The Marilyn Of Old

“You need to come now! I’m out of vodka and kitty litter!”  Shannon laughed, mimicking my mom. “I’d get these calls,” she picked up her glass of Pellegrino. “Oh my god. Driving your mother was the best.”

Shannon had come to the rescue as Mom’s driver after she’d lost her driver’s license at 83. Numerous events had called for it, the least of which was Mom pressing the gas pedal, thinking it was the brake as she entered her garage. Thankfully, the only damage she’d done behind the wheel had been merely a crack in the wall.

That was twelve years ago.

Before coming to this dinner with Shannon, I’d dreaded having to bring her up-to-date on my 91 year-old mother’s Parkinson’s and her declining health.  This past year had not been easy. It was enough to live it, but to talk about it...

Then, again, who knew that my mother would live this long anyway, given the wild life she’d led?  Three husbands. Cigarettes. Boozy nights. Partying hard in her earlier years. “Ever heard of a ‘dawner?’” she’d ask my grown children.

“No, Nana. What’s that?”

My sister, April, and I wondered if she lived so long because because she practiced a lot of self-care in between what she called “the parties and balls.”

She was diligent about weekly massages, resting up, and limiting herself to just a few errands a day. “That’s enough,” she’d say. “I need to fold my tent.” She was into “health food” way before “organic” became the craze. And managed her stress by being a master at deflection. Somehow, her problems always became ours, a sort of a shared stress as if she were delegating some of it to my sister and me. “For Christ’s sake you two, what am I going to do now?!” 

Mom’s crowning glory, the once bleached blonde bubble-do is now grey and cropped short in straight layers. Long gone is the “pouf,” she worked so hard to attain. Occasionally now, as if by rote, Mom reaches up to fluff up her hair. I’m half- expecting her to grab the tall white can of Sebastian hairspray that was never far from her grasp. Instead, she drops her hand to rest on her lap in The Jewish Home for the Aging where I visit her.

She sat at what she called her “command center” when she first was moved in -- a rolling hospital table in her room on her skilled nursing floor – with a messy array of drug-store make-up, a magnifying mirror, the combs and countless bottles of perfume littering every inch of the space, her fear of going without make-up, that she’d “look like a peeled grape without the greasepaint.” That part of her is gone.  The command center holds only a box of tissues now. Why do I miss picking up an extra Revlon “Hot Coral” lipstick at the drugstore only to find she had three already?

Meanwhile, the tabloids stack up on the chair in the corner. I haven’t had the heart to cancel her subscriptions. I show them to her, and if it’s a good day, I’ll get a flash of the Marilyn of old and she’ll make a comment about the cover. “Not much,” she’d said of Prince Harry last week. And for a fleeting moment, she’s back.

My mother’s hands look foreign to me now as if they belong to someone else. Where are those long square-shaped acrylic talons, painted to match the season, her affection for showpiece nails that drove me crazy? 

“Mom’ they’re too long!” I’d protest.

"I'll cut them short," she'd lie to appease me.

I miss them now.

Gone, too, are the wedge heels and pointy-toe shoes.  “Moon shoes,” she’d called the Velcro straps and rubber sneakers she now wears thanks to problems with balance.

No matter, though, she’s still dressed in sparkly, animal-print tops with a line-up of gaudy fake bracelets that adorn the paper-thin skin on her forearms, the fashion choices a mark of her conscientious caregivers. They long for the Marilyn of old, too. Her nurse told me last week that she actually misses finding random false eyelashes on the floor of her room.

My mother used to be flamboyant. Larger-than-life, a cross between Phyllis Diller and Carol Channing who happens to think she’s Marilyn Monroe.  But now this spitfire trio is, as Mom would say, “fading into the sunset.”

“What would Mom’s take be?” April and I said to each other recently after a family event. “I miss that phone call from her to rehash,” I sighed.

“Yep,” April replied. “She would have nailed it in one sentence.”

At dinner, I smile at Shannon and reach for my glass of wine. For this short while, she brought back the Marilyn of old in her memories of Mom, not what I’d expected, and so pleased. I’ve been so steeped in her current condition that I forgot all about these funny antics.

Shannon shakes her head with a smile and looks at her husband of eight years. “Then, her stories and advice on how to find a man.”

“Ugh,” I smile, rolling my eyes. “It was always about a man with Mom.”

“Drop a handkerchief in the travel section of the bookstore,” Mom would say. “Rich men like to travel. That’s where you’ll find one.”

“Lean in a little with the men,” she’d told our college-age daughter. “That’s how you catch ‘em.”

To a single woman at my work: “Listen, they aren’t going to come knocking on your door. You’ve got to get out there and beat the bushes to get a guy. Preferable, an Italian.”

Shannon puts her glass down. “And, then there were her one-liners: ‘Shit –toi!’”

“Oh my god, I forgot!” I sigh. “Like when she’d forget something on her market list… ‘Shit-toi!’”

“Exactly,” she laughs.

Mornings are spent in her wheelchair now. Afternoons Mom is in bed, needing rest. Earlier today, I couldn’t rouse her from her nap in her wheelchair. That happens a lot these days.

So, I sat there in her room, waiting for her to wake, to know I’m there. I looked down at her ankles. The recent swelling had gone down. I lifted her pant leg to check.

There, just above her ankle, was the small monarch butterfly tattoo she’d gotten at 85, before the Marilyn of old had faded into the sunset.

“People warn me that it’s permanent,” she’d, told us before getting it. “They say, ‘But, Marilyn, you’ll have it forever!’”

“Who are they kidding at my age?” she’d laughed. “Shit-toi!”

I smoothed her pant leg back over her ankle. “Mom, I’m going now. Love you.”

And in another fleeting moment, she fluttered her eyes open “Ciao.”

A Bit of Heart and Soul

I wrote this essay four years ago, but after seeing “I Feel Pretty” this weekend, I felt compelled to post it on my blog.  "I Feel Pretty" is a feel-good movie about a woman struggling with insecurities about her appearance.  In this film, Amy Schumer, through her humor, poignantly promotes the idea that confidence stems from how we choose to view ourselves despite the cultural standards. Confidence is key.

At 61, I’m still working on that myself.

I notice her as I place my tote bag in the locker. She’s sitting nearby on the edge of a wooden slat bench waiting to go into spin class: Early thirties, about forty pounds overweight. I take a seat beside her.

“Ugh! My hairclip. I always forget something,” I laugh, trying to establish connection. She gives me a blank stare and a weak smile. She doesn’t want to engage.

She diverts her eyes, tapping her bike shoe on the grey cement flooring. I get it: she wants to get into the dark room, do the workout spin and be done with it.  I know that look; I’d had it, too. I was overweight myself years ago, begging to be invisible, wishing that forgetting a hairclip was the biggest challenge at this venue. If only she knew.

I feel her eyes on me as I juggle my water bottle and bike shoes, dropping one of my socks, then the other. I bend down to fetch them as I make my way over to the bench. Even at the age of fifty-seven, my movements are effortless now in a slim body.

Suddenly the door to the workout room opens with a whoosh. A stream of bodies in sweat-soaked spandex pushes past. This spinning studio is in West Hollywood.  As my mother would say, “it’s a tough room to play.” Actresses, models, svelte young men and women, and buff actor-types are regular spinners. Even the aging business men and women are toned and sleek.

This is Los Angeles. The capital of image. And, this spinning studio is one of the places where many of them work hard to maintain it.

But there are also those who come here to spin, trying to change their bodies, to shed the extra weight, and to get healthy.  It’s a safe place if you aren’t ready to embrace your curves. The lighting is low. You can take a bike in the back row, or tucked away in the corner on the side. Other bodies can block your reflection in the mirror. You can be invisible no matter your size.

We stand to enter class.  I go to bike 26 and begin adjusting the seat. I keep thinking about the woman on the bench. She’s close to me. Bike 42, in the corner by the door.

It isn’t easy coming here. It’s a tough cardio workout for even the most athletic.  My eyes go to the small raised platform where the instructor sets up her bike.  The first spin class I took here was with her. She shared her story with that class at the end of the workout. “I used to weigh 220. Every day I fight it.”

SoulCycle's Heather Peggs  - "the instructor."

Her story resonated with me. 

I place my towel over the handlebars and approach the instructor who’s testing her microphone.

“I just want to tell you that I think it’s great what you do, telling us about your weight loss and the challenge of keeping it off.”

Her smile grows bigger. Her teeth are straight and white. Fingering her long hair, she thanks me.

“You see, I was fat,” I say. “Years ago. And….”

She steps back, sizing me up.  “Oh my god, but look at you now! How big were you?” she asks. “I would have never guessed. You look great!”

“I was 167 at my peak. And, I’m barely 5’3.  I did Weight Watcher’s. That’s how I lost it.”

“I never weigh myself,” she cuts in.

“Me nether!” I reply.  “Except at the doctor’s office.”

“When I get weighed there,” she says, “I look away from the scale. You never get over it.  I go up and down five pounds either way,” she adds.

“Oh, yeah, me, too,” I sigh.  “Going out to dinner.  I can’t resist the bread and butter. But I’m not going to give that up.  I just plan around it, cut back in other ways. It’s a way of life.”

We rush our conversation before class begins. We’re kindred spirits, uniting with sound bites common to those of us who have experienced the battle.

“I’ve kept the weight off for forty-two years,” I tell her.  “And it’s still an every-day thing. It does get easier, though.”

“Really? It’s just been four years since I lost the weight. Wow. 42 years.”

“It takes discipline. Healthy food. And, exercise is key. Helps keep me in balance. But, you already know that.”

She quickly surveys the room; it’s time to start.   She focuses back on me. “I’m so glad you came up to me today,” she says. “What’s your name?”

“Heather.”

She gives me a hug.  “Heather….Thank you.”

I head back to #26 and hop on. Normally, I’m in my own zone just trying to make it through the class and the arm moves. Today, though, my eyes wander.  In the first row are the regular advanced riders with “cut” bodies displaying lots of bare midriffs. Every one of them is able to follow the instructor, spin for spin, beat on beat with the music.

In row two, I see another woman around my age working it. She is holding strong, peddling hard; her over-sized t-shirt is covered in sweat by the halfway mark, while the trim man next to her in cycling shorts and tank top, reaches for his water in the holder below. He’s in his own world pumping up an imaginary hill.  Just then, the instructor gets off her bike and skips around the room to generate more energy. She passes me and presses a hand on mine gripping the handlebars.

At the end of the forty-five minute class, the instructor leads us in a quick stretch. “Clip out and extend your right leg on the handlebar,” she says, reaching up. This is when she tells her weight loss story in a few short sentences and encourages people not to give up. But this time she says more.

“Someone came up to me before class.” She gives me a quick glance and a nod. “She shared her journey with me, her success and her struggle with weight. If you have a story,” she says, “if you struggle, or if you just want to share. Don’t be shy.”

The instructor nods at me again and smiles back. The young woman on bike 42 sees the exchange. She knows it’s me.

After class, in the tight changing space I bump her, the woman on the bench – the woman from bike 42. Her arm is sweaty and slick. Her face is flushed from the workout. “Excuse me,” I say. “Sorry.”

She glances at me as the area fills up with more sweaty bodies. Someone else bumps her. But she ignores them.

“No worries,” she says to me. Her smile isn’t weak this time. It’s warm and genuine. “Tight quarters,” she adds.

“Yeah,” I say. But this time I’m the one diverting my eyes. I don’t want her to see the redness from the gathering tears.

As soon as I get in my car, it’s safe to let the tears flow. Why am I crying? What is this feeling so deep in my gut?  It’s been years! Was being fat that bad? Was the struggle to lose weight that painful? I don’t know if I’m crying for the woman on the bench or because the instructor merely understood and championed me. She acknowledged the struggle, acknowledged my success.

I’ve been thinner for a much longer period of my life now than I was ever fat. How does the overweight mindset still cloud my vision?

Perhaps it never goes away.  Or, maybe it’s a gift to be able to understand. Or, perhaps it’s still there so I have something to share with someone out there in the dark.

For Anna

I met my future daughter-in-law, Anna, when she was four years old. She was holding her mother’s hand on the cement walkway that cut through our children’s grade school.  I'd stopped to chat with her mother, Sally, after she’d dropped off her son. “This is Anna,” Sally said, after we greeted each other.

An angelic face, framed in blonde hair fastened to the side with a big pink grosgrain bow, gazed up at me. Her eyes were sea blue and sparkled. She leaned in closer to her mother and uttered a shy hello.

Just steps away, in a fourth grade classroom, her future husband, Allan, was opening a science book and chatting it up with his seatmate.

Years later, our children grown, Sally and I would meet for tea at the Corner Bakery to catch up. In our conversations, it came up that both Anna and Allan were single. “Oh, if only they could meet…” I sighed. “She’d be perfect.” 

I even brought it up to Allan. “You know, this Anna Howell, I think you’d like her…”

Ugh, every son’s nightmare.

It wasn’t me who arranged their meeting, but a Howell family friend who also knew Allan. “Morgan sealed the deal,” Sally laughed, when I called her the day after Allan confessed to me at dinner that he’d been seeing Anna.

Soon, they had jointly adopted a scrappy little terrier, Judy, and made a home in a cozy little bungalow in Santa Monica. 

Then, when Anna entered medical school on the East Coast while Allan built his career here in Los Angeles, a long distance relationship proved to be a challenge.  There was a break-up.

Three years later, "She got USC!" Sally said to me on a call. "You should see the flowers that Allan sent!" Anna had gotten her first-choice residency.

A few weeks later at the wedding of a mutual family friend, Hank and I saw  firsthand how Anna and Allan had found each other again.

At the start of that weekend, Anna invited me to meet for coffee at the Sorrento Hotel. “Let’s just reconnect,” she’d said with a lilt as she plopped down across from me at the table. Dressed in jeans and a loose sweater, a touch of mascara on her lashes, she'd whipped her blonde hair into a messy topknot and settled in. As she talked, it was clear that they'd both grown up, matured, and realized that a successful relationship meant give and take.

This past August, after Allan and Anna had just moved into their new home, our family was facing some challenges. Anna jumped in, making her and Allan a part of the solution.  Then, a couple of weeks later, on a Sunday morning, Allan asked Anna to marry him at the kitchen table over an omelet and The New York Times. It was the joy we all needed.  Newly engaged, and at a time when she could have made it all about her, Anna made it all about family. “It’s nothing,” she’d said when I thanked her for being so helpful during this time.  
"Nothing," actually, was really something. This young woman, I knew, was special.

Last Wednesday, Anna called. “I just want to spend a little time with you,” she’d told me. "I'm taking next week off, so can I come by Sunday?" 

“But Anna,” I’d told her, “you have so little time off. You don’t have to ‘do’ me. I’m fine.”

Still, she showed up. Anna always does.

This Saturday, I will watch my oldest son, Allan, stand and wait for his bride to walk down the aisle, that little blonde with the pink bow, all grown up.  She will dazzle and those eyes will sparkle.

Allan will take her hand and wed the love of his life. And I, his mother, will look on, handkerchief at the ready. I’ll squeeze my husband's hand and he will glance at me with that solid, knowing look in his soft brown eyes. Together, we’ll watch our son and his new bride, and be thankful.

A Day To Remind Us

My husband, Hank, and I celebrate Valentine’s Day on April 4^th. It’s the day that I picked years ago when Hank suggested we choose another day. “I’m not going to celebrate Valentine’s because it’s a Hallmark Holiday. So, pick a day,” he’d said. “We can call it 'Heather Appreciation Day.'”

What’s to hate about that? “April 4^th!”

So, that’s our (my) day for hearts and flowers.

Over the years, I’ve adopted Hank’s cynical stance on Valentines Day, shaking my head at all the people dashing about trying to please their lovers because the day dictated that they do so.

Valentine’s Day can put pressure on love. This year we were in Washington DC. I’d stopped into a gift store, looking to pick up a warm scarf after eyeing a stack in the window. It was thirty-seven degrees outside. How had I forgotten to pack a scarf? I grabbed one from the stack and took my place behind a young woman at the wrap desk. She peered over the high counter at the saleswoman. “Can you put extra tissue in the gift bag? Make it a little nicer?”

“Sure,” said the saleswoman, fluffing more tissue and toping it above the bag.

“It’s just,” the young woman paused, wiping her hands, habitually, on the Shake Shack apron tied around her waist. “I’ve been saving up. My girlfriend’s always wanted a nice handbag.”

Just then, a breathless young male executive burst through the door.

“Can I help you?” the saleswoman asked, looking up for a brief moment while working the tissue.

His eyes shot around the tiny store. “Do you have any furry socks?”

“I don’t think so, sir. I’m sorry.”

“My girlfriend,” he said, his rep tie now slightly askew. “She wants furry socks for Valentine’s. This is my fourth store.”

“Too late for online, huh?” the saleswoman laughed.

“Ugh, thanks,” he sighed, turning toward the door.  

In the corner, a young guy was fingering necklaces and checking price tags, then moved over to the more reasonably priced scarves.

The saleswoman looked at me with a smile so bright it could put your eyes out. “I’ll be right with you,” she said. “Been like this all day,” she added, reaching for the ribbon to finish up the handbag giftwrap. “People coming and going. Buying gifts just to have something.”

Walking back to the hotel, I came upon Caruso’s Flower Shop.  White plastic buckets filled with flowers spilled out onto the sidewalk. Heart-shaped Mylar balloons attached to the railing with pink ribbons swayed in the breeze, enticing those “last minute lovers” as the daylight was coming to a close.

In front of me, a scholarly-looking gentleman in a brown tweed overcoat, reached into one of the buckets pulling out a bunch of pink tulips. “How much for these?” he asked the male employee close by.

“Twenty-five dollars.”

“For eight droopy tulips?” he asked. “Not, doing it,” he said, stuffing the tulips back in the plastic bucket.

Back at the hotel, we were getting ready to do drinks with our business friends when an older man named Brian, after a day of expert witness testimony in a DC courtroom, he told us, wandered into the small library as Hank and I were rearranging club chairs around the coffee table. “Pardon my wandering in,” he said. “I just love this room. So cozy,” he added, gesturing to the fireplace.

He’d made reservations for dinner at the hotel restaurant. “You know,” he smiled, “a fancy dinner for my bride of forty-four years.”

“How sweet,” I said, looking up at him. “She meeting you here?”

“No,” he frowned. “Just called me. Said she’s too tired to make the hour-long commute.”

“Oh, dear,” I said, “well it’s hard…”

“Know anyone who needs a date on Valentine’s?” he joked, and stayed until our friends arrived.

After drinks, we headed to the restaurant. The hostess seating us was dolled up in a red lace dress with stilettos to match. She planted an over-priced pre-fix menu in front of me. I looked hard at it, realizing that I hadn’t been out on Valentine’s in years. Wow, this is what a Valentine’s menu looks like? Kind of like New Year’s Eve for lovers and we’re-going-to-have-a romantic-time-no-matter-what menu?

Beside us, my eye caught a couple somewhere in their sixties, same age as Hank and me. The wife, her bare, aged arms crossed, was wearing bright red lipstick, marking thin lips. They spoke in whispers as their dessert arrived. Her husband (I spotted the wedding band) picked up his fork, only to be distracted as his eyes followed a youthful woman in leather taking a seat with her mate at the next table. The wife looked up, gave him a look and tucked back into her dessert.

He muttered something to her.  Soothing, I think, but his eyes. They told the story.

Exiting the restaurant, a row of red-clad women, across from their valentines, lined the glass frame of the restaurant - the night to celebrate love.  Ugh. So forced.  

Back in the hotel room, I flipped on the news while we packed to leave in the morning. Images from the latest shooting filled the screen. I paused to sit down on the bed, a stack of clothes in hand, and watched, heartbroken.

In the morning, I awoke and pulled back the curtains. Across the street the American flag was at half-mast on top of the National Education Association building. I stared at it, trying to make sense of the latest school shooting, on a day that was supposed to be about love.

I could scoff at all the hoopla, the commercialism, the angst over furry socks, over-priced tulips, even a fancy dinner alone, but this morning, I didn’t.

It felt different this year. A calendar day rooted in love is nothing to scoff at.

We need it.

Beneath the Rotten Planks

It all started with Joel, whom my friend, Sally, claimed, was the guy who can rid of any home of rodents. “I swear,” she’d said. “He’s like the Rat Whisperer.”

“Your deck,” Joel told me in a text, “is bad.” Then, came a slew of photos of the rotting underneath. “I can put in a vent to block the opening under the house to keep the rats out, but your real problem isn’t rats. It’s this deck.”

It had been a party at night with the rats running up and down our walls back and forth in our attic. Wasn’t it enough we’d plugged every possible hole, sanitized and reinsulated our attic a few months ago? Now, the deck?

We’d been piecing the deck together with spit and glue for years, replacing redwood planks here and there and even shoring up some of the pylons. Every year, we’d paint on a layer of protection, but underneath it was a mess. “Like walking on sawdust,” our contractor told us.

No surprise that the deck we built on the side of the house twenty years ago was disintegrating. It feels as if we’ve been in this house forever. Our youngest, Joseph, now twenty-nine, was born two months after we moved in.  Early on, I kept looking to move again, even to another city. On business trips, I’d get the local real estate magazine and imagine myself in the West Hills of Portland in an older historic home with great bones, land, and no sales tax, or the sophisticated living of an apartment in New York like our friends who took their children to school in a yellow cab. In Chicago, I dreamed of living in a modern high-rise like my friend, Michelle. Or, being transferred to London, like Tom and Kim. It all seemed so exciting. Something new. Somewhere new. I was always on the lookout.

I knew it would never happen, though. Hank is so LA. How could he leave his precious Bruins? The Dodgers? The ocean? And his office just a fifteen-minute commute downtown? Nope. I wasn’t going anywhere, so I settled in and raised our children, fought the cross-town traffic and revelled in our incredible climate.

I took for granted my own family living less than an hour’s car ride (depending on traffic), or my closest friends mere minutes away. Also, that my children lived in a home that they knew and loved on a cul-de-sac where they could ride their bikes.

“Bor-ring,” my dramatic mother would say. “All you do is the kiddies.”

“Ugh, and in Pasadena, of all places,” she’d say, claiming the Westside was the only place to live in LA.

I shrugged off her comments. And never reminded her in later years when she’d beg to come over. “It’s serene at your house,” she’d say.

Still, in the back of my mind, I glamourized a move to a new city. Or, even a new home. Starting from scratch. Shiny new light switches - a “smart home” with all the bells and whistles, instead of living in an old home in constant repair or redo.

Yesterday, our contractor, Mark, called me outside to see the rotted redwood planks, but my eyes went to the area where the deck had been.  “Nikki’s dog bowl,” I whispered to myself as I scanned the ground. “Lucy’s dog toys, Allan’s tennis balls, Joe’s little baseball guys…”

 “Oh my gosh,” I told Mark, “Nikki was our first dog. And these toys and balls…it’s like uncovering an archeological dig of twenty-nine years of family life.”

I whipped out my phone and took a short video, sending it to the kids. Hilary was the first to respond: “Omg!!!This makes me want to cry!”

Allan, of course, wanted to see what it looked like without the deck. Anna, Allan’s fiancée, joked that all the tennis balls had to have been Allan’s and Joseph remembered the little red plastic cowboy. “Whoa, Mom…”

The following day, I came home to more finds. In the kitchen, on a paper towel on the counter, lay a chipped Christmas ornament and Joseph’s old Matchbox car.

“I keep finding things,” Mark said when I asked him about them. “Kinda fun, eh?”

“You forget all this stuff,” I told Hank when he came home that night. “But, you see it again and the memories come flooding back.”

I will probably never have that sleek, contemporary home with all the bells and whistles. I will never have that sophisticated apartment in a high rise or an old historic home on a hill, but life has a way of reminding you to step back and take a look at what you have.

To love it.

And be grateful…