The Point

I was, in my early days, known to craft back when Girl Scouts ruled the earth and long before craft was a verb. Recently though, I've taken up needlepointing to save my hollow soul from utter self-destruction. At first glance, you might see me sitting in the park and think, "How 2002-post-wave-feminist-nod-to-gentler-times-y." But it's more than that. Beyond my Little House desire to "Take Back the Yarn" and channel my underutilized creativity healthily, needlepointing is also taking my fragile sanity and channeling it into attractive throw pillows.

When my son was about two years old, my Mom Friends all had a second babies. I had tried and tried to have a second child to no avail, and still deeply distraught, found it challenging to hang out with friends who'd had no trouble conceiving again, especially with all the complaining they did (and still do) about how overwhelming it is to raise two kids. On most days I tucked my envy up my sleeve and enjoyed the meaty little cherubs almost as if they were my own. Every precious waddle into my arms or sticky kiss on my cheek reminding me of what I was missing but I soldiered on, alternating between graceful acceptance and whiny self-pity. My son, off playing happily and autonomously with his friends (the older siblings), no longer needed me for the most part. My work, for this phase at lease, was done.

I was now knee deep in the bench-sitter phase. I actually got to sit on the benches at playgrounds, which I and so many other new parents had only dreamt about when our children were just walking and needed us near. I wasn't one of the helicopter-parenting contingents, but even the laziest caregiver has to stay on her feet for the months or years after an intrepid toddler learns to climb and before he learns to fall. Back then, benches were those things that held our diaper bags. We glanced at them longingly from behind the swing set or seesaw, but sit on them? No chance. We were crouching mothers, swaying standers, forever at the ready, always on the move.

Now, I was sitting often. Conversations started between my froend and me only to be inevitably interrupted by youth's infinite caprices and then up my friend would go. Off to push a swing or referee a fight, she or he could be gone anywhere from 20 seconds to four minutes depending on how long the child wanted to play catch or slide down the fireman's pole. Sometimes our conversations continued over great distances like two hard-of-hearing great-aunts shouting across the great sandbox divide. More often than not, I got my lazy ass off the bench and went and stood next to my friend with my hands in my pockets while he pushed his younger son on the squeaky swing.

About half the time I didn't tag along, like when there were sobs to be consoled or disciplinary actions to be handed out. It's not really appropriate nor is it, quite frankly, easy to maintain a chat about a hilarious piece on The Onion's site while simultaneously counting down a time-out laced with stern looks of disapproval. When toilet training was involved, my alone time on the bench stretched out before me like those endless, wordless days, backpacking through Europe, when my travel companion managed to find a new boyfriend, no matter what country we were in, and take off with him, leaving me alone.

I tried thinking. And I should have been able to enjoy the quiet solace of dappled sunlight on wood chips but all I could think about, while surrounded by strollers, was of all the babies I wasn't having. I needed a distraction. I started keeping a rolled up New Yorker magazine in my back pocket. I kept it in my car and even brought it to the playground when it was just me and my son, because chances were pretty good that he might make a friend, and then, I would be abandoned again.

Reading was good but also proved challenging in it's own way. I would arrive at the park, hone in on my bench and my friend would take off. No prob. I would take out my trusty New Yorker and, invariably, get engrossed in some saga, totally sucked in to that piece about the crusty container ship captain and how his vessel was taken by rogue pirates in murky international waters and then he was tied up and knew he was gonna get it. The pirate captain demanded he give up his wedding band and the crusty captain said, "No!" which the pirate captain sort of respected him for and then, all of a sudden, my son was standing before me with his crusty nose needing wiping and now it's snack time and does anyone have an extra wipe? I tried to go back and forth between the fidgity sociopathic pirates and handing out fig newtons to grubby kids only so many times before losing the thread of the story and the will to finish. Time and again this happened, so I gave up.

I thought of knitting, briefly. Knitting is, in case you didn't know, very in. In fact, it was so hugely in for a while that it might even be passe at this point. History may prove knitting to be to the oughts what macrame was to the seventies. But who am I to care what's in when I'm just trying to save my own sanity. I tried knitting and I loved it, I really did. Knitted on the subway, knitted in meetings, knitted my little heart out. But when I got to the sleeves I froze. Sleeves and necks involved counting and dropping and decoding patterns and ripping out mistakes, and I just. Couldn't. Do it. I would need absolute silence and uninterrupted control over my environment in order to focus and concentrate and count, and the Turtleback Zoo was not going to give that to me. Nor was his T-ball clinic or the town pool. So much for knitting.

Needlepointing seemed the logical choice. There's no counting or decoding involved. It's paint by numbers for the craft-challenged. I can be needlepointing away on the bleachers while my son's getting a lecture from the coach and when it's his turn at bat, I can stop, lift my eyes and be fully invested in the game. When things get dreary again, I can just go right back to where I left off. No brain necessary.

I took to it like bees to honey.

I found a canvas at a rummage sale for eight bucks and the yarn for another seven. It rolls up and fits in my purse and never gets bigger. It's with me where ever I go. Long lines at the post office? No prob. Inept cashier at the supermarket? Not an issue. Paralyzing shyness at a PTA, 12 Step or Divorced Ladies Peer Group meeting? I can handle it. My needlepoint is my friend, my go-to-gal when I'm seized by a moment of such irrefutable discomfort that my only other option is to throw myself onto the nearest plastic fork and hope for a swift disembowelment. Of course it's a crutch, I admit it. But it's better than whipping out a crack pipe, or keeping a flask in my glove compartment. I know I should be meditating or breathing deeply, but jeeze, I can only do so much to hold it together.

So I needlepoint. And now, when my friends disappear to attend to their younger kids, I relish the chance to take a little break, nestle into my bench and enjoy my new hobby. It's dorky. It's queer. But it's saving me from my suffering these days and I'm slowly gaining peace, acceptance and some nifty new pillows for the sunroom.

Nice Belt

When one is separated and divorce is imminent, one of the topics bandied about by well meaning well-wishers is, "Don't worry, you won't stay single for long."

"Really?" me thinks, "You mean I'll soon get another chance to date forty seven wrong guys before finally honing in on the most best wrong guy before launching into the cringe-worthy world of relationship re-entry?" Oooh, goody. Sign me up. I am positively chomping at the bit to saunter down the well trod path of Will He Like My Cooking? And When Is It OK to Pee in Front of Him? again. Throw in Getting To Know His Parents and His Favorite Foods and Pet Peeves and I pretty much want to throw up. But not on him, goodness, no. Wouldn't want to diminish my chances at "'Til Death Do We Part -- The Sequel."

Which isn't to say that dinner isn't fine. I'll have dinner 'til the cows come home, but that's as far as I'll go for now. Just chit-chat and cloth napkins and who am I kidding? Who the hell am I going to have dinner with? Please. Looking beyond the fact that I don't want to be dating, I shouldn't be dating. Even if I wanted to, which I don't. I have towers of riotous self-help books all over my bedroom waiting for my somber attention like literary stalagmites, the likes of which have brought an unusual topgraphy to my bedroom sanctuary. And I have more crying to do. Certainly a first date isn't the place for an onslaught of heaving sobs, unless of course, we catch a little local Ibsen before dinner and I want to appear deeply affected, moved really, by The Theater. Which brings me to sex.

Here's my sales pitch for a patent pending number on this really great little gadget you just gotta check out. It's not a chastity belt, per se. Chastity belts went out with lemon wedges as tampons sometime after the Crusades. No, this is for the modern woman with a rice paper defense who just might need to be reminded after a glass and a half of wine that her dinner date should end at, "Check, please."

You remember, those bulky home-forged nuisances made of rusty iron? The ones that had padlocks and no spare keys? Well, I'm talking about a chastity belt for today's demanding woman. Something cozy and breathable, made with a cotton/lycra blend that a modern woman can slip on and lock up to remind her that she is in no condition whatsoever to even consider the possibility of sex until she gets her ducks in a row. And I mean all of them.

It's called the "Me Time Belt." It comes in six fashion colors and has a touch pad lock with re-programmable passcode. I would offer it in a barely-there reinforced brushed cotton for the warmer months-- something in a 320 thread count for durability while allowing for a smooth sillouette under summer skirts, and a fleecy warm silk and satin blend for colder climes. That one, called the Shiver Me Timbers, would come with a built in dial for "Warming your cockles when there's no chance of cock!" during those seemingly endless cold, dark winter afternoons.

Wikipedia says: "On February 6, 2004, USA Today reported that at Athens airport in Greece, a woman's steel chastity belt had triggered a security alarm at the metal detector. She was allowed to continue her flight to London on the pilot's authority."

I think she would make a good spokesperson or at the very least, my first customer, don't you?

Chick Magnet

My son's best friend is a chick magnet. He's six, but he's been a bonafide chick magnet since he was about four. The girls line up to sit next to him at story time and to chase him on the playground at recess. Some have even gone so far as to do his cutting and gluing for him, much to his mother's horror. He is swathed in girls every moment of the day and has been since they could wobble towards him.

And so it begins.

He is bathed in starlight, has been anointed with pixie dust and blown kisses by angels. His eyes-dimples-smile combo with extra cheese is impossible to resist, by even the most hard hearted crossing guards. He is a child of the Gods, although his parents would say he is the illegitimate child of Gods, neither of them claiming, as children, an iota of their son's irrevocable lustre.

"What the hell are we gonna do with a popular kid?" his mother once asked in all earnestness.
"I dunno," answered her equally flummoxed husband.

Apparently neither of them had darkened the doorstep of apex popularity in school. But had Brad Pitt? When he was little Brad Stinky Peach Pit, did the curtains part on the 2nd grade play to reveal a child of the heavens, so brimming with that certain je ne sais quois, that parents and teachers alike nudged each other in their seats, and whispered over their betamax camcorders, "That kid's gonna go far." I know from personal experience that I stayed strapped to my seat in the theater, after Thelma and Louise took the plunge, to wait through the credits so that I might catch a glimpse of That Cowboy's name.

"Wait, just wait a second longer," I pleaded with my cousin who was more than ready to go.
"I just want to see," and then I saw it, "There! Brad Pitt. Huh. Brad Pitt. OK, we can go now."

The next time I did that consciously was when I happened across the Democratic National Convention on TV a thousand years ago. "Wait just a minute longer," I pleaded with my right hand which was twitching on the remote.
"I just want to know," and then I heard it, Barak Obama. Huh. Barak Obama. OK, we can change channels now.

What do you do when your child always gets an extra loop on the pony ride? How do you explain to your son that it's not like this for all children. That not all little boys and girls get an extra scoop on his or her single serving ice cream cone then get to live out the rest of their childhoods like miniature rock stars. But such is the way the world has always worked since Darwin allowed the first caveman with two distinct eyebrows. The fancier the feathers, the more fawning one elicits, the more action one gets, the more doors that swing open. And if handled properly, like kryptonite or radium, the arrangement of those feathers, as he becomes an adult, may bring the world's oyster right to his feet.

I'll always wonder if the charisma of some of our most exquisitely chiseled celebrities, Paul Newman for example, was fully in play as a child. It would have to be to explain how someone might be so comfortable with their own skin, so supremely confident as a man, as to marry his wise crakin', right-back-atchya banterin' muse until death did he part. Or to run for student council president and then President president without looking back or pausing for a second thought. Sure, it may take cahones to run, but, let's face it, it takes charisma to win.

A teacher of mine once defined charisma as, "Not giving a damn." He kept saying over and over, "The truly successful, the ones with charisma, their secret is that they don't give a damn. Stop caring what anyone thinks, for chrissake!" This would explain, in a nutshell, my meteoric rise to stunning obscurity and Angelina Jolie's to Brad Pitt.

And the lucky ones with looks, brains and charisma? Well, let's just say that I'll be registering my son's pal's name as a web domain just to get a leg up on the competition. And I'll teach myself to say, "I knew him when," in seven different languages. Oh, calm down, I'm not out to profit from this genetic jackpot of a super nice and totally delightful child. I'll leave that to his parents-- (just kidding, they're friends of mine.) And I promise to sell his domain name, licensing rights and registered trade mark back to him when he turns eighteen or when his parents say he's old enough to take the reigns, which ever comes first. He can pay me two dollars. One for each dimple.

Haunted

One bright midday this summer, just before lunchtime, a phalanx of hungry neighborhood kids tromped into our house. There was me and my son, my sister and her three kids, my pal and her son, and a local neighborhood boy. To spare you the trouble, that's twelve for lunch, including my parents. My sister set about making grilled cheese sandwiches like a sergeant in a mess hall but with the finesse and panache of a four star chef. These grilled cheeses had hearty slabs of butter, or as we call it in our house, food of the gods, and ample cheese, browned to perfection. The adult version of said same included a soupcon of honeycup mustard, some mayo (also f.o.t.g.), and thinly sliced ham draped lovingly across the warm bed of cheese like a silk duvet on satin sheets. Ahhhh, yessssss, summertime.

As the sandwiches were placed on the kitchen table the troops were called in to lunch. They descended, swarm-like, on the kid's platter with knuckles knocking. Their allotment was signalled by the two perpendicular cuts quartering the sandwiches into the hors d'hoeuvre-like morsels so popular among the under four feet set. The more mature diagonal cuts halved the grown-ups' fare. The air above the stove top waltzed with the heavenly aroma of toasted bread, cheese and butter. There was a brief moment of calm as everyone savored. Yummmmmmy.

It was then that my mother noticed that the neighbor child wasn't eating, but standing quietly on the fringes of our noontime feast. I thought perhaps he was withholding because he did live down the street, after all. His kitchen was a mere stone's throw away-- if you had a good arm-- and perhaps he was considering zipping home for a quick bite then joining us after. And why not? He may have more refined tastes that we can't cater to. There's no reason we can't eat what our individual desires dictate and still be chums, right? But he didn't leave. He just stood there. My mother pointed to the platter of hallowed Americana and said, "Go ahead, dear, there's enough grilled cheese for everyone."

To which our ten year old guest replied, "Cheese haunts me."

I'll wait while you re-read that last sentence. And keep in mind, I'm not making this up. And he wasn't being funny. His face didn't change. There was no grin to come.

Huh, I thought. Really? Haunts you? Like in Poltergeist? Do you open the fridge and snatching your tender arm back from Satin's grip, announce eerily, "They're heee-re," at the sight of the individually vacuum packed mozzarella sticks in the cheese drawer?

Or is it a more aggressive haunting like in the Exorcist. Will you begin talking like a sinister Lou Rawls? Will we end up strapping you to your bedposts and pelting you with fist fulls of lactose pills? Will your head spin fully around on your delicate shoulders and then will you open your mouth and spew cheeze whiz all over the flocked wallpaper?

Actually, this is starting to sound good. I'm due for a little cheese haunting. It's been a while. The last time a kid in my neighborhood was haunted it was by capers and what's the fun in that? Bring it on, I say. Let 'er rip. Feed that local boy a grilled cheese sandwich and let the games begin.

But, no. My mom offered to make him a different sandwich, one tailor-made to his liking. I cracked, "He is ten, Mom, he could make his own sandwich." But that wasn't very nice of me. I guess I just didn't want my mom to put down her sandwich and go to all the trouble of making a custom ordered sandwich for Beelzebub's nephew when he might just as likely throw that one up as well. I mean, who knows what caprice of haunting he may find himself under next? I was perfectly willing to sponge off the wallpaper if need be. Just as soon as Mom and I finished lunch.

Bed Rest

Things I would do if quarantined and confined to my bed for a year :

Learn the ukulele.
Brush up on my French. (For what reason, I can't fathom.)
Learn Spanish.
Learn Chinese.
Learn Morse code.
Finish putting together eight years worth of photo albums.
Re-read all of the saved notes I passed, or was passed, from 6th until 11th grade.
Re-read all my old saved letters. (On actual paper, with envelopes and stamps.)
Read all the classics I'm too embarrassed to tell anyone that I never read.
Memorize all the correct words to The Star Spangled Banner, America the Beautiful, America (My Country Tis of Thee), This Land is Your Land and Yankee Doodle.
Memorize at least three verses of Silent Night, Deck the Halls and all of Frosty the Snowman.
Quilt something big.
Knit something wearable.
Make a crochet square blanket then give it away to someone I don't necessarily like, but who would certainly appreciate it.
Needlepoint a pillow commemorating the dates of and reason for my confinement with a pithy phrase quoted along the bottom.
Hook a rug.
Quill.
Recite the names of every guy I've ever gone out with starting in 3rd grade and classify into various colorful subsets.
Google every one I ever dated or had a crush on since high school.
Google all the geeks from high school. (I know, can you believe I haven't already done that? I'm saving it.)
Attempt to sing and catalogue every song I've ever known in my entire life, including all WPLJ radio sing-a-long faves, in chronological order.
Write a hit pop song.
Write a schmaltzy ballad.
Write my obituary.
Sleep. Alot.
Get depressed.
Think of all the clever and creative ways I might kill myself without getting out of bed.
Write upbeat letters to the editors of all my favorite magazines.
Write the great American novel.
Learn to play bridge.
Learn the rules of cricket.
Learn to identify the calls of all the birds indigenous to my back yard.
Take another nap.
Wake up feeling refreshed and a little less depressed.
Practice my ukulele.

Brandi, You're a Fine Girl

Honestly, I couldn't have written it better.

My husband moved out in May. Mother's Day Weekend to be exact. And it's been going well and it's all for the best, and when a door closes a window opens and all that malarkey. But the other day he said casually, something-something, "...when I go back home." And he didn't mean our house in the suburbs, the one we bought and fixed-up together with his stripped and re-varnished windowsills, his re-built garbage hutch and the living room screens he made me for Valentine's Day way back when. Nor did he mean the home that contains his son's bedroom with his beautiful son sleeping soundly in it, an exquisite angel with his legs bent at the knees and feet crossed at the ankles, oblivious to the malestrom of our marriage.

He meant his sublet on the Upper West Side.

And I thought, well, there you have it, what's done is done, the transformation has been completed. He now thinks of his bare room in a three bedroom share on 109th street as his home. And who does he go home to? None other than, Brandi.

How friggin' perfect is that. My marriage falls to pieces in part over my husband's textbook mid-life crisis and he rents a room in an apartment with a female roommate named, I kid you not, Brandi.

Now it takes two to tango and two to admit accountability for the dissolution of a marriage. A large part of what I've been trying to change in my basic personality pie chart is the part that gives a hoot about what the folks in my life are up to. That's gotta go. So to be given the gift of Brandi "But-she's-engaged", the actress, was pretty perfect as far as being tested by God and the cosmos goes.

So, what does a guy who's left his wife and son to follow his New York City bachelor dreams do with a roommate named, Brandi? I'll never know. And I'll never ask. But more importantly, I don't care.

Pool Shark

"Where do you live?" asked the beguiling nine-year-old girl from the shallow end of her vast swimming pool. I'd grown up with her father and the pool, and my young son and I had dropped in unannounced for a late afternoon dip. The babysitter asked if I could keep an eye on her while she ran inside for a sec and I agreed.

It was a simple enough question so I answered it, telling her the name of our town. We weren't from around here.
"Oh," she said, "That's not too bad."
"Not too bad?" I'm thinking, "I beg your pardon, Missy, I happen to like--" and before I could reply, she went on to say that our town, wherein I'd chosen to raise my son, was "full of bandits."

At first I found it endearing that a young girl would use the term "bandits" and wondered if she also pointed out "hobos" slouched on the sidewalks of Newark. I countered that she must be referring to another town with a similar sounding name that was a notorious hotbed of bandits and she bought it. My mind relaxed and leaned back on it's elbow. My son, age nearly five, is keenly aware of bandits and robbers, as he calls them, and I didn't want to add further angst to his already piqued awareness of such evil-doers in the world, much less draw his attention to their proximity to our back yard.

Then she perked up and said, "Ooh, there is one story about bandits that happened in that town. Do you want to hear it?" I looked at her squarely in the eyes and calmly but pointedly said, "No. Let's not tell that story," then glanced at Jimmy, who was doing his best impersonation of an inattentive child. I thought that that would do the trick, using what I would call my ace reverse tone shtick to let her know I meant business, well aware that hers is an existence of crashing crescendos and audible exclamations points. She said, "O.K., I understand," and smiled demurely, proud of herself for her maturity. Just as I was mentally wiping my hands of the whole matter and about to light my brain's corncob pipe, she continued, "This lady, in the supermarket in your town, had all her money stolen right out of her purse."

I looked at Jimmy who was underwater for half of it and then looked back at her.
"I asked you not to tell him," I said quietly and evenly.
"Oh, yeah. Sorry," she smiled, resting a wet chin on a tan, glistening forearm. She was beautiful now and would be spectacular in about ten years. Her long legs supported a lithe torso that already nipped in at the waist, hinting at the classic shape she would take in the coming years, like her mother, aunts and grandmothers before her.

"You know what else?" she said.
"Good Lord, now what?" I thought.
"Some bandits even come to your house," she crackled.
And I thought, "O.K., that's it, we're outta here." What's next? How easy it is to pick a lock? How anyone can break into your house if they really want to? Recent kidnapping trends in the tri-state area?

I had visions of hustling Jimmy out of the pool and back down the driveway the way one might escape a sudden torrential rain or a surprise onslaught of locusts. Except in my vision of the two of us running hunched under a damp towel, I have my fingers in his ears. "Two minute warning," is what I said, "Jimmy, we've got to get going in two minutes." And then I expertly re-directed the conversation away from the looming train wreck it could only become.

Yes, I was being overprotective, paranoid and controlling the way a mother of one child is convinced she can be, but jeeze, Jimmy is at That Age. He is consumed with bad guys, robbers and the safety and the sanctity of our home and his room. He counted the days until his Kung-Fu Panda headband arrived from the cereal manufacturer, finally giving him the superpowers he had gone six to eight long weeks without. And if there was one thing I knew I couldn't control in this scenario, it was that girl. She had an evil mind and she was going to use it for destruction, to remind everyone who's boss, and to maintain total pool-wide domination.

If only we'd brought the Kung-Fu panda headband to the pool. It's made with velcro and might fit me. Wearing it, I could keep him safe from bandits and nine-year-old girls until he was old enough to not need me or it. Then he could keep me safe from bandits and nine-year-old girls and from my evil-doer thoughts regarding what I might do to a bandit or a certain nine-year-old girl if I ever got my hands on her or him in a dark alley.

Next time, I'll call first before dropping by unannounced.