The Pitch

I wanted to turn around and go home as I made my way to the third floor of the Hilton near LAX.  The parking lot had been jammed. I’d snagged the last spot and had tentatively filed in behind all the other aspiring writers toting laptops, files spilled out of tote bags, and the ultimate accessory, a coffee in hand. 

I’m at a Los Angeles writing conference to pitch my manuscript to an agent.  I’ve got three ten-minute pitches with three agents in between the morning sessions. I’ve written and rewritten the pitch countless times after calling on two friends and my sister to describe my manuscript in their own words.

My oldest son, Allan, told me to focus on the book. “No gimmicky sell, Mom.  Just be straightforward.”  

On the drive over, I’d tried to memorize my pitch. “Forget it,” I’d thought after numerous flubs and missing my exit on the freeway.

Way out of my comfort zone, I continued to the elevators. “I’ve got to keep at it,” I’d told my husband, Hank, after learning about this opportunity.  “This book’s a hard sell, a ‘quiet read,’ but I’m not ready to throw in the towel just yet.”

All the triggers are creeping into my psyche as I check in at the desk. What am I doing! DO I actually think I have something to pitch? Is it good enough? Worthy? Look at all these writers. They have such a sense of ease, such a look of confidence. Perhaps they’ve been to this rodeo before, but I’m terrified!

I take a seat on the row of chairs facing the small ballroom that houses the agents. The carpet is a swirl of brown and olive green with random, galaxy-like circles ranging in size.  Who picks these hideous carpets? Is it to hide the stains?  This makes me smile, and I realize that humor is the tonic here. 

Around me, writers study their pitches, heads deep into a typed page, mouthing the words. Some are pacing. All shapes, sizes, genders and races and one writer has put his nametag on his dog, a large mixed-breed that he has brought today. “No gimmicks,” my son had said. I smile again.

“Ok!” blurts out a woman at the door. “All up for the 9:40 time slot!”

As they queue up, it hits me. This is f**ing American Idol for writers. Look at them, these last-minute contestants, rehearsing the pitch, adjusting a skirt, deep breathing and shifting their weight side to side. 

Who, I wonder, will get a golden ticket – the ticket to representation!

I feel the tension rise at 9:48 when the doorkeeper calls out the two-minute warning and the 9:50 group inches closer to the double doors.

Dim the lights.

“Exit right if you’re happy and left if you want to cry,” says the doorkeeper.

A writer directly in front of me is staring at himself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror.  Young-ish, he’s dressed “artsy” in designer skinny jeans, trendy sneakers, and a camouflage backpack. This one’s not starving, but clearly ambitious as he mouths his pitch in the mirror, his hands, emphasizing key points. A pointed finger here. Arms outstretched there.

I’m fascinated. Who can do this in front of people? Five minutes. Ten minutes. He’s still at it in the mirror when the doorkeeper yells the final call for 9:50. 

With one last look, he winks at himself and dashes for the double doors.

I’m competing with this? 

As my 10:00 time-slot ticks closer, my mouth becomes dry. My stomach is in knots and I stand to join the lineup that has just been called. I smooth out the paper nametag (my last name misspelled with an added “r”) stuck to the lapel of my blouse and wait.

“Ten o’clock,” the faux Ryan shouts. “You’re up!”

I straighten my shoulders as I walk through the double doors. “You got this, Heath,” I tell myself, and search for my first agent.

I make my way through the maze of one-on-one tables, a placard identifying the agent. I find my first agent and take a seat. We greet each other formally and before I start the pitch, I look back at the doorkeeper.

“I’ve just got to say before we get started, this is frigging American Idol. You’ve even got Ryan.”

She burst out laughing and my fear melted. Just like that.

“Be you,” Hank had said before I left that morning. “You’ve done the work. That’s enough.”

Dim the lights…

The Return to a Ritual

     I’m seated in an annex to the right of the nave with its own little altar. A beam above illuminates a modest depiction of Jesus on the cross, giving this smaller rendition a sense of quiet awe. 

     St. Andrews is Romanesque Revival, large in scale with thick rounded columns and high arches. The long pews that grace the nave are empty today. It’s almost noon on Wednesday during Holy Week and the Church is all dolled up. In front, there’s a thick red ribbon in swag across the entrance in recognition of this special time in the Catholic faith where Palm Sunday starts the week, followed by Holy (Maundy) Thursday, the retelling of the story of the Last Supper. On Good Friday, the church gathers in remembrance of Jesus’ death on the cross and Easter Sunday rounds out the week celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

     I take a seat and wonder what to do.  Now what? Do I kneel? I don’t really remember the rites of Catholicism.

     My eyes settle on the rose-marbled column next to me. Then, to the grey-marbled steps that lead to the small altar. I study the striations. Strangely, this quiet, cavernous church calms me.  My eyes lift to the altar and I’m flooded with memories of attending Catholic schools for thirteen years and all that came with it - mandatory masses, the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday, and staying in the pew, alone at Communion time, as my baptized Catholic classmates queued up to take the wafer,  “the body and blood of Jesus Christ.”

     So, why as a non-Catholic, do I return?  I’m Episcopal. Why a Catholic church?  Especially, given the scandals in the Catholic Church at present.

     Religion for me is all over the map. Just this past July I was moved by the Rabbi whose soothing voice brought the news of my mother’s passing on that 4:00am call. It was this same Rabbi who greeted us at The Jewish Home For The Aging an hour later, who comforted me as I approached my mother’s room, where she lay, to say my last goodbye. This Rabbi, so gentle and kind, so needed that morning.

     “You do death well,” I’d told him later. “I’m converting.”

     “It’s a lot of work,” he’d laughed. “You sure?”

     Gratitude pulled me to St. Andrews today.  Last night, as I was drifting off to sleep, I wondered if I’d even thanked God for the good things – a grandchild on the way, my husband and children happy, and in a good place, or even something as simple as the pink climbing rose outside our bedroom window. I know I sure as hell call on Him when it’s bad – he’s the Guy I pray to 3am when the “night thoughts” seep in like a leaky pipe. When I need solace. It’s as if I am reaching out for His hand to take mine and make it all ok when things have been tough.

But really, have I thanked Him lately for these blessings in my life? I stared into the darkness of our bedroom, wondering. Have I been so wrapped up in the good that I haven’t needed Him? 

As the sun came up with the morning choir of chirping birds, I woke with a mission. I needed to check in with the Man upstairs on His turf. What is termed, His house.

I believe that one’s house of God can merely be in a garden, or, perhaps a space in your head. I don’t think He really keeps score that way, but I’m here now in a Catholic church though I’m not a Catholic, and am thanking Him.

I’m not a regular churchgoer of any stripe, just a woman raised in Catholic Schools who is revisiting that strange comfort in ritual I’d found as a child.

It’s just a moment, a time, and a day in a week when I feel the need to stop and take stock. Things are good now and yet, I know that life is a series of ups and downs and things can change on a dime. But, for this moment, this day, it’s good. 

I cross my legs, place my hands in my lap and say a silent prayer.

Soon, the church bells ring in the noon. A petite, dark-haired woman around my age approaches. “If you’re staying for the weekday mass at 12:05, it’s in the chapel.”

“Thank you,” I say. 

I wait, hands still clasped in my lap. My eyes scan the small annex and I watch her leave through the double doors that lead to the chapel. Should I go? I tell myself I’ve done my thing and that God doesn’t keep score.

But I need more today.

          I rise and head to the chapel.

Dog Of The Week

Eying the Mason jar filled to the brim with white entry slips, I hand the leash over to the staff behind the front desk. Tucker, our eleven-year-old Puggle, has already dashed to the back.

Tucker loves doggie daycare.

I peer at the snapshot of the “Dog of the Week.” This week it’s a Bulldog, his thick tongue out in defiance. Is that a gleam I see in those doggie eyes?

I sigh, turning to the staff. “Gee, Tucker has never been Dog of the Week and he’s been coming since he was a puppy.”

“Really?” one of them says. “We adore Tucker!”

“It’s random, you know,” another pipes in. “Customers fill out the entry slips with their dog’s name and we pull one from the jar every Monday. It’s a fresh start every week.”

“Yeah, I’ve done the slips, but Tuck only comes when we’re on the road, so my odds aren’t as good as the daily borders.”

The young blonde staffer with a purple streak looks up from her computer.  “Yeah, some of the regulars fill slips out every day they come.”

“Really?” I say, reaching for a slip and a pen, my competitive mode already rearing its ugly head. “Every day, huh?”

“Some of them,” she smiles.

“Let’s see,” I say, filling out the slip. “Today’s Saturday. You pick the winner on Monday morning. My chances are good this week, right? Or, do you get a lot of check-outs on Sunday?” 

A black lab bursts through the door with his owner clinging to a tight leash. “Coco!” the staff says in unison. Coco’s tail wags wildly when one of the staff comes out from behind the counter and takes his leash.

I move to block the jar from Coco’s owner’s view as she hands over neatly bagged meals to the blonde. One less entry slip…

“So,” I say to the two remaining staffers after Coco’s owner is safely out the door. “I’m such a loyal customer.  Been here since Tucker was a puppy. How has he missed being “dog of the week?”’  

I fold Tucker’s entry slip and place it in the jar on top of the others. “Here’s Tucker’s entry slip,” I tell them. “Right here on top. You know,” I say with a wink,” right here on top. Easy to pick.”

“It’s not rigged,” they laugh.

These women behind the desk are great. They know me by now.  At the beginning of October, they’ll ask what Tucker will be for Halloween. The doggie daycare contest is looming and, for me, it’s an all-out war to have Tucker win that thing.

“Oh, of course!” I say. “I know you guys run an above-board place here,” I add. “I’m not one of them,” I gasp, with a devious smile.

I’ve followed the college admission cheating scandal, obsessed with the stories. Who does this? How do they sleep at night? Their children were admitted to college on a cheat – through the “’side-door!’”

“I was never like this with my kids,” I tell them.  “You know, like one of those awful parents with the college scandal, trying to get my dog the coveted spot!”

“You are so funny,” they laugh.

“No, really! It’s true! There was no “side-door” to college for them and certainly no donated building! And, I can’t even remember what they were for Halloween. My kids say I got this way after they left. Now, it’s all about Tucker.” 

Do I detect doubt in their expressions? 

As I leave, I toss another reminder to them.  “I sure hope Tucker wins some week….”

                                                ______________________________

Two weeks later, I’m notified. 

“Congratulations! Tucker is Dog of the Week!” 

And, I wonder, where can I get a “My-Dog-Is-Pet-Of-The-Week” bumper sticker?

Scene At The Capitol Grille

Our small gathering for a drink has taken on a larger feel. I’m crushed against a waist-high side table amongst a sea of wide-eyed interns and government aides. It’s a young crowd. The men are dressed in rep ties and slim suits. The young women are lugging over-sized totes, mostly black, and similarly dressed in suit-type work attire. The chatter is deafening. It’s all politics and glasses clinking. They’ve arrived to celebrate the swearing-in of Andrew Wheeler, the new EPA Administrator.

I’d known someone important was heading into the bar when two security detail guys sporting clear coiled wires behind their ears with eyes moving right to left, entered the restaurant.

We are at The Capital Grille, the “real” one in the chain, located minutes from the Capitol steps.  

“It’s packed in here,” I hear someone say. “Why here?”

“They won’t turn away a Trump guy,” another person answers over my shoulder. “It’s a chain. Too risky if they were to celebrate his appointment in a fancy restaurant,” he adds. “He may be turned away. You never know these days…”

I am in DC with my husband, Hank, on business. He and his colleagues have spent the day on the Hill, lobbying for regulations on flood insurance. Not as steamy as the Cohen hearings, but floods happen…

Just when I lift my glass to my lips to take the first sip, a woman with a thick ponytail slips onto the stool next to me; her over-stuffed tote smacks my arm. My drink sloshes down the stem of my glass, soaking the napkin and the tip of my shoes.  “So sorry,” she says to me with a side-glance, then turns back around to address the woman next to her. 

This is Washington DC. Push. Jam. Shove. It’s a get-your-voice-heard kind of town.

Why did I order a martini in a stand-up situation like this, I think, holding a half-filled martini with the olives now leaning against the side of the glass, deflated above the line of liquor?

I’m in a circle of conversation with half an eye out the window, waiting for Hank to return to the group. He’s at CVS down the street with our friend, Keri. She used to work for an ophthalmologist and has taken Hank to get the right eyewash after he got something gritty in his eye.

“Lots of construction going on around here,” he’d told me earlier. “It happened on my walk back from the Capitol to the hotel. Can’t seem to get it out,” he’d said, his eye red, the lid, puffy.

A metaphor, I’d sighed, lifting his lid softly to look into his eye to try to find the grit that was so irritating.

Andrew Wheeler, the new EPA guy, shakes hands, slapping a shoulder and a hug with one of our group. “Congratulations on your swearing in today,” our friend says, patting him on the back.

He then introduces us all to this new Administrator.  A rumpled guy, more modest and endearing than one would think, given his status.  

“No matter our politics, or that we may differ,” our friend says, turning to us after Andrew has moved on. “I worked with this guy. Every year on my birthday, Andrew came into work with homemade brownies for me. That’s who he is. He's a guy who cares.”

“You’re close friends?” I ask.

“Yes,” he replied. “Politics aside.”

I place my drink down on the side table as I catch sight of Hank and Keri through the frosty window. Beside me, the security detail is busy speaking into their microphones. Soon, Hank is beside me. “I feel better after the eye wash.”

I thank Keri who has joined us.  “Who knew your old skills would come in handy.”

The group discusses today’s event on the Hill and my mind wanders to one of the senators who spoke to us last night, a fellow from the South. An African American guy whose grandfather made sure that he had the newspaper propped up for reading at the kitchen table when his grandson had returned from school.

He’d wanted to teach his grandchildren the importance of reading, knowledge. Although his grandfather didn’t know how to read, his grandson didn’t know that.

“There’s so much hope in this country,” the Senator told us, “you can rise,” he said. “You can come from nothing and, well,” he said, “become a senator.”

“Where’s your drink?” Hank asks, pulling me back into the now.

“A martini in this mess?” I laugh. “I’ll wait ‘till dinner.”

Just then, another colleague of Hank’s bursts through the door, cheeks flushed, his Burberry scarf slightly askew. I make room for him in our small corner. “Ok,” I ask him. “Someone said that Michael Cohen is staying at our hotel. Is that true?”

“Yep!” he said.  “He was chatting people up just now waiting for his car.”

Pulling out his phone, he shows me a picture of him with Michael Cohen.

“Oh. My. God,” I say, taking a closer look. “He really was staying at our hotel!”

As our group head out to dinner at another restaurant close by, a suited staffer begins putting “Reserved” placards on the bar and counter tables as we vacate them.

And I wonder, who’s coming next…

A Return To The Why

I take a seat in the second row of lime green contemporary-style chairs in the center portion of the horseshoe configuration.  The Weight Watcher Leader, a colleague of mine at work, has suggested that I come early to this Sunday morning meeting. It was an incident at work that has brought me here. A “trigger” that has made me want to connect again.

I wait for some sort of feeling to take me back to my first Weight Watcher meeting.  At fifteen, I was sixty pounds overweight and my mother had dragged me to that first meeting.  I’d growled at her, tugging at my long sweater to cover my body, ashamed.  That was until the Leader, had signaled me out. “You’re too beautiful to be hiding behind mascara and that long sweater.”

No one had ever told me I was beautiful.

I realize now that taking me to those Monday night meetings for close to a year until I reached my goal weight, was the greatest gift my mother had ever give me. No gift (and my mother was a giver) had ever matched the support at those meetings. I wonder, is she looking at me now from above?  Did she know how much it meant to me?

I leaf through the WW magazine.Ahh, I think, eyeing glossy pictures of food, the recipes. Still, nothing emotional.  It’s as if I’m waiting to board a flight. I could be anywhere. 

As the room fills up, no one seems to take notice of me – why this thin woman in skinny jeans and a white t-shirt is wearing a WW nametag. A woman sits in front of me with a small infant in her arms. She chats up her seatmate. An older woman inches by me with a smile as she takes the seat next to me. A young couple arrive and sit at the edge of the horseshoe to find space for their baby sleeping under a thin Mickey Mouse blanket draped over the top of the stroller while another man goes for the corner seat in the row behind me.  All around me every adult age group and ethnicity is represented.

Being overweight has no barriers. 

And, in this room, no judgment.

Our leader heads to the front of the room. Her necklace, it's with ten small gemstone rings signifying each year of her goal weight, catches the florescent light above as she begins the meeting. Today’s topic is "The Why."

“Why are you here?” she asks the group. “What brought you first to Weight Watcher’s?”

“When I’m here, I’m not alone,” blurts out the blonde woman seated on the side row in front.

My stomach tightens and tears well in my eyes.  

Another woman chimes in: “We’re sick of ourselves.” And, another, “I just want to be able not to think about my weight. Not to have to try on three outfits before I find something that fits before I go to work.”

“Weight Watchers changes with the times,” another member quipped. Then, a confession from a gentleman in the back: “I gained over the holiday. I know what I need to do and now I’m here to get back into healthy eating.”

The comments become white noise as I try to control my emotion. I’m not alone…

I reach for a handkerchief in my handbag. I’m fifteen again at my first Weight Watcher meeting in the Synagogue on Sweetzer Avenue. As a "new member," I’ve moved away from my mother to the front row, taking in the brochure, realizing that this might be a way out of my pain.  Here,I’m not alone…

I’m brought back into the moment with a woman who says that she just “wants it over,” adding “I don’t want to think about my weight anymore.”

Another member pipes in: “I don’t want to have to think about ordering my salad dressing on the side.”

I raise my hand. Our leader eyes me. She knows…

Two other members weigh in on this woman’s comment. I wait to hear them. Then, our leader gestures to me to speak.

I stand and step away from my lime green chair so that they can all see me - the whole me.

“My name is Heather. This is my first Weight Watcher’s Meeting in forty-seven years,” I say.  I glance around the room. All eyes are on me. They wonder where this is going. Who is this woman? And how can she relate to us?

 “I’m here because I asked your leader, a colleague of mine, if I could come today.  You see,” I paused,  “we had this Christmas lunch at work. Our boss brought food in for our customers and employees. Now, you know as Weight Watchers your mind goes…how will I deal with this? Will there be something for me to stay on the program? Will I have choices?”

I speak their language. They knew then that I was the real deal and I sensed the warmth. 

“It was Chinese chicken salad, thank God,” I laughed. “I can do this.”

I relayed my story of how I’d dished the salad on my plate and walked back to my counter when a customer seated at one of the tables called out: “Heather, did you put dressing on your salad?”

How I’d been taken aback with a “No.” 

“She’s crazy,” the customer had muttered to the group around her. “What’s salad without the dressing?” she’d said, shaking her head. “Crazy!” 

I’d set my plate down on the counter and went into the back of the store. I needed a moment.  

My Weight Watcher colleague saw it all and came over to me. “It’s ok, Heather.”

“Can I come to one of your meetings? I asked.  “I need to share.”

She gave me a knowing smile. “Of course.”

“It’s never over, thinking about the weight,” I say to the group.  “Last night was my son’s birthday and I ate cake, bread, a martini – you name it. But, this morning, I’m back. Strawberries and oatmeal.”

“Here’s the deal,” I add. “I’m 62 and still in the game.  So hang in there,” I tell them. “It will never be over this weight thing. It’s checks and balances. But, is it worth it?” I ask the group.

I scan the room. I see myself in their eyes.  “I could cry,” I say, in a throaty voice as my emotions rise to the surface. I need to tell them that the hurt, the pain, never leaves you with this weight thing. Forty-seven years maintaining what I’d achieved all those years ago, and yet I’m still vulnerable. 

“Yes,” I tell them. “It’s all worth it.”

God's Whisper

My husband, Hank, likes to wait to decorate the house for Christmas “until at least December 1^st.” 

As soon as he pulled out of the garage for work the Monday after Thanksgiving and I’d made sure his car had turned the corner at the end of our cul-de-sac, I began hauling out boxes in the garage marked “X-mas.” 

“You going Christmas crazy like me?” my friend, Cindy, said over the phone later that day. “I think that we had this same discussion last year, Heath.”

Why do I do this to myself? I don’t lovingly take a holiday decoration from the tissue and find that coveted spot in the living room. I don’t oohand awe over a treasured ornament or my collection of snowmen. I don’t love hanging garland on the mantle.  In fact, I worry that it’s scratching the paint.

But, it’s Christmas! And I’m on it. Right?

By Thursday, the 29^th, I’d finished decorating the house, save the fresh greens. It was raining that day and I was obsessing about minutia, things that don’t really matter. Did I do this? I need to do that…

At a stoplight, with the windshield wipers swinging against the downpour, I was making lists in my head when my eyes went to my hand on the steering wheel and the ring that my mother had given me.  It was as if she were speaking to me as the memories came rushing back. 

“It’s the f**ing  hol-i-days!” she’d tell me. “You’re getting crazy again.” 

I’d snap at her. “Just becauseyouhate Christmas…”

“I don’t know why you like this time of year so much,” she’d say. “All the crazies come out during the holidays. Family crap. Who’s coming to Christmas? Who isn’t coming.  The goddamn lists and shopping. Who’s going to make a scene on Christmas night.  It’s endless through New Years.”

“Quit trying to make it perfect,” she’d scold me. “Christmas never is. Or should be. Relax for Chrissakes!”

I haven’t heeded her advice. In fact, I’m worse.  This year, I even put the pumpkins away before we left to go away for Thanksgiving weekend. It’s become a thing with me - a push to the finish as if it’s exam time and the final is Christmas morning. Is everybody happy?

Then, life happens.

You get yanked. God whispers, and those silly worries become luxuries. And you realize that it can all be taken away in a snap.

                                                ____________________________

“I like going early,” Melissa said, walking out of SoulCycle class this morning. I fell in behind her, heading down the escalator to the lower level of the parking garage.

“Me, too,” I replied. “I’m such a morning person.”

She swung around, her wet ponytail whipping at her neck. “I did a 7:30 yesterday. Love getting it done early.”

In sync now, we headed past the entrance at a steady pace to the escalator to the lower level garage. I smiled back at her, the fluorescent underground lighting blaring as I headed to my car just beyond the walled area. “Usually my husband comes with me on Sunday and we do the 9:30,” I said. “But, we’re going to New York later this morning and he was…”

Melissa, to the right of me with vision of the open garage, abruptly moved her arm to hold me back, halting me. “WAIT! HOLD IT!” she shouted as a nondescript grey car whizzed past within and inch of me at high speed. 

I froze, eyeing the car as it rounded the corner of the parking garage, wheels screeching, to the next level.  “Oh my God,” I whispered. Was this how it could end? Some idiot in a grey car speeding in a garage taking no notice of a pedestrian? Ending it all?  Just like that? That dreaded call Hank would receive. My children would receive…

I reached for her. “Melissa, thank you…” Then, I turned to the parking attendant nearby. “Did you see that?!”

He shook his head in disgust, waving cars past with a muscled bicep.  “I see stuff like that all day. Not near misses like this one, but cars speeding around here as if it’s an open roadway.”

“Melissa,” I called to her as she was walking to her car. “I owe you…”

She turned to me. It was light-hearted and I can’t even remember what she said.

I slipped behind the steering wheel of my car, trying to absorb what had just happened. I looked down to reach for the ticket to exit when my eyes went to the ring. 

“You dodged a bullet,” Mom would say. “Pay attention and quit with the holiday crap. Quit with minutia and the busyness. You’ve been given a reprieve.”

I let out a sigh and pressed the ignition button to start the car and looked in my back-up camera for the all clear.  

Outside the space, I shifted into Drive. Moving forward, I cautiously rounded the corner of the garage and exited into the muted winter California sunlight.  Reaching for my sunglasses, I put them on, only to take them off. 

It’s a clear day in Los Angeles, and I want to take in the light. 

The Pendant

“We need a secondary screening!” the male TSA agent calls out over his shoulder.  In a thick southern accent, he turns back to me: “It’s random, Ma’am.

I step into the scanning tube and place my feet on the yellow footprint markers – whoosh, whoosh.

You need a pat down, Ma’am,” the agent at the opening says. Then, calls out over his shoulder. “We need a female!”

We’re on our way back to California from a wedding in New York, followed by a business trip to Atlanta. I’m tired and cranky and feeling still a bit fragile since mom passed away two months ago.

                      __________________________________________

A week earlier, I was in my therapist’s office. 

“I can’t seem to calm down,” I told her, rearranging the soft blue and grey pillows on either side of me on her sofa. “I’m on-the-go at all times. It’s as if I can’t stop.” 

“Because if you do…?”

“If I do, I might actually feel the loss of my mother.”

The room was silent. 

“I’m exhausted,” I continued. “I mean, yesterday, I cleaned out the garage. The day before that, I made a couple of casseroles to freeze. The day before that, I organized the linen closet. It’s endless. And I don’t even like casseroles!”

I reached for the pad and pen on her coffee table, anything to keep my hands busy. “I need to find a way to calm down and feel the loss so I can cry and move forward.” I eyed her with my pen posed over the lined white pad.  “Any suggestions?” 

She recommended meditation.  

“All I do is make lists in my head.”

“There are Apps to - ”

“Tried some,” I cut her off. “Didn’t work for me.”

“Being out in nature can be soothing.”

“You mean, like outdoors?”

“Yes. We’ve got The Huntington Gardens right here,” she smiled.

“I’m indoors-y. I feel good surrounded by concrete and skyscrapers.”

“How about Just Float? Some of my patients have found the experience relaxing. Maybe that will help you begin to feel.”

“That place where you float in a tank of saltwater? I’m not big on water.”

I booked an appointment for later that afternoon at Just Float, desperate to calm myself and let go.

Before going into the water, I had to watch a tutorial on an iPad at this so-called wellness center where “weightlessness awaits” in a private flotation tank filled with warm, clean, saltwater, also known as a “sensory deprivation chamber.”

The entry to the eight-by-four foot tank of water felt claustrophobic and submarine-like.  Once inside, I lowered myself into a few feet of body-temperature water. I allowed my head to rest in the buoyant water and extended my legs like the woman in the metallic swimsuit in the video suggested. I cringed, reaching my hand up to my hair. Does saltwater strip away hair color?  In minutes, the light dimmed and the soft music ceased.

As I floated aimlessly in the small, dark chamber, I had no sense of direction, making me anxious. Lying in the darkness, the only thing I could feel was the blister on my hammertoe despite the Vaseline I’d put over it to protect from the sting of the saltwater.

I tried to breathe slowly to relax like when I’m going through turbulence in an airplane. But there was no horizon to focus on to calm me. Only darkness.  Then, my foot eerily bumped against one of the walls. This is soothing? I have no idea what direction my body is going in? I sat up and groped for the light, illuminating the water. Calm down, I commanded myself.  Then, I lay back down and wondered how in the hell I was going to do an hour in this chamber of prescribed “sensory deprivation” and saltwater.  As I floated, my face remained above the water line but not my ears. That’s when water seeped past the suggested earplug into my right ear. I sat up in a panic and reached for the door handle. I pulled it toward me. Nothing happened. My heartbeat raced. Am I locked in here?  Through the muted lighting, I saw I needed to push it open. Ten minutes in, and I was done.

In the days that followed, I couldn’t get the water out of my ear. It became a daily reminder of my aborted attempt to calm down and address my feelings of loss.

So much of my life over the past ten years had been taken up with my mother’s care.  My need to visit her often, to be therefor her. I was the dutiful daughter, mothering my own mother. 

Oh, sure, there were times when it got to me when I would be exasperated with her demands. But she was always grateful, wanting to “repay” me with a watercolor that she’d painted. One day, she presented me with a little ceramic purse she’d painted in her crafts class before she couldn’t hold a brush anymore. “I know you love purses. This is the best I can do here.” 

It all came to a screeching halt the day she passed away. I loved her. I miss her and now I don’t know what to do with myself.

The water was still swilling in my ears four days after my Just Float debacle. I visited my doctor, explaining what had happened and how I needed to let go and have a good cry.

Peering into my ear with his light, he said: “Whatever happened to a cocktail, a cigarette and a weekend in Palm Springs?”

       I couldn’t remember that last time that I’d laughed that hard. “You are soright…”

       It was as if my mother was speaking through him. She would have been the first to suggest that option. Still, the damn of emotions remained clogged.

At the New York wedding I just attended, a friend of mom's was there. She came up to me and continued to regale me with the wonderful and wild antics of my mother. “She was never dull. Remember when she sold her diamond engagement ring to find the next prospective husband in Italy?”

I smiled with her while touching Mom’s ring for strength (the one she hadn’t hawked), the one on my hand that she’d left me. Hold tight. I told myself.

                                     __________________________________

At the TSA checkpoint, I do as instructed.

In compliance, I walk over to the bubbled rubber mat. A young female TSA agent approaches. “You have any injuries? Sore parts of your body?”

“No.”

“Your necklace is beautiful,” she says, through false eyelashes. “Where’d you get that?” 

I bring my hand to my chest. “Oh, this gold pendant? I’ve had it a long time.”

She nods. “Would you like a private screen for the pat down I need to conduct?”

“No, thanks,” I answer her.

“What’s that on your necklace?” she asks. I dutifully turn around with my arms still extended.

“It’s my monogram. My mother’s is on the back.” I pause. “She passed away in July.”

“It’s so beautiful,” she says, as I turn back around to face her. “So, now you carry your mother wherever you go.”

She ushers me off of the plastic pad. “You’re free, honey. Safe travels.”

Beyond the TSA security screening area, I see my husband, Hank, holding my handbag and laptop case. He’d retrieved it from the belt.

I reach him in a few steps and my hand goes up to the pendant. I hold it to Hank. “I carry mom with me wherever I go,” I tell him. “That’s what the security woman just told me.” 

And, there, right in the middle of Security at Hartsfield Atlanta Airport, on a business trip with my husband, the damn breaks and I finally let the tears flow.  

At the gate, I pull out my boarding pass as we wait to board. Just then, I remember Mom telling my sister, April, that she wasn’t afraid of death.

“All my friends have done it, so it’s no big deal,” she’d said. 

I wipe the tears away and break a smile, bringing my hand to my pendant. She’s with me alright.