The Year Walter Saved Christmas

Read my mother’s Depression-era childhood recollection of a beloved family border below:

In memory of Bruno Walter Kohler, and to all who bring delight to the hearts of children, any time of year.

This is the story mom tells every Christmas. Her father told it before her. She tells it in a formal tone, weighty and reverent, which is different from the way she ordinarily speaks. It’s as if she understands that when she is gone, there will be no one left to tell this story. She tells it to me, her daughter, and her grandson William, as we set up the Christmas crèche with its painted, plaster figurines– this manger, which has been in our family for about as long as this story has been told.

My father Ted, she begins, who was raised in abject poverty during the Great Depression, he never had a Christmas tree as a child. But when I was born, he always saw to it that I had a Christmas tree, and a large one at that.  

William unwinds cocoons of tissue paper, worn with age, and soft as flannel. Small sheep emerge, curled on grass green bases. 

But my father was also thrifty, mom continues, and waited until the very last minute to buy a tree, on Christmas Eve, when the prices came down. Of course in those days, the practice in New York was not to put the tree up, or even to trim it, until Christmas Eve. And then people would celebrate for the twelve days that followed. Which is very different from what it is today, when people throw their trees out the day after Christmas. 

William unwraps a shepherd, and another sheep, this one with neck twisted backwards, looking over its shoulder. I place this lamb, as I always do, backwards, with its hind quarters facing the crèche, and its muzzle craning to witness the miracle of our savior’s birth.

One year, my mother continues, when I could not have been more than six or seven, my father waited, as usual, until Christmas Eve to buy a tree. But when he went out looking, he found that trees were scarce, and actually, there were no trees at all for sale. He did not know what to do. He went home, and I imagine he told my Mother and Walter, who was sitting at the kitchen table, that there would be no Christmas tree that year.  So Walter left for Judges Bar on Zerega Avenue, his favorite watering hole. Lo and behold, a couple of hours later, Walter returned with a cheap bottle of Muscatel, a gift for my teetotaling father, along with two large balsam branches that he had bought from a barfly. My father lashed the boughs together for a tree, and decorated it. And it was beautiful. And I never knew it wasn’t a real tree until I was older and heard the story. So that was the year that Walter saved our Christmas.

Walter, a boarder in my mother’s home, not only saved Christmas that year, but he started a family tradition that endures. Walter bought my mother this manger from a five and dime store. We still erect it every December, no matter how busy we are, and sometimes very late in the season, even adding figures after Christmas Day.

As is the case this December, when we build out our nativity scene on December 26th, which we insist on calling Boxing Day, a British holiday, though we are American. We enjoy this little affectation; a nod to imagined Old World Christmases we have never known. William continues to unwind tissue and I to arrange: Mary and Joseph, the Magi and camels, all crowding the holy crib, and Archangel Gabriel perched atop. But there are also unlikely worshipers, swans and turkeys, dogs and cats–out of proportion china keepsakes, added over the years, collected from boxes of Red Rose Tea and God knows where else.

Walter loved Christmas and would shake the snow globe of childhood memories to mesmerize my mother with sparkling flakes of yuletides past, the Christmas markets, the handcrafted dollhouses, the Christstollen with candied fruit.

William unwraps the last bundle to reveal the central character in this nativity drama. In years when we are not so late in setting up the crèche, we hide the babe behind the manger until  Christmas Eve, when we pop the little light of the world into his straw bed. But now, with Christmas past, I place Jesus right at the plaster knees of his mother, bent and adoring, arms outstretched, hands cupped, as if cradling love itself. 

Bruno Walter Kohler’s own little light kindled into the world in a small town in Saxony, in the late 19th Century. Not much is known about his early years, besides what he shared of those idyllic Christmases. Walter endured the Great War and the severe inflation that followed. He became a merchant seaman out of Hamburg, and in the early 1930s he sailed into New York Harbor and jumped ship, rather than return home, where he might well have been conscripted into the Third Reich.

Walter went looking for lodging and found my great-grandmother, Carmela, who rented him a room in her tenement apartment in East Harlem. It was not uncommon in those days for a divorcee, like Carmela, to rent spare bedrooms. Her daughter Mary lived upstairs on the top floor in the same building, with her husband Ted and my mother, Constance.

An undocumented immigrant, Walter worked seven nights a week tossing back-breaking bundles of The Daily News from a truck onto newsstands throughout the city. He worked all night and slept all day, for years. The Great Depression was still hanging on when my mother was born in 1938. Mary was nineteen and Ted was twenty, and unemployed. It was Walter who bought the milk for little Connie, week after week.

In 1943, the whole family, including Walter, moved from Manhattan to the top floor of a two-family house in the Bronx. One year later, at forty-eight, Carmela got sick and died from something mysterious that doctors at the time didn’t understand. Walter stayed on with Ted and Mary and Connie. While World War II raged in Europe, Ted got Walter off The Daily News paper truck and found him a job as a dishwasher at Schreiber’s, a Kosher restaurant in Manhattan. This was an improvement, or was it? Now Walter worked forty hours a week and had two days off, which he spent, increasingly, at Judges Bar up the street. 

Up until then, no one realized Walter was an alcoholic because he worked every day and never had much time to sit on a barstool. Gradually though, his behavior changed and he became unbearable. He fell down the stairs drunk more than once, and Ted and Mary asked him to leave more than once. But when Walter begged to come back home, they relented, every time, until the last time, when they didn’t take him back. 

Now Walter was on the outs, living in a furnished room nearby. He would often walk by the Tratman Avenue house and talk to Connie, playing out front. In the early 1950s, some of the Bronx was still undeveloped. There was open space and marshland for children to explore. Swamps would freeze over, and kids like my mother would lace on their skates and disappear until dinnertime. One such frozen winter day, Ted and Mary got a call from the police that Walter had been found dead in one of these swamps, about two blocks from the house. According to the coroner’s report, the immediate cause of death was heart attack from “chronic ethanolism.” Alcoholism. Walter had no insurance and no savings. My grandfather paid all expenses to bury him.

William and I add the finishing touch: the snowy forest. None of us has ever questioned the topographic accuracy of these snow-flocked, bottle brush pine trees that we plant behind the stable in Bethlehem. I step back to take in the scene. One shepherd’s staff is missing, another’s sandaled foot is chipped. The porcelain turkey squats beside the rhino.

My mother is pleased with how the manger has turned out, though it looks pretty much the same as it does every year. She is thinking of Walter:

There was a great deal of accumulated sentiment for Walter, who had lived with us for more than two decades. There was nobody else in his life, just our family. He was with us when I was born in 1938 until he died, when I was sixteen. I remember one time I passed Walter’s room, I must have been seven or eight. The door was open. On his dresser I noticed a tiny, leather glove. Now we knew that Walter had lost his wife and child in a fire in Germany many years earlier, but that’s all we knew. He never talked about it. There was just that one glove that he kept on top of his bedroom dresser. I remember it to this day.

I count sheep and make sure there are the same number on either side of the stable, because this is how it’s always been done. It’s as if someone, at some point, perhaps Walter himself, figured out that prioritizing visual balance fostered the harmonious effect that scenes like these call for. Everything is as it should be, as the manger figures from the five-and-ten-cent store settle into their roles for yet another season, to reenact the same story, with the same message. An inexpensive set of statues and a pair of pathetic pine branches, bought by a beloved drunk, tell the tale of agony and abiding love at Christmas.

Houseplants

Photo by Author

Not long ago I heard an  interview on NPR on the “consciousness” of plants, which got me worrying that  maybe I was hurting my pot of basil every time I pinched off her leaves  for marinara sauce. So I’ve been digging my fingers below the surface of my understanding to unearth what it is exactly about my new hobby, so  often frustrating and full of fails, that keeps me at it! Read the story below:

After the “smoke event” of June, 2023, when Eastern Canada caught on fire and belched particulates down the Eastern seaboard, reaching as far as Flatbush, Brooklyn, and turning the sky outside my window Creamsicle orange, I did two things to improve the air quality in my one-bedroom micro-environment: I bought a Korean air purifier on Amazon and a small forest of houseplants from my local florist.

Until that point, I had just one imposing snake plant, worthy of any dentist’s waiting room, which thrived under the canopy of my neglect. Now I had a leafy grove with hard-to-pronounce names and confusing care labels poking up from pots.

Like cooking, there is a knack to growing houseplants. A little education in the beginning helps — plant care podcasts and conversations with neighbors are a good start, but as I discovered, you are on your own to save that broccoli sheet pan supper from shriveling into the petrified forest, or that African Violet, when, for no apparent reason, she loses all turgidity in her stems and collapses like a beached octopus.

What I have learned from cooking and caring for plants is that you have to be willing to have your heart broken and to try again. You have to be willing to turn up the heat and sear salmon again, and you have to be willing to compost that Tiger Aloe that you overwatered and then go buy another succulent, just like it.

I have also learned that both the art of cooking and the art of plant care require good timing and just the right amount of attention. Shrimp can go from raw to rubbery in thirty seconds, and a tempermental Rosemary can catch a chill and drop her needless overnight. And if you get too fussy flipping that flounder filet, it flakes into a million pieces in the pan. You have to face failure, accept what isn’t working, and change course.

But most situations in the kitchen and on the sunny windowsill are salvageable. And this is heartening for someone like me, who likes to eat well and surround herself with foliage that continuously pants oxygen into the air.

I recently heard a story on NPR about the consciousness of plants, not a new concept, but revived and expanded in cool ways. Like most stories that I listen to on NPR, I can’t remember the name of the person interviewed, nor the name of their book. So I looked it up: The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth by Zoe Schlanger, a staff writer at the Atlantic. The takeaway was this: when plants are challenged by unfriendly forces in their environment they don’t just surrender their fate from their fixed and rooted position, they get creative. Or as Ms. Schlanger puts it, plants have “agency.” “They take an active stake in the outcome of their life,” and have this “lively ability to make choices for themselves.” She goes on to describe this weird way tomato plants can secrete substances into their leaves that are so distasteful to caterpillars, that the fuzzy parasites turn away from feeding on tomato leaves, and turn to munching on each other instead. Obviously, plants can’t always save themselves like this, but they can usually buy themselves some time.

And it is in this grace period, when all plants, including my Peace Lily, when the tips of her leaves turn brown in distress, that they are able to tolerate some pain, and stave off death. And it’s also during this time, when plants are kicking into survival mode, that I can step in and try to save my Anthurium, who is turning pale and folding her heart- shaped leaves inward. I can move her from direct sunlight to bright, diffuse light. She might like that. But lighting is tricky with houseplants and I’m still figuring it out.

If I am alert and adaptable, like the plants in my care, I can see trouble coming and demonstrate agency myself. I can be more attuned to the heroics of my house plants as they bend, discolor and curl in order to live. I can watch and intuit their needs. I can notice when my Kalanchoe fails to thrive and pinch her back hard, then mist her well.

My Heart of Jesus keeled over today. He had been ailing for weeks and I had tried everything. I will take him back to the florist tomorrow, and I’ll let the florist scold me for what I did wrong, and I will buy another Caladium, just like him. And I will try again. I will take him home and care for him and not over water him. And if his leaves start to drop anyway, my new Heart of Jesus and I will both demonstrate agency to try to turn things around. And maybe this time it will work out all right.

When Mom Went for Artichokes (But Got Arrested Instead)

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Mom didn’t mean to get involved; she only wanted to help. She just felt somebody should call the wife of the man who was getting arrested, to let her know that her husband wouldn’t be home for dinner. As it turns out, mom didn’t make it home for dinner either. It was uptown New Orleans, February 9th, 1973. We all remember the date—it was also dad’s birthday.

“It was the first snowfall in New Orleans in fifty years,” Mom told me recently, as we  watched whiteness blanket the patio picnic table from the comfort of matching Lazy Boy recliners in her home in Ulster county, New York. That’s not quite true, I discovered later. According to The National Weather Service, whose records date back to 1849 for the Crescent City, there have been seventeen “snow events” with sticking power. Still, it was an oddity, and my mother understood the significance. I was seven, and my brother Robey was ten. This was our first snowfall. It was just starting to come down as we walked to the Winn Dixie market after school. Mom wanted to elevate a weeknight meal to a celebration. Stuffed artichokes, that would do it. When we reached Palmer Park, it was clear that these flakes were going to stand up to the semi-tropical climate. “I only have to pick up a couple of items,” Mom said. “You stay in the park and play.” Then she walked across the street and out of sight.

… A tower display of canned yams rose high in the center of the produce aisle. Mom was weighing artichokes when a police officer, who’d been moonlighting for the pharmacy next door, rounded the corner and chased two girls straight into the pyramid, sending sweet potatoes in all directions. The cop was white, the girls black. Everyone was screaming, including a young bystander from Tulane Law School. “It was an altercation,” Mom told me. Altercation? I thought. Sounds like an understatement. Altercation felt too civilized a word to describe the scene. Mom seemed uncomfortable talking about this. As the cop arrested the girls for allegedly stealing Kodak film, the law student intervened. “I want to give you my business card because I have observed this,”  he told them. The cop saw this exchange and arrested the law student next.  “Then, “Mom said, “the young man started ranting that his father was a prominent judge, somewhere in the Midwest. You should be allowed to rant and rave though,” Mom added, “that should not be grounds for arrest, unless you’re threatening someone you see.” I did see. Then Mom made a big mistake. She said to the would-be attorney: “Give me your card so I can call your wife,”  At which point, the policeman also arrested Mom. “Now that was clearly above his line of duty,” mom said. “He should not have done that. That policeman should have let me take this law student’s business card so I could call his wife. It was an unjust arrest, both for the young lawyer and for me.” “And what about the girls?” I asked. “I don’t know,” Mom replied. That was a different case. They may have been guilty, that’s possible, but that wasn’t the point. Even if someone is guilty, they need to be treated with respect when they’re arrested.”

… 

It was getting dark. I watched flakes fall through halos of light crowning the street lamps as I lay in the grass making angels in the snow.  I can’t remember what my brother was up to, but I imagine that he was hurling snowballs in the direction of the streetcar on St. Charles Avenue. My gloves were soaked through, and my thin coat was not made for true winters. Snow continued to sift down from blackness now, like powdered sugar falling generously on a plate of hot square donuts at The Café du Monde in the French Quarter.

… 

This is where the story goes from troubling to outright disturbing. As Mom was escorted out of the Winn Dixie and into a squad car, she told the cops that her children were waiting for her across the street. “Officer, my children are alone in the park. I have to get my kids.” The cop ignored her and opened the back door of the sedan, “Get in.” Mom hesitated, then slid into the back seat of the cop car alongside the apprehended. They headed downtown to the precinct. 

A graduate of all-female Hunter College, little Connie from Zerega Avenue in the Bronx has never had a problem finding her voice. Her father was an FDR democrat, a union man and an atheist. Her Suffragist grandmother marched up 5th Avenue in 1915. Maybe all this played a part in making Mom the independent thinker that she is. Throw some astrology in the mix, if you like. Whatever it is, stubborn Taurus Mom has always had the courage to speak up. But Mom was also raised in the 1950s, before questioning authority was the norm, especially questioning law enforcement. I’m sure it didn’t feel right to just go along with the police that February evening. Mom didn’t make a scene. She got in the car. “You can imagine how I was feeling Maria.” I thought about when I was separated from my own six-year-old, when he had wandered off a path at the  zoo. Oh those ten minutes of terror—as the security guard sped me around in his golf cart, through flocks of peacocks, pointing out every white male under four feet tall. “The police wouldn’t let me do anything Maria.” She spoke softly. This was hard for her.  “They didn’t care that I had left my kids in the park. They were not compassionate.” Not compassionate? I thought. Again, her choice of words didn’t match the grim scene. Mom seemed detached, as if she was talking to a reporter and not her daughter. It was good we were seated side by side, not face on. We watched the snow fall through the French doors—about three inches thick on the picnic table already. Summer seemed far off. “That cop was a bastard mom. He should have lost his badge that night.” I watched my mother’s pain, in profile. It was not explosive, like those cans of yams that had crashed down and skidded in every direction. Her anger was not directed towards the cop so much, as towards herself. In that moment I saw that Mom has never forgiven herself for getting into the squad car that day. 

…

 “Take off your sweater,” a rookie cop told mom, in front of a roomful of male officers.  Did they think she was concealing a steak knife between her breasts? Mom was thirty-four and a dead ringer for Italian movie star Anna Magnani. Not so many people know who that is today. Magnani wasn’t classically beautiful like Sophia Loren, but La Lupa had something. And so did mom. “Well I didn’t have anything on underneath,” Mom explained. I could feel her humiliation, forty-eight years later. “I was not wearing a bra because, well,  that was the time when women were throwing away their bras.” Mom the bra-burner. Cool. “So the officer understood that and didn’t force me to take off my top. Instead he asked me ‘Where are you from?’ I told him ‘New York.’ He said ‘New York? I thought so…’ And you know Maria, the way he said  ‘New York,’ well, he said it like it was a dirty word.”

They fingerprinted and photographed Mom, then put her in the cell with the two younger women. For some unknown reason, my Mother had the business card of a civil rights attorney in her purse, and after she called Dad, she used her second nickel to call Beau Switch. Beau came down and got her out.  

… 

No one remembers how Robey and I happened to be rescued and taken to a grand townhouse across the street from Palmer Park—how we climbed a tall stoop and met a nice lady—how we were fed, given hot baths in a deep tub, and dressed in pajamas, rolled up  at the cuffs. Looking back, I had good reason to feel afraid, but I don’t recall really being scared by any of it —not by being left in a park for hours after dark, nor by being naked in a stranger’s bathtub. I do remember feeling numb to my core from the cold, and happy to finally thaw out, but that’s it. Eventually, Dad found us at this townhouse and took us home. No one remembers how that happened either. Then Beau dropped Mom off. It was far too late to celebrate Dad’s birthday, but we were home safe under the same roof, which, quite possibly, was more than could be said for the three others arrested that afternoon.

...

Mom did have her day in court, such as it was. “There’s always some humor in a good story, am I right?” “You’re right mom.” “It turned out Beau Switch was an alcoholic,” Mom laughed.  I failed to see the humor. “That’s not funny mom.”  “Can you let me tell the story Maria?” “Go on,” I said.  “So before the hearing, Beau had like three martinis at lunch—and no lunch. And we were late getting to court. And here’s where the racism comes in. When we finally got there the judge said ‘Oh had I known it would be someone like you, (translation: white) I never would have heard this case.’ So my case was dismissed on the spot. Beau was drunk and I didn’t have to do anything.” 

...

Mom had never been willing to talk about this—until now. Over the decades, I’ve tried. “Mom, tell me about the time you abandoned me in an empty park after dark.” Finally she did, and now I felt her shame. More than forty Februarys have passed since Mom ignored her conscience and went downtown without a fight, leaving two small humans in the dark.  Two little people were waiting for one big person to come into focus through a flurry of white, to scurry towards them, clutching a bag of artichokes to her breast, spilling apologies and artichokes, pulling them into her tight. I was a witness to my mother’s remorse. Of course she did know her first duty was to her children, not to the New Orleans Police Department.  

I tried to make it better, because that is what I’ve always done. “Don’t worry mom, I don’t remember feeling abandoned. Really. I didn’t even notice you were gone. Except towards the very end. When it was getting cold.” For once my mother didn’t respond. It felt right for me to say this, and it felt mostly accurate. But I think I would have said these same words, even if they weren’t true. I wanted to add “I’m proud of you mom,” but I didn’t. That would have been pushing it. She would have accused me of being phony. But that’s actually the most truthful thing I can say about the whole incident. I was proud that mom did as much as she did. She saw something wrong and chose to get in the middle of a messy situation, in the produce aisle of a 1970s Louisiana supermarket. This was not small, given who she was, and under those circumstances.  “I want to watch the forecast now Maria. Are we done?” “Yes Mom, we’re done.”

You Name Him You Claim Him: Any Man Can Be Yours!

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Honestly, I had no plan to take a stab at short form humor—this one just wrote itself overnight! Please note: hyperbole (EXAGGERATION) is a defining feature of satire, and so the character below bears only small resemblance to the author:)

Hey there long-suffering single sister, this tip is for you! And you can thank me with a picture from your scaled-down second wedding on a public beach.

If you’re like me, you’ve been dating waaay too long post-divorce. 

It’s a BIG problem. We’ve no time to lose!  I am so much less cute and so much more crazy than I was even a year ago! I don’t look anything like my sun-kissed snapshots from last summer. And men complain about that. Right? They say that I should update my pictures. Are they insane??

Over the years I’ve had several shots at bagging big game—doctors, lawyers, union plumbers—but I’ve missed my Mark every time. That capital M is intentional. You’ll see why. Hang on.

I’ve finally figured out why I’m still spending Saturday night in bed with Chunky Monkey instead of on a second date with Mr. Hunky! I’m a serial first-dater, but it’s not my fault! And it’s not yours either. And I’ve got our solution. But before you go there, it’s not that I’m batshit crazy and that I show up for date #1 late and covered in cat hair. It’s not that the letter from the IRS spills out of my purse, or that my breath smells like a Brooklyn dumpster in August. And it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I do all the talking, order three appetizers, entree and dessert (plus a slice of blackout cake to go) then text the poor rube three times before he gets home. 

No it’s not about me. Or you! The problem is him. Or rather his name. What’s in a name you say? EVERYTHING. You see, in these two decades of liberation, since I cut my wedding dress into rags to clean toilets, the eligible bachelors I’ve met have had the inconsiderate habit of stealing the names of the most significant men in my life, namely, my father, my son and my ex-husband. (Also the pet monikers of my first puppy love, plus the-one-that-got-away.)

I thought I could overlook this, all the Jims and Johns, Bills and Bobs who've populated my storied past, and persist into the present—but I was wrong. Harriet will always and only be Harriet Tubman, Ruth always and only Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Edward—ahh Edward—he can only ever be Ready Teddy. Yes, all those common names generally assigned to biological males, have been retired to a hall of fame housed somewhere between head, heart and honey pot. It’s just ICKY to think about all these same-name men bubbling together in one fucked-up Freudian soup inside me.  

So the problem was ME, not them. I finally understood: somewhere in the first ten minutes of those 666 first meetups, my unconscious mind cried: “Gross!” There can’t possibly be any other explanation for why I never got second dates. C’mon, they all salivate at the sight of me! And I really wanted to want them back! I just couldn’t see beyond their birth certificates to their six figure incomes. Of course I sure saw the midnight blue Maserati of Agamemnon, and I did let Heathcliff drag me across the moors of Ft. Tryon Park. I did swoon over those too. But now I realize that’s just because my clan has zero imagination in naming babies— no Greek kings or romantic antiheroes dangle from our family tree. No psychological associations with past or present men there. Those two men were clean, and I was ready to get dirty with them. Why did they both block me instead?  

Anyway, I don’t strain my subconscious with the prospect of entertaining any more Bills and Bobs in my boudoir. No longer does the vision of pillow talk with a prospective Pete compete with the image of my freckle-faced kid spilling a glass of milk on the linoleum. When I fantasize necking with some new John now, it’s not crowded out by my first awkward kiss on an ugly plaid sofa. And finally, I don’t have to moan “Bob” between satin sheets and see dear old Dad’s beaming face in the rear-view mirror as I pass my road test on the fifteenth try. Freedom!  

I don’t know why it took me so long to get myself, but no judgement—I’m all about self-acceptance and self-awareness today. I’m hopeful. Last week yet another Jim messaged me and I cut him off at the pass. He was so hot for me that he didn’t seem to mind giving up James, the only male name in his family going back six generations. Date two tonight. So far so good, I’m still into him. But I can’t lose my resolve and let him slip back into Jimbo! There’s no time to waste, the Botox wears off in a month and I absolutely must throw the IRS a few thousand dollars towards back taxes, before I can freeze the fuck out of my forehead.

Because I’m finally on the verge of a second date here, and therefore almost at the altar, I feel confident when I urge you to be proactive too—rename the next one before that first coffee date in a well-lit public place. In fact, just take care of it when he first messages you with “Hello beautiful. 🌹”. Tell that Michael on Match that while you dig his name that means “Who is like God?, you unfortunately have an uncle, a nephew and a third cousin who also ask the same question in Hebrew. Tell him it’s Micah from now on if he ever wants to zoom past ZOOM with you. 

If, for some crazy reason, he still balks at Micah, give him three alternatives you can imagine yourself saying upside-down and all out of breath. Here are my top picks, categorized for your convenience. They bear absolutely no resemblance to any male I’ve ever boffed or birthed. (I did have to axe Fabio last minute, when I found out it meant ‘bean farmer.’ Rats.)

Hunky names: Harley, Hank, Ivor, Sven, Travis, Tor or Willulf (wolf).
Names for cinema studies types who take you to see The Tin Drum on a second date: Alaric, Dimitri, Grayson, Griffin or Rémy

Or just go for broke: make him a Greek god (He wants that anyway.): Adonis, Ajax, Apollo, Hercules, or Zeus.

So go ahead, start playing the rename game. And let me know how that fourth date with Conan goes. No wait—scratch Conan. I threw up on Conan O’Brien at a keg party freshman year.  

Okay, bye girlfriend. Sigmund’s waiting. Oh hell, let him wait. I’m having fun. Besides, men think that’s cute, when we make them stand on street corners. What do you think of Huxley or Inigo?

How to Win the Battle of Words with your Teen

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Satire is not my bag, neither is the soldier story genre, but the chance to hone a new skill (plus the lure of cash and prizes) led to this lampoon, inspired by some struggles to connect with my teen. (Glad to say we enjoy more truces than active combat these days:) I didn't win Medium's Slackjaw Challenge, but I hope it gives you a laugh

How to Win the Battle of Words with Your Teen

Tired of playing cook, maid and laundress to your teenager and getting nothing in return? Feel like you’re sharing space with a month-to-month boarder who doesn’t speak English, instead of the fruit of your loins—loins marked by a C-shaped battle scar from his breech birth? I get it. It used to be like that here. But I live in a brave new world today, I conquered my teen, and I can show you how to bring yours into submission too. Attitude and timing are everything. Live by those bons mots of ‘Old Blood and Guts’ and “Do more than is required of you.” Be on the lookout for invitations to dialogue, then storm these secret bunkers below, and take communication with your adolescent from radio silence to minimal talking in no time! 

Bribery 

Your shallow teen’s no match for your booby traps—new clothing and technology, two salvos aimed straight at his mercenary core. Indulge him in yet another pair of ugly white sneakers in exchange for coming clean about what really happened in the locker room freshman year, when his post went viral on the school’s Instagram account and he got suspended. Tell him money is no object when it comes to buying him the 12k followers and million likes he needs to be cool like his cousin. Promise this, and watch him lay the spoils of victory at your slippers: a mother/son night spent making gnocchi from scratch, followed by a marathon Scrabble match, interrupted only by spontaneous confessions of the heart. 

Hunger

“Give me Food.”  Hunger is your ally.  For five hours straight now, he’s been running through back alleys, up cobblestone stairs, and across plazas, pulling daggers and switching out cartridges of ammo, then blasting terrorists to kingdom come!  Well this sort of thing really builds an appetite for a heaping bowl of reheated pasta Bolognese. And you are right there, armed with ziti, and your point of entry: “What do you think your chances are for making the tennis team this spring sweetheart?” “Shut up. Feed me,” he grabs the plate and stalks away. Only four words. A . You’ll have to regroup. 

Patton’s words ring in your ears as you think of all those nights spent reading the classics to your prodigy, tucked snug under flannel sheets: Jules Verne, L. Frank Baum, Hans Christian Anderson. Yes indeed, no dumbed down Disney versions, no Little Golden Books for your little prince—only the real Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, in the original French. Never mind that neither of you understood a word of it.  Ahh, the unabridged Jungle Book and The Swiss Family Robinson, with all their dated, sexist, racist, imperialistic nuance… So much investment in one prepubescent mind—for what? A vocabulary reduced to two word-commands. Yes, more is required of you, you’ll need to reconnoiter.

Keep him in your sights as you follow him into the dining room and wait for him to come up from his phone for the shaker of Romano you’re dangling over his head. He won’t. Pull quickly from your quiver: “You’ll make the team darling,” you lie, as you tuck a benzo into the saucy tube stuck to his fork. You seriously doubt that. One Saturday tennis lesson plus six days spent playing Counter-Strike Global Offensive won’t add up to him making the final cut on the court, but you’ll start on this wholesome subject, then cross enemy lines into direct interrogation on sex and drugs. “Shut up. I’m not talking to you.” Oh no? He grabs the cheese and starts shoveling macaroni. Suddenly, he starts spilling about the cute girl in Computer Science class, the one with the ‘80s asymmetrical bob, who he finally got up the nerve to ask out on the last day of the semester. He describes how they left school together last Friday, and made out behind the falafel cart. Aww... 

Guerrilla Warfare

Perchance, is the bathroom light switch on the outside of your bathroom door? If so, you’re in luck! Listen for when you hear the shower running, then lights out!  “What the fuck?” he’ll cry. “You think you’re so fucking funny! Turn the light on you idiot!” Fifteen easy words, expressed with integrity, and he won’t pin it on you. When he gets out, he’ll put his kid brother in a half-nelson. 

Or try this: When he finally gets off his bony ass at midnight to take out the garbage, follow him to the front door and quick—lock it behind him!  When he starts pounding, say: “What’s the password?” “You’re hilarious,” he’ll reply, “Now open the door.” You can draw this out as long as you like. “No sonny boy, the password is swordfish. Remember Horse Feathers? Remember that summer we watched Marx Brothers movies at Nana’s? Duck Soup, A Day at the Races... How old were you? Nine? Ten?...” “Shut the hell up and open the door NOW.” 17 words. Positively conversational. You’re really getting somewhere now. 

Capture an AirPod 

Of course the biggest tactical error of your whole campaign happened when you caved to his heart’s desire and bought him those AirPods Pro for Christmas. Noise cancellation mode is not your friend. Your teen can tune you out whenever he wants, which is always. You’ll need a General MacArthur maneuver to undo this mess, an amphibious invasion of the Korean peninsula, a recapture of the capital city. Your Seoul has got to be his left AirPod.  

At noon, creep to his bedside table and slip it from it’s fungal case. Don’t worry, it’ll be there. Those pricey little plugs are the only things that find their rightful homes in your teen’s universe. 

Now replace it with the one you had “tweaked” by Kiev Yegor, your neighborhood cobbler and former KGB agent. Cue the continuous loop: “RESISTANCE TO QUESTIONING IS FUTILE” alternated with John Philip Souza marches at 82 decibels. When he breaks, offer him a cool washcloth, and negotiate your terms. “When you get home from school son, mother will ask: ‘How was your day?’ And you will answer her in cheerful, complete sentences.” He will reply:  “Yes mother, I will volunteer an earful of amusing anecdotes about my colorful day, from 1st Period through 8th.”  “And what about your commute?” you press. “Yes mother. I will report any transit delays caused by sick passengers or goats on the tracks.” “AND??” you add. “And I will hang up my wet towel mom.” BATTLE OF MIDWAY!

Doves Lose*

No time to rest on your laurels. Send your  twelve-year old to the front line often. He’s expendable. Maintain aggression and start enjoying dinner table debates over the existence of God and which is the most important kitchen appliance: the panini press or the Nutribullet.

*Note to Doves

I’m throwing this one in for you olive branch wavers.  Reverse psychology is totally overrated—you do know that— but still, you could just try chillin’ sometimes, to get your teen’s attention. When he finally pulls off his gaming headphones at midnight and sits down to that warmed burrito you’ve put in front of him, you could say absolutely nothing and just dollop extra salsa right on his plate. You could pour him a tall glass of milk and offer him a brownie, then sit back and shut up. Check your IG feed. Watch a Southeast Asian food blogger go live making fresh turmeric powder. Rest your chin in your hands and close your eyes. Pretend to fall asleep. Actually fall asleep. “Mom, mom!” he may wake you. “Go to bed mom. Thanks for the brownie. I’ll take out the trash and lock up. Let’s watch an episode of The Office tomorrow night okay?  I love you mom. Good night.”  All that could  happen. It’s possible.  It hasn’t happened yet in this camp, but it could.

This Very Good Time

Photo by Alex Block on Unsplash

“This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

For years now I’ve puzzled over this quote taped to the inside of my spice cupboard, alongside other inspirations. I’ve always liked it, but now it’s starting to make sense too. It’s a call to action of course, but one that demands thoughtful, precise response — nothing sloppy. In the last few weeks, humans young and old, from all walks, here and abroad, have shown me that they know what to do with this time. It’s heartening.

Another saying that isn’t attached to the inside of my cupboard, but taped in my brain instead is this: “Children don’t listen to what you say, they watch what you do.” This holds true for the two male adolescents in my care. With these two mottos in mind, I keep going back to one powerful memory — a choice my mother made — more than fifty years ago. As it turns out, that was also a very good time.

New Orleans, circa 1969

I did not eat a single grape for what felt like my entire childhood but actually, I was only deprived of my favorite fruit for the first few years of my privileged life. The Delano Grape Boycott started the year I was born, in 1965, and ended victorious in 1970, when the growers agreed to union contracts that gave workers better wages and working conditions. I missed grapes badly. Mom would roll our cart straight past the plump green globules in the produce aisle of Schwegmann’s. She’d explain that by not buying grapes we were helping Mr. Chavez and the migrant farm workers who picked those grapes, way across the country in California. This made zero sense to me. My appreciation for the purchasing power of money was limited to my understanding that, with the right combination of coins from my change purse, I could purchase a large cola ICEE from the corner store. It was impossible for me to understand how reallocating the family budget from table grapes to bananas could possibly help. Yet my small sacrifice, added to that of countless others around the world, brought those vineyard bosses to the bargaining table: grape pickers were finally allowed to take water breaks and collect unemployment insurance.

The concepts of conscience, sacrifice and solidarity were modeled for me at a tender age, by a women’s libber in oversized sunglasses and head scarves, who went for peaches and pears over grapes. These three ideas stuck in my scalp at age five, much better than the plastic barrettes forever sliding off my baby-fine hair. Conscience, sacrifice and solidarity. I remember these three right now, at this very good time.

Is It Still Okay To Be Picky In Your Fifties?

Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash

Are you too picky in choosing mates? It’s good to ask this question at any age. Explore possible answers to this one, and nine other related questions.

Is it still okay to be picky in your fifties? I think so. But then I’m still single. And I’ll be the first to admit I’m a work-in-progress when it comes to functional intimate relationships. Still, I think I can scatter some seeds of hope, harvested from six years of post-divorce dating. And I do think it matters to this conversation that in all those other ways humans interact—ways that don’t engage prolonged mouth-to-mouth contact—relations with friends and family, with my kids’ teachers, the letter carrier, the super—those are all skipping along quite well. I have a thicket of friendships that needs regular watering, and gets it. And at fifty-four, I’m not devoid of self-awareness—a working romantic partnership does feel within reach. Close enough anyway, for me to share some thoughts—not advice—on dating for the long-term. I toss these questions out with humor and heart, to take to your own heart, or to ball up and toss in the single-stream recycling bin.

Are you being picky or just choosy? It’s a good question to ask, whether you’re deciding on peanut butter or people. Where should you compromise, and where should you hang tough? At the supermarket or on the dating site, there’s a difference between being hyper-critical and just discerning—which are you? I personally like someone with good teeth and well broken-in boots—and arty. But in New York City, those are easy items to check off your shopping list. Apart from these quirks, I don’t really have a type—yet I still seem to harbor some illogical deal-breakers that may not help my chances of finding love.

Take the guy who was allergic to garlic, onions, leeks and pretty much everything else in the allium family. I asked two friends and got two answers. From the one who didn’t cook: “No big deal.” From the one who did: “Next.” But he was a great guy: smart, stable, empathetic and gainfully employed doing meaningful work he loved. And he treated me well. That all counts for a lot. I passed on no-garlic guy because I couldn’t accept that I’d never feel free to slather garlic butter on bread in our someday home. 

Is there a workable solution here?  As I’ve puzzled losing good men for bad reasons, it’s never helped matters to make mean faces in the bathroom mirror—or worse, when I’ve fallen into that manhole of fearful thinking, shouting at my reflected self: You’ll die alone. I find comfort when I remember that, while we humans share space on Earth for a few revolutions, we all enter and exit this world alone. This is usually enough to pull me out of my funk and into more productive reflection: Yes I bailed, now how valid was my complaint? Have I ever actually shared a bag of garlic knots with someone? Would this be an especially meaningful shared activity? And thinking back to the one before: Did he really have to love David Bowie, or was it enough that he babysat my purse and didn’t hustle me off the dance floor?  Before I roll my cart past another good guy, could I take a closer look at the first five ingredients? A friend recently used this question to help her decide between three candidates she’d been dating: If I lock my keys in my car at one a.m., which one is going to show up to help me fish them out? 

Are you making excuses for bad behavior? The problem is, historically speaking, I forget to ask myself this question going in, and also to re-ask it regularly, throughout the relationship. While my friends may be drawn to qualities in mates that don’t matter to me, there is one thing we can all agree upon: we want to be treated well. Who doesn’t? The following questions, when asked then answered honestly, might help clarify things: Is he checking in regularly, or do you do most of the reaching out? Does he pay you an occasional, well-timed and authentic compliment? Or does he drop hints that he’s not really looking to be in a relationship?  Does he wash your pots? When you turn in at night, is there a fresh glass of water by your side of the bed? Does he ever show up to your place with three ripe avocados and a lime?  Taken alone, no single gesture is essential, but all together they add up to this: an appreciation of you.

Is this relationship more fun than work? Does the person you’re seeing plan fun dates? If you’re like me, a single working parent head-of-household, your bandwidth is stretched microfiber thin. You love your kids, but you also look forward to those Saturday night dates. In relationships established on equal footing, combing the weekend calendar of events is a joint effort. I’m always happy to suggest a walk in the park, followed by a stop at a taco truck.  I won’t lie though, it feels good when someone comes up with something to do that would never occur to me, but that feels like something I may want to do every Saturday for the rest of my life. 

Is this relationship more work than fun? Relationships “require work.” We know this. But how much work are you willing to put in? I’m full of bright ideas to fix other people’s lives. But now, before I push up my sleeves and overdo for others, I’m asking myself: is this person basically together? Do they have friends and take fairly good care of themselves? How bad are their vices? I don’t want to come off as judgy, I for one can’t kick the caffeine habit, not even close, but I don’t think my trenta matcha latte is going to prove too burdensome for someone else. And their idiosyncrasies or indulgences shouldn’t feel too heavy on my back either. 

Is he officially de-coupled, or almost there?  Where is he at with his ex?  Are they at least on civil terms? Are they too close? Ideally, I hope to see signs of a clean, dispassionate break. I once dated someone who had a polaroid of his ex in plain sight, in his bedroom. I still don’t know how I feel about that. Okay, I do. I feel weird about that. 

Is he open to trying new things in bed?  How willing are these men I’m dating—men pushing sixty or past it— to leave their comfort zones and change up their games between the sheets?  When they discover new glitches in their lovemaking—or mine—how enthusiastic are they to explore new paths to mutual pleasuring?  Can they lighten up and still find their sexy?  Or do they just get defensive and roll towards the wall?  Can I lead them along to a sex shop where we’ll take suggestions from some smart, sex-positive consultant, thirty years our junior? And if they aren’t already sold on tantric sex, are they now willing to look into my eyes, share breaths and try the modified lotus position? 

How much time do you want to give this? That’s a big one, isn’t it? For me, it’s until I have clarity. And until then, I take it one-date-at-a-time. Despite advancing age, I embrace my relaxed philosophy, even when my shrink doesn’t. He’ll say: “I think we both see the writing on the wall.” Maybe. But I’ve got to play this out. The heart wants what it wants. This is not orthopedic surgery, where sometimes you have to re-break broken bones that had already started to knit together poorly on their own. Doctors do this all the time. They break bones and realign them, so they fuse together straight and strong. But repeated break-ups and make-ups with men have led me more often to mangled relations and hard feelings than to warmth and wellness. Today I’d rather sit in ambiguity, for as long as it takes.  

Do you really want to be in a relationship? My son’s barber, a widower whose marriage was unfortunately cut short somewhere between the silver and golden mark, asked me recently: “Are you happy?” In my defense, I rattled off  my “list of goods”: “I’m good. My sons are good. My parents are still good—thank God. Things are good with the ex. Work is good. The car is still good. And the weather! Wow! The weather is so good!” The barber waited to respond until I  gave him what he wanted. “Oh and I’ve been dating a little.”  “Aha! Good! Good!!...”  Do I look miserable? I thought. I don’t think so. Sure, on most nights I’d rather spoon a warm body than three wedge pillows, but I still think I’m good. Yes, I’m good where I’m at right now. Which brings me, perhaps, to the most important question: Am I happier being alone today, than I’d be if I were in the wrong relationship? The answer there is yes. 

14 Valentine's that Remain Close to my Heart

I invite you to celebrate some different ways in which we express and receive love, in 14 Valentine’s that Remain Close to my Heart, my own love letter to the holiday we celebrate on February 14.

14 Valentine's That Remain Close to My Heart

Christmases past make me think of my father standing on a ladder, cutting corners by zig-zagging the pre-LED lights back and forth on only the forward-facing side of the ten-foot Douglas fir. And my mother, bracing the ladder below, making him take them all down and start over, going round and round clockwise, taking care not to leave any back branches bare of colored bulbs. Same Advent drama, year after year, and in the end, same glorious, trimmed tree.

Valentine’s Days past do not call to mind any such ritual, however. Apart from those 15 years of marriage when I received, without surprise but still with appreciation, one dozen coral roses on February 14, it’s been different every year. I am an unblushing opportunist on this day of doily hearts and boxed chocolates. Depending on circumstances,  and the people who happen to populate my little off-axis world at the time, I reinvent the meaning of love each year to suit the situation. I make the throbbing best of it, with or without the male protagonist. In fact—not to sour the sweet—-but some of my best Valentine’s Days have been spent loving friends, not lovers. Which is a good thing to remember as I face Cupid’s arrow this month as a single mother in her mid-fifties. 

Here are fourteen stand-out Valentine’s Day recollections, not “sensual”  but “scent-ual” experiences all, twinkling GIFs in my ever-growing text thread of memory, leaving behind a trail of heart-eyed smiley emojis.

1.  As a teen, receiving a single truffle heart from Teuscher Chocolatier in Rockefeller Center, in a keepsake box from my first man, Daddy. I have probably eaten a heart-shaped bathtub full of chocolates since then, but that one, wrapped up all on its own, from one father to one daughter, is the one I remember the most

2.  Also as a teen, in the kitchen with mom, unmolding individual coeur à la crème crustless cheesecakes from French porcelain heart-shaped molds, then spooning strawberries on top. We used the wedding china and the real silverware that Valentine’s night I’m sure. The texture, I recall clearly, more like cottage cheese than New York cheesecake, felt continental to my teenage tongue. And now this strained dessert, involving cheesecloth and imported custard cups, has come to symbolize the love and creativity my mother has always put into getting dinner on the family table for fifty-eight years of marriage.

3. As an eight-year-old, at the dining room table, addressing small envelopes enclosing Peanuts valentines to my classmates in Miss MacIntosh’s third grade homeroom, then sealing them with heart stickers. There was something about working in miniature this way—small hands, small cards—that felt just right. The anticipation of giving each one out, then getting 25 odd ones in return, of spreading the love and having it returned exponentially to my class cubby, well it’s up there with waiting for Santa, or the first day of summer vacation.

4. As a freshman in college, obsessed with a senior who was, in turn, obsessed with Dylan, I took a skein of blue yarn and went at his dorm room, tangling it up in blue, from ceiling light fixture to dirty tube sock under the bed. He didn’t know what to make of it, or of me, but I remember how happy it made me while doing it.

5. In my early twenties, showing up on my boyfriend’s doorstep—La Petite Coquette— in only black bra, garters and fishnets, to which I’d rigged pink bows, while holding a giant heart of Russell Stover caramels, bigger than his Greenwich Village studio apartment. I was ravished. 

6.  In my late twenties I started sending Valentines to friends and family by way of Loveland, Colorado, where volunteers would intercept each envelope and postmark it with a Valentine verse. My valentines still go this circuitous route as volunteers are still ready with the red stamp to add an original stanza every year like: 

St. Valentine started the trend —

A special day to reach out to friends

Loveland, Colorado picked up the cue,

Sending heart-felt messages to you.

7. As a new mother, my thoughtful sister-in-law gifted my then husband and I  with a certificate for a dinner out. Our toddler son sucked buttered linguine and tugged at mylar balloons tied on the backs of every chair.  

8. With the birth of our second son, my then husband presented me with a golden locket holding photographs he’d hand-colored of our boys, posed in chubby-cheek profile. Here they were, finally birthed at thirty-eight and forty-two, after years of false starts and fertility treatments, twin hearts facing one another, now nestled against my breast bone. Not made of pure gold, but gold tone instead, the locket’s surface has dulled with wear, but not the contents. 

9. As PTA mom at a Valentine’s Day Bake Sale, standing behind a bridge table, in heart-shaped deely boppers and smeared to my elbows in pink frosting, selling all those damn cupcakes to second-graders waving dollar bills in my face. I remember my toddler sat beside me on a folding chair, well-behaved for hours, content or catatonic, through a patina of rainbow sprinkles. That was a good day, standing shoulder to shoulder with parents who had kids in my son’s class,  selling silk roses that would go home in backpacks, then be presented to other mothers that night

10. As a forty-four-year-old at the dining room table, experiencing deja-vu with my first-grader, as we sat addressing Snoopy valentines to all his classmates in Ms. Lombelino’s first-grade classroom. Among other things, I remember thinking, this is what I’m meant to do with my life.  

11. As a fifty-year-old divorcee, when both sons come home from their school bake sales with gifts for their first sweetheart: a Valentine’s mug and a duck plush which still sits on the dashboard of the KIA. That duck has fallen to the floorboard and been returned to the dash too many stoplights to count

12. As a fifty-one-year-old, redeeming a soon-to-expire gift certificate to a storefront massage parlour, for the best deep tissue kneading of my lifetime. My then boyfriend, and still friend, gave me the voucher because he knew he’d never use it himself. I still meet up with this man at white elephants and book fairs, where we swap stories on raising teens. I remember leaving that spa limp all over, in such a good way.

13. As a fifty-three-year-old, dabbing my pulse points with a  scented oil that my next boyfriend, and also still a friend, had blended for us at a legendary fragrance shop in lower Manhattan. Based on his description of our personalities, the perfumer mixed up a unisex roll-on that really did suit us both. That perfume lingers in my olfactory receptors, and this man and I, both foodies, swap recipes and alert each other to good deals on avocados today. 

14. At 54, this upcoming Valentine’s Day is already making sweet-smelling memories. They say the pre-war bathtub is the poor woman’s spa. A Google search didn’t pull up this expression, so I must have invented it.  I’ve been mixing up batches of bath bliss for those I love, and have already started hand-delivering my bath salts. My dermatologist seemed startled, then smiled: “You know I hate Valentine’s Day.”

I get it. For some, it’s a loaded day of filled chocolates and full of regrets. For a spate in my twenties it was that for me, too. But this year, just like these thirteen heart days which precede it, I’m not biting into Valentine’s Day and returning it to the box, disappointed.  I love this day. A time when we fully experience the well of a love which surrounds us. With luck and a little focused attention, we carry this goodwill into the spring. But not the cynics, who believe this holiday is confined to the borders of a romantic love which eludes them, nor the forgetful, for whom this loving feeling only lasts until midnight on the fourteenth day of February, until the tree comes down in their hearts. I bought a two-foot living tree with a root ball this past Christmas. I’m not forgetting this year. My dermatologist’s surprised smile helps me remember.