Erma, Son and the Holy Ghost

There are about four or five sock puppets hanging around my shoulders at all times, sometimes whispering, sometimes barking at me to remember how to deal with the sudden loss of my dad, the savvy navigation of my divorce and boundaries to be maintained with my ex, the mindful single-mom raising of my only-child son, the finding of a job, the maintaining of all the household finances without said job, and the low-grade yearning I still have for another child which surges every time someone asks me how many kids I have. These puppets are in lieu of a best girlfriend-- something I am sorely lacking these days but am clearly not meant to have at this time-- and a husband-- something I have chosen to do without. So my sock puppets fill in. They hover at ear level and say things like, "Let go," "Accept," "Be Strong," and "Forgive." They whisper, "Be there for yourself," in one ear while cooing, "Reach out towards others," in another. They keep me from throwing all of my estranged husband’s belongings onto the front lawn and kicking him in the shins. Like me, they're doing the best they can.

Last night it was vaguely suggested to me that life is unfair, bub, and I'm welcome to go jump in a lake. I had just that morning been to therapy and yoga and found myself in a swivet that church was days away. Who would mollify my whiny prattling in the interim? Who would soothe me with balms of reason? My kitchen cabinets were bespeckled with self-help post-it notes but suddenly, they seemed lackluster and dusty. My sock puppets lacked pith.

There was one thing left to do, I thought. (Actually, there are the drugs and prostitution cards I'm still keeping close to my chest.) But before I play them, there's this other thing I keep hearing about. They call it praying.

I know. I make a slight squinchy face every time I say it, too.

People I know talk about it and others I would never suspect slip it into conversation. I figured I’ve got to try it. I know I probably should have been doing it all along since jumping back on the church bandwagon last year, but I haven't. Not in a person-to-person sense. I've chimed in for the rote-learned religious limericks that are the mainstay of every organized service. I take heart the messages embedded in the little stories that we mumble in unison reminding us of Jesus and his father and friends, and the epic Spanish soap opera that was their lives, but alone in my car, in my room or my head? No, I don't. I don't "do" praying.

But last weekend, two unsuspecting friends, a Christian and a Jew, both told me that they drop to the floor in the mornings before brushing their teeth. One hits her knees and thanks the good Lord for all her blessings. (The Jewess) The other slithers onto the rug against her bed and meditates for a full ten minutes. (The lapsed Catholic) I was surprised at both of these revelations. I wouldn't have pegged either woman for the type. You know, the praying kind: the Wal-Mart-shopping, bible-meeting-attending, teddy-bear-collecting, scrapbooking kind. In other words, not me.

Maybe it’s the lexicon. I could call it meditation. That would be socially acceptable to the others in my 30 Rock-watching, Target-shopping, NPR-listening demographic, but then I’d have to actually meditate. As far as I can tell, praying is different from meditation. Meditation, from what little I've learned from my kundalini yoga teacher and from reading “Eat, Pray, Love” only once, is the emptying of one's thoughts so that the mind may be clear and hollow enough to allow one's own strength and wisdom to bubble up from within. It's the act-- or, non-act, as it were-- of listening to one’s inner teacher or honing your intuition but only after emptying the head of all its administrative and emotional pablum.

Sound easy? It is and it isn’t.

The sock puppets get in the way, interfering, as is their wont. They leap into my head with all the subtlety of a Mexican hat dance, reeling off lists of phone calls to make, emails to return, chores to do and permission slips to sign. Most importantly, they remind me not to obsess over things out of my control. It’s loud and crowded in there. Asking them all to leave with an alamand left seems like a worthwhile pursuit but one that might take a full lifetime to master and monks don’t get health care benefits.

So, always one to explore the easy way out, I thought I'd give praying a little go round. Praying is more like a little chit-chat with your supreme being of choice, your own personal god or what have you. I liked the idea of it because I could just keep talking and complaining, as if I were on the phone, to my imaginary friend, who, I'm told, is always listening. When I've said my piece and explained my side of the story, I can wrap up the conversation with a closing sentiment akin to, "So, there you have it. Please give me the strength and guidance to see this through in whatever manner you see fit. Ball's in your court." And then I would sign off with pretty much the same panache as hanging up a phone. No stillness or time to reflect on the solution. Gotta run.

I remembered Carolyn's advice. "As soon as you wake up, get right onto the floor and pray. If you don't do it first thing, you'll never do it." Easy I thought. If I can remember to put a thermometer in my mouth the moment after opening my eyes, still supine, which is what I did for all those years while trying to get pregnant, then I can do this. I called her a few days later.

I said, "Carolyn, I just wanted to tell you that I thought and thought last night before bed about praying in the morning."
"Good," she said.
"I went to sleep with it on my mind. I even visualized doing it the next morning," I said.
"Excellent," she said.
"It was the very last thought I had before slipping into unconsciousness," I went on.
"Fantastic," she said.
"And do you know what happened the very next morning?" I asked.
"You forgot," she said very matter-of-factly.
"I forgot," said I, "how did you know?"
"Because it's hard to start. It's hard to get in the habit. Keep tryin' and keep me posted."
"Alright. Seeya," I said.
"Bye," she said and hung up.

Then, this morning, I visualized my conversation or my prayer if you must. I thought about praying to Jesus, who always looked a bit too much like a Dead Head for my comfort zone, but praying to him seemed dishonest-- too fake, too Grammys. I envisioned Mister God with his fabulous, white Grizzly Adams hair and beard, all tumbling down and well groomed. But what does he know from girlfriends and husbands, mothers and pregnancy? My god needed to be a woman, at least to start with. I know there are a bazillion goddesses out there, but I'm not familiar with them and didn't want to feign familiarity. I was already on thin ice in that department. So I thought and thought. Who would I cast as God if I could cast anyone?

I started with Madeline Khan, of course. I pictured her draped in white silk, very Dior, cut on the bias, her auburn hair fluffed up around her face like a halo but she seemed too young and flip for the job. It’s imperative that my God have a great sense of humor, but also the gravitas to take her responsibilities seriously. I needed someone with a little heft, a little deity-esque bravado. I considered Bea Arthur. She's got the seasoned age thing and the white streaks in her hair so she certainly looks the part. I would put her in something long and loose with bell sleeves and a golden rope belt. She'd want to wear one of those long-to-the-floor vests she favored on "Maude" which would be fine with me as long as it was white, too.

But my god is a benevolent god and Maude was tough and cutting. I needed her to have warmth and compassion, the scathing remarks I could do without. My own local reverend fit the bill, but I was wary of deifying anyone mortal and refused to have her in the running. She was politely asked to leave the audition.

Then a face came to mind; female, wizened, kind and forgiving, with a great sense of humor and a warm, comforting smile. My God would be Erma Bombeck. Or at the very least, have her face. I put her in something scoop necked with pleats and long sleeves because, like my mother, she is mindful of the loose skin under her forearms dangling. A shimmering white, cotton-poly blend would be most flattering and breathable and she may chose to belt her robes or not depending on how fat she feels that day.

I think I chose well when I chose Erma. It's been a few weeks since I started this essay and I would say that I remember to pray about half of the time. Curiously, I rarely conjure Erma’s face or anyone’s face for that matter. It’s just nice to have her on retainer if I need her.

I wake up and roll down onto my knees, my head and upper body flopping onto my folded arms on the bed because I’m too tired to hold up my spine. If anyone shuffled by at 6:30am they might think I was drunk. I begin by briefly thanking Erma for yesterday, and then ask her to give me strength and guidance for today. I acknowledge, with the nudge of a sock puppet, that I’m not in control and that I’m sure she’ll do right by me. A handful of times, I’ve slithered onto the floor and done a few deep breaths, clearing out the lungs as I attempt to quietly empty out my brain. This is my spine’s big chance to straighten up and fly right and my mind’s opportunity to shut down. It doesn’t. It thinks about the day, and I berate myself for being so inept. Then my sock puppets berate me for berating myself. So, up I get to brush my teeth and forget about the whole thing until the next time I remember.

I'm trying. Like someone determined to follow a diet, I'm going to try with all my might. Why is it so hard to fold this into my routine? The ground seems so far away. Do I think I'll get sucked under my mattress? Am I afraid of becoming a weirdo? I put toothbrush to tooth and these thoughts, too, fly out of my mind.

"Chicken," the sock puppets say, moving their heads side to side, eyes cast down. With a few muffled clicks of their wooly tongues they say again, “chicken.”

Blue

Ok. You need to hear about my divorce like you need a hole in the head, but there is one little morsel I'd like to share, a little sum-sum that bears repeating, and trust me, there is precious little worth repeating that you haven't read in a dime store novel or dozed through on the small screen about my divorce. It's your basic garden variety split laden with all the hack dialogue and cliche scenarios you would expect. Except for this:

Back in our salad days of love, when we were about half way through our seven month courtship, my soon to be ex-husband-- soon to be husband at the time-- let me paint his toenails dark blue. Once his size twelves dried, he galumphed proudly up to the beach and around the conservative little shore town where my family has spent their summers for generations. Some folks raised their eyebrows but most raised his glass and toasted the man who was presumably "made for me." He was smart, funny, creative, driven, then throw in the confidence of throwing caution-to-the-wind and he was a dream come true. Sound the trumpets.

So we did.

Months later, we were engaged. Ten months later, we were to be married. A grand wedding was planned. A lovely dress was bought. We were feted and fawned over until finally the big day arrived.

My father-- a memorable public speaker who reluctantly embraced the spot light-- had worked hard and surreptitiously on his father-of-the-bride toast and now it was his turn to speak. He stood there, beaming and be-tuxed, and told 180 of our nearest and dearest how pleased he was that Jim and I had found each other. He made mention of his first favorable impressions of Jim and how excited he was for our future. Dad had looked up on the Internet some phraseology from Jim's entirely foreign career path (my father was an artist, Jim was the opposite) and wove his newly-learned definitions into the speech with a panache that suggested how proud he was of his new son-in-law's impressive career path and smacked of his willingness to embrace him as family. Wrapping things up he said, "You know, there were some in this small town who clucked when they saw Jim's blue toenails, but I'm hear to tell you," and he leaned into the mic and steadied his voice for effect, "any son-in-law of mine who wants to paint his toenails blue, is okay by me." Then he stepped away from the mic, bent down, and took off his shiny black shoes and socks to reveal that he had, indeed, painted his toenails dark blue. The crowd went wild. My dad had brought down the house.

Fast forward eight years. Our marriage had reached the harrowing depths that marriages have to reach before something or some one gives. Jim and I separated with Jim moving an hour away to the big city-- city of dreams-- for the usual textbook last-gasp rigmarole. After a year of separation, my dream died and so did my father. By now I expect the marriage to expire, my dad's death, on the other hand, was a complete surprise. I was blind-sided. But after the year I'd had, I was almost used to this feeling of harrowing, moaning-groaning despair. Almost.

Six weeks after my dad died and a day after we scattered his ashes, my pending-ex-husband did something that necessitated that I retain a divorce attorney pronto. Time to get this ball rolling. And so with that, I headed into her office with calm resolution, empty tear ducts, and a sharpened number two pencil. My attorney was a whip-smart, toughened Jersey Girl in her forties-- her haircut, like her suit, was no nonsense. She laid it all out for me and explained the deal in the simplest of terms and then we set about disentangling our finances, which, for those of you unfamiliar to these waters, is really all a divorce is at the end of the day. The rest is emotional muckety-muck which should be directed at one's therapist or drinking buddies and has no business in the crass bureaucracy of divorce. When we were nearly through, she got up from the table to make a xerox. When she returned, I glanced at her feet.

She was wearing open-toed sandals. Her toenails were blue.

My conservative, beige-suit-wearing divorce attorney's toenails were dark blue. The same shade of blue as my ex and my dad. On this day of all days, of all seasons, of all time-- the same freaky shade of friggin' blue. Not green or purplish, light blue or mauve, or any one of a jillion shades of red which, lined up end to end could reach Pittsburgh and back again, but dark blue.


I asked her about it and she laughed and then told me in a clipped aside that no, this was not her usual shade. Her teenage daughter put her up to it. I told her the abridged version of my story and she touched her forehead to the table in disbelief. Yeah, you and me both.

The next day I told an old friend my story. She got goosebumps. She was convinced that my dad was sending me a message.
"And what message would that be?" I asked.
"You know, that you're doing the right thing," she said, "That your dad's still behind you 100%."

My dad had been my greatest advocate in my life's Spanish soap opera turn of events. Not because he didn't like my ex, but because he wanted what was best for me and my son and was convinced that I knew what that was. Remarkably, I did and I do. I think he was also secretly pretty relieved that I hadn't turned to drugs or prostitution as a result of my last year's undoing. Now, as I fill out the at-times overwhelming tsunami of paperwork, I occasionally imagine his particularly exuberant voice telling me how proud he is of me. Then I push away from the calculator and have myself a little cry.

I told my friend that I liked the idea that my father was sending me a message via my attorney's toes, but that I would prefer to think of it as a sort of cosmic wink. After all, I've known for months that I would have to make this decision myself, with no outside influence or encouragement. And that ultimately I am making the right choice, regardless of what signs or signals Dad sends me. Although, I do get a huge kick out of this sort of thing and hope they keep 'a comin'.

So there's a little full-circle fun for ya. The next time you get a pedicure, you can think of me and my dead marriage and deader father and my alive and well divorce attorney.

You know I will. And I won't be choosing dark blue.

Putting the U.N. in Fun

Recently I found myself hanging out at the U.N. bar with a bunch of Middle East dignitaries not named Michael.

The U.N. bar is not some hipster haunt in Williamsburg, and no, "middle east dignitaries" is not code for "other suburban moms." I was literally at the United Nations delegate's lounge-- a guest of my girlfriend, Dahlia-- chatting with foreign dignitaries who asked that, were I to write about them, they each be identified as Michael.

Dahlia's been my girlfriend for twenty-five years and working at the U.N. is the culmination of a string of global career moves she's made to keep herself engaged in foreign politics and the plight of the war torn and emotionally mending. For years she's brought me hand woven scarves, hand bound journals and beaded strands of beautiful craftsladyship that have made it all the way from Rowanda, East Timor, Nepal, India, or Hong Kong safely back to me in New Jersey. She travels alone, always has, and has never so much as batted an eye at narrowly evaded military coups, raucous uprisings or surly cab drivers. I've marveled at her unflappable gusto and wanderlust-- which blows mine out of the water-- ever since we met in Paris on a trip to Moscow all those years ago. And now she's in New York City, for another ten months (or ten minutes), until her next opportunity opens up and she flies out the window, leaving yet another sublet to store her bare-bones belongings in some basement in Queens. She's got boxes all over the world filled with the flotsam of sudden moves-- undeveloped film canisters, needless formal wear, letters and trinkets-- awaiting the day when she makes her global rounds to claim them. I love her because besides being ballsy and wearing all the world's hearts on her sleeve, she's funny and laughs at my jokes.

The Delegate's Lounge was located at the end of a massive room the size and scope of a large museum cafe. One wall was compromised entirely of windows-- an interesting safety choice for the U.N.-- and the ceiling was in another stratosphere, which was a good thing, because on the opposite wall hung the most exquisite and enormous rugs I'm ever likely to see.

I was immediately frustrated that I didn't bring my camera.

One rug had an Escher-through-the-looking-glass design that began broad at its edges and pointedly delved into such dizzying minutia that I couldn't help but picture the famous Iranian artisan, crouched on the floor with his forehead pressed against the fibers, a knotted carpet thread in one hand and a magnifying glass in the other. The other rug was also a gift, from China, and its topic was the great wall of. It was a breathtaking depiction-- just the sort of misty mountainous vista that I get lost in leafing through expensive glossy coffee table books or watching animated Pixar movies. It was so exquisitely detailed and so ridiculously huge that I felt for a moment that I was perambulating the great wall itself. Completely encompassing my vision, I followed the wall as it snaked and wound between enormous teal green mountains, low lying fog clinging to forgotten blackened trees, until eventually the wall, too, disappeared into it's own distant minutiae.

I'm no rug-hugger, but I was completely awestruck and I asked Dahlia, if this bar was open to the public. Everyone's gotta see this rug, I thought. Goodness, no, was her reply which I should have known as I recalled her having to meet me at a gate about eighty yards from the building where she presented me to a security guard only minutes before. Then Dahlia told me that this summer they'll begin renovating this 1950s vintage monument to Bauhaus Buck Rogers architecture-of-the-future and I felt an immediate concern for the rug. What if it doesn't make the new interior designer's cut? What if they go with flocked wallpaper and a nice arrangement of plates? I’m going to miss the wall-to-wall carpeting, hospital-blue formica and all that curved, blonde wood paneling. Where will they store these rugs and how did they get them into the room in the first place? My concerns gave way to introductions as I was lead to a table under the windows and introduced around.

Five relaxed, attractive, swarthy men in jackets and ties looked up to greet me as Dahlia introduced me around the table counter clockwise. "This is Michael, Mike, Mikey, Mick and Mack," she didn't actually say. Their true names were more colorful to me, but really they were the Tom, Dick and Harrys of the Middle East, or to be more current, the Dave, Steve and Johns of my generation. I found in them no trace of bravado or outward display of chauvinism. They each looked me respectfully in the eye-- something I'll admit I hadn't expected them to do-- and were modest and soft-spoken. I knew I had no business talking to these guys and I was smart enough to know that I'm not smart enough to engage them in any variant of meaningful political discourse that they haven't had a zillion times before. There was nothing so tedious to me, in the many months over many years that I spent in Europe, as having to have the same clichéd debate over and over with smug, humorless internationals, most of whom, had never been stateside. So, as they looked to me to inject new life into an hour old cocktail conversation, I threw them a curve ball.

"What kind of games did you play as children growing up?" I asked.
They looked at me and finally, one of them spoke up. Mike, I think it was.
"You mean games with other children?"
"Yes," I said, "Tell me about the games you played with your brothers and sisters and all the kids in the neighborhood where you grew up."
There was a bit of shifting in chairs but it was Mike again who spoke up.
“There was this one game we played where all the kids ran around while one kid chased after them and kicked them in the bottom. If you sat on the ground, you couldn't be kicked, but the moment you stood up to run, you were chased and kicked again.” I thought this sounded like fun. Also like something the Little Rascals would have played. I considered asking them if they wanted to play. There was certainly enough space. We wouldn't even have to push any tables aside. I smiled.
"Sounds hilarious and really fun," I said.
"It was," said Mickey. He was older, a friend of the dignitaries and a doctor now, but remembered playing it as well.
"What else?" I asked.

Michael told me about a game they played on a flat surface with round flat pebbles or thick discs. The object was to knock your opponent's to the corners of the table, (or out of bounds or off the table), by flicking. Each player took turns. I asked them what the flicking looked like. "Show me," I said. Michael leaned forward and moved his beer out of the way, then he held his bent forefinger back with his thumb and flicked it low against the table. I asked Mickey if he had the same flick. No, he said and he showed me his. He held his forefinger back by his index finger and the two fingers stayed straight while they flicked.
"It sounds a bit like pool or billiards," I said.
"Yes, it's very much like this," answered Mack.
"Did you all play this game?" I asked. They had grown up in different parts, mostly cities, of two separate but neighboring countries.
"Oh, yes. Everyone played," said Mick.
"Will you all show me how you flicked?" I asked, "I want to see everyone's flick."

They all sat up and moved their beers aside to show me their own individual flicking positions. Each one differed from the last and every finger was used to a unique effect. I thought about how these men must have learned their particular styles from their older brothers and fathers before them. Or maybe they came up with their own. For a brief instant I pictured these well-respected and well-comported men as excitable five-year old boys, studying the older kids and then racing off to perfect what would one day be their own signature style.

It was then that I heard my girlfriend say something to one of the Michaels about how she could fit six spiders in a matchbox. "What did you just say?" I asked. She grew up in the Philippines, raised, along with the chickens, by nuns. Electricity was available every other day. Easy Bake Ovens and Big Wheels were not.
She said, "If you sectioned off a matchbox you could fit six spiders perfectly in each compartment."
"To keep?" I asked.
"No, to fight," she replied.
"I don't understand."
She explained, "When I was a child we used to catch spiders and keep them in matchboxes. Then we would find a stick and someone would hold it. Then two people would put their spiders on either end of the stick and we would watch them fight until the death."
"I beg your pardon?" I said.
"They would move to the center of the stick and fight each other until one wrapped the other in its web around the stick. That was the winner." I didn't know there was an arachnid version of the cockfight.
"How long did this take?" I asked as I imagined this drama unfolding with the riveting speed of a six-hour cricket match.
"Oh, two minutes or so," was her answer.

Wow. Clearly it is not a small world after all. It's a big, big world and my slice-of-America ala mode upbringing looked nothing like theirs. All those childhood hours I logged making up dance routines to The Carpenters I could have been ass-kicking and spider-fighting. I suppose I can still teach my son these games. Of course I'll have to make him promise not to tell the other mothers where he learned them.

Our round table chat took on the feel of an intimate campfire heart-to-heart and the dimming dusk light softened our faces and defenses. Stories of childhood games turned to the re-telling of cherished lore: epics of romance and the quest for God and love. The men sitting around the table grew from boys to lovelorn teens in my mind and their eyes grew a bit lonely and remote. Years before they would find themselves eating take-out dinners with plastic forks and defying parking signs in New York City, they were gangly teens, at home with their families, craving the kind of unattainable romantic perfection they had only read about in school and whispered about in the dark. It's then that they began their grope for what they perceived as true enlightenment. Half way around the globe, I was doing the same.

The barmaid took one last sweep of our empties and a security guard gave Michael a sideways glance. The room had darkened and I looked up to see that the rugs had lost a bit of their command. Rising from the table we wordlessly shook off whatever intimacy had been garnered over the last few hours. The men walked ahead, their faces out of view and Dahlia and I followed, arm in arm, a few steps behind.

That much I had expected. The rest was a pleasant surprise.

Hair Care

I went in for a haircut today. It’s a cozy, small-town salon with four chairs and a sink. And though the palette and décor is steely blue and cool, there is undeniable warmth to the vibe. The last time this woman-- the owner-- cut my hair, my marriage was on the skids. I’d been losing weight, sleep and marbles. As she draped the cape around my neck with the finesse of a lady matador, she asked me what I wanted in her signature bright and measured tone. I straightened my shoulders, tossed back my hair, and said, “Something that will save my marriage.”
“You mean the number five,” she said.
“Yes, give me the number five,” I said and we shared a tentative laugh. I added, “No pressure,” then took off my glasses and we relaxed into the business at hand. (Needless to say, that haircut did not save my marriage. I did not fault her or the haircut.)

Today I went in for a whole new do-- a different one from a year ago. She did her thing and then asked her question with the same earnest verve as ever.

I smiled impishly. I'd be dropping another bomb today, which some might think not only cruel but in poor taste, but I went for it. I need a chuckle, and if anyone could handle it, she could.
“What can I do for you today?” she chirped.
"Can you give me something that will bring my father back from the dead?”

“Oh, my goodness, I’m so sorry,” she said and she meant it as she touched her hand to her chest. I followed up quickly by saying, “It’s o.k.!” but I felt a bit bad for using my dad's recent death as material. I was pretty sure he wouldn't mind. He'd think it was funny. Then we laughed and I settled in to tell her my tale and we got down to the business at hand.

The more I talked, the more she listened, and she did that with finesse, too. She combed and cut and talked and listened and I imagined the compartments inside her brain whirring, like a jazz drummer using both hands and feet and smoking a cigarette while he plays. She wove strands of our old conversations into this one effortlessly-- her mind able to retrieve nuggets from my spotty client history without delay. This impressed me even more than the cutting hair/chatting, patting-head-rubbing-tummy thing, since I rarely see her out of the chair and only come in three or four times a year.

The things I've told her in that chair-- on and on as if there were soundproof walls separating me from the dye job next door. But there aren't. There's just hair and air. I don't even have the excuse of flimsy hospital curtains to act as a veil for my delusion of privacy. (And my payments have lapsed on my personal laser shield.) For some reason I'm able to carry on and on as if the other occupants, inches away, are stuffed mannequins, deaf or European. I've never, in my life, been able to recount someone else's conversation in the chair next to mine, so, perhaps they pump something into the air. I'll go with that for now.

My cut wound to and end and my dad did not materialize-- some things not even a haircut can fix. I complimented myself by complimenting my hairdresser then walked out of my haze and into the haze.

I thought about women and discretion, that little-spoken, much-considered notion of generosity.

All my life I've read and heard of a man's character described as great or strong. A man having good moral fiber or keeping his word have been germane to the great American novel and most black and white films since long before cable, but not enough credit is given to hairdressers and bartenders and the woman I've sat next to in waiting rooms. Not enough merit is given to women for discretion, most of whom, after all, are like walking skeleton closets-- reams and reams of personal information, available at the sip of a tea.

Girlfriends are forever coming and going as their distances are assessed and re calibrated. The concentric circles of friendships that ring every woman like so many hula-hoops, reverberate with confidences and data. And the onus is on us to not divulge. There are no meter maids for innuendo. The files of past friendships are thick and bulging with hardship, infidelity and sex. There are biological descriptions and renewed prescriptions and run ins with cops and his ex. Children and parents, husbands and neighbors, there's enough material there for a lifetime. But it's hard to read clearly the expiration date on a friendship. Like so many lines, it's smudged.

There's a powerful seduction at play with most women, to use this fodder to grow closer to another, newer friend. Confidences are currency and the strings that bind us become thicker and more cord-like with each moment two bodies lean in. But women have choices like the men who wear hats in the movies. They can say, "It's not for me to tell," or "You'll have to ask her." "It's in the vault," is a phrase I admire. Then they can lean back and change the subject or get themselves a refill. They can reconsider. They can stop.

It's not easy to do, and I'll admit, I'm no warrior. I've leaned in and recounted thickly veiled yarns mostly by saying, "this woman I used to know," or, "an old girlfriend of mine once," but there are times when I'm weak. There are times when I leak. I've eaten more than my share of dangling carrots.

At the end of the day, trust and discretion are a valuable portion of what amounts to a woman's character-- poorly lauded, perhaps, not as attention grabbing as other brassier traits, maybe, but no less valuable. And when you add a good haircut on top of that-- well, then you've got yourself a woman of fine character and considerable talent. What a find! And all too rare, indeed.

Little Voice

Here's the situation and grim doesn't begin to describe it:

I've just found out that my dad is dying fast and although The Good Doctor has told me that he thinks Dad's got as many as five days to live, I just don't see him lasting much past three. It's Thursday afternoon, and just five days ago, on Saturday, we were all sitting at the dinner table together at my parent's house. Since then he's gone into the hospital, deteriorated, spiraled, and now we're breaking him out of the joint to take him into hospice care at our family's summer home at the Jersey shore. So, to recap: In five days he's gone from a man feeling not quite himself, eating a sandwich at a dinner table, to a man unable to walk, strapped onto a gurney, with the knowledge that he's got a few days to live nestling into his psyche. And my head is about to explode.

It's an hour and a half drive south to the beach and Mom will be riding in the ambulance with Dad. Since we've all descended from different points on the map, everyone-- both sisters, my brother-in-law and me-- will each be taking one of four separate cars. And everyone's left. I'm last to leave.

Now, for reasons too tedious to go into, I'm driving my beat-up, second car-- the station car-- with a near empty gas tank. It's a twenty-year-old manual shift junker that I adore madly, but it's seen better days. There are no airbags because they weren't mandatory back then, and there's no right rear view mirror, because they were optional at the time. Optional! There's no AC or FM radio, no lighter and not a single computer chip to be found. The car is totally off the grid and looks it. There are bumper stickers of varying degrees of irony and a bit of a side swipe-y looking dent over one of the back fenders. It's a work horse of a four speed with manual windows and manual steering that got me back and forth safely across country and through years of parallel parking in Boston, San Francisco and L.A., but, let's face it, it's a glorified golf cart.

And it's out of gas.

Then. For reasons involving the chasing down of nurses, doctors and hospice coordinators in the ICU, and the magazine article Mom read once years ago about hospital theft, my wallet is in my mom's purse. My mom is in the ambulance with my dying dad and the ambulance has left. I have to get my car out of the hospital garage, pay for parking and put gas in the car with no money. And I'm crying pretty hard. Nope, scratch that. I'm probably crying harder than I ever have in my life. This is a pre-verbal cry of such depth and anguish, that I don't feel exactly human. We've held it together for five, long, dizzying days, and now, with no more information to leech out of anyone, no patient to advocate on behalf of, and no loved ones to hold it together for, I've lost it.

I'm rolling down the window to tell the nice shift worker in the little garage tollbooth that I have no money to pay the seven bucks for the garage. She manages to decipher what she can from the hysterical gasps and sobs coming from the crazy, sallow-eyed lady in the little, blue shit-heap and waves me through saying, "Drive carefully."

Now that I've cleared that hurtle, there's the problem of gas. I'm thinking, thinking. Every one's left. I guess I could have gone back into the hospital and ask one of the nurses for ten bucks, but I didn't think of that at the time. I considered driving directly to a gas station and asking the pleasant, swarthy, foreign man who seems to manage every gas station in New Jersey now, if he'd give me some free gas. Honestly, he might not give two hoots. I just couldn't be sure how the sympathy card might be received across cultural boundaries or how much fudge factor a small business owner has to play with at the pump. On this day of all days, I couldn't chance it.

I know, I thought, I'll ask some stranger for money. Over the years I'd handed cash to strangers. Maybe some one would hand some to me.

There was the midwestern looking mom and her teenage daughter who I noticed crying to a cop in Times Square once. I walked up to the mom, asked if I could help, handed her forty bucks, and smiled and walked away. There were the three other people I shared an uptown cab with the day of the black out. They were low on dough and I'd just been to the ATM so I handed them each twenty bucks, just in case. In seventeen years of living in New York City I'd lost my wallet three times and each time it was returned to me with everything in it. I felt I'd seen the magic of money karma at work in my midst and that there must be some errant pixie dust floating around somewhere, perhaps in my glove compartment. So I looked around.

A man in a dark suit was about to cross just in front of me. Bingo! I thought. If this guy is in a suit, there's a good chance he's employed. He looked like a pharmaceutical rep; mid- forties, maybe not the countenance of a super benevolent guy, but not the look of a total jerk, either. I wiped my pink, puffy eyes, tucked my greasy hair behind my ears, brought my sobs down a notch and craned my head out the window.

"Excuse me, Sir," I said, "you look like you have money."

My god. Can you imagine? I could have said, "I hate to trouble you, Sir," but no. I said, "You look like you have money," like he's from an old, New England family. Like some pick up line from the Great Gatsby. And if you've forgotten what kind of shape I'm in or what kind of car I'm driving, re-read the above. I'm a blithering mess. But I have gotten his attention. He walks towards me with a slightly pained look on his face-- the kind of face I make when someone asks me if I have a moment to take a brief survey.

I stammer. "I'm s-so sorry to ask, Sir, b-but my muh-om's in the am-bu-lance with my f-father and she's g-got my wah-hallet and I'm-m out of gas and, he's d-dying, and I'm-m s'posed to f-follow and could I puh-please have t-ten dollars?"

He glances down at my ridiculous car and my wet cheeks and bleary eyes and his furrowing eyebrows say to me, Really, lady? I don't have time for this. Are you serious? Can this really be what they're teaching in Small Con School these days? But he's reaching for his wallet-- albeit slowly and with a look of achy, quasi-resolve-- so I continue.

"I just nee-ed enough to g-get me an hour and a half-f down the parkw-way. Ten dollars sh-should be enough."

He hands me a five.

I nearly laughed. 'Th-thank you s-so much," I said, "thank you, Sir, th-thank you." He gestured meagerly and I drove off. And I gotta tell ya, it cracked me up. It actually made me smile. For a brief moment in an otherwise dark, forbidding stretch of time, I had to laugh at the guy who thought, Yeah, what the hell, I'll give this dame some money, but I'm sure as hell not giving her ten bucks. She'll take five and like it. Jeeze, I gotta be crazy. Women, today. Criminy.

So I drove to the station and put gas in my car and made it all the way down to the shore where I joined my family in helping my father die; which he did, incidentally, a day and a half later. And I couldn't have done it without that surly guy, in the navy blue suit, who didn't really want to help me, but did anyway. He'll always be part of the motley cast of characters that made that incredible week even more surreal that I ever could have imagined. And the next time I'm at a dive bar I'll order a cold Pabst in a can and toast to the little voice inside that man that kicked his ass into leaving the trajectory of his morning, to walk over to a shit-heap of a car, where he took one look, pried open his wallet, and spotted some hysterical broad a fin.

Artist, Funny Guy, Dad

The thing about funny people, that is, if they're really funny, they're funny 'til the day they die. Such was the case with my dad.

He died a couple of weeks ago, and if you think there's anything funny in that, there is, remarkably.

On the oncology floor of the hospital, Dad was king of the A jokes. His style was dry, his timing spot on, and every single joke killed. Even as the nuances of his delivery and subtlety of his facial expressions went over the nurses' heads, he kept us in stitches. We laughed for five days straight, my mom, two sisters, brother-in-law and me. Doubling over behind the fabric curtains, hiding behind hospital promotional packets, our bodies shook with muffled laughter. That is, when we weren't crying. Or trying to hide the tears. Or laughing through them.

Then one or two cancers morphed into three as we pried the truth from his doctors. When Dad figured out he was dying, he asked my sister point blank. She answered yes and he told her that he wanted to go home. So we unhooked, untethered and untangled him from the ICU, and off we went-- home again, hospice, jiggity-jig. We settled him into his favorite sun lit room, with his own sheets and favorite squishy pillow, down at the Jersey shore where he loved to paint the skies and sail his boat and watch his grandchildren swim in the ocean. He was now very, very home.

He continued to make us giggle although things were growing darker even as the sky outside was bright. Two of his dearest friends came for a visit and brought more mirth and thoughtful conversation. Even the minister had a great sense of humor. Very thorough and exceedingly honest, he spoke to my father with tempered delight which, in turn, gave Dad great comfort. Dad listened, saying, "Wonderful, wonderful," as he heard the wise words with closed eyes. After the good reverend left, Dad asked us repeatedly if we were OK. We lied and said we were.

That perfect day would be his last and he died the very next morning. He died quietly and without physical pain, in the bosom of his family. He always loved to say, "In the bosom of my family." And he would linger on the m as his mouth turned into a grin. That very same impish grin, as it turned out, would follow him out of his body and off into the sunset he so dearly loved to paint. We laughed and sobbed as we watched him go. Like a transatlantic voyager, which in a way I suppose he was, leaving for an extended trip. We tried to be happy for him, knowing that he'd pondered this trip his whole life-- had been perusing its brochures for eons. And now he was finally off and it was so hard to comprehend. It had been just seven days since he'd gone into the hospital and he'd only felt odd for two weeks prior. But as rushed as we felt saying so long and farewell, he left us with calm assurance and full closure. He died with his ducks in a row. He left us with a smile on his face.

Days later, my mother, sisters and I would circle the dining room table with his random stuff spread out like at a flea market. The mirror ball he installed in the ceiling 35 years ago hung over our heads, still. My mom had wanted to do this. "It has to be done," she said. So we surveyed his life and we laughed.

My one sister asked for the scrolling LED light up belt buckle that he wore with a smirk and reprogrammed for family holidays. My other sister asked for his other belt buckle, the one with the pink lips that we all remember him wearing in the seventies, with an even bigger smirk. I asked for his Michael Jackson "Off the Wall" album cover imprinted-onto-mirrored-sunglasses, which I can promise you, we all begged him not to wear out in public. (He did anyway.) And we each got a Buddha. It took a while, but finally, it was all divvied up and done.

My mom mostly watched. She had already kept what was precious to her-- his Soupy Sales autograph, his saved ticket stub from the Newport Jazz Festival. This round was for us.

So now I've got to find a place for his Swiss army knife and his grandfather's pocket watch. I'll pack away assorted bow ties for my son, should he grow up to be the sort of man who wears them. It's a crap shoot, I know, and he's only 5 1/2, but what the heck. They're his grandfather's ties. And books, and pipes and a trucker hat that reads Tolstoy in curly red letters across the front, which I'll wear intermittently with my South Park baseball hat when it rains and shines. And I'll keep his T-shirt that heralds the onslaught of the menacing "Med Fly" folded up with my "Free Pee Wee" tee. And maybe I'll set his little carved, wooden man-scratching-his-head statuette next to my framed photo of my sister mowing her lawn in Vermont, topless.

And I'll be reminded of his sense of humor, as dorky, cornball and endearingly hokey as it could be, when it wasn't masterfully sophisticated and clever. And I'll be glad that I have mine and my mother and sisters have similar. And I'll thank him for it. And remember.

Because if there's ever a time to be grateful for a sense of humor...

Banter Addict

Let's say, for arguments sake, that a person could be addicted to snappy banter. What might the addict do to quell her craving?

I had plenty of time to think about it after the subway doors closed and the simmering, bubbling conversation I'd been enjoying ground to a halt with the sliding doors' bing-bong. I was pretty sure Penn Station's maintenance crew couldn't give me what I needed, and New Jersey Transit's conductor crowd wasn't worth it's weight in straight answers, much less snappy banter. So I came up with a plan.

After I've put my son to bed, and poured myself half a beer, I'll lower myself onto the floor and set up a Fisher Price bar.

I'll use two overturned beds for the bar, maybe three, and make the bald man with the little curly cue on his forehead the bartender. Then, the one with the black Prince Valiant hard-hair, I'll set in his chair, and I'll put myself nearby but not too close. Must appear elusive.

"What'll you have?" the bartender asks.
"The usual," I answer and spin once around in my yellow plastic chair that molds to me perfectly.
OK, maybe I won't spin around, dumb idea, but I'll sip my cocktail as Hard Hair Guy sidles over. I need a glass of some sort. This'll do: I'll use a teensy Lego gear shift as a stem glass which I can just reach if I slither down onto my stomach. It's at this point that I wish I wasn't the girl with the helmet of yellow plastic Pippy Longstocking braids, so I trade myself in for a Princess Leia pez dispenser. Now we're talking. Taller, leaner, lighter on my foot.

"Hello," Hard-hair says and I tip him forward in his chair ever so slightly towards me.
"Hello yourself," I say with a tall, brunette, pezzy nod in his direction.
"Sorry I'm late," he says with a grin.
"Day late and a dollar short, pal," I say in Carrie Fisher film noir-eze.

The bartender asks Hard-hair what he's having. I rip off a tiny corner of a gently used Kleenex left on the coffee table for him to use as a bar wipe, and find an errant dust-covered dime near a chair leg to use as a coaster. The perspective is off, but it's all I can find within arm's reach and I am not about to get up off the floor. Besides, the over sized coaster thing is all part of this swanky bar's shtick. And I am a swanky, over sized gal.

Hair Guy says, "What's a girl like you-"
I cut him off, "Doing with a face like this?"
"Well, now that you mention it-"
"I just did."
"You might have," he says. "but you didn't answer my question."
"What was the question?" I ask.
"What does it matter?"
"How could it not?" I take another sip.
Then I look at him squarely for the first time and smile ever so slightly. I pause for effect but I'm way too tall. So I turn my self sideways and lay down a bit to get right in his face. My pez head is too big. Big coasters, big head. I suppose that's my shtick, too, but I'm stalling.

I sigh. These four sips of beer are really going to my head.

Banter is just not the same using hard, wooden children to talk to plastic candy dispensers while leaning on my elbows. Not the same as being a live adult sitting up straight, fingernails tapping a thickly varnished bar. Sure, I could do the bantering "for us-- for all of us," as Ingrid said to Humph, but I'd rather go to sleep. So I haul my tired, sorry ass off the ground and up the stairs and will myself to dream of conversations that skip across the water like a smooth, flat stone.

I know they're out there. My sparing partners crop up from time to time for coffee or lunch and we occasionally IM on facebook. They are men and women who, like me, can get giddy from snappy banter when it's taught and brisk the way I used to get giddy jumping double dutch for much longer than I'd ever imagined possible. But then someone has to get going and some door eventually shuts and there is a resonant buzz that floats along side me until it quietly, eventually fades. I feverishly look to the man in the crosswalk, waiting for the go-man signal, wishing we could pick up where I just left off, but something about his brown suit tells me it's not gonna fly.

Every so often I'm pleasantly surprised. A tired, detached postal worker behind the counter asks if she can help who's next. "I'd like a table with a view," I say as I pile my neatly addressed packages onto the counter and get out my credit card. She answers, "All I have is the one near the kitchen," as she weighs them one at a time.
"As long as the food is decent," I say.
"In this place?" and she raises an eyebrow.
"True," I say, "but I come here for the ambiance." And we smile as she asks me if there's anything perishable in my packages.

It's nice to be reminded that snappy banter is out there. Elusive, like Princess Leia, perhaps, but out there.