Mid-dance line, Charlie is seized with a brilliant idea: “I’m going to drive my VW beetle to Louisiana and register it! No smog laws there! Who’s in?”
“Road . . . trip!” everybody cheers. Never mind that the Beetle, with all the junk in it, at best seats three and can barely get to Long Beach.
The first pall comes upon Tex’s announcement that by 11 in New Orleans, 9 p.m. our time, second lines are breaking out all over town.
Charlie’s eyes glitter with joy—and then he takes the dark turn. “God, Mardi Gras in New Orleans is the best party on earth and every year I miss it!”
“And who knows how long New Orleans is even going to be there,” Bradford helpfully adds, downing another Sazerac. “What with global warming—”
“The levees, the flooding,” Jerry agrees.
“Thanks to the great almighty US of A!” Tex adds.
And oh boy, here we go, where so many of these gatherings eventually do . . . into the howling pit of political ranting. Which gives liberty to much shouting and bellicosity and the mad chain-smoking of American Spirit cigarettes (who brought those?).
“If it hadn’t been for the Russians—!”
“The Republican base—!”
“The Christian Right—!”
“Gerrymandering—!”
“The oil industry—!”
“Dark money—!”
“Big pharma—!”
“Coal—!”
My sphincter seizes up with it all! I can’t stand it!
SATURDAY MORNING, when I come out in my fabulous purple Pema Bollywood goddess pants, my household is not impressed.
Wisecracks Charlie (whose Mardi Gras hangover is finally lifting): “Did a clown die?” Sassy with mystery extra credit, Hannah mimes handing me a phone: “The eighties called. They want their pants back.”
“No problem,” I say grandly to all of them, embracing my inner size fifty-two. “I’m going to forgive all of you, because my birthday today is all about self-celebration.”
I’m doing that by throwing a simple birthday brunch. With ground rules. To begin with, conversationally, this one day will be a politics-free zone. It’s a safe space. A very soft, safe space.
I’ve asked all my girlfriends to bring any one of “the three C’s”—champagne, chocolate, or cheese. Just in case there is not enough cheese, I’ve stockpiled it. Right next to the Third Eye Bookstore I found a store called “cheese therapy” (all lower case, upper case being too stressful in these difficult times). It has its own “mac-and-cheese” bar, which includes gluten-free mac and dairy-free cheese (South Pasadena is a very particular town). Having no dietary limitations myself, I’ve rounded up a bunch of high-fat goddess food. A fontina-artichoke-honey dip. Camembert with cranberries. Brie and peaches.
On the big living room computer: Joni Mitchell.
“What is this?” Julia wrinkles her nose as she walks in, still clutching her gift bag. “Ladies of the Canyon?”
“Are we officially out of our Blue years now?” Andie asks. “Or Court and Spark?”
“Ladies of the Canyon, yes, suckas!” I say. “I’m now on Malibu time. Get used to it. I’m going to wear a wind-blown scarf and drive alone up the coast in a vintage convertible and I will paint breezy seascapes.”
“Okay,” Julia and Andie say, exchanging glances.
“PS,” I say, “I know I often make everyone throw the I-Ching on my birthday, but I’m sick of it. There’s too much darkness there—‘The Abyss,’ ‘Biting Through,’ ‘The Preponderance of the Small.’ Those Chinese can be tough. One time I had an eighty-year-old feng shui guy come to my old house and he said my then husband Ben would die in five years of a head injury. So today we’re saging that energy out and working with this very nice tarot deck card of white cats. I’ve taken all the bad cards out, like ‘Death’ and ‘The Tower.’ ”
What happens next reminds me that maybe I need to get new girlfriends.
I always have this idea that I’m going to get together with My Girlfriends and that it will be fun and fabulous. Sort of like on Sex and the City, or like with Nora Ephron and her I’m pretty sure fabulous girlfriends (Rosie O’Donnell?). Or Oprah, as on Oprah After the Show. I am fifty-six. These are supposed to be the Oprah/Gayle chill years, of Northern Californian spa retreats, hot stone massages, coconut oil, wealth.
“What are you doing?” Andie asks.
“You have a ‘cat’ tarot deck . . . and you’ve taken out the difficult cards?” Julia asks.
“It’s my personal journey to goddesshood!” I exclaim.
Thank God now my more woo-woo girlfriend Marilyn arrives, in dark glasses and a sunbrella hat, clutching what seems like a Jeroboam of Honest Tea.
Marilyn puts her hand up.
“No alcohol. I am on . . . A. Forty-eight-hour. Sugar. Cleanse.”
We all murmur how great that is—
Although I can’t help thinking, at the rate Marilyn goes on sugar cleanses—I mean, how much sugar is Marilyn ingesting that she needs such frequent cleansing? The last time it was a 72-hour cleanse. Now it’s 48 hours. Soon it will be “I’m going on a 4-hour sugar cleanse.” Does that mean the other 20 hours of the day sugar is being bolted?
Julia—she of the unwanted Groupon cardio barre—returns to what is becoming an attack.
“I don’t know what you’re doing with these—these pants, but Sandra, honey, these are not the Eileen Fischer years!”
“Um, excuse me,” I lash back, stung. “I’m fifty-six. I believe these are the Eileen Fischer years. In fact, starting from age twenty-two, I kind of wanted them all to be the Eileen Fischer years!”
Marilyn nods sagely, quaffing her Honest Tea.
“That’s right. Yes. This is the time of the important ‘crone’ work.”
“God, no!” Andie wails. She is mysteriously rearranging the cheeses. What—is there a more “correct” order? Alphabetical?
“ ‘Crone,’ really?” Julia exclaims. She herself is dressed in a tailored white shirt today, and cuffed stylish jeans.
“Crone, yes,” I say to Marilyn. “I love that idea. Instead of bemoaning the fact that I don’t have the skin of a twenty-six-year-old, I can look in the mirror and say, ‘Wow! Look at that! I have pretty great skin for a CRONE!’ ”
“Yes,” Marilyn says, smearing brie and peaches on a baguette. “It’s very important work.”
“You know what they say, ‘When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple!’ ” I exclaim, throwing my arm out like a badass Lady of the Canyon.
Julia puts both hands on my shoulders: “I’m sorry, Sandra,” she says, “but you’re not quite that old yet. We’ve got Madonna. Jane Fonda. Even Betty White. No one is wearing purple.”
“What about Golda Meir?” Marilyn asks, waving her brie to the wind.
“Come on, people!” I exclaim. “I’m tired of trying to be young! Why should I even have fitness goals anymore? Every time, I get really excited about a Groupon ‘bikini boot camp’ thing with rock-hard pecs and six-pack abs, but four weeks later I’m burned out over that nonsense. I’ve repeated this cycle a zillion times! When do I get to give up?”
“You’ve got to use it or lose it,” Andie says.
“If I make it to my eighties?” I push on. “You’re supposed to gain weight. That’s right. Things flip. If your blood pressure rises, it’s better for your mental alertness.”
“Have you heard about Renee?” Julia asks, eyebrows up. “She’s sixty-eight and winning surfing competitions—huge spread in AARP magazine—”
“Yeah, maybe when I’m sixty I’ll get the short fabulous silver hair and I’ll start training for half marathons!” I’m practically yelling now. “But the back half of the fifties are the readjustment years. Hashtag Menopause. Isn’t this time for a pause?”
“So true,” Marilyn says with a nod. “My daughter Clare signed me up for this gym, but the classes are so confusing. If you come in sneakers, everyone’s barefoot. If you come barefoot, ever
yone’s in sneakers. Finally, I found my grail: ‘Cardio-Broadway!’ I was all set to do ‘Wilkommen, bienvenue!’ from Cabaret. But no. This was all about Kinky Boots and Hamilton. Who has time to fly to New York to see that?”
“And all that yo-yo dieting,” I say, slathering peach/brie on my Costco baguette so vigorously I feel sure it will count as cardio. “Sure, I can deny myself for weeks, doing only the nonfat Greek yogurt, anorexic chicken breast (don’t you feel like even the organic chickens, now, are anorexic?), the—blech!—steamed broccoli. But now that my children are no longer toddlers on my lap at Chuck E. Cheese’s, with that horrible wine grotto— One of the boons of middle age is that my divorced partner and I can Yelp some new gastro bistro and see a frisée of salad topped with a gleaming fried duck egg or pasta with pancetta and white truffle oil. Even with a Tuesday Groupon, no one can afford this but people over forty-five, so if we don’t eat it, who else will? The New York Times food section always has big pieces on how to make your own pasta, and I’m thinking ‘Who under the age of forty-five is reading this, and who still gets to eat pasta?’ ”
“Heh heh, I know,” Andie suddenly says. “The other day I actually thought ‘In order to eat fried chicken, I’m going to have to murder someone, go to trial with poor legal representation, end up on death row, and only then will I allow myself to order a last meal of fried chicken.”
“Why would I want to be young again?” I ask, sawing like a Viking into the Camembert with cranberries. “God! Just look at what my girls are going through! They have to get up at the armpit of hell called 5:30 a.m. At 6:30 a.m. in the inky blackness, Sally pushes open the chiming car door and wails, ‘Ohhhhh! We have to run today. Timed miles!’ The last time Sally joined hands with two classmates and exclaimed, ‘For Narnia!’ before the buzzer went off, she ran a six-minute mile and threw up! Jesus!
“And that,” I say, chawing on my baguette, “that is the fantastic thing about being middle-aged. I’ll never have to do an exercise I don’t want to do ever again.”
“How about a personal trainer?” Julia asks.
“Oh,” I say. “A couple of years ago, I stupidly paid a personal trainer to make me do things I didn’t want to do, ever. Stephanie would say things like, ‘Do ten burpees’ and I would actually try to do them. Idiot. You know what I would say now, at age fifty-six? I would say, ‘You want me to do a burpee? You’re fired.’ Or better yet, ‘You want me to do a burpee? I’m notifying my attorney, ophthalmologist, dermatologist, and anesthesiologist and I’m having them fire you. I’m unleashing my inner Leona Helmsley.”
“Honey,” Julia says, “you have to keep evolving. You have to keep trying new things!”
“Things that are new now blow,” I tell her. “For instance, last winter, Charlie’s family invited me to join them on a ‘fun ski day’ in Vermont. Did I know how to ski? Technically, yes, I last skied when I was eight, which felt recent, although in fact—and that is the continual amazement of midlife—that was actually like a hundred years ago.
“This became clear when I was handed a pair of modern ski boots. A typical ski boot used to have laces. This thing was like a pressurized canister that used gravity to swallow my foot whole, causing hydraulic bolts to snap shut around my chubby calf, making it feel like it was being Skilsawed in two. Upon being handing skis and poles and a helmet, I realized I couldn’t walk. Forty minutes into my ski adventure, like a beached whale, I literally couldn’t get out of the building.
“It was then that I first put on what I call my ‘ski face.’ All around me were pod people behaving as though skiing was a perfectly normal—even fun—activity. I alone knew it was not. The most sensible course of action was to lie down on the dirty carpet next to the hot chocolate machine, crying, so a team of Army engineers could chopper in and unspring me from my cruel leg traps. And yet, maybe the skiers would turn on me if they smelled fear. I would pretend calm and enjoyment, even though I had no idea in what direction the slopes were or what on earth I would do when I found them.
“But me on skis is not great either. Instead of a skill level of five or four, I’m like a minus ten, meaning I need a team of sherpas not just to carry me up the hill but to push me out of the way of actual skiers.
“Even getting to the bottom of the bunny slope seemed impossible. How do you walk uphill in skis? I kept sliding backward and careening into other people, including some five-year-olds. Fortunately, all five-year-olds are excellent skiers—a Lilliputian team of them helpfully pushed me toward the rope tow.
“The attendant handed the rope tow to me. I grabbed it, but it jerked forward with surprising strength and I was literally now being dragged spread eagle forward over the snow. It’s amazing how many things can go wrong so quickly. Later I do a face-splat off a chair lift—they actually have to shut the whole thing down for ten minutes. Bottom line: snow is not fun!”
“What are you going to do?” Andie asks. “Just stop trying and quit?”
“Why not?” I exclaim. “Can’t I step out of the endless cycle of self-improvement? Which is”—here a new idea strikes me—“itself a form of capitalism, isn’t it? Marilyn! Help me out.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” Julia asks.
“Yes—the capitalization of feminism,” Marilyn says, twirling her baguette in the brie. “To whip women into a bipolar frenzy of dependence on purchasing outside products to ‘fix’ us, the pattern is ‘Chastise! Indulge!’ It’s all ‘Lose ten pounds!’ ”
I riff back to her:
“Here’s a scrumptious fudge brownie recipe your family will love!”
“Walk off the belly fat in thirty days!”
“Oprah says, ‘Love and accept yourself for WHO YOU ARE.’ Buy the book!”
“You may not have noticed, but YOUR HAIRSTYLE IS AGING YOU!!!”
“Indulge in some hazelnut Dove Bars immediately. Order online. Two-hour delivery.”
“Depressed and confused? Try Cymbalta.”
“Are your toes ugly? The twenty-minute pedicure.”
“Practice Kegels—”
“I know,” I say, “even the vagina. It’s not enough that it stretches to give birth. Now it has to stay slim and thoughtful and moisturized. It’s another thing on the to-do list. Jesus! Isn’t fifty-six an age where I don’t have to do this anymore? Can’t my vagina just take a smoke break and do crosswords now? Can’t it just be an obese, retired Nancy Pelosi who goes to Las Vegas and gambles?”
“Honey,” Andie says. “It’s just that for you, ‘goddesshood’ seems to be just about eating cheese and not exercising!”
NO MATTER IF my girlfriends don’t get it. Or if the party ends without anyone even touching my adorable fanned-out “cat” tarot cards.
The next morning is my personal time to shine.
I go into Third Eye, for my magical 11 a.m. “shirodhara” goddess massage. It is a physically and spiritually transformative eighty-minute Ayurvedic massage treatment, whose culmination is warm oil poured soothingly onto your third eye. (“You have to experience it to believe it,” enthuse, on the website, apparently rejuvenated clients.)
I sit in the waiting room in my fluffy spa robe, sipping lemon cucumber water. Therapists come out and greet their clients. At 10:58. 11:00. 11:03. 11:05. While waiting, I can only laugh watching my monkey mind count the minutes. So what if it’s six minutes after 11? Now seven. The door opens—there she is! Vasti!
Vasti gently leads me to our treatment room and sits me on the massage table. Indicating a basket of oils, she asks, gently, “Are you familiar with Ayurveda? With the three doshas? Vata, Pitta, Kapha?”
I tend to not like eighty-minute—and now due to the lateness, seventy-three-minute—massages that begin with an enervating Ayurvedic lecture. Never mind. Deep breathing. Om. I quickly select the oil that smells nicest, like a vanilla lymph node. And she begins.
Although there is much fussy, almost ritual draping and redraping going on, it’s a nice massage and I relax. It’s true that
the room has a space heater, the bed warmer is on, we’re in a California winter heat wave, and I am fifty-six. But—
Whoa! What’s this? A drizzle of—ouch—almost scorching oil splattering onto my forehead. Then oozing into my scalp and eyebrows—eww—
I endure this, biting my lip, so transformation can happen, but forty seconds in I am forced to ask, “How long does this go on for?”
“Eight minutes.”
I sit up, pulling my sheet around myself in shame. I’ve failed at Ayurveda—and the bar was low! “Stop it!” I shrill.
“No problem,” she says calmly, rebundling my head in yet another towel, before retreating. “I’ll leave you for your five minutes of personal time.”
Fully refreshed, I arise from shirodhara ready to do what stressed middle-aged ladies do best. I yell at the front desk and demand a discount. They give me 30 percent off—which I guess is for the third eye, so we’ll call it even.
Home Self-Care
THE TIME HAS COME. I can deny it no longer.
My three-story 1906 craftsman house has become a haunted house–like eyesore. Understand that we live in a historic enclave in Pasadena called Greenfield Heights whose local pride—fueled by architectural tours and block parties and wine tastings—only continues to swell. Yesterday, right across the street, on our neighbor’s lawn, a fussy GREEN GARDENING AWARD sign went up. The arrow was conspicuously pointing toward his lawn, away from ours.
Further, our most recent Greenfield Heights e-newsletter said, under a banner titled NEIGHBORHOOD PRIDE: “Please e-mail us if you need references for gardening, painting, or deck refinishing.” Was this for my eyes only? Back in 2009, at the bottom of the market, I bought my home on a short sale. I can’t explain exactly what that means, except to say, as the owners were in trouble, I got the house way below market value. Yay! Unfortunately, it was not enough below market value that I had money left over to properly maintain it. So it’s basically fallen, like Norman Bates’s house, into disrepair.
The Madwoman and the Roomba Page 4
