Mom's the word...

today's rant is actually not a rant...more of a reflection, and i hope you forgive if this gets too sugary...tomorrow lauren...my one and only...turns 21...i will spare you the "gee how did that happen?"...or "but i still feel 21!"...which i don't feel or look thanks to my being distracted these weeks, forgetting to see my colorist...creating a root crisis of epic grey proportion..i am feeling my candles these days..but this afternoon, as the hours lunge forward i remember those hours 21 years ago quite vividly, and the cavalcade of "mom" memories flash every time i close my eyes...every achievement, every disappointment, every "boo-boo", every giggle...all the minutes I wasted second-guessing my parenting skills...and in doing that almost missed the sheer joy...then forgetting to breathe since being a mom is much like being on a treadmill...one that never stops...but luckily we do stop it once in a while...catch our breath and then marvel at our handiwork...when i held all 6 pounds 12 ounces of her all those years ago, i wonder if i grasped what a miracle motherhood would be...and all the places we would go...

Martha, my dear....

Ah...sir paul turns 70 today...if i close my eyes i am a wide-eyed (and much blonder) 5-year-old clutching a beatles album....the requisite crush on paul (it wouldn't occur to me until i was older that john was the "hotter" beatle...but i digress)...when he married for the third time, this time to a jewish long island woman my age, i had to think...damn, so close....but although paul's songs dance in my head today, that is not why today's blog is titled "martha, my dear"...it is more than 6 weeks since we moved into our rental, as our new condo gets closer to completion...the building we are in is one of the first completed in the development and only offers cablevision...and so after so many years since my "divorce" with cablevision (our irreconcilable differences caused by their use of the term "customer service" - truly an oxymoron) we are reunited...we have a spanking new phone number, which we can take with us to our new place in a few weeks...and that is where martha appears....we all know phone numbers are recycled...for all the issues you can have with verizon, for my 50+ years this was a non-issue...oh, cablevision...maybe you should stick with one utility to screw up....it would seem my new number was "recycled" too soon...and so we get calls for martha...from colleges....from many people who i cannot understand as they are insisting martha is here...in spanish...to which my years of french do not help...i know you will tell me there are block lists, etc...and i have explored many options...which become complicated when so many of martha's ardent admirers are "private callers"... so now i figure, if it's quiet, and not an ungodly hour of the morning or night...maybe i should chat along...discover the power of this martha...after all, the love you take is equal to the love you make....

the unbearable lightness of monday

it always seems to go this way...i read a book, poem, or essay that blows me away and then feel muted as a writer in its path...the past two weeks were the perfect yin and yang of being a writer...accepted into a workshop, rejected for publication...but back to the workshop...next month i will be attending a poetry workshop at the southampton writers' conference...and the writer leading the pack will be mary karr...although i have read so much about her, and some of her poetry online, i hate to admit, i never read any of her memoirs...and so i went to our new library, got my card and got going...backwards, as i started with "lit", her latest....i could not put it down, and i find myself thinking about so much of it, so often...so, of course, i start thinking about my poems...my work...and then, of course, i think about the peanut m&m's in the cabinet...the new bag i bought to replace the old one i almost decimated last week as i struggled to write something more than a grocery list...the one in my basket at target this morning when my cell phone rang...a call from the conference coordinator happy to answer my dimwit questions...but i can't hear him because every aisle is bursting with the cries of rugrats..."i want this, i want this, i want this"...as i find a quiet corner, i chirp happily into the phone, as my inner voice yells, "hey, kid, i want this too"...and you're not getting my m&ms...

not lost in translation

today mike and i spent the afternoon with my friend, sabine, and her husband, frederic...sabine and i became penpals in 7th grade....i would write to her from staten island in french, pouring through my small english-french dictionary and notes from miss larsen's french class-she would write to me in english from lille...and so it went until somewhere around the time we hit 30, and lost each other in the lack of a forwarding address, or some other crime of the snail-mail era...until 2 1/2 years ago when sabine found me on facebook...and so we brought this extraordinary friendship into the 21st century...and then we finally met, after 38 years, when mike took me to paris for my 50th birthday celebration....it was an incredible day at versailles...a memory i will carry with me forever..and now today, sabine and frederic are in new york, and we are taking them to the 911 memorial...through back and forth emails they have decided that they want to visit the memorial this trip and it would mean more to be with us...and here the four of us are, winding through security lines and finally at the site itself....mike-no french, me-butchering french, sabine and frederic-both with very good english...for quite a while words are not needed, and then all is understood...and after our visit, and a subway trip dodging thunderstorms, we have a wonderful dinner, enjoying each other's company as if we do this all the time, and i think that the simple joy of friendship is never lost in translation....