, much of it was dark and I feel honored to be included in their lives in such an intimate way. But it was heart-wrenching, to be honest, to have a glimpse into this other side of Rich. It made me worry for him.
This is a new experience for me: I’ve never known anyone in the military. I’ve never gone to a send off. I’ve never had to say such a serious goodbye. Even while they worked to put me and our other friends at ease, I felt awkward at moments and wasn’t really sure what to say to Rich or to Diana. My hope, of course, is the same as I suppose everyone else’s hope is when they send someone they love off to war: That they stay safe, that what they see doesn’t scar them too deeply and that they come home to those of us who love them as quickly as possible.
