in memoriam

her name was walkyrie vom adler stein.
she was my dog, my friend, the loyal keeper of my home, my constant companion.
we called her eikka. also eikka monkey. also, monkey girl.
she never started fights with other dogs, but she never ran from them either. so i always told her she was sweetness and light, because i'm a firm believer in positive reinforcement.
she adored all my people. everybody i invited into our home, she welcomed with tail wags and sloppy kisses and an assortment of toys which she considered her most prized possessions.
anybody i didn't know or felt cautious about, she barred from entry. and she was pretty convincing.
she was descended from a long line of schutzhund champs and k9 working dogs, and needed stimulation every day. so we had games and we had jobs and we had quiet time.
she loved new things, new people, new food, new experiences.
she would learn a trick in about three minutes flat. and she'd never forget it, even if months went by before you remembered it yourself.
she was the smartest dog i ever had.
because i work from home, we were always together. inseparable. so the years passed in this way, and we really lived every minute of them.
on february 2nd, eikka passed away in my arms, with an assist. we were at home on her bed, the doors open to our garden that she played in every day. the sun was shining, a cool breeze blowing in the trees outside. she left us as she lived - brave, confident, and loved beyond measure.
she had a heart like you would not believe. she was bold and powerful and beautiful.
i am desolate without her.
i miss my friend.

my america

“americans,” my grandfather, my dad’s dad, used to say to me, “we can do anything we put our minds to.” he’d grown up destitute, the son of an immigrant butcher. and, when he was ten years old, he got his first job. every morning before dawn, he drove a horse and wagon to deliver milk to affluent families’ doorsteps in manhattan. he attended his local public high school and, from there, went to city college where he graduated with a dream to be a doctor and an acceptance to the medical school in edinburgh. but my grandmother, to whom he was already engaged, did not want to move to scotland, and warned she would not wait for him if he did.
he chose love.
once married to my grandmother, with my dad on the way shortly after, the stability of a government job looked attractive. he went to work for the usps where he toiled in the main office in midtown manhattan for decades, until his retirement. shortly after his retirement, he went back to school and got a masters degree in education. with it, he went on to teach high school algebra and trigonometry for another fifteen years. he and my grandmother lived quiet, contented lives.
my grandmother was a bookworm. she read, day and night. each week my grandfather would drive her to their local library where she would check out the maximum allowable number of books…twelve. and she’d read every one of them. some weeks, my grandfather would mock-complain that she’d finished her stack of books early and he’d had to take her for a second trip that week.
my grandfather was also a card shark. he joked he had a memory like an elephant but anyone who knew him could tell you it was more than just insanely good recall…he had a photographic memory. for instance, in a card game, he would remember the face of every card shown, every card he’d been dealt, and he would also then know what the likelihood was of a card he needed turning up or already being in the hand of someone else at the table.
he never lost a card game. ever.
and he never played a high stakes game that i ever heard of. the most he brought home in winnings was a fan of twenty-dollar bills. and then he’d take us kids out for ice cream cones with sprinkles. truth is, he would’ve raked it in at private games. he would’ve cleaned up in atlantic city or biloxi or vegas and probably been shown the door or barred from the tables. or worse.
but it wasn’t about the money for him, and lord knows he could’ve used the money. it was about playing the game well. and that’s what he taught me.
“every day,” he would tell me, “in every way, i’m getting better and better.”
my grandmother, my mom’s mom, would often say to me, “you can do anything you want to do. you just have to put your mind to it.” and, like my grandfather, she really believed it.
unlike my dad’s dad, my mom’s mom grew up privileged, the only daughter of an affluent land developer in south louisiana. she was an artist, a painter, and never worked a regular job a day in her life. but she knew the value of a dollar down to its last penny and never put money anywhere she hadn’t thought about it clearly or made a decision that was the way she wanted to spend it.
and, yet, she had some of the sloppy habits of the wealthy, too. like, she couldn’t be bothered keeping a record of checks she wrote. the register in her checkbook was mainly blank, apart from a few artistic doodles in the margins. what transactions she had remembered to note were often rounded off to the nearest zero. one year, when i was a kid, she was so way off in her lame attempt at calculations, she wrote a check to the irs for her taxes and it bounced. i recall having a nightmare that bad men were coming to take my grandmother away but, of course, that never happened. instead, she paid a hefty fine and wrote another check, a good one this time, after which my mom supervised her tax preparation, with an eye toward keeping the immediate family out of federal prison.
my grandfather, my mom’s dad, was a lawyer. i never quite understood what had attracted him to the law since he rarely ever spoke of it at all. like the law, however, he did absolutely everything at a glacial pace. he never hustled across the street, never drove a car above 40 mph, never hurried himself or anybody else along. he had one speed and that was slowly forward. as a kid, i loved it that there was an adult in the family i didn’t have to skip beside to keep up with. and i delighted in my grandfather’s sense of play. often, he would bring me dolls or toys when he came over to visit with us but, even better, he would hang out and play with me for hours. once he brought handmade furniture for my dollhouse, pieces which remained amongst my prized possessions for many years. when i was really little he taught me to make sailboats out of old or unused stuff he’d find around the house, and we’d take our skiffs to the water’s edge, floating them until they capsized and sunk. he loved the water and was a strong swimmer. even when i was very little he would take me out into the waves, holding me in his arms as he jumped them. when i was old enough, he taught me to jump the waves myself, or duck under them. and when i was tuckered out he’d bring me to shore, then go back out beyond the waves where he’d swim laps along the shoreline. i would sit in the sand and watch him go, arms pulling, legs kicking. so sure and strong. i never could learn to swim like that, like a machine. i had to settle for mermaid fantasies in the deep end, and underwater tea parties with my friends at the bottom of the shallow end.
like her dad, my mom is a lawyer. she knew she wanted to be a lawyer when she was a kid, despite opposition from my grandfather who didn’t think it was a “nice” profession for a lady and wanted her to either be a school teacher or a librarian. but she went for it and she went for it young. not that she was one of those nerdy genius types who go to college at twelve, or anything. she was sixteen.
and she is one of those rare lawyers who really loves the law.
sure, she’s cynical, crafty, maneuvers up, down, and sideways for a client…because she knows there is the letter of the law and there is its intent. so, you need to be smart and you need to be moral and my mom believes that and that belief in her is unshakable.
my dad, who is a doctor, always said my mom would have made a great judge. because she is utterly implacable most of the time.
so, when she said to me on election eve that the greatest disappointment of her life so far was not that george bush won the presidency, i was listening. she told me she’d always understood that the founding fathers in all their wisdom had set up our system of government so that the checks and balances between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches were such, that no one president could actually change this country drastically for the worse. because of this, she was pretty sanguine when bush jr. got into office, even for the second time. but, now, after eight years, her view is permanently altered.
“bush ruined this country,” she told me, “and i can’t believe it, still.”
her president, our president, broke her heart.
i never thought a day would come that my mom would have her heart broken by a man she doesn’t know and never will. because she has the heart of a lioness.
and that’s my personal beef with dubya.
there’s a little bit of mix and match on both sides of my family, but the mason-dixon pretty much runs right on through our tribe.
i have relatives who will disagree with me on almost anything political or social. some of them probably couldn’t find their way clear to vote for a black man for president, to them it maybe seemed wrong or like the world was upside down or something. i feel sorry for them, for being narrow and scared, and clinging to the wrong side of history.
and i have friends, not many, but a few, who probably punched their ballot for the republican ticket back in november. and they may have sighed inwardly doing it but still couldn’t bring themselves to vote for the democrat.
today, i am so glad it didn’t work out for them. i’m euphoric, actually.
like our new president seems to, i feel a terrible weight upon me of these last many years of war and terror and fiscal chaos and environmental waste. i worry about the future of my people, this country, our planet and all the other living creatures that inhabit it. i worry about the air and the oceans, the forests and the ice caps, the jungles and the coral reefs.
but, today, i also feel hope. hope that a sea change in thought and philosophy is now before us. hope for the possibility of a fundamental change in our intentions.
and because we face this brave new future led by a man who appears to be a true statesman, a man with intelligence and education, with sensitivity and compassion, and a seeming ability to actually negotiate with his people, and all the other people of all the diverse nations on this earth, but, even more important, with himself.
because of this man, i have hope.
my grandparents, all four of them, were proud people. in their lifetimes, they had seen prosperity and economic chaos, war and peace, freedom and strife. they were born in the age of the horse and buggy, and passed away in the age of the concorde busting the sound barrier over new york city and london and paris. they saw a man walk on the moon.
and they were patriots, proud not of everything america did or had done, but proud to be a part of this country’s greatest generation. they knew, as our new president said earlier today, that “greatness is never a given, it must be earned.”
what was “greatness” to them? i’m pretty sure they would have agreed with our president today when he mentioned these qualities…
“honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism – these things are old. these things are true.
this is who we are.”
i hope this is who we are. i know, this is who we were.
i miss my grandparents. and i really wish they could have been here for this campaign, this election, for today’s inauguration. not just because i think they would have been proud to be here for this, but because i am proud to be here for this.
in my america.

choice

i live, now, with the lights on. morning and night. afternon and evening.
it’s a craving for something i can’t quite put a name to. illumination, maybe. clarity, perhaps. some desperate hope for a brighter future.
we seek each other’s constant presence because time is suddenly so short.
there are many tender hugs, chaste kisses, sad smiles between us.
she is innocent yet knowing.
this breaks my heart.
in the hospital, sharp with the odors of disinfectants and fear, we cling to each other. we listen to the test results, the theories, the suggestions for more tests.
poor prognosis. that’s what they call it.
it means, quite simply, the end of time. i find i am greedy for time, i want more and more time for her, with her.
it’s true, from the moment we reach maturity, we begin to die. but, also, we have some embedded expectation of not just survival but an ability to grow and change and thrive.
to love.
to wake up each morning, and fall asleep each night.
to have happiness and sadness. to find joy and discomfort, delight and fear.
to eat ice cream.
when you know the end is near, most of that falls away even as it becomes most dear.
traditionally, staying up all night, or almost all night, is how i come to the choices and decisions at the critical crossroads in my life.
and so, now, i am up nights. also, days. i find food intolerable. drink must be forced down. it’s as if a part of me is dying with her. i don’t have to try, it’s just happening.
i’m told i must drink and eat something. try to sleep whenever she does. i must keep up my strength for her because she needs me now more than ever. the wisdom of this is as clear to me as my inability to complete these essential tasks.
i go without. because i can not nuture myself while she is dying. i know it must be simple technical effort, get it down and don’t bring it right back up again. i understand. because this is what i am trying to help her do.
i hand feed her, tiny portions of food or drink, her favorite things only. things that are soft, easy to digest. we go outside in the garden as often as we feel able, just to sniff the air, feel the chill. then, quickly, back inside to the warm bed.
it’s a simple life now. i ache with it.
one day, soon, i will be faced with a choice. to put her through horrible procedures in a desperate last chance at extending life. or to let her go with dignity and beauty, shining characteristics of her living life.
i know i want to do what is best for her, not for me. because what’s best for me is to hold her and never let go.
and, yet, we lose the ones we love.
we break down in overwhelming tragic grief.
we cry for ourselves.
then, one day, a light shines. it’s a small light, and dim, and it seems way off in the dark distance.
and, yet, we take one step towards it.

vanity fair

beauty knows no pain.
i didn’t come up with that line.
but, the first time i heard it, the truth of it sure resonated. and, as i may have mentioned before, a quick glance at my shoe rack tells you the idea of sacrificing looks for comfort is repellant to me. an abomination unworthy of serious consideration.
lately, though, my style worldview’s taken a huge hit. body check, actually.
see, i busted my toe.
technically, i fractured the 1st distal phalange of the hallux. which means, i busted my toe. my big toe.
how it happened is…i ride horses. and they are heavy. like, half a ton heavy. things got interesting, like they do with horses, and i busted my toe.
well, that’s how i tell it, anyway.
then there’s the real story which is, truly, so dull and unglamorous that the people who heard it straight urged me to come up with something better.
thing is, when it happened, i didn’t realize i’d actually broken a bone. there was the initial swearing, hopping around, weeping…i mean, it hurt. then i dried my eyes, iced, elevated, took advil, and went back to walking around on it. for three months.
oh, sure, it was swollen, bruised, painful and i had to limp hard to get anywhere but, i made it work. i even planned a trip to new york, my favorite walking city. after a few days of genuine slogging along city streets, though, in subways, up and down steps, sprinting for cabs or elevators, dashing across intersections amongst hordes of my fellow pedestrians, i was completely lame. and, what was worse, instead of enjoying my time in museums, restaurants, theaters, i was always dreaming of some future moment where taking my shoes off and giving the toe an ice rubdown wouldn’t be wholly inappropriate.
that’s when i realized i hadn’t just jammed my toe, or sprained it, or strained it. i had busted it.
so, you must have a really high tolerance for pain - says the beverly hills foot doctor as he returns with the x-ray of my toe. evidently, space between two pieces of bone where no space should be, is called non-union and it’s bad. walking around like i did, kept jostling the two broken pieces so they couldn’t fuse. worse yet, the fracture was in the joint, which makes it a lot harder to heal.
now, anyone who knows me will tell you i am a delicate flower. i have a low, way low threshold for pain. as a kid, my mom called me the princess and the pea—or princess mudfoot, but that’s another story – because i would be scraped or scratched and bleeding from the kind of incidental contact with sharp points and edges that most people don’t even notice.
i bruise if i bump into furniture.
the best padded running shoes give me blisters.
i even cut labels out of new tops because the way they poke at the nape of the neck makes me want to rip my clothes off. at wholly inappropriate moments.
but i have a will of iron and that can get me a pretty far distance through all kinds of pain and suffering when i have a mind to go.
low threshold for pain, maybe. but, high tolerance for it when i make a commitment to push through.
this is a family trait.
ignoring a fracture because there’s something better to do is a trick my grandmother pulled once, when we were on our way to the ballet. leaving the house, she slipped in the driveway and broke the fall with her arm. she insisted she was still up for seeing the performance, but, when the curtain came down, suggested we take her to the er because her arm was broken. she’d waited to tell us because she didn’t want to miss the ballet. i know this because, later, when i asked her how she knew her arm was broken, she said she heard a snap when she fell.
although my grandmother’s tolerance for pain was somehow marvelous to me, it was also terrifying, and i swore i would not grow up to be like that.
then, there’s my mother, who went into labor with me in the middle of the night but preferred to suffer the contractions quietly so as not to wake my dad up too early in the morning. that, to me, is even more unbelievable than ignoring a fracture through an evening performance of swan lake. then, again, she is her mother’s daughter.
truth is, my entire family functions at a pretty high level with a minimum of sleep on a completely regular basis. my dad sees his first patient somewhere around dawn, monday through saturday, and rarely goes to sleep before midnight, usually after being out on the town with my mom. my mom takes calls from clients however early the phone starts ringing and keeps pace with my dad every night at bookclubs and concerts, operas and ballets, theater and film, dinner parties with friends, dinners out with other couples.
but, ignoring a fracture for three months sort of takes the cake. even in my crazy family.
although, i blame the ballet classes.
i started when i was three. now, when you're that little, class doesn't actually hurt. physically, that is. then you get a few years older, and a pretty pirouette or nice turnout just isn't enough. soon, they’ve got you stretching in ways no mere mortal ought to, leaping at heights and distances no reasonable girl would attempt, and developing poses that most kids would give up on long before the sweat and the burn.
and that’s how you learn to push your physical limits, then, on a long exhale, push a little further.
equally demanding are the emotional politics of the ballet studio. and, from day one, i felt intimidated by the other girls. they were prettier, for one thing. mostly older, too. they wore pink or white leotards and they were not shy. they were chatty in the changing rooms, catty once out of earshot of their victims, and they tittered amongst themselves during class, particularly if you missed a step or lost the count or, heaven forbid, fell out of a turn.
in a traumatizing environment like that, you learn to suck it up. chin high, gaze straight, you push through until you are safely on the other side. even if you are the princess and the pea at home.
how i reckon it, that’s where i got my training for the three months walking around on a busted toe. training plus total denial. but, denial sure is hard to maintain once you’re looking at a dark space between two pieces of bone on the x-ray film.
the treatment, initially, was immobilization. and that beverly hills foot doctor was not kidding around, either. he sent me home in a massive removable cast, a contraption made of molded black plastic and cushy foam-lined thick compression bandages, wrapped and buckled up by wide velcro straps. from toe to knee.
for six weeks.
in the middle of summer in los angeles. where it’s typically in the mid 90’s all day. every day.
i was allowed to take it off for sleeping and in the shower but, anywhere i wanted to go, i had to go in das boot. i called it das boot, because it was about the size of a german u-boat. the beverly hills foot doctor found this very amusing, while also reminding me what a great film “das boot” really was. i actually already knew this, and grudgingly agree. i say grudgingly because i used to be a d-girl for the producer of that film, and my experience working for that particular group of german filmmakers was…well, that really is another story.
the point is, das boot was so massive and ungainly that i couldn’t actually walk in it. instead, i would lurch forward, swinging at the hip, then land with a resounding thud on my heel. a tight swivel got my leg swinging again so i could lurch into another step. inclines, like my driveway, were hi-larious because i had to crab up or down them, sideways. and stairs were barely navigable without clinging for dear life to railings and hoisting das boot up, one slow step at a time.
nor could i wear jeans or pants, unless i wanted to roll one leg up over my knees. which i did, sometimes. but, mostly, i wore skirts and dresses which left my opposing leg bare and open to the likelihood of having das boot scrape, abrade and basically sand all the skin off me. so, to prevent that extra damage, i would wear a riding boot on my good leg. in the middle of summer. and, as hot as it gets here in los angeles in summer, it feels even hotter when you’re wearing a riding boot on one foot and dragging das boot around with you on the other.
when i did get out of the house, anybody i passed, even complete strangers, asked what had happened to me, always expecting something more dramatic than my busted toe.
once, in an elevator, the guy holding the door for me wondered aloud if my leg had been amputated. which, seriously, gave me nightmares. i even told the beverly hills foot doctor, at the next appointment, that i was having toe amputation dreams. this must have helped him organize a fairly accurate psychological portrait of my internal process because, every time i saw him after that, he would emphasize that i was healing well and making great progress.
finally, the cast came off and i began a three-month stint of physical therapy with a therapist of diminutive stature, a recently retired ballet dancer.
and, so, i entered a new phase of acute physical pain that really didn’t let up unless i was pounding advil, sitting around with an ice pack on my foot, while watching something screamingly funny on tv.
tiny dancer, it turns out, has hands from hell. from the moment she would start her foot massage on me, i would yelp, whimper, pant, and break out into a full body sweat. i spent most of the sessions breathing in, then out, while trying to hold up my end of our chirpy, girly chats about clothes and shoes and boys and the wine country in france where she was traveling that summer.
after a few months of these thrice weekly torture sessions with tiny dancer, i began to see improvement in my gait and flexibility, although it was also becoming increasingly clear that my days of pirouettes in pointe shoes were gone for good. if i’d grown up to be a dancer i would have been considering surgery. or retirement.
the biggest plus, though, was i was finally ready for more stylish footwear. see, during my two-month confinement in the cast, i was restricted to a very few articles of clothing that would work with das boot on one leg, a riding boot on the other. my new instructions from the beverly hills foot doctor were to expand my footwear options to ugg clogs or sandals with wooden soles or running shoes fitted with special orthotics to promote healing. well, that wasn’t going to work, now, was it? orthotics in running shoes were not invented for delicate flowers.
it was wooden shoes for me, which opened exciting new outfit possibilities. all casual, of course. you can’t exactly shimmy into your favorite little black dress and then pair that with your clogs for an evening’s cocktails.
so, i was getting out there in my clogs and doing fine but i couldn’t help notice all the women around town in their kitten heels and closed-toe pumps and pointy-toe stilettos. everybody had cuter shoes than i did. and, more important, they were walking around without a deforming limp. i was suffering from shoe envy.
hell may have no fury like a woman scorned. but a woman with a closet full of really cute shoes she can’t wear is not a woman to tangle with either.
dark days, i tell you. very dark.
but, as time passed, and i did the foot stretches and exercises tiny dancer taught me, i started to heal. and with the healing came less pain. and with less pain came more walking. soon, i was hiking with my dog again, going to yoga, riding horses, and experimenting with a variety of shoes in my closet.
now, it’s true i have a lot of shoes. but, not compared to my mom. and my grandmother, for sure, had more shoes than both of us put together. she had shoes she’d never worn, shoes she’d worn a thousand times that were older than my mother, shoes in every hue, straps or pumps with every type of heel ever designed. but no clogs. no wooden shoes at all. she wasn’t into anything clunky or chunky or in any way cloddish. my grandmother liked her things to be feminine, preferably with a diamond or a feather or a flower on it. a ribbon or bow might do in a pinch. she preferred lace and embroidery on her pillows and tablecloths. fringe on her silk lampshades and even, sometimes, on her upholstery. i distinctly remember a thick, satiny, twizzle-sticked fringe along the bottom of her forest green brocade sofa.
these days i’m getting around a lot better. my limp is, i’m told imperceptible. i can still tell i’m not walking exactly right but, i’ll get there.
my grandmother was an aquarius, like me. every year, on her birthday, which falls a few weeks before mine, i like to do something special. sometimes i watch her favorite film – “gilda”. sometimes i’ll wear a piece of jewelry she used to have on all the time. always, i light a candle.
this year, to celebrate her birthday and my newly perfect gait, i shimmied into a little black dress and slipped into a pair of high heels.
and i walked.

fly

everybody has experienced mortal dread.
some version of mortal dread, about something. at one time or another.
now, i don’t mean reasonable fear, like…
the time you boarded the itsy bitsy prop plane during that rainstorm in alaska, and you skimmed over rough, ice-capped seas, and your only comfort was knowing, if you crashed, you’d die of exposure in thirty seconds flat.
or like – the time you went for a swim in the lake by your cousins’ house and that log floating around between you and the shore turned out to be the gator you’d heard had been sighted way off in the other lake, eight miles down the road.
or like – the time when you came right off the horse still holding your reins, and you got dragged quite a few paces, sucking in the dust flying off those pounding hoofs by your face, till you finally rolled free.
all those moments when your stomach swoops and your breath hitches and you suddenly feel hot even though ten seconds earlier you bundled up because it’s the middle of winter and the wind’s howling all around, to my mind, are rationally and reasonably dreadful moments.
because…well, you may be about to die. imminently and horribly. and, in my opinion, imminent horrible death, with possible maiming along the way, is just cause for mortal dread.
emotional dread, now, is another animal altogether. that's the dread mere logic can’t touch. you’re not in imminent danger, horrible death can not be predictably forecast.
but, you’re in a panic anyway. and it feels as real as if you were catwalking across a tightrope in the big tent without a net, and losing your balance.
heights, depths, water, air…all those, pretty commonly, provoke mortal dread. also tunnels, bridges, elevators, escalators, fast lanes on the freeway, merges on the freeway. i have a friend who devolves into madness when confronted with the imperative to parallel park. she really does suck at it, too. although, perversely, she always scores great parking spots, even in super congested areas where there are none to be had. good parking karma combined with really poor parking skills. once, she lined up her ride by an open spot along a crowded street here in hollywood, then got out of the car and asked me, her passenger, to park for her. so, i did. because parallel parking isn’t one of my mortal dreads.
i have other problems.
there is, of course, an astonishing variety of mortal dread-inducing triggers. for starters, there’s blood. just the sight of it makes plenty people pass out cold. i know somebody who got through half a year of medical school before realizing they got faint at the sight of blood. sad story.
there’s also ghosts. demons. fear of the dark. or of open spaces.
then there’s public speaking. or a confrontation with your significant other. a compliment, or a criticism. a visit to the doctor or a mysterious illness. being alone in a foreign country or just being alone at home. a visit from your mother. a visit from your mother-in-law.
i could go on but, point is, everybody’s got a thing. quite possibly, more than one, that provokes mortal dread.
my big thing is, i don’t like to fly. at all.
and that’s a charitable way of putting it.
i don’t like one single thing about it. except for the part where i actually arrive at my planned destination, in one piece.
for starters, i don’t like the smells. just driving to the airport, that first whiff of av fuel makes me literally sick to my stomach. i don’t like airports, either. the temperature is always wrong, whatever the season. the crowds are pushy and excitable, and downright brutal during the holidays. the lighting is harsh, the seats are uncomfortable, the noise level’s too high, the flight crews are dismissive and unhelpful.
then, there’s the plane. i’m crammed into coach, of course.
the seat that, no doubt, has not been cleaned in weeks. the legroom that can barely accommodate the very young or the very short. the tray table that you just know the passenger before you sneezed on. the video screen in front of you that won’t reboot no matter how many times the flight attendants try to. the teeny tiny windows that you really can’t get a good view out of, even when the skies are perfectly clear.
the deep droning roar of the jet engines all around and through you, rattling your teeth, your bones, and your homeostatic balance. that one, by the way, nails you right up there in first class, too.
then there’s the lavatories on the plane that reek of disinfectant and lord knows what else once you’re in the air and a couple of your fellow passengers have been in there. and, seriously, why do people insist on peeing on the floor in airplane lavatories? okay, maybe in turbulence, men might have a problem with their aim. but, i swear, on the smoothest flights ever, somebody will still manage to pee on the floor. and then you have to try to step around it in a 2x2-foot space.
it’s just repulsive.
these are the classic discomforts of economy air travel. and i can handle all that just fine, with medication. it’s the mortal dread that really gets me. and, boy howdy, it kicks in early. usually, within moments of booking my flight. even if i’m not flying for months yet. thinking about flying, is enough.
as soon as i get that email confirmation in my inbox, with the flight info and my name on it, i get nervous. and i’ll stay nervous, too, anytime i think about my upcoming travel plans, until i land at my destination airport and get down off that plane into baggage claim.
now, the baggage carousel is where i see a lot of otherwise pretty calm folks get amped up. they’re worried about lost luggage, damaged luggage, delayed luggage and so on. and i, of course, am amongst them, hoping to soon see my battered blue rolling duffel bag bounce down the chute and onto the carousel. but i’m so damn happy to have arrived intact that getting my luggage just doesn’t have the weight that the sheer triumph of my survival does.
i have, inadvertently, scared other people into a fear of flying just by being nervous near them too many times. and my theory for what’s contagious about fear of flying is this – we’re all hanging by the same emotional thread when we’re up there in a jet at 36,000 feet at sub zero temps in very thin atmo. because, when you fall from the sky, there is no walking away.
of course, there’s an almost total certainty you will fly on commercial jets your whole entire life and never be in an aviation disaster. you may, however, be in a near-miss aviation disaster but, we all know the stats - it’s the safest way to travel. you’re at far greater risk in the cab to the airport. or crossing the street from where you parked your car to get to the restaurant the night before.
and yet, mortal dread tells me that planes are just too big and too heavy to fly. it tells me that i’m breathing my last breath, enjoying my last moments with this group of three-hundred and forty souls i have never seen before, reading my last book, watching my last images on the video screen, listening to my last tunes on my ipod, and drinking my last coca cola with ice.
my reaction to those dreadful thoughts is, pretty simply, high anxiety. i get tense, i feel ill, and i become very, very alert.
and, let’s face it, i’m pretty high-strung to begin with.
this is why i mostly fly alone.
although, my sexy english boyfriend swears i am nowhere near as bad as i think i am. but he only says that because he’s english and it’s a known fact that english people like americans best when they are silent and subdued. i am, in fact, almost completely mute, if quietly weeping, on planes. see, when i’m that strung out, i lose interest in my usual preoccupations. like talking. also sleeping, eating, drinking…normal functions which, when attempted on an airplane, can make one seem cranky and demanding. my long legs may be jammed right up against the seat in front of me, the food served may be totally inedible, the drinks may not be coming quick enough, and sleep is now a distant memory. but, if we’re aloft, thrusting forward at 450 knots, still on our right heading, then, really, that is all i require.
to be perfectly honest, at any given moment on a flight, i am just purely happy to be alive.
naturally, i don’t watch in-flight films in which a lot of bad things happen. like, the aircraft starts to go down, people scream in panic, the oxygen masks drop, a fireball rips through the cabin, children wail, women weep, men wrestle with their fear the way men in films do, and then the air marshal saves the day with critically well-timed help from a flight attendant who looks like halle berry.
personally, i have never seen tommy lee jones or halle berry on a flight i’ve taken. now, i’m sure they fly all the time, just like everybody else in hollywood. maybe they ride up in 1st class or on studio jets. hell, they probably have their own private planes, and more power to ‘em. my point is this, i don’t expect an air marshal or a flight attendant to land the 747 heavy i’m sitting on, at jfk airport, at nine pm on a thursday, should the pilot and co-pilot get bitten by venomous snakes a few miles above ohio.
instead, i like to watch programming that will either attempt to make me laugh, whisk me into a fantasy world, or bore me into a trance-like state in which the hours seem to pass by like minutes.
so, on my most recent flight across the continental u.s., i managed to cram “spiderman 3” and “shrek 3” into five hours and some minutes. i watched a little discovery channel over kansas, something about constructing suspension bridges, so i was able to slip into the aforementioned trance pretty easily. and, when we touched down safely in los angeles, i had just run out of suitable programming. the only film left for me to watch was a kid flick about hedges and furry critters that don’t resemble, in shape or color, any animal i’ve ever laid eyes on.
lately, i’ve been considering booking a flight to london, to visit my sexy english boyfriend on his home turf. i envision myself drinking tea, eating scones and striding through the grey wet afternoon in my old burberry trench coat with the plaid woolen lining. of course, for me, that journey means only one thing…
eleven straight hours of battling mortal dread.
as i consider the panic ahead of me, but before the headaches, tummy aches, nightmares, neck pains, hot sweats and cold sweats begin, this two-word solution for stress management holds out a faint ray of hope--
video ipod.
i see a trip to the apple store in my immediate future. by car.

found

i don’t have pierced ears.
but i love jewelry. i’m crazy for it, actually. on any given day i have about five rings on my fingers, three necklaces, a few bracelets on my wrist and, in summer, an ankle bracelet, too.
i once wanted my ears pierced, so i could get earrings like all my friends had. i was twelve. my mom, who wears earrings every day without fail, took me to the jewelry store. she said i could pick out a pair of gold studs, my choice. but the longer i gazed into the immaculate cases, countertop glass thick and warm under my palms, the less committed i felt to the notion. sure, the idea of bloody holes punched through my earlobes was a deterrent but, even at that tender age, i was resigned to accepting a certain level of pain for my vanity. a pair of trendy heels had already been reluctantly purchased for me, for parties only, on the theory that pointe shoes were doing me far more damage in ballet class anyway.
but, mostly, what was changing my mind, was a book i’d read at the house where i was the saturday night babysitter. in it were pictures of elaborate tattoos and multiple piercings on body parts i had not yet even seen on any adult in my young life.
sure, vanity knows no pain.
anyone can take a quick glance into my shoe racks and see that i embrace that concept wholeheartedly.
but by the time i was staring down into the jewelry case of gold studs, i had already formed a personal theory about body art. namely, it wasn’t for me. i would draw the line at mutilation and scarification rites. anything decorative i felt like wearing had to come off at night, without leaving holes or indelible ink.
so, we left the store without earrings, my earlobes intact, and i’ve never had regrets.
well, almost never. there was this pair of emerald earrings once, a while back. these stones were the green of fields in rain. i held them in my hand and wished, in that moment, that i could stick them in my ears and regard my own reflection. then i handed them back to the lovely woman who possessed them, and never saw them again, or anything else like them…other than in museums.
shortly after the aborted piercing appointment, i discovered i like diamonds. all gemstones, really. i like them in rings, pendants, bracelets. i even like them in earrings…on other people.
some might say i wear too much jewelry but, i like to think i can pull it off…tastefully.
to be honest, having more than five fingers without adornment makes me feel naked and that is, admittedly, kind of flashy. but layering necklaces is so totally in. seriously.
i used to wear a gold bracelet all the time. an art deco piece made in france. it’s a link bracelet, delicately wrought by hand, in burnished, rosy gold. and it was my grandmother’s.
then, one day, i was in a meeting with a producer, when i looked down and saw the bracelet was missing. the panic spike melted any inhibitions i might have had about codified behavior in job interviews. i stood up on the other side of the desk from my prospective employer-
sorry to interrupt, but i have to go right now – says i.
he was stunned. this may have been a first for him. i mean, we were smack in the middle of the interview. i raced through my brief narrative - the bracelet, my grandmother’s, the inconceivable emotional toll on me if i were to lose it…
and he helped me search. around his office, in the hallway up to the elevator, and then i rode down, alone, to retrace my steps to the car. all over the fox lot people asked me what i was looking for and one person suggested “lost and found” at the booth by the gate.
after i had virtually torn my car apart, all that was left was the booth by the gate, on my way out...just in case. seriously, who is going to turn in a really nice, lost, gold bracelet?
well, as it turns out, an angel.
because the guard at the booth told me a woman had found my bracelet laying in the middle of new york street. he didn’t recognize her and when he asked for her name she hadn’t wanted to leave it.
in my world, on my planet, that’s an angel.
oh, yeah…and i got the job, too.
so, i took my bracelet in for repairs and when i got it back i retired it to a safe place. now i just take it out and look at it from time to time. it’s not as much fun as wearing it, but the idea of losing it again, forever, is too awful to contemplate.
i once lost a diamond, too. i was wearing a ring that my great grandfather had given to my great grandmother when they were courting. my grandmother called it a promise ring. i guess she meant the promise of love.
one night i was at the hollywood bowl with a couple of writers, an exec, and a producer. one of those hollywood special blend nights that are both social and bidness, with friends, and friends of friends. at one point i looked down at my hands and that same panic seized me because-
a diamond had popped from the bezel in the promise ring.
i don’t know if you’re familiar with the hollywood bowl but it’s a ginormous outdoor amphitheatre. you park miles away along with thousands of other folks, walk on busy streets, across freeway access ramps, through tunnels, up mile-high escalators, and steep flights of steps, into the seating areas.
searching for it in that environment was a no-go. i checked my clothes, basically got naked in the ladies room but, it was gone.
and i suffered through the evening's entertainment - one of those-best film scores-programs, never my favorite anyway. i like something thunderous in an outdoor amphitheatre, like ravel maybe. accompanied by fireworks, if at all possible. so there i sat, in an agony of loss and self-blame, listening to the score from “superman”. i called upon the spirit of my dear departed gram to help me through and she must have actually been listening.
because when i pulled my car into my garage late that night and wearily swung my strappy sandaled feet to the cement floor, there was the diamond, right by my toe, glittering in the dusty yellow light of the electric garage door motor housing.
i took the stone and my promise ring in for repairs and when i got it back i retired it to the same safe place i keep the bracelet.
a few weeks ago i was with one of my best girlfriends one evening, at a new spa’s opening night soiree. the place was all zenned-out, wood and stone, orchids artistically displayed in pots. my girlfriend was there before me, getting a foot massage when i arrived. but before i can sit beside her for a little chat, before i can even get a nice glass of wine, she glances at her hands and when she looks up at me – there’s that panic spike. i recognized it right away and my eye flew to her engagement ring. her diamond was gone.
the search we made, for four hours - through her clothes, all around the spa floors, the walkways outside the spa by flashlight, the inside of her car, the inside of her office, the parking lot outside her office, her house, the driveway outside her house – was exhaustive. but there was no stone.
her husband joined us a little later. he smiled, he shrugged. he hugged her. and he told us that he’d never really wanted to get her a diamond in the first place. he’d wanted to get an emerald. and the only reason he didn’t, he said, was because he was afraid her mother would kill him.
and, now, she’s going to kill me instead – says my girlfriend.
we laughed. we even went out for a midnight supper after that, and made a toast to love.
because stuff is not love. not even the stuff that signifies love. like a diamond ring.
and stuff gets lost. all the time.
sometimes, when my stuff is found, like my bracelet or my diamond, i’ll find myself really believing that it made its way back to me because i was meant to have it, to keep it.
i don’t know…maybe that’s true.
could be, it’s just some good luck.
or maybe it’s a piercing pair of eagle eyes, which i also get from my grandmother.
and if she taught me anything she taught me this – the thing you guard most against losing in life, is love.
i lost someone recently. the kind of friend you laugh with, cry on, complain to, celebrate all your good fortune with. the kind of friend you can trust with your ideas, your fears, your stuff.
so i try to remember how fortunate i was to have ever known him, and to have been able to count him amongst the precious members of my extended family.
we were not related but he called me “sis”.
we went to see junky action movies on opening night and we made sure we had plenty of popcorn and candy and cokes with ice.
we talked about where we’d meet if there was a really big earthquake and we hi-lighted the routes on maps so we’d be sure to find each other.
we shared our best stories. and our lame ones.
we swam with our dogs in the pool on hot summer days.
we ate haagen-dazs vanilla and dark chocolate ice cream bars on summer nights, and laughed until the moon rose.
we talked on the phone most days.
we sang along to our favorite songs on the radio.
we celebrated our birthdays together, with champagne and roses. even if we were apart.
he was the best kind of friend there is. but the only way i know to honor that now, is through memory.
when we lose the ones we love, we wish we could have fixed something, changed something, done something different. logic tells us there was nothing. we don’t get second chances like that in life.
but in my dreams, i get a do-over.
and we find each other again.


for jkw

straight

i keep about five kinds of bourbon in my liquor cabinet at all times.
mostly small batch because, typically, that’s my preference, though i also have on hand a bottle from one of the larger distillers, for the mixed drinks that i like to whip up on special occasions.
juleps, of course. for the derby in springtime but, also, late in summer when the mint starts to luxuriate through the herb beds, and a sweet minty drink in a tall glass of ice is just the thing on a hot afternoon.
then, in winter, when i’m chilled to the bone, bourbon sours are particularly nice…sweet, tangy, and fiery on the way down.
but my all-season favorite mixed drink is the old-fashioned. and, it is truly old-fashioned, near dusty with age, in fact. it’s hard to even get a bartender who knows how to mix one.
that’s a shot of bourbon swirled with a splash of water, a sprinkle of sugar, a dash of bitters, one orange slice and a maraschino cherry muddled into pulp, all poured down over a few ice cubes.
yum.
sure, i like a colorful girly drink every now and again. in fact, you might say i’ve had more than my share of cosmos, apple martinis, champagne cocktails, mimosas, pina coladas, white russians, and cerulean blue poolside island rum concoctions with sliced bananas floating in them and umbrellas poking out of them.
but the truth is, i like a little pain in my whisky.
so i usually take my bourbon pretty much as it comes, right out of the bottle and down into the glass.
straight. neat. mean.
not unlike me, actually. on a good day.
now, it’s been brought to my attention on a number of occasions that i don’t look like the kind of girl who drinks bourbon but, really, what does a girl who drinks bourbon look like, exactly?
not like she checks her lipstick after tossing one down, perhaps?
not like if she gets a little too much sun she starts to feel faint, perchance.
in fact, not like she can flounce around convincingly in a skirt.
and i think the real reason i get all stiff-backed and snarky when someone new tells me how surprised they are to see a bourbon go down my throat with ease is, women writers.
what, in heaven’s name, are women writers?
well, obviously, me. i’m a woman. and, i’m a writer. when somebody asks me what i do, i say i’m a writer. does it also need to be qualified by my race or height or by my dimensions in a bikini? if i was a dancer, a doctor, a candlestick maker, my gender would not be as critical.
take a glance at the authors’ names on the bookshelves and there is a gender imbalance weighted heavily towards the menfolk. take a look at screenwriter’s credits on the dvd’s you rent from netflix and blockbuster and you’ll find an even steeper ratio of men to women writers. directors? well it seems to me that there are about a dozen women directors in hollywood that can get a film shot, cut, and onto the silver screen.
now, i write thrillers and action scripts.
this is always a surprise to people who are meeting me for the first time, or who don’t know me well, or have known me for ten years. and, i assume the surprise lies mainly with the fact that i appear to be the kind of girl who tears up at the final kiss in a romance, weeps a river when leading men beg their beloved to forgive them their heinous sins, hides her eyes when the tension gets too taut in a thriller, or simply skips out when the killing begins in an action movie.
i have this friend who’s “made it” in hollywood. we’ve known each other since college and we used to be close. in fact, for a long time, there was nothing either of us had written that the other hadn’t read and commented on. we spoke all the time and saw each other, socially, most weekends.
when he started to get some heat, signed with an a-list agent, and began making the big bucks writing bad tv, we had a chat about what i could do to get my career jumpstarted and he suggested i switch genres. write a romantic comedy, he advised.
but, why – i asked, dumbfounded.
write what you know – he said to me.
sure, we’ve all heard that before. it’s pretty good advice.
but, what he was really saying was – you’re a girl, so, write a chick flick.
now, it’s certainly true that i am not a detective. or a killer. or a pilot. or a cop. or a federal agent, or a hooker, or any of the other characters that populate my screenplays. but show me a male screenwriter who’s killed a man or turned a trick or had a real job as a lawman or a fighter pilot, and i’ll eat my hat.
see, that’s the thing about writing…you get to make stuff up.
oh, sure, i’ve had real romance in my life. there’ve been a couple of genuinely comic moments, too. but, my life does not resemble “philadelphia story” or “jerry maguire” by any stretch of the imagination. and, honestly, whose does?
most everyone i know is either miserably single, in a ruinous relationship, divorced, or planning on getting divorced soon. so, what i really know about romantic comedy is what i see at the movies, just like everybody else. that the good ones are superb and the bad ones unwatchable stinkers.
and what do i know about thrillers? detective stories? action movies?
i know that i like them.
so i try to write what i like, what speaks to me and makes me think deeper or laugh louder or cry harder. sometimes i pace the room muttering to myself with frustration and excitement. when a scene really goes the way i want it to i’ll often pump up the volume on my ipod hi-fi and dance with my german shepherd in the living room.
she’s a surprisingly good dancer. seriously. the dog has more than her fair share of natural grace and athletic ability.
so, although my friend meant well…presumably…i’ve had to discard his advice. and maybe i don’t write what i know.
or, for that matter, have an a-list agent and a fat checkbook, and an entrée to glam red carpet events here in hollywood.
but, at least i still write what i love.
and i'll take my kentucky sunshine straight, from the bottle into the glass.
thank you very much.