Hostess

A few of us moms from Stella's class are swapping playdate hostessing duties since school let out ridiculously early. Enjoying the weather, sitting on the porch with my laptop while the girls have scooter races in the driveway. Relaxing during their inevitably fleeting bit of cooperative, independent fun before one of them comes running to me breathlessly to tell on one of the others.

quatrefoil cinq

We inherited a chair from a neighbor friend. It's a wing chair and ottoman. Now that I have my very own wing chair I daresay I've always wanted one. It looks smart next to the fireplace, especially at night when the antique lamp upon the mantle is lit, the one with the glass drops and the clear tube bulb that reminds me of Frankenstein's laboratory. All I need is a good book to complete the portrait of domestic bliss. Maybe a tawny port. A fire ablaze in the hearth. A golden retriever. And a butler. (Can you tell I've been reading Julian Fellowes?)

And there are the children opening Stella's birthday presents the morning she turned five, a few short days ago. That's me in the background considering fabric samples. A quality family moment. Can you see the quatrefoil pattern on the left? In the violet colorway? It's $135 a yard. But I can dream. After being lucky enough to score a few yards in silver from a friend who wanted to unload them, I daresay dreams can even come true. And I daresay I can use the word daresay four times in two paragraphs. (Thanks Jules.)

a simple lovely world

I was dreading Spring Break as a sort of precursor to summer stupor madness, mainly because we are too poor to afford those sumptuous full-time day camps. We had no travel plans. We'd just be hanging out.

Artist at Work

Last night I had a bout of insomnia due in part to the fact that I have been discouraged by my PT from sleeping in my most satisfying position—on my side, top knee hiked up, bottom leg straight—as it "mobilizes my SI joint" or something like that, in a bad way, so that I wake up stiff and feeling ninety. So this afternoon I crabbed at Stella that Mommy would be taking a nap. (Note: I did wake up this morning far suppler than usual, praise be.)

This is what I get for chasing the dragon of restfulness (yes, with a Sharpie)—

furiously and regularly

I haven't blogged furiously and regularly in a while so I'm grateful for each little red dot that shows up in my Feedjit map. Because I've neglected you. In fact I've pruned you. Did you notice? I've cut large swaths of posts, streamlining my ramblings into a hopefully coherent, essay-ish patchwork.

duct tape and a toy gun

Did I tell you I grew up around here? Five minutes away. I pass my childhood home sometimes on my way to Borders, Bed Bath & Beyond, the local cobbler. I've wanted to ring the bell since I moved here in 2008.

I've been doing a lot of walking lately. Traded my sticky mat for Pilates-based physical therapy. One of my doctors told me that jogging is out due to the arthritis. I was jogging for a while too. So I've downloaded Lady Gaga and Cee-lo Green and some muh-fucking song called Traktor...and I've been hoofing it all over the sleepy nabe in hopes of snagging some kind of endorphin rush, a feeling of exercise accomplished. I'm not easy to fool though. My arms, my yoga arms...I grieve. But they'll be back someday.

now I remember laughter

I wanted to wait to post till I was sure I was giddy with joy, because I tell you Reader, the winter has been a suckfest. I was waiting for the third boot to drop, you know how bad news comes in threes. But Stella's teacher who spoils me rotten with her adoration for my kids, told me I could use her brother for my third thing. He's battling cancer. So thank you Miss K. I am done now. And I will pray for your brother even though I'm a budding atheist. And with the melting snow, let's just say I should give myself the gift of one of those light hats for next winter. The sun makes everything so much better. So does a doofy Adam Sandler movie. So yes, laughter made a comeback this evening. Praise be.

awed and humbled

My mom says she can see that the left side of her lower lip droops just a little bit when she studies herself in the mirror, but I couldn't tell when I saw her Sunday evening. In fact she looked better than I'd seen her in ages. She wasn't even annoying. Bryan and I think she's awed and humbled, both by the surprise attack—it was plaque in her blood that stroked her—and by the fact that she's doing so well after waiting to long to get her ass to the hospital. She admitted that she won't do that again. Hopefully she won't get the opportunity.

xo

when it rains it shits (and other tales from the front lines of suburbia)

Aaaaand my mother had a stroke.

Ba dum bum!

Seriously folks, is this any way to follow up the last three posts I wrote?

Did I mention the lice is back?

Oh she's killing them. Killing the lice that is!

So Sunday morning, I'm standing around the kitchen counter fretting over the looming day. I've got the green light to take myself to a cafe with my laptop and work on the novel, which, and I thank thee o lord, is still in progress, ten pages away from 200 (can she make it?) when the phone rings.
I answer.
"Elishe?" says my mother, who sounds suspiciously drunk on a Sunday morning.
"Yes?"
"I think I had a little shtroke," she says.

soup and cards and warm hearts and cookies

There has been an outpouring of love and sympathy from readers and friends and family since Stuart died January 3. Bryan and I are very grateful to have such wonderful support. To those who have shared their hearts, thank you.

Here's what I have learned from this event, about myself and about grief and about Stuart and family—

1. It's better to express what's in your heart than to suppress it for fear that it will sound trite or wrong or inappropriate. If it's heartfelt, it will be the perfect thing to say.

the day after the funeral

I woke up yesterday morning after the funeral at my in-laws' apartment in Brooklyn with a couple verses vying for my attention. Something about the combination of a childish rhyme and a teenage suicide wouldn't let me go until I gave it whatever life I could. Life. Ha. I scribbled it down in the back of the memoir I'm reading.

Writing helps me maneuver through this death. Okay okay, it helps me maneuver through life. I am thankful for my writing habit—it's here when I need it, now more than ever.

surviving stuart

The phone call came at one this morning. Hours later, surfing the sheets with a bone-weary body and a busted mind I was composing this post. The last time I looked at the clock it was 5:28. I finally fell asleep only to have a nightmare about raccoons on my front stoop, five or six of them digging in my garbage. One of them lunged at me and I awoke with a start and remembered. Stuart's dead.

happy new year very much

I actually have some resolutions this year. Two resolutions.

1. To please stop saying 'awesome' unless something is truly awesome. I have this thing about being in my forties and saying, "awesome!" like I did when I was eighteen. Or maybe back then I said "tubular." I'm after more grown-up words. Maybe it's part of my mid-life crisis. Whatever it is, I am on high alert. In the past four days at yoga I have witnessed two students say "awesome" when another student or teacher helped them squeeze their mat into a packed class. That it's not just me is reassuring but increases my chances of failure. I am impressionable and must work hard for this one. Makes me wonder, do we say awesome instead of thank you? I will be on the lookout.

a very bakugan christmas

I was so smug. I was sure this would be the holiday we looked back upon and remembered as the year Bakugans hijacked Christmas. If you don't know what Bakugans are it doesn't matter. They are plastic toy balls that spring open into battling dragons and things when they contact a magnet. There are tons of them and Hamish wants every one and the "battle gear" that accompanies them. Sold separately of course.

But it's not to be. Instead, this will be the holiday everyone remembers as the Christmas we all had lice.

backtrack

My brother-in-law (one of five brothers-in-law—I hope I'm not leaving anyone out) has an iPhone. I do not have an iPhone. I should never have an iPhone. In my less sane moments I think an iPhone will complete me, shore up my worth. Give me the appearance of possessing a dazzling life when I whip it out in front of my peers. Yadda yadda. The truth is that I will never finish the novel (yes I'm still plugging away) if I had such a sleek gadget. It would do me in. 

Enter the Hipstamatic, a cheap app (no I'm not receiving a commission) that turns an ordinary photo into a work of art.

Below, if you will. Rewind to Thanksgiving. Fun with a borrowed iPhone. Pics by me and Chuck. The light. The color. The framing options. I drooled. And it wasn't just over the giant bird.

My niece (one of ten, above) just became a bat mitzvah. Mazel tov darling! 

50 hours down

Tonight was the last night of my Anusara teacher's training with Justicia Friese DeClue, who, if I haven't already said this, is brilliant, not just because she's a gifted yogi, not because her head holds a thousand tons of information—anatomy, philosophy, possibly every page of the Anusara teaching syllabus...but also because she knows how to disseminate her knowledge and provide the safe space for her students to feel deserving, welcome and full of potential to soar. Plus, although she's steadfast in her belief in Shiva-Shakti Tantra, she's not at all gooey, and that suits me.

I am gushing, it's true. Maybe I am gooey.

enduring the assault

I don't know how it happens. Or maybe I do. My childhood. My early training in dysfunctional stress management. The subsequent addictive behaviors and their inevitable withdrawal symptoms. The melt-downs upon which this blog is named after.

My whole life has been punctuated and punctured with spectacular displays of grueling self-hatred that sometimes I share with you, like now, since I've been blind-sided again, and feel desperate for the reassurance that I am not alone, desperate to make something productive of my pain.

Hope has given way to hopelessness. Happy delusion has disintegrated into what? Panic. A yearning to check out, to hide under the covers for the rest of winter until I feel safe to show my face again.

toast

My bedroom reeks of pot but I swear I haven't been smoking, even if you don't believe me. Seriously, you don't want to see me high. It isn't pretty. Did you know all the Main Line moms toke up after they put the kids to bed? It was the cover story in Philadelphia Magazine. I saw it in Whole Foods the other month. But I've always been a black sheep, despite my adolescent yearnings to fit in, so I do not partake. Is it even pot anymore? I think it would kill me.

a whole lot of crunching going on

Being the nutrition committee liaison may never result in removing Trix from the lunch menu at Hamish's school. It did however result in my being coordinator of the Pennsylvania-wide event called Apple Crunch. This morning was the big day. After dozens of emails and phone calls with the cafeteria manager, my co-liaison, the parents' association, the Nutritional Services secretary and the principal, there were tables stacked with hundreds of local-ish washed apples in the atrium, and a whole lot of crunching going on.

respite

Dinner with the family is so... familial. Hamish tells Stella that she should be friends with girls and boys but not with robbers or hogs. Bryan wants to know why Stella shouldn't be friends with hogs. After all, she loves pigs. At least she used to, back when she was four and not four and a half. Hamish says, no Dad, not pig-hogs. The kind of kid who hogs everything. Then he reaches for the air above his plate of chicken and pasta and green beans, and pulls fistfuls of it toward his snorting face to demonstrate the kind of kid Stella should stay away from. Bryan smiles his understanding, but I know his smile also reveals his adoration and wonder at his six year-old son. Dinner has become a time of revelation, of getting to know our kids on a more relaxed level, of witnessing their growth from feral bunnies to coordinated humans capable of using forks and finishing sentences and laughing at PG-rated jokes. There's still discipline and frustration but there's fun at the table too these past few days, the kind of fun that reminds you why you had kids in the first place, the kind of fun that reassures you your life is not over. Now Stella demands that Daddy watch as she counts her fingers. She begins counting. She starts over. And over. And over. There's no hurry. She's already eaten her chicken. Finally she gets it right. Counts those fingers the way she must have imagined it. The luxury of not rushing her to finish already is blossom-sweet. Stella, it turns out, has ten fingers. It's quite a discovery.