Jen Laird White

I’ve been on vacation.  And while ON vacation,  I couldn’t even think about being interested in anything in the world, let alone vaguely amused by it,  when the kids didn’t go to school for six or more hours a day.  It’s all about keeping them alive.  Or safe from me.  Nothing is humorous, not the health care debate, michael jacksons obsessively covered and unsurprising death, not even the woman who blogged endlessly about motherhood and how much drinking helped her deal with it and then announced mid summer that she was quitting drinking.  Thank god I picked Middle Age as my blogging topic although I’d certainly quit middle age were it an option. Here’s a summer story.  My friend Wendy and I  jog every day we can in the summer.  We spend our summers at the same place on the ocean and we have boys who are great friends.  Wendy and I just like hanging out.  Our runs are usually talk marathons with topics ranging from death to divorce (is there anything else other than, perhaps, food although I prefer to eat food rather than talk much about it).  We run at just about the same speed although I’m a bit more pitiful since I have six years on her.  This summer has been a hard one for both of us.  I think we’re both at some sort of mid-life crisis cross roads, happy one day, confused the next.  So on one particularly beautiful morning, one of those days, in perfect symphony, we headed out wondering if we should just keep going.  The kids would get used to living without us, the husbands would find younger, much more sympathetic wives (at least for that initial fake phase before they showed their true colors and became “demandingshrews” with all sorts of needs that didn’t include giving blow jobs), we could travel and sleep in in the morning, cook breakfast just for ourselves and the only fights we’d have to break up would be in barrooms.  We could use the bathroom with no one walking in and earn housekeeping money having sex which is sort of the way it works for me now.  We glumly rounded the corner in a glade next to the ocean where the path widened and there was actually a picnic table.  Suddenly one or the other of us shouted “What the heck is that”.  Up ahead, mid-glade, whatever a GLADE is, was the largest, grey seagull either of us had ever seen.  It had to have been thirty five pounds.  And not a looker of a bird.  Sort of a seagull version of Marty Feldman, for those of you who remember him.  Just sitting there looking, shoulders hunched, eye wide (I say “eye” because only one was visible) and head tilted at a bizarre angle as though it had spent the night on a pullout couch…something MY summer vacation included a lot of.  We got closer and it didn’t move.  We got really close and it stared at us with one terrified Feldmanesque eye and still didn’t move.  And that’s when I noticed the clear fishing line wrapped around it’s beak and wing, closing it’s beak and effectively attaching it’s head to it’s wing.  Ugh.  Big problem. Way bigger than a pull out couch kink.  And not a good look.  Ugh again.  And it was such a nice, well needed run.  Suddenly, here we were, mid marital bitch and being faced with one of those real decisions.  An ethical, moral, substantive and not superficial dilemma and I was just not in the mood.  “What do we do?” asked Wend.  “Two choices.” said I.  “One.  We keep going and have our nice run and continue to hammer our husbands until we feel better.  If we choose one, the bird will sit here all day looking unattractive and probably feeling horrible then get ripped to shreds by a coyote or a fox once it gets dark.  Two.We saved the goddamned bird.”  I looked long and hard at her.  She looked back and grimaced.  “You know we have to try to save it, right?” she said.  I nodded.  We decided that she would stay with the bird, I would run back to the road and try to find a box or a towel and a pair of scissors or, better yet, a vet with a specialty in ornithology.  The road was about five hundred yards away and there was a little wildly overgrown cottage just to the left.  It had the air of Unibomber residence about it and I paused outside the cottage wondering whether I was going to get shot or spend the rest of my life in captivity if I went to the door.  I noticed that the beat up Subaru circa 1979 parked outside had Obama and Save the Organic Farm stickers.  In my experience, Subaru owners, Obama lovers and anyone who wants to save a farm, let alone an organic one,  is unlikely to own a weapon that they will use to shoot ME.  I was a bit more unclear on the captivity part but, feeling the birds terror,  I took my chances, made my way through the puckerbrush and knocked at the screen.  I could see, peering in, that this was a unique house.  So special.  A home to make me feel proud.  A home that made me feel, well, almost Scandinavian.   A place that made me realize that I was not a total failure in the housekeeping department.  Because this house was what TOTAL FAILURE looked like.  And it was the perfect place for my mission because it’s owner had clearly never thrown ANYTHING away.  The woman who came to the door had the sweetest elderly face I’ve ever seen and white hair hanging to her waist.  She didn’t seem at all dismayed by her failure as a housekeeper but more confused by my presence.  I knew instantly that I would not become her captive because there was no room in her house for me.  Phew. I explained my needs and she sprang sprightly into action grabbing a box from a heap of ten thousand box choices(you just never know when you’re going to need a cardboard box or 500), carefully determining perfect seagull size,  grabbed the stinkiest towel I’ve ever smelled from a stack of probably equally stinky towels and found a precious pair of sewing scissors that couldn’t have been better matched by the vet specializing in ornithological surgery.  She asked if she could join the rescue and I said the more the merrier.  On the way down the path she made me sniff two wild yellow primroses perhaps, in a failed attempt to make me think that the fierce stench was coming from them not the towel. I could smell nothing other than urine, pet hair and something that might have been dead emanating from the towel but the gesture was sweet.  We returned to the glade to find Wendy looking worried because Ole One Eye had tried a daring escape into the bushes no doubt sensing that someone was about to wrap her in the stinkiest towel ever and thinking perhaps that being torn to shreds by a fox was preferable.  So there we were.  Standing next to One Eye.  Box.  scissors and stinky towel.  NOW WHAT.  This felt a bit beyond us all particularly since none of us were really sure how much shredding power was still in the seagulls un-fishing line fettered feet.  I decided I’d do the wrapping and holding, the nurse with a towel, if you will.  Wendy could get all the glory as the stench-free surgeon. And our sweet elderly friend could step in where she felt comfortable.  I think she might have been the crisis counselor although not the one with the DNR order.  Too sweet for that.  I grabbed the towel, yelled for the girls to head One Eye off at the pass and we ran around the glade for three or four minutes like something out of the Three Stooges, only stinkier.  Finally,  I swooped, Wendy held the box, I grabbed, we threw the poor terrified bird into the box and held her down.  Wendy, with nerves of steel, started snipping.  “Ooohhh, I’m so frightened.” our  friend, the non-housekeeper kept saying.  I will admit to some serious heart pounding myself.  The bird initially made several attempts to remove my fingers only to be foiled by the fishing line closing her bill.  Eventually she settled down, staring calmly at us with her only eye, either suddenly understanding that this might work out better than drawing and quartering by the locals or just overwhelmed by the smell.  The smell kept me calm too, trying to control my gag reflex.  Wendy kept snipping.  A piece of line here, a piece there.  A chicken bone came out with one long strand that was securing the wing,  a good sign indicating that the bird had probably swooped on a child crabbing which involves no hook just a piece of chicken and a less than bright crab who won’t give up even after he’s lifted out of the water.  The hook might have meant serious damage, way beyond our NON expertise.  Finally, with a quick snip, Wendy freed the bill, leaving a small bit around the lower bill but the bird able to freely open and close.  The bird took a second to catch on.  I only understood when the bird did because the bird grabbed me.  It didn’t hurt but it got my attention.  I leapt, released my hold and the gull hopped out of the box and QUICKLY shook free the towel.  In a childs story, now would be the point at which it looked at us with a deep long stare of grattitude.  A communication between man and animal.  In this case, the bird did stop, the bird did look and I believe the bird glared and silently communicated the following… “I can’t believe you couldn’t find a cleaner towel”.  She flapped twice, made some sort of sound and took off.  Wendy, our new friend and I hollered with joy, we returned the scissors, the box and, as much as I wanted to keep it, the towel, said goodbye to our new friend with the crazy messy house and returned to our jog, so proud of ourselves.  We couldn’t stop talking about the how’s and whats of our rescue effort.  Finally we settled into our run again.  We’d gone about a mile, flush with success, when I said to Wendy…”So what do you think that was about?”.  Wendy got a knowing expression on her face.  She said that she looked at the bird and wondered if it was us, bound in invisible thread, struggling with our obligations but needing someone to set us free or even better, that we needed to set ourselves free.  I pointed out that the bird might have been an analogy for marriage, our marriages, bound by something invisible and suffocating that needed help and some freedom to return to its former marital bliss.  Again, that we needed to free ourselves of whatever it was that was damaging, starving our marriages.  We ran a bit farther and finally agreed that the bird was just a sign from god telling us that even goddamned seagulls need our help.    

So what’s the point of my summer story.  Here’s the point.  Life goes along at it’s own pace.  Ups, downs, boring periods, fun times.  But how often do we get the chance to do something that scares us.  Something that we don’t know how to do or something that makes us very, very nervous.  Not often.  Kids do it every day.  They start new schools, play new sports, eat something that freaks them out.  And they feel proud when they do it.  We grownups just don’t have the opportunities.  Or we don’t take them.  Figuring out how to help that bird was scary.  I’m still a little amazed we did it.  I can’t tell you how good I felt for days afterwards.  Even now, I’m writing about it, aren’t I.  Just a little bit high.  And because I’m a sap I like to think there’s a bird out there retelling the tale of the rescue to all the other cawing gulls, partly to explain why she’s become so smelly but also a bit in awe of our kindness and skill.  That feeling of succeeding at something that doesn’t come naturally is too good to be passed up.  I think we should make it a rule, those of us of a certain age, that at least once a year, we make a choice to do something that scares us to death.  That we really don’t want to do because it’s hard.  Take a leap.  Be afraid.  Push yourself somewhere you really don’t want to go.  It’s the reason that I jump off the wharf in front of  my parents house every summer.  The wharf is a big wooden dock that juts into the tidal river that runs by our front door.  Kids leap seventeen times a day.  Adults do not.  It’s high, it’s cold, there might be sharks(not really, but “Jaws” ruined my life), it seems like an injury waiting to happen.  But I do it.  Early on in the summer.  Every summer and I’ll never stop.  Just because it reminds me of what it’s like to be young.  Nothing is old when you’re young.  I stand there.  I take a deep breath and I imagine the cold and that feeling of being airborne.  I imagine my leg getting ripped off by a shark.  I understand that airborne and fifty are not a good combo.  Neither are legs and sharks.  I get nervous.  And being a little nervous can be very exciting. It takes me a while.  Then I jump. And you should, too. Because when you sputter back to the surface, just for a minute, you’re eleven.  And eleven is a very nice place to be.

So I had the talk yesterday with my ten year old.  Yes, that talk.  We were in the car coming from the pediatrician where he’d just had a tetanus shot after a run in with a rusty nail, en route to the vet with our older cat who’d had a run in with her younger male sibling that left her with a pus oozing wound, an unfortunate need to vomit over the entire house and a bad attitude.  As the cat growled and screeched in the carrier, Jack and I rode to our vet, a great guy who unfortunately moved twenty minutes away a couple of years ago but is so nice he’s worth the trek.  The ride gave us a chance to chat and it turned out to be substantially more interesting than I could have imagined given the pus-y pissy pussy in the back. So there we are, me and Jack, cruising down the highway, when he says, immediately after a somewhat mundane discussion about why he refuses to wear his yellow raincoat,  “Mom, you know how you tried to tell me where babies come from and I didn’t want to know.  Well now I have some questions.”  I kept both hands on the wheel, eyes on the road and tried to stop the sudden rush of blood to the head.  I had, in fact, about eight months before, tried to have “the TALK.”.  Jack was home from school, pseudo sick during a period of malingering that ended when he made the serious misstep of pretending to lose vision in one eye.  He lost the fire for faking while sitting in the pediatric neurological opthamologist with numbing drops in his eyes and teary parents, imagining brain tumors.  Who knew, in his world of ten year old fakers,  that losing vision was ANY different from a belly ache?  On the day I decided to talk about where babies come from, he was perched in front of the boob tube, eating a quantity of cereal that would belie the claim of severe gastric distress and I thought, what the heck, if he can eat that much cereal, well, let’s just make something of this day.  I got out the book that covered this topic, one that my mother had actually used for me and my siblings.  I find it comforting that in a world of endless changes,  where babies come from has changed not one iota since caveman days and before, even if the advent of Victorias Secret, transexxuals and deadly STDs has made the whole production somewhat more complicated.  So there I am, well worn book in hand  proposing a chat about where babies come from.  Jack stopped chewing cereal, looked skeptical and, for the first time that day, actually a bit sick.  But he nodded.  I began with the flowers and their stamens, moved on to pictures of tadpole like sperm and jelly doughnut eggs, followed by wrestling frogs and just prior to the doggie style doggie style, stopped at chickens who looked for all the world like they were playing leapfrog.  Even more than the previous page’s frogs.  At that point, Jack, eyes now truly feverish, closed the book and said he needed a nap.  That’ll teach him.  You may not start sick, but I can get you there.

And that was the last time we dealt with that.  I had begged Rich to take him into the garage and do the talk.  Rich assured me he would, once he got around to it.  Which was NEVER.  And look, I do think ten is a bit young for this conversation even though the experts recommend eight.  I, personally one to often ignore experts, would have delayed oh, say, until he was thirty and getting his own place, but Jack has some very sophisticated pals who have known the nuts and bolts of procreation for a long time.  The only fight I’ve ever had with my friend Martha, the mother of Jacks best friend,  was when, at four, she told her son EVERYTHING, just because he asked. To me, that’s like dating Claude the local homeless guy, just cause he asked.  Sweet, yeah, but not advisable.  And, thus, because Henry ASKED,  I had dropped sweet  Jack in the sweet little nursery school classroom  with his sweet pal Henry who swaggered in armed with this potent time bomb of bizarre info.  I am unclear on the connection between autism and vaccinations but make no mistake, I think this kind of penis/vagina info at that age could result in permanent catatonia.  And I thought the grin on Henry’s face was about Legos.  I freaked when, once outside the school, Martha told me that Henry was now the possesor of the penis/vagina info, info that I, at forty eight,  still find hard to fathom even though I have, indeed, been an active participant and have the children to prove it.  She calmly explained to me that she and George were parents who believed in telling the truth when asked a reasonable question.  I shrieked that I was a parent who preferred to elude any less than tidy truth, particularly those involving penis’s and vagina’s,  at all costs at least until children could shave and buy their own dinner in four star restaurants.  And that there were no reasonable questions involving four year olds and the penis in the vagina thing.  It all eventually died down but, six years later,  I was reasonably sure that Jack did, in fact, have the info and I feared his version was not accurate.

So here we were, travelling the Parkway at sixty, screeching cat in the back seat, eyes on the road and Jack with some questions.  It was as good a time as any.  He turned his precious ten year old eyes my direction and said “Okay, mom.  First question.  Ketchup, pickle, mustard?”.  I had no idea what the fuck he meant. And, as I explained before, I have participated in the penis/vagina thing so I was confused.   “Huh?” I said articulately.  “You know, mom, ketchup, pickle, mustard.”  It became clear that I was screwed because my sex talk dilly dallying had allowed him to move so far beyond the certainly odd penis/vagina connection and into the land of the truly bizarre, although that reference to hamburger companions made me more than curious.  And concerned.  “Jack”, I said, “I gotta be honest.  I have NO idea what you are talking about.”  “Mom, c’mon.  You know. (look of disbelief) What are those?(look of extreme disbelief) What are ketchup, pickle and mustard ” (Look clearly translated to mean: “you idiot, you’re trying to keep me from the smutty truth. But I can take it”).  My mouth was now hanging open in dull confusion and I was fantasizing about the enormously expensive vet visit that was, oh, shoot, another eight miles away.  I shook my head.  “I don’t know ,sweetie.  I don’t know what you mean.”  He paused, turned to look seriously at me and said. “You know, Mom. Ketchup, pickle, mustard.  Condiments.”

Thank god we had this talk.   Condoms.  It’s condoms.  God, the embarrassment potential at the hands of his male pre-teen pals because of word confusion was enormous.  Condiments.  Condoms.  You can just see the poor little guy standing there nodding knowingly and about to make a fast food reference that would guarantee years of no one to sit with at lunch except for the other children who thought that ketchup, pickle and mustard were part of a romantic experience.  Phew.  And we’re were off and running on “the Talk”.  I explained the “whats”, the “hows” and the “what fors” only touching on STD’s for fear of wounding my boy for life.  I think I made a good case of the clap sound almost like a romantic sinus infection.  But there was a relief in having this chat.  That could have been embarrassing down the road, say, when, my boy,  preparing to lose his virginity at thirty six has to stop by the the Grand Union pickle aisle first.  And the mustard.  My god.  Downright painful.  The other questions were about Maxi Pads and vasectomies (this one prompted by running in to a friend in the supermarket parking lot, while Jack helped load the car, who was near tears because her husband had gone to the doc for the old snip/snip and had balked at the last minute and come home intact. Don’t get me started on the difference between a tiny nick to the balls and pushing an eight pound moving thing out of a canal half as small as a paper towel tube, attached to your body and surrounded by sensitive nerve endings, over a period of several hours.  NO patience. ).  This talk with Jack was amazing.  I don’t know if I have ever been as proud of myself as a mother (other than, perhaps pushing the moving eight pound thing through the half size paper towel tube).  We had a good chat, I stayed calm and was, if I do say so myself, quite articulate about things hard to be articulate about.  Jack didn’t turn red or even look confused.  He just wanted to know some answers and he knew when he was ready to hear them.  He listened and sighed with relief when I think he realized that condiments had no part of romance even if penis/vagina contact did.  I’m sort of with him.  The thought of pickles in your bed, ohh, and relish?…..anyway.  While I was proud of myself, I was even prouder of Jack.  Brave boy, calmly taking advantage of some quiet time (save for the screaming cat) to ask something he wondered about. And really listening.

It got me thinking about all of us.  Perhaps we all need to ask more questions.  When things don’t seem right to us, rather than jumping to judgement in our confusion, or boarding the bandwagon of popular opinion, we need to ask questions.   And lots of them.  Some big.  Some small.  Can you leave your kids in the car while you run into the grocery store?  If you don’t tell a friend she looks fat, is that lying.  Does executing terrible criminals make sense or does it make us worse people?  When does life begin and how do you reach a common ground when some people believe that abortion really is killing little babies?  Why is Geithners plan the wrong one or the right one?  Is Blue really the new Black?  Or is Brown?  Or, as I suspect, is black always going to be the new black?  Why does my hairdresser, after years of fine work, suddenly give me a purple lowlight?  What if the one I love isn’t really cold, but I’m just a bitch?  Is a romance in cyberspace cheating?  How do you take care of your parents when they’re old.  Why do I have to wear a yellow raincoat that looks like it’s for babies?   You can go on for ever.  And I think we should.  Talk to each other about all sorts of things, try to see how the other one thinks. See who knows what.  Henry knows a lot.  And acknowledge that you only know what you feel.  And that it may not always be right.  Just spend some time asking and answering.  Go for a ride with someone you like (I recommend leaving the screeching, pus covered cat at home) and find out something you want to know.  And something they want to know.  I think we’ll all be better off.   And stand less chance of spending large amounts of time in the ketchup aisle before a hot date.

PS.  Okay, can we talk about my Pus-y, pissy, pussy line?  And here’s some smart people talking about how to tell your kids about sex.  Just wing it.  You’ll be fine.(something pertinent)

I ran into my friend Danny at the drugstore the other day.  He was buying nosehair clippers.  I was buying super strength nighttime anti-aging cream.  Pretty much sums it up.

PS.  Just a quick product endorsement, I was buying ROC, the strongest amount of retinol you can buy without a prescription.  It’s good. and it’s only 19.95.  I have no idea what kind of nose hair clippers he settled on but let me know if you want me to pursue that information.

Okay, so here’s a blog about something I hope you never have to deal with.  The Salem Witch Trial aspect of the Swine flu.  And you thought those nice Puritans in Salem were hysterical.  Swine Flu.  The potential pandemic or as I like to call it THE PIGDEMIC.  Or the Pig Panic.  Or how bout, It’s Just A Slow News Week?  Here’s the deal. My sister and her baby went to Mexico for a conference.  You know where this is going.  Had fun.  Drank cool drinks on the beach, ate okay Mexican food and thought they had really dodged a Mexican bullet when they experienced no gastrointestinal distress.  Wrong. Big time.  Came home.  Got respiratory infections.  Spent lots of time with us because my sister is a single parent,  while baby spewed boogers and received love.  Read hysterical newspapers on Sunday.  Called doctor.  And life as we knew it ended.  All of us, healthy or not, and, trust me, we were all really, really healthy except my mild case of PMS and the jury is still out on whether that counts as illness, ended up in the vortex of swine flu.  Haz-mat teams, being forbidden from attending school due to contact with possibly infected person and the hysteria that might result should other parents discover that we had handled a baby who’d been to Mexico and had a cold.  So my sister and I have spent the last few days trying to entertain three healthy boys and a baby recovering from a cold without having any other human contact or going to any other public place.  It’s been great. I’m thinking of asking the Haz-mat teams to come back just to mediate fights.

Here’s what I think.  I was a longtime member of “The Media”.  I was pretty successful in my day.  I worked with fine journalists like Charles Kuralt and Connie Chung and then I ended up on TV trying to continue their tradition.  I’m not blaming folks like them.  But I do think the hysteria starts with the newsfolk and has much to do with what else is going on in the world.  For instance, remember West Nile Virus.  Probably just barely.  Every year we would hear about the deadly West Nile Virus and there would be spraying of toxic chemicals, predicted horrible death possibilities and terror when you found a dead bird in your gutter.  No more flinging of dead birds into the trash after closely examining them just out of macabre interest and fascination with being up close to such a pretty thing, even dead, when they are usually in the sky.  No, suddenly every dead bird was an issue for the health department, even those with cat fang marks in their heads.  You just never know, people would say.  And do YOU want to die of West Nile?  And then 9/11 happened.  Now September Eleventhwas real news.  Deeply tragic real news.  News that required all news people work long hours on a REAL story that, like all REAL news stories,  was terrifying and full of actual grief.  And you know what’s funny?  Since 9/11 we have never heard another story about West Nile.  Or at least I haven’t.  My friend Gina’s son is a teenager and like all teenaged boys, he had a really naughty idea one day. He and some friends discovered a dead opossum while walking home from school.  Like any teenage boy I can think of, they decided it would be hysterically funny to hang the dead possum by it’s tail from an overpass onto the roadway below.  I know.  Stupid.  But not surprising from a demographic who’s only goal in life is to have some sort of skin to skin contact with a teenaged girl, fart the loudest in their posse, preferably not in front of the teenaged girl,  and eat as much as can possibly be consumed by any human, ideally from a mixing bowl.  Yes, a few cars hit the poor departed possum frozen in full rigor mortis, screeched to a stop, one broke a side mirror.  Chaos, but no one was hurt.  The kids were stunned at the pandemonium they caused and ran but because they were decent kids, came back to make sure everything was okay.  Got arrested.  Cops laughed.  They were headed for a slap on the hand BUT the woman who’s side mirror they had lopped off was a reporter for a local news station and it was a VEEERRRRYYYY slow news period.  So what do you think happened?  Well, by the next morning, news organizations AROUND THE WORLD were reporting a roving band of teenage boys who had executed an innocent(if anything that bizarre looking can ever truly be innocent)opossum and thrown it, like the now infamous frozen turkey incident, at unsuspecting cars, hoping to do grievous harm to both the drivers and the poor possum.  The family got hate mail, animal rights people demanded death for the teens, the judge, succumbing to public pressure hit the kids with a felony.  That they will have for the rest of their lives.  

Slow news days are going to ruin our lives.  And hysteria will kill you faster than swine flu or West Nile.  Last year I had an unsettling event in my life.  After a series of routine tests, a very young and somewhat hysterical doctor diagnosed me with a heart condition that would kill me quickly and ruin my life before it did.  Let’s just say I became somewhat hysterical, the doctors were somewhat hysterical, my normally level headed spouse became hysterical, my sister and her angrily divorcing spouse became, for just my period of near death, remarkably civil and hysterical, my friends, hysterical, my parents, hysterical.  Even the pets seemed off.  There was so much hysteria every where that I looked that I filled a prescription for Xanax and never actually took one.  Just carried it with my in case the hysteria threatened to overwhelm.  But in the midst of it all, two of my friends, both gifted doctors, didn’t display one bit of hysteria and spent a lot of time on the phone with me talking me off ledges until we could find the right doctor to help me.  We did find her (just so you know, her name is Evelyn Horn and she is a spectacular cardiologist at Weill Cornell).  She sat me down in her office and spent half an hour on my chest with her stethescope after which she looked up and said something like this…”Okay, you are not dying.  You’ve got a problem but I think as long as we take care of you properly, you can live to be 102.”  And I was no longer hysterical.  I think that period of time shaved years off my 102 life span and I’ll probably only make it to 95 but it also taught me a really important lesson.  Hysteria is never helpful.  It’s just hysterical.  

We need to all calm down.  Deep breaths.  Be practical but not fearful.  Perhaps always on alert for opossums hanging from overpasses and never drinking the water in Mexico (c’mon, it’s just common sense) but other than that, go back to looking at dead birds in your yard, eat all the pork you feel like and don’t be afraid just because the media tells you to.  My friend Alanna Levine, a lovely, smart and most importantly CALM, doctor who is all over TV all the time (www.alannalevinemd.com) came up with a few pointers for getting through this all with practicality.  Here they are:

From: Alanna Levine <alannalevine@me.com>

Date: May 1, 2009 11:17:02 AM EDT

To: Jen White <jen1515@verizon.net>

Subject: Swine Story-let me know if you want more or different info…xox

General Swine Flu Facts:

1.  The information is changing hour to hour so what is true now, may not be true tomorrow-check www.cdc.gov for the latest information.

2.  There is a big difference between a virus that is very contagious (spreads easily) and a virulent (causes severe disease) one.  On a personal level, I would be more concerned with virulence.

3.  Even if you received a flu shot/mist this year, you will not be protected against swine flu-the CDC is developing a different vaccine for H1N1 virus.

4.  H1N1 virus is responsive to antiviral drugs like Tamiflu and Relenza.

What should we as individuals do?

1.  Use common sense!  Think of it like seasonal flu and act in the same way you would during flu season.

2.  Wash you hands frequently-hand sanitizer is okay if you don’t have access to water.

3.  Eat well and get enough sleep.

4.  Encourage people who don’t feel well to stay home.

5.  Sneeze or cough into a tissue and wash hands afterwards.

6.  In work and school environments, clean frequently touched surfaces (like you ordinarily should)-viruses can live for 2 hours or longer on surfaces.

7.  Do NOT take anti-viral medication prophylactically unless you have a special circumstance and it’s after consultation with your physician.

8.  Avoid non-essential travel to Mexico.

I’m going to add that I’m unclear what any essential travel to Mexico might be.  But Alanna forgot the most important tip of all.  DO NOT READ A NEWSPAPER OR WATCH TV UNTIL I TELL YOU THAT THE SWINE FLU TERRORIZING IS OVER.  And I read the papers this morning.  I think they’re getting bored and by next week we’ll be on to something else. 

My friend Jonathan’s mother died Friday and we went to the calling hours yesterday.  She was quite old and had been terribly sick for sometime so, while it was sad for the family, it was not devastating.  My spouse and I took turns at the calling hours at a very fancy New York city funeral parlor.  We took turns because I noted in the Times that there would be a viewing and I didn’t think that my kids were ready for real life dead bodies that had not been killed by aliens but just by old age.  I went in first and Rich wandered Madison Avenue with the boys and bought them expensive candy.  Then Rich went in and I sat with the boys in the sun on a swank storefront ledge and taught them how to identify facelifts vs injectables.  They were quite good at it by the time we headed home although the six year old could really only spot a bad lift not an artful one and the ten year old felt that most women were walking too fast to really assess the likelihood of Botox assistance.

I had only met Jonathans mother after she had suffered strokes and other debilitating illnesses but I knew people who had known her when she was younger and they always cited her great beauty.  And she looked pretty darned good in the open casket.  Although not nearly as good as she did in the pictures of her glowing with life.  And, as I glanced at her, not really ever having been comfortable with the open casket thing, some thing struck me. She was wearing a Chanel suit.  Now I have never actually coveted a Chanel suit but I do know what they cost.   Jonathans  mother was going into the ground swathed in $5,000 or so of yellow, orange and cream Chanel suiting that, even if sold on ebay, could have fed a family for several months.  And it would, once deposited in the ground, no matter how nice the casket was(and it was a very nice one) disappear in a blur of whatever happens once a human is boxed and begins it’s return to the dust.  I know this seems callous but Jonathans wife, my friend Jane, made the same point.  She also pointed out that the deceased was a very clear-eyed, generous and practical woman who would NEVER want to waste a perfectly good Chanel suit by burying it underground to return to dust.  Particularly since the Bible never, ever mentions ashes to ashes, Chanel to dust.  And this got me thinking again about an issue that has bothered me.  What is the right thing to wear to your own funeral and how do you make sure that your wishes are followed? 

One of my best friends from childhood died at 41.  She had been diagnosed with bone cancer when we were 16 but had lived an amazing life minus a leg, eventually minus a lung and plagued by endless amounts of medical interference, dealing with it all by getting on with her fabulous life. She became a renowned poet, travelled the world dragging her unwieldy prosthesis and buckets of pills and developed an incredible sense of style that involved black, drapey architectural clothing with perfect jewelry accents.  She had strayed far from her working class overtly religious parents and simple roots and had become a woman of her own making, of taste, of culture, of the world and not, loudly NOT,  of any sort of religion.  She and I often laughed about the land of fashion “Don’ts” we grew up in.  So, after years of too much medical meddling, Micheles heart just plain gave out when she hit forty one, while sitting alone in a chair reading a book.  No one saw it coming.  I was asked to give the eulogy at her funeral and showed up in our home town, devastated with grief, new baby and toddler in tow and a wicked stomach flu.  My parents met me, we had a cry and they took the kids so that I could go to calling hours.  And there, laid out in a box, was the most horrifying sight I could imagine.  My dear, dear friend. Dead.  But worse than dead, this beloved fashion conscious woman I loved, she was dead and wearing a purple polyester dress, pink lipstick and her hands were wrapped in rosary beads.  I didn’t know what to do.  First of all, I realized then and there that there was NO afterlife because if there was Michele would have come back, I guarantee, just long enough and while no one was looking because she didn’t like to upset people, to fling the rosary beads across the room.  And purple and pink.  Polyester.  It had never occurred to us that she was going to die.  She’d fought so long and hard and beaten every odd that I think we thought we’d have her forever.  Sure she had a DNR in place for surgeries and other medical emergencies that were her life.  She’d done that years before.  But she had never contemplated, really, what might happen if she died and so she had issued no directives for post death fashion.  Here she was, one of the most Audrey Hepburn-esque women I know, lying in a box, swathed in polyester in a tone that brought out the yellow in her skin and pink lipstick that made her look, well, dead.  “I am so sorry” I whispered.  “I don’t know how to help you out of this mess.”  And it was then that I began to think about what to wear when you’re dead, imagining the laugh that she and I would have had over this, and the directives you need to leave in place to ensure that well meaning parents or color blind spouses don’t pick their favorite thing, that very thing you would not be caught dead in.  Literally.  I have always said, forget the open casket unless I look really good but my experience is that that is unlikely.  But I think we should all think about this, those of us who care about our appearances and like to wear attractive clothes.  What do we want to go out in?  And I mean, really OUT.  What message do we want to send.  Some things seem clear.  No dead cleavage.  Or mini skirts.  Although if your legs were REALLY good there might be an exception.  Keep the jewelery for the kids, grandkids, daughters, daughter in laws.  Do NOT put expensive jewels in the ground to exist with the worms.  We are NOT ancient Egyptians.  I mean, can you imagine, post death, having the family dog killed to go to eternal rest with dad?  Have the same attitude toward jewels.  The ancient Egyptians were simple.  We are not.  Never let the funeral parlor do your makeup.  My GOD.  The only people they have ever given a make-over to are dead.  And they got their training at undertaker school.  Which is a much lower level than Cosmetology School.  Don’t do it.  I don’t know the alternatives but a plain scrubbed face would be better than the Undertaker look.  Even if he is called the Bobbie Brown of Undertaking.  I say skip shoes.  They only open the box halfway.  I say, heck, skip underwear.  Right?!  Particularly your really good French underwear.  Although it’s not like you’re going to hand it down to your grandkids?

I’m not saying you have to do these things.  I’m not even saying that, once you’re dead, anyone will let you.  Or certainly that you’ll care.  I am, however, suggesting you give it a shot and leave an approved wardrobe options list, or a DNDB directive (Do Not Dress Badly) somewhere prominently displayed just in case (buses move fast and without notice).  It’s never too early to contemplate and even in the end, it would be nice to be in control and to look good.  My husband still remembers that his father was wearing makeup in his casket.  My husbands father was a tough guy from the mean streets of Pittsburgh who would sooner beat to death a man wearing makeup.  And how did he go out?  See what I mean.  Looking like he was about to burst into a refrain of “I Feel Pretty”. The dead are, yes, dead, but they should have some dignity.  Who knows whether they are clinging to the ceiling staring down in horror at everything that’s happening to them.  We need to acknowledge that.  And acknowledge that it will one day be a part of our life and one for which we should be prepared.  And well dressed.

And that brings me to my other idea.  My friend Christina has recently been bothered by dreams about all these people in her life who died young.  Her uncle, her dad, some other folks.  I know other people who have those dreams, too.  My husband often dreams of his father, sans makeup, of course.  My mother dreams of her parents.  I sometimes wake up and realize I dreamt that Michele was weeding my garden, something she often did.  It is as though these people are reaching back to remind you they are there.  Just trying to get in touch.  Find out where you’ve been and what you’ve been up to.  And that’s when it struck me.  Facebook for the dead.  Think about it.

I know that things have been silent here for  a week or so.  I’ve been thinking deep thoughts about Vermont’s very impressive gay marriage legislation and New Yorks attempts to follow suit.  Then came the Easter break.  More deep thinking about Passover and Easter and how Elijah manages to drink the wine and Jesus manages to do the rising trick and the Easter Bunny gets into my house without the dog barking.  But now I’m back to deep thoughts on gay marriage.  We spent Easter at my parents house and Dad and I were doing dishes one day.  We were having a nice discussion about the very topic of gay marriage.  And during this discussion, I realized that many gay people seeking marriage might not be aware of the Marital Point System.  The MPS.  It’s a complex system, far beyond reform of the US banking system, Earned Run Averages,  or even conversion from Celsius to Farenheit.  It is particularly complicated because it is a system with no clear rules or guidelines but a clear understanding by all who have chosen to do the marriage thing, be it City Hall, Las Vegas or somewhere decorated in ubiquitous white ribbons and baby’s breath.  It is like a secret handshake or x-ray vision glasses that only begin to work once the words “I Do” are uttered.  It seems to be universal in every language and culture although varying to some degree for instance in places like Afghanistan where women do not, in fact, get any points for anything and should consider themselves lucky not to have their husbands stone them to death for washing their white sox with a red burqa.  For some unknown and, as yet, unresearched reason, in Western culture, women seem to know the MPS scoring system before their spouses.  It may even begin with the engagement ring, an excellent way to garner early, premarital MPS points.  The spouses seem to become aware of the system much later, around eight to ten months into marriage, a change reflected by perplexed expressions and a slight look of fear in their eyes as if to say, “I don’t know what’s happening here, but it feels like this perfectly nice day has gone South rather quickly”.  After a couple of bouts of silent treatment or loud stomping through the house, most males figure it out.  The point system for males seems to be underdeveloped compared to their spouses but many males go through a slight improvement curve for the first year or two when they try, yes they really try.   After this period of effort male scores seem to plummet to be replaced by hostility and anger and female scores and sex drives become stagnant except  after weddings or any other occasions involving martinis.

Now, how, you ask, did I become so knowledgeable about the MPS system? Well, it really just started this past weekend with Dad.  As we stood by the sink, dad washing, me drying, the phone rang.  It was an old friend of my parents calling to report that the deathly illness that everyone was fearing for the friends husband was, thank god, NOT.  He was going to be fine and not die after all.  Great news.  Dad hung up, reported it joyously to me and returned happily to his dishpan.  “Dad”.  I queried.  “Aren’t you going to call mom and tell her?”  Mom was getting her hair done in the city. “Oh, she’ll be home in a while.” And he blissfully continued washing the dishes.  Now my father may be the Bernie Madoff of the Marital Point System.  The Bill Buckner of wedded bliss.  He looks good on the surface but once you scratch it, he’s one big Ponzi scam or missed opportunity.  I love him to bits but my siblings and I are still overcompensating for the fact that dad’s idea of a great Christmas present for his beloved is a knife sharpener or a wastebasket.  He’ll do dishes til he’s blue in the face but were mom ever to require major surgery with anesthesia, days of recovery, removed organs and the like, I’m quite certain, unless prompted, he might want her to drive herself.  He’d bring her home, of course, if she called to remind him.  I have tried to help him. My siblings have tried to help him and yet,  after fifty, yes, fifty years of marriage, he can’t score more marital points.  Here he was passing up a perfectly good way to generate a TON of points by simply thinking enough to call my mother and tell her that, yipee, their good friend was not, in fact, dying.    One of the all time champs of losing marital points was my husbands father who only remembered birthdays when it was too late to do anything about it.  On my mother in laws 45th birthday, he proudly showed up for birthday dinner with her only present.  A recently, try fifteen minutes before, purchased blueberry pie.  A BLUEBERRY PIE.  When she ran weeping from the table after it’s presentation,  he pleaded to her departing back “But Roberta, you LOVE blueberry pie.”  While many men struggle with the MPS system, not all are failures.  I have friends whose husbands are major league champs.  One neighbors husband does all the cooking, shopping and laundry and she trains to become a professional bike racer.  Another spouse stays home so that my friend can continue the work she loves.    I have insider knowledge, however, that he could earn substantially more points if he actually cleaned, shopped and kept the kids under control rather than treating their home like a zoo with the four walls serving as just a way to keep the kids from escaping. Sure it allows her to do the job she loves plus everything else.  Another friend found herself pregnant at 43 after three months of dating and her now husband said, “Okay, let’s give it a shot.”  They have one of the best marriages I know, more than a decade in. I think because the marital points in that decision will last forever.  There’s a husband I know who thought that you could rack up enough points by simply buying tremendous gifts for every occasion and being absent, literally and physically,  the rest of the time.  My god, were the gifts good but she eventually ran off with the plumber who doted on her every word and liked helping pick wallpaper.  Not to mention being able to plumb.  My spouse is quite good in the marital point category.  He, in fact, just hollered up the stairs to see if there’s anything he can do to help.  He made dinner last night and often buys me spectacular pieces of jewelry or great clothes that he picks out himself.  This counteracts the negative point factor of shrinking my expensive French thong underwear by putting them in the dryer along with my cashmere sweaters, or forgetting to bring something for work that means I have to drive two hours into the bowels of a run down city to deliver it to him because he can’t leave the job, or promising to stock the house when he’s home and we’re away and his idea of stocking is a small container of Half and Half and a black banana, and I bought the banana.  All in all, I am a lucky woman and our point score, from where I stand,  is good.

For men, the point system seems to be based on a simpler equation.  Many, many points for any sexual act.  Even more points for the naughtier sexual acts.  Talking dirty or doing something completely unexpected while performing naughty sexual acts will almost guarantee a lifetime at the top of the MRS game.  And if you are willing to wear a nurses uniform while doing it all.  I don’t need to continue.  The only point reduction in the male world seems to be the result of any sort of irresponsible financial behavior, like, say, when you, just for instance, go to Starbucks for a cappuccino and then for a quick 15 dollar pedicure at the Korean nail place but you don’t check the balance in your checking account and so the four dollar Starbucks and the fifteen dollar pedicure have bank charges attached that result in a nineteen dollar series of small pleasures costing seventy five dollars.  It sounds crazy but it could happen.  Occasionally men subtract points in connection to a perceived betrayal usually involving sports.  One of my best friends got a big point reduction for purposely perpetrating an unbelieveable fraud by attending MINOR LEAGUE BASEBALL GAMES pre-nuptially and pretending to actually like them.  I would have to say that the spouse should lose some points for ever believing this charade.   Once the ring was on, I daresay, she never went to a minor league field again.  Huge loss of points but completely recovered by performing a dirty sex act.  I have a dear friend who just had a horrible multi month ordeal of exhausting medical treatments.  On the back end she pointed out how truly incredible her spouse had been, how grateful she was and how much she feared the amount of time she was going to have to spend on either back or knees to repay him.  All about the points.  MPS.  Really, with men, all points can be covered under the MPS-SA scorecard.  Marital Points Score-Sexual Acts.  The more Sexual Acts, the higher your rating.  It’s that simple.  Nothing else you do really matters.

Now, I could go on with this lesson in statistics forever but I’m too tired.  I do hope that it helped you gay men and women out there contemplating that walk down the long and winding aisle.  Marriage is not a piece of cake. It is, in fact,  a highly complicated set of statistical problems that will vary from relationship to relationship and is really about who does what and when and who does it better.  And with more thought.  Or with better technique.  You know what I mean..  And just to wrap this up, Dad did call Mom and give her the good news about their friend.  Huge Points.  I know, however, that once Mom reads this blog, and she will, that she will know that dad didn’t have the idea on his own and the points will vanish faster than the money in the US Treasury.  But maybe Dad will have learned his lesson.  Cause, trust me, once mom reads this, there will be no naughty sex acts in his future.  Although that is too horrifying even to contemplate.

A joke from Kerri:

Best friend? 


This really works…try this experiment.

Put your dog and your wife in the trunk of the car

at the same time, for one hour.  When you open it, 

see which one is happy to see you?

I received the photo at the left from my friend Bill in the context of Allure magazines anti-aging issue.  He knows how opposed to aging I am.  Now, as is obvious from the picture, Bill is a guy who clearly just wants me to feel good about myself.  This is the same Bill who pointed out that Osama bin Laden and I share a birthday.  Ahhh.  Good friends.  Well, this pic features forty three year old Cindy Crawford wearing last nights dessert.  It’s quite a photo.  And I certainly know how that goes, we all do.  Kids get a little crazy, hopped up on sugar, food starts to fly, everyone’s having fun, clothes come off, out comes the digital camera .  And bango.  A potential Christmas card photo. It happens here at least once a month.  As Bill kindly pointed out,  whatever Cindy is currently using for anti-aging products, they do, indeed, appear to be working although it’s a bit hard to see through the coating of last nights dessert. (note: her head is cut off because of both my incompetence at uploading anything AND does anyone ever really care about her face when dessert is on the rest of her?  It looks like whipped cream and maybe some lemon meringue? I’m getting downright hungry. ) Then, today, the paper features Valerie Bertinelli, 48, in her bathing suit.  Valerie looks great too although why everyone seems to be so shocked she looks good is beyond me.  Maybe it’s because she did go through that phase when something went south with Eddie Van Halen and to kill the pain of a declining marriage, she picked fast food over alcohol and drugs.  What the hell’s wrong with that.  But the pics of all these fabulous women in my age group half naked got me rethinking my Christmas card policy.  Every year, usually at the height of summer tans,  I get my four kids all dolled up, or at least make them wash the chocolate off the edges of their mouths and we pose for a Christmas card photo.  They always look cute, the spouse has on a clean shirt and a game, “I’ll do this for you” kind of smile.  And I look fabulous.  Which is really the point of a family Christmas card anyway.  Who really gives a damn what your kids look like.  Kids are kids and your kids photos are really only interesting to two people.  You and your spouse.  And maybe your parents if they don’t have something more interesting to think about.  The spouse is male and only changes by greying or slight weight fluctuations.  But you, now that’s where everyone is looking.  How’s she holding up, they wonder? Is she having work done?  Is that arm flab I see?  Kinda seems to be letting herself go.  What is she wearing?  Did she think hair that short would be flattering?  I know that’s how it works.  Particularly when you send the card to the families of old boyfriends.  The wives spend hours with a magnifying glass bent over your card.  I’m sure of it.  Which is why I’m now proposing that the family holiday card should actually be just a picture of me.  Me looking really good.  Well lit, no sign of the hours of physical prep that went in to the shot, the hair coloring and facials nor the retouching that took out all smile lines and age spots.  Heck, me naked if dessert was really good that night.  I think it should just be me. Wind in my hair, a sly happy smile on my face.  A look that says “I know that time is passing, but I’m enjoying every minute.”  A photo that doesn’t feature the double chin that appears from a certain angle or the muffin tops at the upper edge of your jeans.  OR the crease between your eyes when you’re discussing something you care about.  It will not feature you shrieking at the kids or berating the spouse.  It will not be from behind because, as we all know from Star Magazine, even twenty year olds have cellulite in a certain light.  It won’t be the Jamie Lee Curtis in More Magazine.  Remember that one?  Jamie Lee, in her underwear with no retouching or special lighting.  Heck, she didn’t even suck in her belly.  And while I applaud the sentiment and the bravery, it should not, I repeat, NOT be her Christmas card.  No, we all want the Valerie Bertinelli card.  She, by the way, credits her new found shape to yoga.  Just so you know, I think it’s a multitude of down dogs combined with some heavy retouching.  Not that I’m cynical. So, go for the Valerie Bertinelli card.  I. personally think the Cindy Crawford card is just too much.  Although I’m sure my friend Bill would disagree.  You want your Christmas picture to say happy and satisfied with life not messy at the table while eating dessert nude.  Hmmm.  Although, here’s an idea.  How bout a Valerie Bertinelli for friends and family.  And then a Cindy Crawford for old boyfriends and husbands ex wives.  Maybe that’s it.  Two cards. To cover everything.