middle MIDDLE middle

It's been hard to write the past year.  I am no longer the wife who just lost her husband or the woman I will become. I am in the middle. I am rounder around the middle. I am middle-aged. In the middle of a sentence, I can't remember what I was saying. 

It's the kind of middle that feels like I am sitting on a bus in-between two strangers who used to know me, or the first day at the all-girls Middle School and my new plaid skirt is too stiff.  It's like when I take my dogs on a summer walk and at the point where I turn around to go home, they settle onto a wet patch of grass and don't want to move.

It's an exercise class that is only halfway through and I thought it was almost done. It's the middle of the night when I am wide awake and say "Alexa, what time is it?" and she says "1:30 AM;" or a mid-life crisis when I buy a new car and it does make everything a little better until my 15-year-old daughter backs into the deck pulling out of the driveway.

It's the 13.1 miles into a marathon when the crowd has thinned and all you can hear are feet hitting the pavement, moving on with busy lives. I run faster to keep up with their expectations, but they are out of sight. It's usually mid-July when it seems everyone is on a family vacation.

It's the so-so kind of middle. I can't complain because life could be worse, but I miss the days when I was excited about a date night at Target followed by a movie. 

It's the middle of a movie and I don't recognize the plot, but I am the writer so I try changing my lines.

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The middle is binging on Netflix mid-day on a Sunday afternoon. A 70 degree day in mid-February, the big blue sky out west in the middle of nowhere, and a full rainbow centered perfectly in the sky.

It feels like a second wind at the half-way point of a marathon. And the smooth pit of an avocado cut in two.

It was Jan and Peter Brady and being old enough to stay up past midnight to watch Friday Night Videos. It was my older neighbor explaining the meaning of the middle finger, and feeling a little cooler.

It's knowing that is my son playing mid-field in lacrosse by the color of his socks. It's seeing my daughter sing a duet center stage at her 8th-grade graduation. It's when my husband comes up in the middle of a conversation with my kids and it half-way brings a smile to our faces.

It's the friend who in the middle of her own life, does not forget to check on me. It's an invitation at exactly half past the hour when we need it the most. 

It could be the intermission of a Broadway musical and the second act has all of my favorite songs and being half-way through a book you can't put down. It's deciding that the middle of your life can be like chapters from the Choose Your Own Adventures books you read in 6th grade. 

It's the moments betwixt & between when I don't wish I was younger, and I stop telling myself I am getting old. It's adorable babies smiling in the middle of the grocery store, and being happy to come home to my daughther and her friends hanging out in the kitchen. And then knowing better than to interrupt them in the middle of their conversation.

It's winter break between semesters or summer solstice in the middle of the sun's journey around the Earth. Or in the middle of folding laundry, finding the lost earring he bought me in my pocket, and standing next to my handsome Middle School son and realizing he is almost taller than me.

It's counting the number of times my friends make me laugh and when I come up with the average, deciding I am not too busy to meet an old friend for lunch at noon. It's finding myself in the middle of a messy house, on my laptop, writing again. 

It's closing a door and being hopeful about what you can't see behind another.

It's the end of who I was and the beginning of who I will become. I get to write the beginning, the middle and the end. 

Whitney Houston, The Greatest Love Of All (frequently seen on Friday Night Videos) - the photo is my favorite place to be in the middle.

Who Goes With Willy Wonka?

I saw her get off the treadmill, soaking wet with sweat as she sat down to pray. She was in a hurry because,  as usual, she procrastinated too long and now had only ten minutes to shower and get ready. She always wanted to be more spiritual but seemed to often only remember after exercising when she needed a few minutes (she did not have) to rest. She was ignoring her dogs who were patiently waiting by the treadmill for her, hoping that the headphones and blue Nike shoes meant they were going for a walk. 

I knew my dogs were disappointed, in the same way, I am afraid I have disappointed my kids this Halloween. We have a basement full of Halloween decorations from my daughter's Bat Mitzvah Halloween party two years ago, and I did not have the energy to put them out this year.

It is the first year my son did not ask and a few times; I gaged my kids to see if it bothered them. "Should we put up the Halloween decorations or is it too late?" I asked my kids. "Sure" and then my daughter followed with "but a lot of people on our street have not put out their decorations." It seemed to me that every front yard on our street was decorated, but it made me feel better when she said this.

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We were not ready to let go of our annual Halloween costume shopping. They asked to go to the very popular costume store that is more of a destination and event outing than our usual trip to Party City. I initially said no and blamed it on being out of the way and too crowded, but mostly because the last time I was there I was looking at costumes with my husband.

Grief is in details like the lighting outside on a cloudy day and the first colder temperatures of fall that felt as it did two years ago when I met Jay for a mid-day rendezvous during the week without the kids to shop for costumes for the Halloween party. I don't remember noticing such details at the time, but in hindsight, memories take on senses giving them a vague dimensionality. It tricks you into thinking if you try hard enough, you can walk back into them.

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He wanted to be Willy Wonka.  She wanted them to dress up as a couple. "Sonny and Cher," she said or "Johnny and Roseanne Cash."  I don't think he understood. "But it would be so fun to be Willy Wonka," he said on the occasions when this came up in conversation. "Who should I be then?" she asked, "Who goes with Willy Wonka?" He did not have an answer.

He went as Dracula, and I was a witch. It was not quite a couple but close enough to where I was happy. It felt romantic to shop for Halloween costumes without the kids. I called my mother-in-law after we parted ways as I drove home “you will not believe how handsome your son is going to look in his costume.” I felt like things were going so well. I wanted to be in love and looked for every reason I could find. On this day, I was head over heels for Dracula. "You are the hottest Dracula ever," I said to him more than once.

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Who goes with me when at age 6, my father suddenly dies from a heart attack? I was the youngest of five and I was his girl. Who am I when I walk back into my first grade classroom after losing my dad. I rub ice cream popsicles on my face to make my friends laugh, hoping to hide the little girl whose ears will not stop ringing. Who takes care of me when my mom works full time and has recently gone back to do a second residency at the hospital?  Who looks after my mom when we have no family in town and close friends of my parents come around less after my dad dies, until they almost completely disappear from our lives, showing up only for the occasional holiday or special events.

He may have been Dracula and not the Johnny Cash to her Rosanne, but he went with her and she had been looking for that for so long.

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I am a creature of habit. Jay and I bought a treadmill before we had kids and we used it often. Jay and I did the same pattern in ten minute cycles: 4 minutes fast, 2 slow, 2 fast, 2 slow, repeat 4 times. I still stick to our 10 minute pattern, always have on headphones & listen to a podcast. I sometimes pray when I am done and I usually have on worn workout pants & mismatched socks since no one is watching. Well, that is, no one but Junebug and my dogs. She goes with me now, and the dogs follow close behind.

"I Was Walking Far From Home" by Iron & Wine

Gone Fishin'

 Junebug is fishin' in the sewer & dreaming up poems but will be back to writing essays soon!

I WANT TO FEEL FINE

I am starting my blog with an except from a story that Jay's grandmother, Dorothy Rosenblum, wrote about her family coming to America. I wish you could hear it in her very memorable  Southern drawl. She was a very warm woman who wrote using lots of exclamation points which I love! 

"It was no wonder that while we were forced to love in Minsk, my father decided to go to America to build a better life for us there. He saw no future for Jews in Russia. Although it would mean a hard journey and a long separation, even his father urged and encouraged him to go.

To get out of Russia was no small feat, even then. His experience and trials were many. All the ports of embarkation to cross the Atlantic were closed because of the war. After a long and arduous trip through Siberia, China and Japan, my father finally boarded a ship for America in Kobe, Japan on December 3, 1916. He arrived in San Francisco on January 1, 1917,"

And then in 1921, Dorothy continues....

"My father, aunt, uncle and cousins, Sylvia and Rebecca, met us at the Terminal Station on Spring Street, where the Richard Russell Federal building is now. The train pulled up to the platform and there was my father, just like his picture! I went right into his outstretched arms and hugged and kissed him - and I did so forever after."

-Written by Dorothy Rosenblum, 1994

Dorothy Rosenblum, known by her Grandchildren as Ma-Ma

It has been the end of the world in many ways as I know it and I want to feel fine.

It was Saturday late afternoon last weekend and I was at Starbucks because I needed some caffeine to feel fine.  It was the day of the marches and as I looked down at my phone to check Instagram and Facebook while waiting for my drink, I was relieved to see those who I knew had marched safely. As I took a thankful breath, I was not expecting to the hear the escalating arguing I did right next to me and as an Asian woman quietly left, I was even more surprised to hear yelled at her  “you need to learn our customs.”

I am not one to always speak up but it felt too eerie to be quiet. I decided it was time to march in my own way since I had not that morning so I followed the woman who was leaving and said I was sorry for what happened. And I then marched back in and said calmly to the woman who yelled at her, that what she said to the woman was not necessary or nice. I am not saying this to brag because like many of us, not speaking up seems like less and less of an option.

I was prepared to walk away if she got angry at me but it actually turned into into a civil conversation. As a group of young adults took over, she explained and defended herself and then said turning to me and then to them “you are right, I should not have said that and I am sorry.” And as she walked out to to leave, she said crying “but you don’t know my heart. You think you do but you don’t.”

I did not think I could feel empathy for a woman who said something that I thought was so offensive but I did.  I understand how it feels when people abruptly make decisions about your heart.

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I remember playing the game Jenga with my kids when they were younger. It was one of the very few games I thought was fun. You build a standing structure with rectangular red, yellow and blue bricks and then very carefully choose and remove one brick on your turn. If on your turn, you remove a brick that causes the entire structure to collapse, you lose the game. The best strategy is to remove bricks that are not needed to hold the structure in place but you never know which brick will cause the rumble.

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That’s great it starts with an earthquake

It’s six o’clock TV hour and every few minutes a breaking CNN news alert comes on with a new executive order. Every one feels like another brick being pulled from our already divided country and I feel on edge. It seems the patriotic and symbiotic hope our country was founded is on shakier ground than ever.

2016 was a year of aftershocks for me after Jay died, and finally one day I could clearly see that all of the bricks had fallen to the ground in my life and I knew what needed to be done. My work in progress is to rebuild myself and a strong family of three, (plus our two dogs of course). It seems the work ahead for those who are afraid for our country will be simiiar as we step on bricks being pulled out from under us, and do our best to use them not to continue to build a wall of division in our country but to rebuild our faith in humanity.

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I could choose to call the woman in Starbucks racist but I think the path of judgement is too worn in our country so I will use it as an opportunity to believe that we can stick around for hard conversations and find ways to come together.  We are a country of diverse beliefs and experiences and if I can remember that, it gives me a little more room in my world for others.

I am going believe that the woman in Starbucks has a good heart and that most of us do because if it's the end of the world as I know it, I have to find a way to feel fine. It's been my only choice.

I will end with these words of Jay's grandmother:

"There are many people in my life that I have enjoyed and loved. I by no means like everyone I met, but I am thankful I never had the need to "hate" and for the abundance of people in my life whom I was privileged to have loved as family and friends."

 REM It's The End Of The World  (which is quoted in this blog)