Let me start by saying that binging a Darren Star show was on my To-Do List much the way playing a five hour card game “War” with an eight-year-old was.
Still, it was the #1 show on Netflix and I decided to go with the populist choice.
Many hours later —
I’ve been seduced by it all, and while I know it is a calorie-free confection, I still feel bloated and unsatisfied. It has grown-up Disney princess vibes: Multiple Prince Charmings, an impossibly drawn protagonist, fairy godmother wardrobe, and Lily Collins’ eyebrows.
Thin, by Design
Don’t overthink it.
Don’t overfeel it.
Too late.
You know what bothers me? Emily in Paris serves the same unhealthy message sent to women / girls since forever ago, only now it’s much worse.
The protagonist is flawless, ie: stunning, painfully thin, and Instagrammable. She’s a spunky mannequin. In fact, that’s the whole point. She travels for work in her dream job, leaving her dream man (for several dreamier men) and is confronted by a middle aged antagonist (a nod to the aging step-mother in Snow White?) before landing the COOLEST bff on the planet. Even her colleagues are perfection.
I know it isn’t real life but my subconscious isn’t up to speed.
In 1999, the New York Times published an article by Erica Goode, noting how a “few years after the introduction of television to a province of Fiji’s main island, Viti Levu, eating disorders — once virtually unheard of there — are on the rise among girls.” According to a study, “Young girls dream of looking not like their mothers and aunts, but like the slender stars of ”Melrose Place” and ”Beverly Hills 90210.” Prior to this, “you’ve gained weight” was considered a compliment, not body shaming. But, that changed because #HOLLYWOOD.
As a teen, and still throughout my life, I’ve struggled with disordered eating. And let me add, that as a Jewish woman, food and meals are the gravity of our religion. There is no avoiding the drug. And like most people, I own a mirror and clothes.
My battle started when I was 11. Yes. ELEVEN. Perhaps I was precocious but I knew my Barbie dolls and favorite Disney characters had waists they could encircle with their fingers.
I knew that I had friends who just looked better in clothes. I saw fat on me and did the math. It was bad.
It was bad.
Built to Fast
I believed commercials, magazines, and any ad that told me what to look like, what to weigh, but understood how utterly unachievable the quest for perfection truly is – yet I would continue to seek it for the rest of my life.
This is the message that media sends to women every day. Now, with our obsession with 24/7 social media, we send it to ourselves. In a world where social justice has become the engine to fix societal norms, it may seem “petty” and “deranged” to rail against a silly TV show like Emily in Paris and say “Please… stop.”
But this is coming from a place of pain, confusion, experience, and concern for young women everywhere, who exist in both real AND virtual image conscious worlds…
This oversight, in context, may be understandable. Or, I may be experiencing early onset of a degenerative condition, so I’d better make haste and get this story told. While I remember it.
First, a question: Have you considered the one skill you wish you could be blessed with instantaneously? For me, it was always figure skating. Not Olympic level, no, even though this is make believe, it doesn’t feel right to be able to magically best an athlete who invested their life on an ice rink. Speaking multiple languages, a close second wish, seems fairer.
The one skill I didn’t expect to acquire in middle age was skiing. Also, I didn’t think skill was required for basic skiing. The last time I’d been was as a teenager in Grossinger’s decades before. Up the bunny hill, down the T-Bar, it was sledding while standing and less intimidating than instructional swim in camp.
So when my family planned the ski trip, it wasn’t on my list of “Things That Scare the Shit Out of Me” like Wednesday carpool, or the school nurse lice notification letter, or the growing pile of essays that needed to be graded, I went with the flow, just happy to have one activity, just one, that I could enjoy participating in with my no-longer baby boys, who would put down the footballs and soccer balls and game cube controllers, and actually do something with mom.
The first time I fell, it was getting off the lift. I had the balance of a woman who just slammed six tequilas with none of the benefits. “Think I’m done here.” I announced, after being propped back up by a team of superhero regular people. “I’ll just get back on the lift going down.”
I reached for a seat —-
“No” the attendant said. “It’s one way only.”
“Well, then” I explained. “Seems we have a problem.”
“Just come with me down the mountain,” my husband said. “See, watch the kids.” And there they went, like birds skimming the water’s edge, unaware that JAWS lurked below.
“No can do.” I said,
”You don’t actually have a choice.”
“Actually, I do.” I said, sooner seeing a future as frozen Lot’s wife than attempting that unholy mountain.
“Come on,” he bullied said. “Just ski to me.”
“Fine.” I moved forward and my body slipped from under me. I executed the triple axel I’d always dreamed of and ended up a pretzel of legs and poles, my butt in the air.
“Look here, lady’s playing Twister in the snow.” Some snowboarder ass, the first of many of that sort I’d later encounter, said to his mate.
I had no actual idea how to move. Everything seemed pinned by ice and resistance was futile. By then my sister and brother in law, both experienced skiers came off the lift and saw me in this butt up position, and waited.
“Jen?”
“Yep.”
“Need some help?”
“Nope.” I said, emphatically. “I got this.”
“You sure?”
“Never been surer.”
I didn’t look up but I imagine the looks they exchanged as they skied to the precipice and left me to deal with my pretzelhood.
“Jen, if you don’t want my help, we’re going to start going down,” my husband said. “Is that ok? Or do you want me to wait?”
I want ski patrol now, while I still have a pulse, I prayed, but shooed him off, as I really I didn’t want to be, couldn’t imagine being, more humiliated than I was at that moment.
As anyone who’s given birth once can attest, never mind four times, there is little mortification a woman hasn’t survived, yet there was something about this that unglued my patched together midlife self-esteem, that reflection of ourselves we insist on even as our thighs expand and our jowls begin their descent.
I would get through this. I would figure out which leg needed to go where and how the heck to move parts of my body that seemed to be completely disconnected to my motor system.
This Yoga Position is “Called Mom on Skis”
Time passed along with hoards of lookie-loos and not interesteds. The flames of shame kept icicles from forming out of my tears.
“Hi mom,” my 9-year-old said, already back on the hill for another run. “Need help?”
“Please,” I said, as he broke the pride spell.
He advised me to take off my skis and place my body in a frog like position, rising slowly facing uphill. He told me how to align my skis, to kick the snow off my boots, and dig in the poles for balance as I reattached the skis, parallel to the mountain, edges in.
This is the best advice I have ever received in my life.
“Thanks, honey,” I said.
“Want me to ski down with you?”
There was no way in hell I was going to move.
“No, enjoy, go ahead…”
“Are you coming?”
“Not yet.”
He, as he always does, called out my bullshit.
“You can’t just stay here mom. You have to get down. Follow my tracks.” He slid across to the other side of the mountain and motioned me to join him.
“Jack.” I said, to myself. “Not today.”
He kept beckoning me, his gloved hands animated, without a doubt that I could do this.
That blue goggled boy who I watched crawl, lift himself up, grasping anything until he could walk was now encouraging me to defy the safety of stillness and meet him on the other side.
I will die, I thought. But I will do this.
It started out ok. I moved slowly, but soon lost control and fell as I tried to stop. Once again, Jack guided me through until I was standing. In my boots. I refused to put the skis back on.
I would walk down. Or slide on my butt.
In the end, I put the skis back on and, about an hour later, made it down the hill. I had both a migraine and ten patents for “new ways to fall.” But I did it.
Along the way there were tears. My husband passed me many with his sister and her husband and bawling like a tragic blue Jiffy pop infant, I shooed them off, cursing nature, cursing the snowboarders who I held especially responsible for my frequent falls, cursing Byron, Emerson, Whitman, and Frost and anyone who blatantly mislead me into thinking nature an ally.
But, I did it.
Once.
Back in the lodge, I met up with friends who told me they were heading home and offered me a ride, which I accepted. No way was I going back on the mountain and staying overnight in a motel just to hang out in the lodge again tomorrow.
And that would be the end of this story, except it didn’t happen that way.
I stayed.
I declined the offer, and went back up the lift. I knew that once I went up, I would have to come back down. It would be messy; indeed it was. But I had left my comfort zone and that felt unexpectedly cool.
____
Eleven years a couple of lessons, and many epic falls later, I am queen of the greens. I’m even comfortable on blue trails, mostly, but have no interest in blacks. (I’ve accidentally ended up on a rogue black, and I find that regular life holds enough fear for me — “Did my child drive home safely? Is that driver going to stop at the intersection? Is that mammogram going to be negative?” — that I don’t need to seek out terror. Sailing on the blues or greens is freedom; anxiety is my mind prison and skiing unshackles me.
Last year, one of my last trips pre Covid-19, was to Park City. Beautiful, frozen, and absolutely buzzing with clueless masses who had no idea what would happen two months later. It was challenging — many of the runs were longer and more snow-packed than the North Eastern ice trails I was used to. But I acclimated, and was soon in the zone.
Until I fell off a lift.
My timing was a second off; I didn’t make contact with the seat. I dangled a bit before plunging downward. Aside from the not-unfamiliar humiliation, I was fine. But, I decided to brood a little in the suite, waiting for my family, who were halfway up the mountain, and would probably not be down until sunset.
It was noon. I took my time luxuriating in the bath, reading, checking up on social media. Eventually, I decided to go back up the lift. Mindfully, I redressed, layer upon layer, remembering my boots, hand warmers, gloves, skis, polls, and the other million things one must bring in order to let gravity have its way, in comfort.
I was already settled on to the lift when the chill hit me. My legs were freezing.
Oh.
My.
G-d.
I wasn’t wearing pants.
How could I forget my pants? I had the Hot Chili’s so it could have been worse, but not much worse, if you ask my kids.
I had no pants and was making my way up a miles long trail.
If only I looked like this maybe it would have been different…
Signs indicated a midway stop. YES! Well, of course I was going to get off there and ski down because I had No. Pants. On.
At that magic moment, I lifted the bar and then skied off the to the left where the sign I had missed a moment before revealed itself:
Well, isn’t that on brand for the day?
Two hours later, soaked and frozen to my core, I stood by the door in front of my family, who stared at me with a spectrum of horrified to amused expressions. What should have taken a person 10 minutes to ski took me two hours because of terrifying moguls. Every time I got the skis back on, I knocked into a hill and off they flew.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Are you looking for a moral to this story? There is none. This is an ode to middle age. Actually, it is a farewell to middle age, and a hello to the AARP years. Yes, I’ve been getting targeted ads from them, and for overactive bladder studies, when what I really need is an app that prevents me from leaving the house unless I’m dressed.
Which, for the past year, has a been a non-issue.
For when I do go out, it isn’t the pants I can’t forget. It’s the other blue. The one-sided blue that is more important than anything I’ve worn to date.
It Goes With EVERYTHING – also, It Goes Over the NOSE
Because this is so much worse than anything waiting on the top of a mountain.
10. Excitement. Be suspicious of anyone who denies that the onset of Covid-19 triggered a primal thrill. This does not mean it was welcomed, nor that it didn’t give way to horror, despair, loneliness, among other feelings that will be covered. When I first learned Covid reached America, it was personal. I knew Patient Zero. It was exciting to know Patient Zero. Am I awful? I prayed for his recovery and for his family’s health. But still, you know what I mean? You could see that glint in the eyes of reporters on TV, and of friends you met when you could still meet them in person. When they were all alive and well. That “well, this is extraordinary” feeling which quickly morphs into terror paralysis.
9. Terror Paralysis. To be fair, this was not just the next phase in the pandemic grieving cycle, but rather one that mellows into a resting state from which you never recover. So far. It started about a half hour after I returned home from a business trip to DC, early March, 2020. I had found out about Patient Zero while in DC, but continued to attend meetings and even visit the Smithsonian Museum of Art. Union Station was packed. So was the subway, the railroad, Grand Central Station… It wasn’t until I arrived home that it struck me that anyone I passed could have the infection. I could have brought it home. I could get sick and die. Someone in my family could, too. Or someone I did not know could have gotten it from me and die. Etc. Etc. This cascade of brick thoughts buried me and as I dug out another load drops like Medieval stink tossed out a Briton window. “Go shopping and buy everything you can,” my husband, the calm one, said. “This is going to be bad.” What does that mean? What do I need? The only answer I could think of was avocados.
8. Suspicion. The aisle of my local supermarket are wide, but still I would not cross by any shoppers headed my way. In these pre-mask days, I wrapped a scarf around my face, and through foggy glasses, I reached for non-perishables that I would never before purchased. Hey, unprecedented times call for unprecedented meals: Beans and grains of every variety. Tinned anything. Powdered milk. Unfiltered honey. If Covid-19 didn’t kill us, we would be healthier than ever. Nevermind. I hit the baking aisle and decided that a few bags of high-gluten flour and white sugar were in order. I already had a 5 lb bag of yeast in the fridge, don’t ask, so I unintentionally pre-gamed the baking phase. But as I piled my cart to comical heights, I was constantly aware of my surroundings, like a CIA operative. Is anyone coughing? Sweating? Hoarding Tylenol? Sneezing? Breathing? I became a human measuring rod. I sneered beneath my scarf at anyone reaching for the shelf the same time as me. I scurried around the store like Pacman avoiding the ghosts. At the checkout counter, instead of casually watching the register for accuracy, I faced my head down so the cashier and I would not share the same air. I flew to my car and Lysoled everything, including the Lysol. Drove home and asked my newly homebound family to help unload the car. That’s when the anger began.
7.Anger. Can anyone please help me unload the car? LOL. Remember when this was the only ask and even then it had to be an ask on a loop? Unloading the pandemic stash, the first of many, just meant that all this stuff had to be, at some point, cooked, cleaned, saved, lather, rinse, repeat. Having my family home, all the grown kids, is a mother’s dream. For a weekend. But when it is an around-the-clock Club-Mom vacation – HOLY $hit. Everyone had an excuse why he couldn’t help. My husband was working from home. My son was working from home. Three other sons were learning from home. Well, guess what? I ALWAYS work from home and no one does my cooking, cleaning, and laundry. Am I Super Human and all this time, no one told me? Damn it, Kal-El. Also, it’s been brought to me attention that my kids have been playing football at the local field… Yes, I followed them to make sure they were socially distancing themselves, playing FOOTBALL, which they assured me was “only tag.” “Do you not know how this virus works?” “We’re careful, mom,” they said. I watched them be “careful” as I mentally prepared my funeral.
6. Rage. I did it. I smashed a glass on the floor after pouring out it’s contents, Calm Tea, on a pile of my kids clothes, collected from the floors in their rooms. Although I was fully aware that I had lost it, I still noted their side looks at one another, the “Mom’s nuts but is this really happening?” glance that made me feel seen for the first time in months. I am not ashamed of this, nor will I be. As I explained to me kids when Daenerys incinerated King’s Landing there’s just SO MUCH a woman can take. They kept the glasses out of reach for a while. Good thing they don’t know about my dragons.
5. Sadness. After The One About The Tea episode, I collapsed in grief. All the tears I had not cried over everything from the human loss, the individual stories and obituaries in the news, the people I knew who had passed, the state of the world in every conceivable way, to the person: my imprisonment, my own self-doubt, my lack of gratitude, my self-pity, just exploded, and left me deflated, as if the only thing that had kept me aloft were toxic fumes. All that was left was sorrow. Exhausting, empty, sorrow.
4. Strength. Who has time for sorrow and self pity when there’s another load of laundry to be done? There’s something to be said for being raised with Gloria Gaynor playing on the radio. I will survive. At least, for now. And as long as I am alive I have agency to make this better. I will write. I will reconnect with friends. I will use this time to learn a new skill. I will emerge (if I emerge) better, stronger, faster. As a first but meaningful step, I downloaded “Splits Training” because I never made it down to the floor in all my years in dance class. What better time? A few months and some pulled muscles later, I can get down about 1/8 of an inch more and everything hurts. But hey, I’m a work in progress.
3. Wonder. At some point, I started to feel like a caged creature, watching actual animals fly and crawl freely around the perimeter of my house. I’ve fed multiple cats, been visited by two possums, a giant raccoon, and watched a rainbow of birds perch on my maple tree. I’ve bought cat food and bird food and learned to out them in different places, or else there is no need for the cat food. Oof. You know, there is no Covid worry for animals. There was no industrial revolution. No war. No politics. There is just this moment.
2. Frustration. Being that my husband is an essential worker and my youngest son attends school, even though I’m a full-time hermit, I can’t know that Covid won’t find its way into my fortress wearing the mask of a loved one. I also can’t visit my mother, who lives alone. I have never met my 8 month old niece. My theatre company has not put on a live show in over a year. So when I see how other people treat Covid with a devil may care attitude, or dare politicize it, it fills me with frustration. We are all in this together – but some of us don’t get that, or worse, don’t care. It is almost enough to want to crawl into bed and stay there, except for…
1.Hope. Welcome to the in-between-days, when the arms race between vaccine or virus is playing out in real time. Can you visualize it? Although so much is still uncertain, damn if the Pandora story doesn’t resonate. Hope is a thing with Fauci, I mean Feathers. It is perched on a bust of Athena, who, in my mind’s eye, is driving a chariot of chilled vaccines.
The three of the four are grown and gone. But they were home last week, albeit for 24 hours, so I braved their rooms for a mom-clean.
You want to hear something awful? A part of me is relieved that I don’t have to clean everyday. That my frat housefrau hours are shorter- my laundry and towels sorting less overwhelming.
But mostly, I’m sad. I miss knowing we’re all under the same roof at the same moment just a few steps away.
Today, I was perceptive.
It struck me – for the first time ever – how cramped they must feel in their rooms when they come home.
We built this house after the fire. The utility of design, while not exactly Bauhaus, dictated the architecture. Each bedroom large enough to accommodate a twin bed with trundle, a desk, and a night table.
They fit well.
Who could foresee the men they would become- the physical space they would occupy in relation to the dimensions of the rooms?
They are lucky. They had a roof over their heads in a house built for them. They are lucky. They had enough.
I haven’t. I want to reach into the past and grab my babies and feel those tiny hands reaching for mine. Read stories from cardboard books and make funny faces and leave on a night light.
I took the laundry from the baskets – well – from around the laundry baskets and closed yet another door.
…not a sound from the pavement. Has the moon lost her memory? She is smiling alone.
Watching a recent episode of The Librarians — yes, I know, not exactly Game of Thrones but completely sensible for GenX, as it is the lovechild of The Goonies and Indiana Jones with a nod to English and Ancient History buffs — I was struck by a similarity between drama directors and The Librarians. Aside from the “obvious” (our brilliance, four dimensional mind-mapping abilities, Navy Seal ninja skills) and aside from our magic-adjacent talents, and forgetting our long standing bonds with John Larroquette, Noah Wylie, and Rebecca Romijn, here is what we actually do have in common:
We voluntarily hurl ourselves into the emotional and physical adventure demanded by each play, called to action by a siren heard only by those with our “curse.” As we cycle through the journey, we find ourselves hanging by a thread of uncertainty, dangling over the abyss of failure. We have moments where everyone doubts our cast-mates, the material, the DIRECTOR, and mostly, ourselves. Yet, somehow, at the last moment and to fresh shock of all, we slay!
The euphoria!
Then, stasis.
The stasis is soooo boring.
So we begin another episode. As if we have collective amnesia about the stress, heartache, annoyance, time commitment, and all that other stuff baked into community theater.
What is the point of human memory if it can’t teach us to stay in our safety zones?
Right now, I’m posing that question not just to the Internet, but to the back of an auditorium chair, rescued from the garbage heap. You see, it had spent decades in auditorium currently undergoing a massive renovation. It’s been gifted to me by a former student who knew that this oddly timed Coronavirus renovation meant the demolition of the space in the high school where I worked for sixteen years. It was a demolition that, despite my title of “Director of Dramatic Arts” for said high school, came as a total surprise.
This was my home away from home. This was my “library.” A place where magic existed, a space in the middle of chaos made out of even more chaos, but somehow, time was non-linear, not traditionally regimented. Time expanded and contracted; it was a composition of musical bars, rehearsal hours, months, then days, then minutes counted to curtain time. Time was an inexplicable artifice. The discovery of a script page from years past, a glittery shard, a costume tossed under an old prop, are brain trippy transports to times long gone.
The stillness of the empty space where I built sets, the only sound a staple gun and my own footsteps, gradually transmuted into a zoetic, animated carnival of activity. There were great moments with filled to capacity blockbuster musicals, and smaller moments with quietly falling tears. For those who cycled through, the creative collaboration, the problem solving (How do we support a 50 pound castle with paperback books? How do we hang colorful paper bag lanterns 50 feet above our heads? How do we make it rain?), the knowledge that through vision and teamwork the seemingly impossible was always possible, are lessons stored in a margin, like a treasured pocket-watch, taken out when needed.
The Persistence of Memory, as depicted by Salvador Dali, a fan favorite for sure, has drama kid vibes. Yeah, it’s theatrical and quixotic, but also still and retrospective. The mountains in the back are thought to be Catalonian cliffs of northern Spain, culled from Dali’s childhood, that time in life that imprints and can be summoned to the present in a millisecond. The curious, the odd, the fascinating, all invite the audience to break that fourth wall and interpret the art themselves, becoming a part of its very being. Like eyelashes on a silhouette, there is much to which we must impart our own meaning. It challenges the rational world, as do dreams, but anchors itself in stillness. How drama kid is that????
And here is where it all ties together:
This auditorium demolition is déjà vu. It is not my first unexpected demolition — oh no — not in the least. My house burned down in 2003, leaving a toasted shell awaiting permission from the Town to “remove.” This excruciatingly slow process took months. Once, I tore away the police tape, and with a flashlight, through breaths of smoky air, I entered what had been my home, praying the splintered floorboards would not give out beneath my feet.
Here I encountered IRL three of the most surreal things ever:
Bags of popped microwave popcorn in the pantry.
My son’s uneaten Barney bowl of baked cereal, 1/2 Cocoa Pebbles, 1/2 Fruity Pebbles, perfectly aligned in half moons as he had designed them every morning.
The kitchen clock, melted at 7:50, drooping on the scarred wall.
“Please tell me when you are going to demolish the house,” was my repeated request to the contractor. I hoped to rummage through the remains looking for, actually, anything. Any memento would do.
when the house was the microwave
When my husband called to tell me that the house had been demolished and cleared, I rushed over to find an empty lot.
——–
In that empty lot, a new house stands, the one I am typing from this very moment. My kids grew up here. Time marched on. And I know that memories are always superseded by progress. The new school auditorium will undoubtedly offer scores of drama kids those unimaginable, surreal, magical experiences that will shape who they are, as they provide a refuge from the rational culture beyond its doors. And as for souvenirs from my past productions? They’re a part of who I am, and who every student with whom I worked is, too. But let’s not linger too long –
IN RE: Parents Really Need a Break. But Is Summer Camp Too Risky? Sharon Otterman
Dear Editor,
As a mother and teacher who has worked in sleep-away camps for about a decade, I could not agree more with Bradley Solmsen. My fellow sleep-away camp retirees and I continue to keep in close touch and we are in agreement that while the temptation to send kids into the great outdoors — free from their restricted quarantine quarters, and endless Zoom classes — has never been more tempting, it has never been more risky.
We remember the summer of Swine Flu and other more routine calamities that plow through camp, as well as the lesser and more expected but no-less frightening health phenomena that camp staff is responsible to care for. Much of what goes on behind the scenes in service of providing a safe and secure experience for children and staff is hardly publicized in glossy brochures.
To incur the additional responsibility and liability born of an uncharted pandemic is absurd. Yes, we want our children to have a return to normalcy, something we all crave.
That said, there is an extraordinary opportunity for camps to rethink and repurpose!
Open camp for MOMS.
We have been the universal antagonist and family police for almost four months now.
Stay home!
Wash your hands!
Do your homework!
Pick up that wet towel!
You are NOT ordering anything else from Amazon today!
Read a book!
It is midnight and the kitchen is closed!
Wash your hands!
No, you can’t go to your friend’s house! I don’t care what other mothers are allowing!
Put on a mask when you go outside!
Wash your hands!
Are you tired of being the bad guy? I know I am. So. Very. Tired.
Between laundry (why the heck is there so much laundry when no one is going anywhere??) feeding my college-aged home bound kids, my middle-schooler, and my working from home 24-year-old, cleaning, shopping, which is akin to being a character in one of the constant video games my kids are playing (escape the home with an arsenal of masks, wipes, supplies — dodge the barrels and pitfalls — keep socially distant from those with no concept of personal space), working at our ACTUAL jobs from home, and just keeping it all together just to do it all again tomorrow…doesn’t just reading this make you tired?
Getting the groceries before Corona gets me.
Let’s open those camps for moms. We know how to socially distance. We will happily share cooking, cleaning, and shopping responsibilities. We will kayak 10 feet apart, crochet masks, and carve beautiful woodshed signs with inspirational message like “Stay the *F* Away” and “Mom’s Busy,” and “No.” We will play Words with Friends on our iPads while staring at the willows by the lake. We will marvel at how the momma birds that nest in the trees outside our huts feed their young and then shove them out of the nests, ready or not. We will take spread apart power walks, and learn cool-ish dances and practice yoga and we will drink fancy cocktails as we talk about how, despite all the complaining, there will be an empty space in our hearts when our kids once again leave our homes, after the pandemic has flown the coop.
Can’t Argue With Nature
Jennifer Lanter
Artistic Director SHTARKcontrast
SHTARKcontrast is a non-profit theater company in Woodmere, NY
Jennifer Lanter is also a writer and High School English teacher, who worked as the Drama Director in summer camp for 15 summers.
Once upon a better time, the 1970s, there was a terrifying plague threatening all the land. Staten Island. Also Brooklyn. Maybe other places but the extent of this fairy tale is limited to the scope of a very limited narrator.
The narrator was a third grade student, whose flat world was limited to the far reaches of Flatbush and the Staten Island Mall.
The evil Chicken Pox! tore through our school’s student body leaving no one unscarred. Of course, people were unscarred but alas, this was the literal terror of it all: being permanently pox marked and losing the familiarity of our own reflections.
The Chicken Pox! was also exciting. It meant staying home from school and getting to tell everyone you had the Chicken Pox! It meant you were trending.
Having Chicken Pox! meant that you were dangerous. Sure, a healthy child would survive, but you possessed the power to potentially hurt fragile adults (our parents, aka Boomers) because we all knew the older you were, the worse it hit) and the show-off older siblings who boasted that their superior immune systems had overpowered Chicken Pox! time and again.
(We did care about the vulnerable, those who could suffer greatly, but in the immature binarism of little kids and politicians: everything was good or everything was doomed.)
We had Chicken Pox! Parties. Our parents’ herd immunity plan was to infect us all, hoping we would have childhood Chicken Pox! and the consquent antibodies, thereby protecting us from the adult version, and just getting it all over with. They wanted the shoe to drop, which in light of the Novel Coronavirus Pandemic, I totally get.
So it was with exhiliration that I heard about my friend’s diagnosis, just two days after a sleepover at my house. Chicken Pox! was imminent.
Chicken Pox! the reality lived up to the hype. As the dots started to appear, and the calamine lotion slathered, and the school notified, and the nails trimmed, I remember feeling “chosen.” How crazy is that? Of course, I also felt lethargic, itchy, and concerned about accidentally tearing my face off in my sleep. But the thrill of informing my friends that I HAD IT, was real.
How a couple of decades and an escaped bioweapon naturally occuring lethal Coronavirus put a different spin on contagion. Imagine a Covid party. For those who went on Spring Break, attended weddings slipped in “under the deadline” or flat out disobeyed rules for social distancing, you actually can. But the rest of us, particularly those Paul Revere/Cassandras who are my true people, this is like having an intense game of kickball in a Swarovski Crystal shop.
About 6 weeks ago I started to feel sick. The last thing I wanted to do was call anyone and tell them. Not that I had put anyone at risk, Not that I had been socializing (ever) but being that I was not unwell enough to be tested, and to presume I had a mild CV infection, I could not know for sure. Why cry wolf? Why cry anything? Sympathy and prayers are in unlimited supply, but come on. It would be ridiculous to come out as possibly Covid positive when the worst of my condition included “stayed in bed,” and “didn’t have to go down and cook or clean for the family.”
Yet now, I, as do so many others, wait for the shoe to drop.
I sincerely hope mine is a Jimmy Choo. Or a Chanel bootie with pearl detail.
These boots were made for walking from the kitchen to the bedroom
We wait for serum testing. We wait to get the serious case of CV that we escaped. We wait.
We wait.
We wait.
We do inventory every morning. I’m still here. Good. I can breathe. Good. Let me check the news.
“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.” –Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
(This blog is dedicated to everyone who ever mocked, opposed, shunned, ignored, or took for granted my advocacy for online education, ie EDMODO, Schoology, CommonLit, etc., for the past 10 years. F. U. Also, stay well.)
Stupefaction is my new favorite word. It vacuums up all the feels and huffs them out in a paralyzing aerosol. Stupefaction is the primary pandemic. Coronavirus is the secondary, the deadlier of the two.
Symptoms include hating everyone, feeling a compelling need to do something abstract, checking a device every 1 second because something may have happened in the 1 second you didn’t look, circulating the same not so funny memes to every single Whatsapp group you belong to, intending to make the most of your time learning the Great Courses, or visiting a virtual museum, but, instead keep checking the Covid death counter or r/coronavirus, or, if you are a deranged narcissist, hanging out with your equally idiotic drift of swine.
Stupefaction is encouraged by the mainstream media who, let’s be honest, love this shit. They love anything that brings the eyeballs. Normalcy is a curse! Who the hell knew Andrew Cuomo had a brother until recently? Wolf Blitzer, Greta Van Susteren – come on. Without a disaster of some sort, their celebrity candles would have never been relight.
Stupefaction is the reason why I have shelves stocked with every kind of bean and grain imaginable, even though I have never in my life eaten a pink bean. I have NO plans to cook anything in the pantry. If push comes to shove we will be eating them raw.
Stupefaction is the reason why America was unprepared for this. The Cassandras/Paul Reveres amongst us (hello) saw this coming in January. TBH we live in worst case senario land and we cried Wolf (Blitzer?) too many times to be taken seriously. And the “It’s the Economy, Stupid” ethos is hanging in our prefrontal cortex right next to the blue dress. America played a game of chicken with CoronaV and lost.
Brought to you by your friends at GAP
For now.
Stupefaction is also the reason why America will be ok. Most of us have been affected with this since 2016 (whatever your politics) and yet, despite our own lack of productive agency, the life force within us keeps moving forward. The will to survive is stronger than these twin pandemics.
In the 1300s, another pandemic spread from the east like a “many tentacled monster,” and Black Death brought, what is now, imaginable devastation. What was actually three strains, and brought to humans from fleas, who can bite the bottom of the Pope in Rome was incorrectly predicted to bring the end of the world. Guess how civilization responded in the fusty timeth bef’re technology.
Pilgrimages (I’m looking at you, #springbreak2020)
Whipping themselves to atone for humanity’s sins (Still looking at you, #springbreak2020 – and #MarchWeddings2020 – and all #espècedIdiot2020)
Writing great literature (see The Decameron and Danse Macabre if Chaucer isn’t your thing.)
Partying like it’s 1999 (see #2)
And we are here. For now. And most of us will be here tomorrow. And tomorrow. And tomorrow. Creeping at our petty pace. The stock market will rebound. The trees will blossom and allergy sufferers will be terrified. School will continue. Lots of babies will be born in about 9 months. The gynecologists of the world will be super busy in the coming months for many, many reasons.
But for those of us who get the short straw, the best I can hope for is a Les Miz finale. That bit where Jean ValJean is welcomed by the entire dead cast brings me to tears so hard in its devastating perfection.
Or, as a fan of contemporary Danse Macabre, this:
NOW WHY GO UP THERE WHEN PEOPLE ARE DYING TO GET DOWN HERE?
If all this death talk offends you, let me offend you even more! Here’s another symptom of Stupefaction: The unbridled usage of the F-Bomb. People are f-ing dropping it all the f-ing time. Even the spokesman of gallantry himself, DJT, was caught on another hot mic before addressing the nation cuz he soiled himself with a f-ing pen.
So to all of you bloggers and readers, heed the call of Virginia Woolf, who understood both the value of the written word, and the fragility of life, but sadly surrendered to a Stupefaction of her own.
Stay well. Mentally, physically, and for fuck’s sake, stay home.
If you are a mother of only boys, this is not something you ever want to hear from your OB/GYN after delivering your baby.
Did he say “It’s a girl?” –
This was what I asked my husband in the recovery room. I must have had temporary amnesia after the delivery, probably brought on by that pronouncement.
But it came back to me.
Yes –
Is there something wrong with our son? –
No. There is something wrong with your doctor –
(Stop yelling about a healthy baby being a blessing –that sex isn’t important. I know that. Believe me. I know.)
However, it is also ok to confront the fact that not having a daughter is a kind of absence that mothers of boys only (MOBOs) experience. And when you are lying spread eagle exhausted on the table, sweating, panting, bloody, the last thing you can deal with is a ridiculous doctor who can’t tell the difference between a freakin’ boy or the elusive girl baby.
Let me put it out there that there is NOTHING wrong with my son. All the parts are there. I am a qualified expert in that field as I was on diaper duty for four male children.
And yet, I felt not a moment of disappointment, sadness, or shock. My beautiful tiny boy, with denim blue eyes and a mop of white blond hair, looked newly sent from heaven. He was everything to me the moment I held him. I counted his fingers and toes and gently ran my hand over his head, feeling the familiar weight of his newness and thanked G-d he was ok.
For seven months I didn’t know if he would be.
The bleeding started at 8 weeks.
Looking back, the doctor thinks I lost his twin. That accounted for symptoms of a miscarriage while still having a pregnancy. There was a shadow on the sonogram that eventually disappeared into me. Or, as my son surmises, he is so powerful that he absorbed his twin and you know what, that is entire plausible.
I wasn’t sad about the twin, just petrified that I would lose another pregnancy.
The pregnancy before, I ‘d suffered a “silent miscarriage” in my second trimester.
A routine exam.
The look on the sonographer’s face.
I knew.
I’m going to get the doctor. I’m having a little trouble finding the heartbeat –
But just a few weeks ago I’d seen the baby’s heartbeat. Good news. I was told 95% of pregnancies make it to term when you see the heartbeat. But odds never stood in my way unless it involved a lottery ticket.
The next day I had the D&E. My baby had passed at least two weeks before (estimated) but didn’t want to leave on (her?) own.
It isn’t a baby – my husband said.
It isn’t a baby – I repeated.
TBH I handled it like a pro. Totally trusted that there was something wrong and it wasn’t meant to be. And when I got pregnant again, any potential grudge against the powers that be was nulled.
Until week 8.
Months of tests and bedrest and stress trickled by in Worst Case Senario Land. At 26 weeks, I had a two hour sonogram, about an hour and 15 minutes longer than “normal.” Something was wrong and THEY weren’t telling me…
Nothing was wrong.
My son.
When he was born, with all of my soul, I swear to you that the only thing that mattered about his biology that it was healthy. People say that. I swear that.
That does NOT mean that I didn’t grieve not having a daughter somewhere in the lineup. That’s something else entirely, and mothers of boys only know that this does not mean we love or cherish our gifts any less.
We do not wish they had been anything but who they are, and our lives are defined by that infinite love. Hockey gear, sweaty gym bags, constant feedings, wet towels on the floors, toilet seats up, yessss but also that infinite love.
I literally dreamt of having a daughter and woke up feeling sad. I was banned from the girl’s section of BABY GAP, cheerleading my friends as they showed off the sparkly headbands, leotards, and tutus they purchased for their own daughters. They were in the club and I didn’t have the password.
I write this as an older person who has seen my baby boys, who once regarded me as the entire world, who grasped my fingers in their small hands, who ran into my arms at school pickup, who distanced themselves as teenagers and later adult children do, and wonder if it would have been different with daughters. Maybe it would have been worse. But I don’t miss something I never had. I only miss MY baby boys even as I marvel at the astounding men they have become.
Tom’s egg-shaped bald head bounces left to right behind the magazine held up to his face.
Breasts, Tom. You’re looking at breasts –
Oh my –
He drops the Playboy.
Someone from the office must have pranked him, leaving that academic journal in his wooden inbox. Yes. It was a good one. A little mean, but hey, so was Tom.
He was a good one.
Tom Steinfeld was probably the most influential person I’ve yet to meet, and not because he was an influential person. His serendipitous juxtaposition in my life informed everything that followed. Kind of like John Keating meets Miranda Priestly by way of Lurch.
Tom Steinfeld suffered from macular degeneration. That’s why I was initially hired at Playbill Magazine: Because of another person’s traumatic vision loss. I was to be his seeing eye dog.
Will Not Wag Tail For Treats
Specifically, I was to interact with his clients, arrange promotional events, summarize piles of magazines, read his mail, update databases, and assist with the day to day particulars and technicalities. Also, I had to soften the edges consequent to the occasional ragged bite marks he left on those who had no Tom GPS. He was old school. Very old school. The University of Athens old. Opened doors for women and closed them on babies. He had no EQ for political correctness and set off trigger warnings like a ‘to the manor born’ Archie Bunker.
Tom Steinfeld had a caricature portrait made of him by Al Hirschfeld and it hung in his Playbill office at 52 Vanderbilt. It was made for him when he could still see all the Ninas.
Tom Steinfeld possessed every material want. People had no idea what to gift him. Among his presents were a star — maybe a galaxy — named after him, and a cow rental. He had wheels of cheese crafted from the cow milk sent to him a few times a year.
To anyone reading this blog, you’ve probably never heard the name Tom Steinfeld before, but if you’ve ever held a Playbill in your hand, you can thank him for the pleasure. Although he was the National Sales Director when I began at Playbill, he had been there for what would eventually be 65 years, owning the company at one point, saving it from ruin.
Although he was a gazillion years old, with money to retire in either of his two homes, and had a serious handicap, nothing could stop him from coming to work. Literally nothing. A retirement party. A trip around the world. A company relocation that would not include an office for him. Nope. Playbill Magazine was Tom’s blood. They needed him for many, many years and at the end he needed them.
For a brief time, he needed me.
OF course, anyone could have been me. It was my fortune that being in Tom’s orbit provided me with a wealth of skills, tools, connections, insight, and always THOSE stories. Tom had attended Philips Exeter Academy and later Harvard with what was then the Who’s Who Captains of America.
I have Edsel Ford [II] on the phone, Tom –
Bob Crandall [President of American Airlines] said he’s good for 12 pages-
He dined with Gwen Verdon. He fought in WW2. His first wife was General Mountbatten’s personal secretary. When she passed, he married a French Moroccan Jewish Audrey Hepburn. He was a giant of a man who diffused finishing school charm, tossed bon mots like confetti…
…most of the time. He could also be a mean son of a bitch and people wondered how I put up with that.
It took a while, but I learned to give it right back as good as he gave.
Disassemble
All the while I acquired knowledge like a s l o w Number 5, reading a daily stack of magazines and papers, from the Wall Street Journal, to Ad Age, to Car and Driver, to Variety – I had to keep ahead of every industry that advertised in Playbill – summarizing, discussing, predicting. Tom knew many of players quoted in the articles personally and typically sidelined with a related anecdote.
When I was Spark Notes
His personal finances were managed by a slew of planners, accountants, and lawyers. I learned all about the stock market, money management, and assorted life skills that would come in handy until I got married and relinquished those operations to my husband.
My husband, who, I will never let anyone forget, SOLD MY APPLE STOCK WHEN WE GOT MARRIED IN 1994.
Lucy- no one in the REAL world uses that Apply computer thing
My husband, nonetheless, was Tom Approved. Tom insisted on seeing pictures of anyone I was dating. Although he was mostly blind, he had an apparatus that magnified text and images that he studied until things made some sort of sense to him. Once, upon seeing a picture of a guy who flew me out to Switzerland for a date (yeah, so that happened… ) he said,
Thank you, next. Nope. Jen. Sorry but I do NOT like the look of him. –
I like him. He may be the one. –
That was what he said when he saw my eventual husband’s picture.
At this point you may be wondering how he could recognize a soul mate but couldn’t identify those breasts in the Playboy and I’m not entirely sure myself. Maybe, as breasts do, they got lost in the magnification.
We worked in advertising and this was before #MeToo and Tom never did or said anything inappropriate, even by today’s standards. There was an instance, though, that might have appeared to tell another story.
It was Valentine’s Day, I think 1993, and Tom asked me to help him find a gift for his lovely wife. Of all places, we took a bus to Victoria’s Secret. On 57th Street or about. He walked over to a negligee carousel and randomly picked out a few.
This looks pretty – he said, holding it out.
IDK how he saw that.
Hold it to yourself. You’re about her size. Do you think it would fit her?-
Do not let your mind go there. The man was truly asking for his wife because he could not see. Also, he could not see how awful the optics were at that moment. A great big tailored old man with a 20 something woman holding up a wee something that Kim Basinger might wear in 9 1/2 Weeks. Yikes.
It’s perfect. Buy it and we’re leaving. –
Are you sure? We could look for someth…-
Totally sure Tom. Let’s go-
Tom napped every afternoon while listening to audiobooks (I, myself, would later develop a dependency on audiobooks to fall asleep) and during that time I wrote. First, it was beauty and high end product editorial. Later, as Playbill expanded onto the internet with what was then the LARGEST website in the world, Playbill Online, I interviewed celebrities and theater luminaries, providing content for this new medium. I managed the New York database of shows, casts, and crews.
As long as I made sure the wheels – cheeses and all – were functioning in his life, Tom had nothing but support for my aspirations and pride in my accomplishments.
About 16 years ago I played a call on my answering thanking me for flowers I did not send.
You’re Welcome?
Tom loved you. You know that –
It was his wife.
I called my editor (I had been writing from home for years at that point and hadn’t spoken with Tom in a while.)
Oh, yes, Jen. I’m sorry. Tom died –
(He didn’t go in to work that day.)
I’d like to imagine there was a standing ovation in a large theater somewhere in heaven, when Tom arrived.
I’d like for him to know that although a Google search for his name yields NOTHING except his obituary, the impact he left on the world, (definitely my world), is written on a masthead among the stars.
🌺 🌺 🌺 🌺🌺 🌺 ᗷEᗩᑌTY, ᗷOOKᔕ, ᗷᖇOᗩᗪᗯᗩY, ᗷOYMOM, ᗷEᗪᒪᗩᗰ, & OTᕼEᖇ Vainglorious Pursuits 