Ode to an Entenmann’s Walnut Ring

The minute anyone entered my mother's Bronx apartment, she would put on the kettle, so everyone could enjoy a nice hot cup of tea. Nothing fancy: just a Lipton or Tetley tea bag in the mug. I never saw loose leaf tea as a child. I would not have known what it was. 

Tea was served with milk and sugar or Sweet'N Low. The odious pink packet was penance for what invariably was eaten with the tea: a sweet treat. Tea and dessert made people feel welcome in your home. Not offering it was just plain rude. Hopefully a seven layer cake from the local bakery, rich with chocolate frosting. But at least a slice of an Entenmann's walnut coffee ring or crumb bun. 

Entenmann's was always on hand. My female relatives did not see the point of home baking. Who had time for sifting and whisking? There was cooking and cleaning and gardening, needlework and crocheting, not to mention a job at Alexander's Department Store (my grandmother) and the Pelham Manor Village Hall (my mother).

Entenmann's cakes, bought at the A & P, had the whiff of fanciness. The script font seemed old fashioned and proper, the blue and white box classy. The company was founded by a German immigrant in Brooklyn in 1898, and, by midcentury, famous fans such as Frank Sinatra ordered the Crumb Coffee Cake weekly. Their products stayed fresh longer than bakery cakes, thanks to the magic of preservatives, not that anything hung around long enough to become stale in my family. My grandmother loved cake and bread, and we all inherited her tastes.

I must admit that I have hardly been loyal to Entenmann's. I don't stock their treats in my kitchen. My wonderful 18-year-old daughter, Violet, loves to bake, and especially during the pandemic, we've whipped up a steady stream of delicious cookies, cakes, and pastries that pair well with a nice cup of tea. Violet enjoys the challenge of the recipes in Claire Saffitz's book Dessert Person. Raised on Entenmann’s, I find the Saffitz approach unnecessarily grueling. But I like to spend time with Violet, and I like to see her happy. So I’m in for any crazily complicated baking project she wants. We spent an entire Sunday on Saffitz's sadistic instructions for an impossible tower of cream puffs called Crouquembouche, a truly insane endeavor, the directions for which include the disclaimer "Godspeed." Between making the cream puffs, the creme patisserie and the caramel, not to mention constructing the tower...let's just say the mood in the kitchen became tense.

A baking hiatus ensued. During this time, I noticed in the Acme flyer that Entenmann's products were on sale. I thought longingly of my mother, who died in April 2020. Maybe I'd get the walnut ring and brew some milky tea, sweetened with honey, and enjoy a slice like we used to. But sadly, the walnut ring proved elusive. It wasn't available at the supermarket or on the Entenmann's website.

My daughter knew of my sudden desire for Entenmann’s, so on Mother's Day, she presented me with two of their products. The limited edition Lemon Loaf was light and delish, although a more robust crust would improve it. My mother added strawberries and whipped cream to the plain Loaf Cake to make Strawberry Shortcake. She’d also top toasted slices of the cake with scoops of Neapolitan ice cream. That’s the kind of baking I’m most comfortable with. 

The Cheese Buns were fine, if a bit light on cheese. They do make me even more nostalgic for the walnut ring, a glazed cake with a cinnamony filling, studded with raisins and walnuts. It was always hard to resist picking off all the best parts. 

Searching for the walnut ring, I landed on the Entenmann’s Facebook page, where I found a 2014 post confirming the sad news that the Walnut Danish Ring had been discontinued. Customers made their displeasure known. “You people are seriously messing up,” posted Billy Dello Russo.  I wish they’d bring it back. 

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I could really go for a slice, sitting with my mom at the table in our breakfast nook. 

May her memory be a blessing

 A year ago today, at about this time, the phone rang. It was a woman calling my house from the hospital. "I don't have any information," she said quickly. "I'm one of the chaplains."

I immediately began to cry. "Thank you," I said.  I sat down on my unmade bed.

"I'm glad I called," she said. "I saw that your mother was having comfort measures only, and I thought a ringing phone in the hospital room might be an annoyance." 

I told her I had finally, after more than a month, been allowed to see my mother the previous day. For 15 minutes.The chaplain assured me that my mother had received The Last Rites, over the phone, and that the pope had said that would count. Or was it the bishop? I don't remember. 

A man had called earlier from the hospital asking if she would like The Last Rites, and I had said she would, and I had told my mother over the phone that she would receive them. "Good," she said. "I don't want to be thrown our of heaven too."

On the phone now with this chaplain, I cried my eyes out. I barely said a word, and she prayed with me as I sobbed. The Hail Mary, maybe? The Lord's Prayer? It's all a blur. I didn't absorb her name, but I will always be so grateful to her.

Not long after, the doctor called me to tell me my mother had died. I thanked her for getting me in to see my mother, and then asked what would happen now. She said I should call the funeral home. My cousin, thankfully, is a funeral director. I called him and he took care of the small burial ceremony that was allowed in the midst of the pandemic.

A year today. Time doesn't make sense the way it used do, now that my mother had to die alone. A month, or a week, or ten years: all would seem just as accurate. 

When she first died, some friends wrote to me: "May her memory be a blessing." It's such a nice thought. Someday, I suppose, it could be true. I see that her life was a blessing. 

Saying goodbye to my mother

At the end, there was only a piece of paper with my phone number on it. 

"I need to hold onto this," my mom said. "Or I won't know how to call you." Her cell phone battery had died, and she didn't bring the charger when the nursing home sent her to the hospital in an ambulance because she had fluid outside of her lungs.

My heart seized. I told her not to worry. I told her the nurses would be able to reach me. "Or I will call you," I said. 

Was that our last conversation? Or was it the one when the phone rang in the evening? "Chrissy," she asked, in a panic. "Why am I still here? They are keeping me locked in a room. No one is explaining anything to me! And they are trying to put something in my I.V.!!! What are they putting in my I.V.?"

I asked to speak to the nurse. They were administering a dose of dilaudid, to relax her, she said. The nurse gave the phone back to my mother. 

"I am working with the hospice agency to bring you to us," I said. "You have to be patient." The agency had not finished processing whatever it was they needed to process. So many forms. 

"Okay, Chicken," she said. 

Chicken. She hadn't called me that in years, maybe. That was her pet name for me when I was a child. I also call my children Chicken. 

"I love you," I said. I wished so much that I could be there, holding her hand, and not in my house in New Jersey, watching Little Fires Everywhere.

My mother was in a hospital in Connecticut, dying alone. Dying of cancer, utterly on her own because of the coronavirus. I hated the virus that deprived her of visitors. She'd been ill for over a decade, first with lymphoma, then with circulatory problems that led to toe amputations, then with multiple myeloma, which the doctors said was in remission. There had been so many medical appointments, hospitalizations, days and weeks of feeling very sick. She'd lived alone for the whole time. 

It was late April and she had not seen me, my brother or any family since March 20, when because of  pain so severe she could not walk, she temporarily checked into an assisted living facility near my brother's house in Norwalk, Connecticut. She hated the assisted living and one morning called me at 5 to tell me that she had gotten stuck in the bed. They were not allowing visitors because of the godforsaken virus. She wanted out. Ten days later, she was found unresponsive and the staff nurse, suspecting a stroke, had called for an ambulance. The emergency room doctor asked me about whether she should be intubated, what her wishes were, that she likely had corona, that her chances of survival were very low. That if it was his mother he would not put her on a ventilator.

A little later, he called me back. My mother was doing a bit better. They would not need to intubate her. "I asked her what she would want," said the doctor. "She doesn't want any tubes. Also, she said that you think that you are the boss, but she's the boss."

That sounds like her.

Last summer, I started meeting her at every doctor's appointment. She would take a car service from City Island into Weill Cornell in Manhattan, and I would board some combination of trains and buses from New Jersey.  In July, she had Mohs surgery on a very large squamous cell cancer lesion on her forearm. It was an all day appointment, pretty traumatizing, as the surgeon left her with me in a room long enough that she bled profusely on the floor. I stayed with her in City Island that night. Then there was a series of appointments related to a clogged subclavian artery. And also the primary care physician and the oncologist. Usually we had at least one, sometimes two appointments per week. It was exhausting. And nothing seemed to help her feel better. 

I felt a constant weight of guilt and shame. My mother lived a little over an hour from me, but since I don't drive on the highway, I did not visit her nearly as much as I wanted to, as I should have, as she needed me to. We'd tried to lure her to New Jersey, but she loved her view of the water and the boats, and she loved being near her brother and in the area where she had always lived. 

"You're the one who left," she told me once during a heated discussion, in which I was trying to convince her to move closer so I could take care of her. 

I was. The one. Who left. 

So easy, it would have been, to buy a house in Pelham, the Westchester town where she lived. "I'd like you to live near me," she had said. "So I can be involved." 

It was 18 years ago when we decided, instead, to settle with our 18-month old son in Montclair. A house built in 1897 that came with a century-old piano in its own room. This was the room in which we were planning to set up her hospital equipment. She had a newly discovered tumor in her lungs, something in her liver that suggested it had metastasized, and just for good measure, several pulmonary embolisms. Also the fluid that made it hard for her to breathe. The doctors said it could be weeks or months.

The morning after the Chicken conversation, I tried to call my mom's room. No one would answer. I called the social worker to see what was happening with getting my mom moved. "The doctor has an update for you," she said.

Shortly after, the doctor called. I had never laid eyes on her. After so many doctor's appointments, this one, the last one, I'd not met.

She said my mother had taken a turn. It would not be months, or weeks, but days. 

"Are we able to see her?" I asked, sobbing. Yes, she said. They had just changed the rules, and I could come in for a 15-minute opportunity to say goodbye. We got right in the car. 

No traffic because of the pandemic. As we neared the hospital, the nursing supervisor called me. I was to wear a mask, go to the desk, and someone would come get me. I was to gown up, scrub up, glove up.

This hospital was deserted. The guard took my temperature. It was 97. The receptionist was wearing a leopard mask. A nurse collected me, delivered me. Another nurse helped me with the blue gown, two more masks, gloves. I went in.

The room was tiny. At least it had a window. 

My mother lay in the bed, out of it. Her legs were uncovered. Her eyes were open,  a beautiful light green, but did she see me? "Hi, Mama," I said. "It's me. I love you." I kept repeating some variation of this. She put out her hand, and I took it. I was not sure if I was allowed to. I should have hugged her. Why didn't I hug her? 

I thought to write this before, but I could not make my thoughts go in a straight line. And maybe no one wants to read this. But I finally put it down because I don't want to forget. Everyone says remember the good times. 

But it is also important to bear witness to the worst, worst times. 

Hello faithful readers

Thank you for still checking this woefully neglected blog. I would like to invite you to read this post I wrote the other day on Medium. It is about emptying my mother's apartment after she died.

Quarantine Bitch: A Haiku Story

#1: Amazon Fresh

Delivery time!
Conflict: My Zoom yoga class
Knee hurts anyway

#2: Wiping The Food

Disinfecting groceries
Is not very fun
I'll make my husband do it

#3: Cat Vomit

Wonder how I hurt my knee?
Squatted down to clean
A big cat hairball

#4: AARP Magazine

Or maybe it was because
I decided to try
Some old people exercise

#5: RSVP

I cannot attend
The virtual happy hour
I'd have to shower

#6: Endless cooking

College-aged son home
Needs: 6000 calories
Eaten while gaming

#7: Lunch

What fresh hell is this?
We are out of salad greens
Guess I'll eat these chips

#8: Master project

Productive people
have a quarantine project
I prefer not to

#9: Masks

Have two pretty masks
Cannot breathe in either one
Best to stay at home

#10: Nothing

"What's your plan today?"
asks my beloved husband
Same as yesterday

#11: Recipe Fail

New York Times Cooking!
Your Braised White Beans recipe?
No one would eat it

#12: Old

I'd been wondering
How I would look with gray hair
I have my answer

#13: Truth

My mom's in rehab
She was in the hospital
Severe pneumonia

#14: Alone
I can't visit her
I can't hold my mother's hand
She is all alone

I am obsessed with Better Things and we need more shows like it

The third season of Pamela Adlon’s FX series Better Things started February 28, and it’s exciting to have new episodes of the one show on tv that tells the story of a woman in her fifties. I just wish it wasn’t the only one.

Better Things means so much to me, because although I love a family drama, such as Parenthood, and also a melodrama, such as This is Us, and to a lesser degree, a comedy, such as Modern Family, those shows aren’t anything like real life. I enjoy watching Gilmore Girls with my 16-year-old daughter as well, but, let’s be honest, that is pure unadulterated fantasy of idyllic mother/daughter relations. And also, none of the above portray what life is like for women my age. No movies do it, either. It’s not news that in Hollywood, you can either be young and dewy, a mature 40-year-old plumped up with injectables, or a granny. Women in their fifties are all but invisible, unless someone wants to make a dumb joke about hot flashes.

Adlon called Better Things a comedy in an interview in The New Yorker, but though there are funny moments, I don’t think comedy is what drives the show. Each episode is like a day or a week in a life of a cool fifty-something single mother of three daughters who is also working as an actress and constantly cooking delicious looking, elaborate meals for her family and many hip friends. It’s a poetic collection of vignettes of all the things I, a 57-year-old mother of two with a sputtering career, have been going through. Oldest child heading off to college, check. Menopause, check. Aging eccentric mother, check. Colonoscopy, check. Grandma having another fender bender, check.

Created by Pamela Adlon and Louis C.K., who left after the second season for obvious reasons, the show draws on Adlon’s life as a single parent of three daughters whose own mother lives next to her, just like on the show.  “Sam Fox is me in a cape,” Adlon told Terry Gross in her interview for Fresh Air.

As far as I am concerned, Pamela Adlon is Pamela Adlon in a cape. She is a superhero to me because she has managed to so accurately and sensitively and dare I say, sweetly, capture the essence of what it is to be a woman in the sixth decade of life, dealing with all the stresses and irritations and yes, joys. I didn’t realize how hungry I was for something, anything, that showed a woman of my generation having the life experiences I am having, until this show came along.

Sam is so real because she doesn’t always handle challenges perfectly. Her mom, Phil, really pushes her buttons. (Fun aside: all the women in this family have traditionally male names; the daughters are Max, Frankie and Duke.)  Phil is a handful; she gardens naked, makes tactless comments and is a hoarder with some cognitive issues. Duke, the baby, says to Sam: “Mom, no offense, but you’re kind of mean to Gran.” It’s true. Sam can be out and out horrible to her mother. Towards the end of season one, Sam, with breathtaking cruelty, decides not to take Phil away for the weekend after all, just as they are exiting the driveway with suitcases in the back. As Phil briskly returns to her house, Sam sits in the car. “I suck as a daughter,” she says. “I suck as a mother.” Oh, honey, I’d like to judge but I can’t. Because I’ve been there.

And dear God, the kids. Max, the oldest, screams “I hate you” at her mom, voice shaking furiously, with realistic regularity. (The bit part of Max’s friend, the evocatively named Defiance, was played by Adlon’s oldest daughter Odessa.) Frankie is rude and has some typical middle child issues. Duke, the baby, is the sweetest, but even she, in a game of Truth or Dare, makes one friend scream “penis!” in the middle of her mother’s party, and forces another to put a Monopoly hotel in a place that a Monopoly hotel should never go. (I didn’t think that particular scene was necessary, and I’m just going to go ahead and assume that that was Louis C.K.’s doing. I will say that what I’ve seen of Season 3 has less of the sometimes gratuitous raunchiness of the first two seasons.)

So the kids do the things kids do, like announcing an immediate need for a “dress from the forties” minutes before it’s time to leave for school. Sometimes, Sam gets it right, but she also falters as a parent, because she’s human. During a party, Sam asks Frankie, “where’s your sister?” Frankie inquires “which one?” Sam’s answer, “The shitty one,” is not exactly straight from a parenting handbook. But it’s hilarious. When Frankie gets in trouble for using the boys’ bathroom, Sam is mostly annoyed that she has to interrupt her day, a day that seems to have phone sex as its main objective, and it’s Max that enlightens her that the matter needs her attention. “Mom,” says Max. “Frankie’s a boy.” Sam sinks to a bench in the kitchen, cluelessness giving way to realization.

We see Sam noticing the changes to her body, a slight thickening of the mid-section and the “I feel bad about my neck” issues that Nora Ephron elucidated in her writing years ago. Yet the physical signs that she has spent five decades on this earth are secondary to what’s really important. After Max frets that she’s been wasting time getting high and being social and doesn’t have an idea of what she’ll do with her life, Sam has the perfect response. She lets her know that she’ll figure out her purpose, but even if she doesn’t, that’s ok. “You’re still going to love your life,” she says, “because life is good.”

Adlon is at her best when she depicts the small miracles that will emerge from the chaos of daily responsibilities when you least expect them. A word of wisdom from a homeless woman, real talk with an elderly widower, a well timed fart from Phil that gets Sam out of answering Frankie’s question of why she divorced her dad.  These moments even show up for we women in our fifties. As Sam says sort of inappropriately when she gives a talk at a “Women and Girls Empowerment Day” at Frankie’s school: “We all bleed and we all suffer and the bleeding stops and we still suffer.” We exist. As the kids say, “representation matters” and we want to “feel seen.” So please put us in more tv shows.

Home renovations and life lessons from a 107-year-old

Yesterday was a little bit of a tough day for me. We are doing a necessary electrical upgrade in our 121-year-old house. We have to replace the old fashioned “knob and tube” wiring which was installed in 1900 and which is still in a good part of the house. It works fine! But apparently it’s not “up to code” according to whoever decides these things. Someday, when we want to sell our house, we will have to replace it, or no one will buy it, say all the realtors and basically everyone. Since I wanted to paint some rooms, my husband insisted that now is the time to deal with this disruptive work. I am so annoyed, because in my mind, nothing put in today will last as long as the wiring that was installed 117 years ago and still works! But what do I know?

A team of electricians is all up in my space, sporadically turning off the power and internet when I need it most. And the work they do is loud. Super distracting. The cats are scared. The electricians took out my beautiful antique brass switch plates, original to the house, and put in some gross plastic ones. Sometimes, one of them will say “uh oh” and they will all gather around, which is rather disconcerting. Today one of them got their arm stuck in a hole in the ceiling and I was very stressed out! I am a mom. And they keep going to the bathroom and talking about how much they are going to the bathroom.

So yeah, I am super cranky about my first world problems. I was grumbling about the dust until bedtime, when I read this lovely article in The New York Times about Anthony Mancinelli, a 107-year-old man who still works full time as a barber! 107! He is almost as old as my wiring. When he became a barber, barbers still did medical procedures, like treat high blood pressure with leeches and burn off warts. He drives himself to work, does his own shopping and cooking and works on his feet all day. He doesn’t take any daily medicines, and he says he feels great. He still misses his wife of 70 years,who died 14 years ago, and he visits her grave daily.

I love this man! He reminds me of Max Fisher’s barber father in Rushmore, my favorite movie of all time. I showed my daughter the article this morning, and she agrees with me that Mr. Mancinelli has discovered the secret of life. He found something he loves, and he does it every day. Today, when I was driving her to school, Violet mentioned a crossing guard who worked at her middle school and greeted her every day with a giant smile and kind words. The crossing guard not only got her safely across the street, she brightened Violet’s day and that of every other person that she saw each morning and afternoon. That’s another person, who, in my opinion, has found the secret of life. She loves her job and she spreads good will.

Thinking of her and Mr. Mancinelli, I smiled to myself all the way back from the high school drop off. I shouldn’t complain about the work being done in my house. I am lucky to have the house and the means to fix things that need to be fixed.

graduation blues

“Yesterday, a child came out to wonder/caught a dragonfly inside a jar/fearful when the sky was full of thunder/and tearful at the falling of a star.”

I decided to torture myself and listen to Joni Mitchell’s “The Circle Game.” That song--which has always, always made me cry--is pure utter fuel for the mess I am today.

Yesterday, my little boy had his senior prom. He attended with his lovely girlfriend of a year. Tomorrow he graduates high school.

How?

Seriously, yesterday?

Yesterday, I was a 35-year-old divorcee not that interested in children. Yesterday I met a man named Dalton Ross, nine years my junior, and like magic, we fell in love. He was full of enthusiasm, and he wanted children, and soon, we married. Quickly and easily I was pregnant, and after much morning sickness, a goodly amount of Mr. Softee, and a long labor, some of it spent walking around Washington Square Park, some of it spent watching Rushmore, my baby boy was born on July 13, 2000 at St. Luke’s Roosevelt in Manhattan.

He weighed 8 pounds 9 ounces. We named him Dale Kelly Ross. He took to the breast like a champ with his jaws of steel. He would not sleep in the crib, so I slept with him snuggled by my side. The exhaustion was epic. But that was the job, and I was committed to it.  

When Dale was 18 months old, he began running up and down the hallways and we grew out of our one-bedroom apartment on Washington Square Park. My days as a hip youngish editor about town were over. We moved out to Montclair, New Jersey so the little boy had room to grow. I never looked back.

At pre-school, he did not like to draw. He would peel the paper off the crayons. He would hand us sidewalk chalk. “Can you draw?” he’d ask. Blond curls and big brown eyes. He loved the block corner. He favored large structures. “I built the Serious Tower,” he would say. The biggest building in the world, at one time. The pre-school preferred to use recycled materials, in the tradition of Reggio-Emilia, Italy. At one point, the teacher decided the children would build sculptures from styrofoam, and she put together a museum of their creations. I took off from work that day. I knelt on the floor so we would be eye to eye, and hugged him. “It was so special to be here today, and see the sculpture museum,” I told him. “You are my little boy. You are my pride and my joy.” He nodded solemnly.

Yesterday. That was yesterday.

He sobbed into the skirt of the white suit I wore to my first day on the job at ELLEgirl. “Don’t get me dirty,” I said. “I have to go.” A month later he started kindergarten. He sat at a desk with a big lunch box looming before him, terrified. But elementary school, it was good. I lost my job and became a stay-at-home mom. I learned to drive. I tried out that whole class mom thing.  Dale made friends and he learned to play French horn and he discovered Harry Potter and chess. He won the prize for most books read; he played soccer; he learned to swim. We joined a pool club and he was on the swim team and the tennis team and I was his biggest fan.

And then, it was middle school. The boy who had spent a decade loving us unconditionally began to find us embarrassing. That’s how it goes. That’s life, right? Yesterday,  they are sobbing into your white skirt; today, they don’t want you near them.

During this period I read a post about parenting kids this age. The author used the metaphor of the wall in the swimming pool. The child swims away from the wall; that’s the natural order of things. But then, inevitably, they need the wall. Your job is to be that wall.

So, yesterday, when he was in middle school, I tried to be the wall, when I remembered what kind of parent I wanted to be. Sometimes, though, I fell down on the job. He would try my patience, as teenagers do, and I didn’t always handle it perfectly. I could have been better, yesterday. I could have been the wall. The wall is the vessel for the water that makes the pool. The wall does not complain when the swimmer moves away. The wall is silent, strong.

Yesterday, he started high school. I drove to the school to pick up his schedule before freshman year, got out of the car, and realized that my legs were shaking. Why? I was not starting high school. I was nervous for him? But it was fine. He dropped soccer and discovered a talent for running. One glorious freshman season of basketball, and then he stopped playing tennis too, and ran year round.

As the months and year moved on, he pushed us away even more. He told us almost nothing. They must separate. You raise your children to leave you. It’s the natural order of life. My husband and I left our parents. But they didn’t tell us how much it hurt.

Yesterday, it was the senior prom. That was really yesterday, not a metaphorical yesterday, but actually, yesterday, June 19, 2018. And tomorrow, that’s graduation.

Wish me luck.

Define Job

I just read "The Selfishness of Motherhood," an opinion piece by Karen Rinaldi that ran in The New York Times. It was published last Sunday, but you know how it is. Sunday turns into Monday which turns into Tuesday which turns into Wednesday, and here it is Thursday, which seems like a good time to read The Sunday Review section.

I've been a stay-at-home parent for the past 11 years (well, mostly; I've done a smattering of freelance work), and Rinaldi's piece made me feel defensive and cranky. I felt the same way when I read non-mother Elizabeth Wurtzel's 2012 piece in The Atlantic, which ranted that motherhood isn't a job because one isn't paid for it. Wurtzel went on to say that being a stay-at-home mom is really about ruining feminism while getting your nails done and going to yoga all day long as a nanny does the heavy lifting. Grrr.

The hook for The NYT piece is a well-meaning comment from Rinaldi's mother: "Motherhood, it's the hardest job in the world. All sacrifice!" This statement stuck in Rinaldi's craw, so being a published novelist, she churned out an op-ed piece. She's a mother of two, and, she writes, "I don't believe for one second that motherhood is the hardest job in the world nor that it is a sacrifice."

Yeah, there are probably harder jobs. I can think of a few. Firefighter. Stunt person. Cleaning toilets all day. Sandhog. Pedicurist. Giving colonics. Anyone who has to deal with Trump.

But why write a whole piece that aims to prove that motherhood is not a job? It's semantics.

Parenthood is work. It requires physical and emotional and intellectual labor. True, it's unpaid.  I know what it's like to get paid, because I worked full-time as an editor and writer for 23 years; 6 of those years I was also a mother. Being paid is really awesome. Not being paid stinks. (Aside:  if a parent is not available to do the work because she/he is at a paying job, then someone has to be paid to do it. If a nanny is doing the same tasks that a parent does--it's a job because she is getting paid.)

According to Rinaldi, the purpose of the tendency to call motherhood a job is to preserve the feelings of homemakers who want to be valued. How dare those homemakers want to be valued! She says motherhood is not a job because not only does one not get paid, one does not have a boss. Um, ok. Not to get personal, but does she, a novelist, have a boss?

About a month ago I was at a very hoity toity party, where I told a woman how much I had enjoyed her daughter's memoir. She was pleased, and then asked, "Aren't you in publishing?"

"Not at the moment," I said. "I am mostly at home with my children." She looked like she wanted to murder me. "Well, that's a luxury," she said disapprovingly. I sweetly agreed, but she was done with me then. This unpleasant interaction comes to mind now, maybe because Rinaldi's piece makes me feel similarly dismissed.

I recently saw the 1970 film Diary of a Mad Housewife at Film Forum. It's a must-see if you haven't already, the story of an Upper West Side mother of two with an insufferable husband. In some ways it's dated, in others you can see how little has changed. I liked it so much I bought and devoured the novel on which the film was based. The frazzled protagonist--a liberal arts grad named Tina--does a lot of "women's work" and is dismissed by all.

I'd have more to say about this, but right now I have work to do. Unpaid work.

Uncle Jack

I want to talk about my Uncle Jack. He was my father's older brother and my godfather. They looked alike, more and more as the years went by, he and my father, with the same distinctive nose and smile. Uncle Jack always slicked back his hair with some sort of old-school hair grease, maybe a bit aggressively applied. He always made me feel that he was happy to see me. I adored him.

Uncle Jack worked nights. He drove a truck that delivered newspapers, and the depot was pretty close to our house, so on weekend mornings, he would often stop by with The Sunday New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and a bag of fresh kaiser rolls. I would ask, "Which do you want, tea or coffee?" He would make a choice, and I would promptly forget and fix him the opposite. He thought this was hilarious. He would sit and have a roll and tea/coffee,  and talk to my dad about I don't know what, but it pleased me to see them together. They really got along well.

A couple of times, he had me climb into the cab of his truck so he could "teach me how to drive." I would start it up and travel a couple of feet. "That's enough," he would say, laughing. Then he would go home to my Aunt Cathleen, who is from Ireland, and his three kids, Johnny, Patrick and Cathy. I would pore through the newspapers and get all kinds of ideas of things to do, like teen sleepaway camp in Mexico, which my parents would not allow. I also believe that these weekly deliveries are what got me interested in becoming a journalist.

Uncle Jack worked hard. I never saw him complain. Sometimes, at a family gathering at his house in the Pelham Parkway section of the Bronx, he would emerge in his work clothes and announce that it was time for him to go to work. "Nature of the beast," he would say, smiling.

When my father died in 1991, Uncle Jack said: "Anything you need, you ask. Anything." I knew he meant it. I saw him less frequently after my father died, mainly at weddings and funerals. His son Johnny, his eldest, died of esophagus cancer in his 40s. My brother drove Uncle Jack and Aunt Cathleen from the funeral mass to the lunch, and I was in the car with them. He cried bitterly. "The son is not supposed to die before the father," he said. "That's not the way it is supposed to be."

In recent years, both Uncle Jack and Aunt Cathleen had been sick. I had plans to visit them this winter, but there was an ice storm that kept us from traveling. I feared at the time that it was my last chance to see him.

It was. Uncle Jack died yesterday.

Non-writer

Yesterday, I was mistaken for a non-writer.

I was enjoying a post-yoga brunch with some fellow students and our teacher. One student, a successful writer of books and teacher of writing, asked if we would all attend a practice run of a workshop that she is developing for non-writers.

Non-writers. I kept silent. Though she is more acquaintance than friend, we are part of the same monthly poker night and I've know her for a couple of years. Yet she does not realize that I am a writer, something I've noticed before, but never bothered to correct, which is obviously my fault, not hers. Many times, when she has talked about her projects, I've thought to chime in and say...what, exactly? That I worked as a magazine writer and editor for many years? That I have a tiny blog that I never write in? That my freelance part-time writing career has dwindled down to nothing? That I have the type of writer's block that makes Fran Leibowitz look productive? I consider myself a writer, but now there's always something more important as the day dawns. Monday: tending to a sick child. Tuesday: accompanying my mother to a chemo appointment. Wednesday: French class, followed by matinee of The Heidi Chronicles, followed by telling husband that things are really no better for women now than when Wendy Wasserstein wrote this play 25 years ago. Thursday: Yoga, then reminder that I am supposedly a writer, then laundry, then carpools, then dinner, then homework help.

Today, there's nothing that stands in the way of me writing, until 2:09, when I take my Girl Scouts to sell cookies.

In a way, I am a non-writer. I don't write. Do I bother to start again?

I thought I might write a response to a Today.com essay that a couple of friends posted to Facebook yesterday, in which one mother scoffs at another for attending to her children too "preciously," creating time capsules of each year of the child's life.  The author championed the parenting style of her own 1970's mother, who sent the kids out to play unattended so she could drink cases of Tab in peace. The author's argument is that she turned out fine, so her mother's parenting philosophy must be correct.  While I agree that Tab is delicious, I wouldn't advocate emulating my parents just because I grew up to be sort of ok. They would take my brother and me to the drive-in wearing our pajamas, and tell us to sleep in the back seat, while they watched Goodbye, Columbus and chain smoked with the windows rolled up. My brother and I thought this was a fun night out, but no parent today would do this. Our parents did what seemed right to them; my husband and I do what seems right to us. Or sometimes we make one decision and reverse ourselves. We have no idea, really, what to do with a teenager. (Don't tell our son, or we're even more screwed.)

I get very exhausted when one parent denounces what they see as a pernicious trend in parenting. I've said this before, but the people who come up with the theories of parenting are always justifying their own choices. You make your choices; I'll make mine. We have no way of knowing how our kids will turn out.

Bird Poop on My Excitement Dress

Violet has a tennis match in 45 minutes, so I'll make this brief. We just got back from our annual week at the Jersey Shore with my extended family. This trip has been mandatory for decades.
Activities include leisurely walks on the boardwalk, and hours at the beach huddled under an umbrella while coated in sunscreen and swathed in hats and muumuus. Some enjoy burying one's father in the sand, nightly viewings of Jeopardy, the playing of board games, trips to the water park and frequent consumption of fish followed by Kohr's brand soft custard.

On our last night, we were sitting outside the Berkeley Fish Market waiting for our table. Suddenly, a tar-like substance landed on the menu I was perusing and splashed all over my dress. Bird poop, but a bird poop darker and thicker than any I had ever seen. And more copious.

I was wearing my Excitement Dress. I should explain. Each season has its own Excitement Dress. The Excitement Dress has been recently purchased and is the one you always wear when going somewhere special. Past Excitement Dresses: a tight black mini from Betsey Johnson (1984), a pale blue lace A line mini from Jill Stuart (1994), a black mini from Comptoir des Cotonniers (2009). This year's excitement dress indicates a general death of panache in my wardrobe. I mean, things are bad. I blush to tell you it was purchased from the Hanna Anderson catalogue, is fitted through the bodice, and has a full skirt to the knee. It is red, and I've worn it at least ten times since it arrived in May. Perhaps this bird is some sort of fashion arbiter.

A nice lady told me that being pooped on by a bird is good luck. I went to the bathroom to clean up as best as I could, but I never recovered, emotionally. Sulking, I stabbed without enthusiasm at my mahi mahi, while wearing a dress covered with the excrement of some berry-consuming bird.

Soaking and stain remover did not eradicate the evidence, which is maybe for the best. I really deserve a better Excitement Dress.

Egg Baby

Yesterday at 6:40 am, my eighth-grader paused in his waffle consumption to sweetly say: "Mom, I need your help with something this morning."

His tone was so pleasant. "I need to make an egg baby."

I must have looked confused. "Do you know how to make an egg baby?" he asked. I did not. "You just use an egg and a pin. You put a hole in either side and blow all the insides out of the egg. It's due today."

I had a vague memory of my father trying this when I was a child, maybe for Easter? I remember him actually sucking out the raw yolk because the blowing method did not work.

Oy.

My son had to leave for school in 40 minutes. I took an egg out of the refrigerator and found a large needle. I put the needle on one end of the egg and drove it through. The egg cracked. One dead baby.

My boy took a look. "Do you have any white eggs?" he asked.  He was supposed to name the egg baby and carry it around in a safe container for a spell, take care of it like a parent. I only had brown. No problem. We decided that his baby could be biracial or adopted. 

This time Dale put the pin through both ends without cracking the egg. Using a combination of running water and blowing, we cleaned it out. He drew a face and hair and named his progeny Ovi Juan Kenobi. 

We lined a tissue box with bubble wrap and off he went. This was a project for health class. The point, I guess, is to deter teens from having children? I have no idea. 

But an eggshell is a good metaphor for a child. An eggshell is fragile. It will break unless you take precautions. Yes? 

Likewise, everything you say to your child can make or break them. I could have snapped at my son when he sprung this project on me at the last minute, made a comment about planning ahead. But I didn't. Because the previous night, out of nowhere, sitting at the table eating a snack, he gave me one of the most important parenting lessons I've ever received, way more valuable, probably, than carrying an egg baby.

It was quiet. My daughter was asleep and my husband, out of town. "Do you know when I am happiest?" he asked. "When you're happy with me." 

At the end of the day, the egg, miraculously, was unbroken. 

The Wrong Soccer Field

Yesterday, at about 1:15, I drove my son to Fortunato Field for a soccer game. I pulled into a spot down the block.

 "Dad always drops me off in front and then parks," he said, with great irritation.

"Dad's in Nicaragua," I replied.

He stormed off to the field, and I sat in the car for a few seconds. I hate driving, I hate parking, and if you really want to know the truth, I hate soccer. I'm a tennis gal. I felt like crying. Instead, my daughter and I got out and walked to the field.

A lacrosse team was warming up. I checked my phone. Ugh. Dale's game was at the OTHER home field, Pittser, at Montclair State University. So he would be ten minutes late for the warm-up.

"Try driving faster than 10 miles per hour," said my precious little boy, the one I carried for nine months, birthed after a 20 hour labor, and then breast fed for a year and a half. I sped up to 25 mph. This time I dropped him off prior to parking.  He jumped out of the car before I had completely stopped, which did not foster my good will.

It was a spectacularly beautiful day. The sun shone brightly and it was hot but not too hot, as long as you were nowhere near the field. Something about artificial turf causes the temperature to rise exponentially.

One thing I don't like about being a soccer mom is the lack of climate control. I have certain weather requirements. Nothing too picky: I just can't stand it when the temperature falls below 60 or rises above 80, or if there is any kind of precipitation. Also, I don't much like humidity. And I need to be in the shade.

The other team arrived. They were from Union City. Everyone--players, parents, coach--was speaking Spanish. Violet's friend, the sister of one of Dale's teammates, arrived. They went off together.

I found some shade, which was available several yards from the sidelines in a little gazebo. The temperature was just right! I pondered the graffiti that the college kids had left. I would just sit this one out.

Though I have been watching my kids play soccer for 10 years, I still don't have a strong command of the game. Once, my husband called me while he was working and I was on the sidelines.

"How is the game going?" he asked.

"Fine."

"What is the score?" he asked. I did not know. "Well, how is Dale playing?" he asked. I had no idea. "What can you tell me?" he asked.

"Well, there are a bunch of people," I said, "and they are all chasing the same ball."

So that's how it is. I wouldn't say I am the worst soccer mom in the world. The worst soccer mom in the world is the one who berates her kid from the sidelines. I don't do that, because I don't care.

As I sat peacefully waiting in the gazebo, blissfully disconnected from the game, three people approached me with a bible. The leader said he wanted to talk to me about the mysteries of the bible. I am a churchgoer; in fact, we had just left our church two hours earlier. And yet, I know from experience that you should never be polite to people who approach you wielding a bible. It took me months to shake the Jehovah's Witnesses who kept showing up on my doorstep.

But now I was trapped. The three of them entered the small gazebo. The talker showed me bible passages that he said proved that there was a God the Mother. He was very long-winded, but  I listened quietly. What choice did I have?

Five minutes passed. He was still yammering. I started wondering if this was some scam to steal my wallet. "The Holy Spirit has a name," he said. "If you do not know the name of the Holy Spirit, then your baptism was not valid. " My patience was wearing thin. "I actually don't think that makes a difference," I said. "Anyway, what is the Holy Spirit's name?" I was sort of curious.

He wouldn't tell me, or get to the point, which--I'm just guessing here--was to tell me I would burn in hell unless I switched to his church. At least, that is how it went with the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Finally, I extricated myself by explaining that I had a soccer game to watch. The blazing sun would be less torturous than this. The boys were losing 3-0. I remember enough high school Spanish to decipher the gist of what the other parents were yelling, which translates roughly as "continue to kick the ass of these boys."

Our parents were saying something similar in English, but in reverse. The dynamic is very unsettling, come to think of it: two groups of parents urging their children to kick the ass of other children. I think the final score was 6-0.

Bad Shampoo Alert

Good afternoon. I have emerged from blogging hibernation to shine a light on a very important matter. In brief, Nexxus Color Assure sulfate free shampoo and conditioner are terrible products. Do not buy them. After using them for several weeks, my hair has literally never looked worse (I am including the spiral perm episode and the time I accidentally dyed it purple). It's frizzy yet lifeless; at once greasy and dry.

I bought the Nexxus crap several weeks ago, because CVS was out of my preferred Salma Hayek products for color treated hair. As I am well into my dotage, I've been crankily coloring my hair for a few years; my stylist says the color lasts longer if one uses a special shampoo. So I obey.

The purchase of the offending items coincided with a visit to the salon, which had just switched to Aveda hair color from Goldwell. At first I suspected that my hair didn't like the Aveda. Or that this horrific winter we've been having has rendered it dull and dry, with random greasy areas.  So I carried on using the Nexxus every third day, which is how often I wash my hair.

Finally,  it dawned on me: the shampoo! It's "Sulfate Free." Apparently, sulfates, while bad for the environment or human health or whatever the problem (I was going to research it, but I can't take it on), are what make shampoo actually work.

Yesterday, I used some hotel shampoo and conditioner, and my hair looked immediately better. Not fantastic, mind you. It may take a while before the memory of the Nexxus has faded from my follicles. I don't like to waste things, but the shampoo and conditioner will be disposed of.

To recap, this stuff stinks.

Demented Product of the Day: The Power Nap Head Pillow

Clearly overwork has distorted the perspective of this poor man

Hi. Flipping through the detritus of the day's mail while Vi is doing her homework, I just spotted this item for sale in Hammacher Schlemmer. According to the copy, it "blocks out noise and light to create a private zone for catching a quick power nap...at a crowded airport or recharging between meetings at work." !!!!!! It costs $99.95.

Further Proof That I Am Psychic

There was a strip of tape on my bicep. It looked like some sort of medical tape, and it had been there for longer than I could remember. I had tried to remove it over the years, but it was hard to get off, so there it stayed. Finally, one day, I yanked the tape hard. It gave way to reveal a raised scar, in a  straight Frankenstein line. Also, there was a bloody hole an inch deep. How had I gotten that? When?
I began calling and meeting up with friends to see if anyone could help me remember. No one knew.

Suddenly, the light switched on. My husband and kids were wishing me happy birthday. It was 6:21 am. It was so disorienting, being woken from this dream, so early on a Sunday morning. "Give me a minute," I said, and told them about the dream.


I wrote the above paragraphs back in September, a few days after my birthday, for a post I had titled "The Birthday Monster." It was to be about my birthday tears and joys, but I never got past those few words. Long story short: I was weepy and feeling sorry for myself, until my sweet daughter did everything she could to make my day special. Love her.

 I am sharing the writing now (I have not changed a letter) because it is proof that I am psychic. I have long believed this to be true. My husband rolls his eyes, and maybe you are, too. But listen to this: I now have a Frankenstein scar, acquired after this dream. A few weeks after my birthday, during a routine skin check, my dermatologist (I have had trouble but finally found a good one) discovered a suspicious growth on the back of my neck.

 This thing was not even on my radar. It was small, reddish, hard and pimple-esque and had shown up about 3 weeks before. Nothing like the brownish moles I worry about. The doctor removed it for biopsy,  and called me with the results a few days later.  It turned out to be squamous cell skin cancer.  Squamous cell skin cancer is not as deadly as melanoma, but a little more deadly than basal cell. If not caught early, it can spread throughout the body, or disfigure a person. This was caught early.

I was not terribly surprised by the diagnosis. Though I have been very careful about the sun for the past two decades, I grew up in a time before SPF and thus endured many sunburns. As a teenager and young adult I would sunbathe, trying to get tan, which I regret whenever I see the milky white skin on my unsunned abdomen. If only I had stayed out of the sun, my entire epidermis would look so good.

My mom has had a few squamous cell growths removed from her face. My grandmother had numerous large basal cell skin cancer moles. I mean, they were gigantic. I pray that nothing like that ever appears on my body. It motivates me to sunscreen up and regularly get checked at the dermatologist. I have had so many suspicious skin growths biopsied, but before this, they had all been benign.

The doctor said: "It's absolutely nothing to worry about." So I did not worry that much. I worry about all kinds of things you are not supposed to worry about; still, I was not THAT worried. She explained they would have to remove a little more skin to see if the cancer had spread, which I took to mean they would numb the area and scrape a little off. She did say I had to see a dermatologic surgeon for this procedure, called an excision.

So last Tuesday, I took the train into the city, and made plans to meet a friend for lunch. I did not look up "excision" on the internet. Or ask many questions. That is why I did not realize that a hole five millimeters from the outside of the growth would be cut into my neck. The train was 45 minutes late. Thus, I arrived that late at the fancy doctor's Fifth Avenue office, across from Central Park. I sat under a crystal chandelier on a white leather couch. The leather was buttery soft, unblemished, like the skin of an unsunned belly, if you will. The lillies on the coffee table were dead, which I found odd.

The doctor had beautiful red hair swept into an elegant chignon. She and her receptionist were looking at tile samples for the bathroom while I filled out my paperwork. Later, when I was in the room, "excision" was explained to me. A hole five millimeters from the edges of the growth would have to be cut. Honestly, it is probably better that I did not know too much beforehand. After a monster amount of local anesthetic was injected into me, the cutting began. Then the doctor cauterized the edges. Maybe to kill any stray squamous cells? I was not really listening.   I could smell my own flesh burning, and it was like chicken cooking. That was gnarly. Finally, she sewed the circle closed in a straight Frankenstein line. Ten stitches.  See! I am psychic.

They sent out my flesh for biopsy.  The nurse showed me how to change my bandage, then she stuck on a pressure bandage, which I guess was to impede any bleeding. I was told not to move my neck, carry anything heavy or travel for the next two weeks. When I emerged, my sweet friend SueAnne was there in the waiting room. I was walking with a stiff neck. I also had a bandaid under my eye because another growth that was bothering me had been removed. So I was looking pretty gorgeous.

We went to lunch, but I had no appetite and was finding it too much effort to eat without moving my neck. SueAnne paid, and insisted on taking me in a cab to Penn Station. Due to traffic we missed the train by one minute, so I had a one-hour wait. I spent the time thinking about my many loved ones who had had cancer-- those who had made it, and those who hadn't. Both parents, cousins, uncles, in-laws, grandparents, beloved friends. They had endured unspeakable treatments. I merely had a hole cut in my neck and a Frankenstein scar. I probably should have gotten someone to drive me instead of taking public transport, but my issue was so minor, hopefully. I reflexively turned my head to look at the board, and learned why I had been advised not to move my neck. Ouch.

That night was Back to School Night, my daughter's last at her elementary school. My husband Dalton thought I should stay home. But I did not want to miss it. He had to carry my purse. "You are walking like a robot, you have a bandaid on your face, and I am carrying your bag," he said. "You are raising a lot of questions." I laughed.

Long story short, my biopsy came back clear, which raises the question of why it was necessary to cut a hole in my neck. But, I am not a doctor. The stitches come out next week. I have nice friends who brought me lunch. I realized I wait on my family like a servant, and I taught them how to do chores I can't right now. Another silver lining: now that my daughter has seen the scar, I don't think she'll argue about the importance of sunscreen. I made up a hilarious song: "You say squamous (short a)/ and I say squamous (long a)."

Anyway. My point is, I am psychic. And also, you should wear sunscreen and get a skin check.

how it looked one week later