Drop Off

Over the nearly twenty years that I have labored in the groves of public relations and promotion, I have been struck by the magical confluence that often occurs between projects I represent and my own life.

A psychologist, or simply an observer of life, might demystify this observation somewhat, pointing out that I am likely drawn to people who, and projects that, mirror my own affinities or my life itself.

Still, I was quite unprepared for the outsize case of goosebumps and outbreak of gulping sobs that overtook me when my funny and profoundly soulful client Rabbi Bob Alper sent me a chapter from a previous book of his... with the suggestion that I seek to get it republished in this Back-to-School season as it depicts the emotional impact of a parent dropping his child off at college for the first time.

The chapter is entitled Departures, and reading it ruined me for hours...if not days as I was in my own Countdown to College mode, getting Little Babe ready for move-in day at Muhlenberg College. It originally appeared in Life Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This: The Holiness of Little Daily Dramas, published by Liguori Publications in 1996. 

Now, having dropped off Little Babe in a scene of farewell that neatly echoes the abrupt one described by Bob in his chapter (that's my youngest son in our rented minivan, pictured above, on the NJ Turnpike this past Friday morning, en route to Muhlenberg. You can see how traumatized he is to be heading to college. Not.), I have read and re-read Departures, finding solace, fellowship and great insight in his depiction of a parent's stunned leave-taking from their cool-as-a-cucumber, college-bound child.

Thank you, Bob. In the spirit of paying it forward, I am reprinting (with Bob's permission!) Departures.   It is my gift for parents everywhere in this Back-to-School season. From day care through pre-school, kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school and college, the approach of the new school year is always bittersweet.

And if you like Departures, check out Bob Alper's newest book is Thanks. I Needed That. It is a touching, transcendent and readable collection of uplifting, inspiring essays; a one-stop-shopping site for the Jewish High Holiday season and beyond. 

DEPARTURES

When I was a smart young rabbi and knew quite a lot, I created worship services for little children, adapted baby naming ceremonies, and lectured to new mommies and daddies about how to raise their children Jewishly.

Now I'm a not-as-smart middle aged rabbi who wishes that somewhere, a more enthusiastic middle-aged colleague would create a life-cycle ceremony that addresses events I find myself going through: kids leaving home.

Sometimes it feels as if Judaism, and probably most other organized religions, guide and nurture us through the many stages of parenting, from birth rituals and the beginnings of religious education right on through the agony of adolescence.  But suddenly it seems as if we parents are on our own at the parting, the moment when our children embark on the step that, for most, changes their status in our homes from resident to visitor.

Whether it's college, a job, the armed services, there comes that moment, and for parents the experience is often similar.

When I went off to Lehigh University in the fall of 1962, my parents drove me to campus, six hours from home.  We unloaded my stuff, made the uncomfortable introductions with my roommates and the fearsome dorm counselor, and then my parents gracefully took their leave.  About three decades later my mother confessed that after they exited the campus they pulled the car over to the side of the street, turned off the engine, and cried.

On a whitewater rafting trip in Idaho I became friendly with a fellow from Oregon named Patrick Michael Sean O'Halloran.  He told me that when he entered college in 1961 his Irish Catholic parents drove him to the California campus.  They unloaded the car quickly, and he was pleased that they departed soon after.  A few miles into the trip home, Pat only recently learned, his parents pulled into a highway rest area, turned off the engine, and cried.

There must be a better way to launch children into their independence. 

Some of life's major events are marked by a very discernible occurrence, the instant of birth being the most clear.  Other events are spread out over time:  the transition from babyhood to personhood, for example, or the passage through adolescence, which for some takes an entire decade.  Even a wedding, though it has its prime moment, is diffused over the months of preparation and the hours of ceremonial festivities.

But that leave-taking comes upon us abruptly, sometimes with no forethought or preparation, and certainly without ritual to help us endure.  It may happen in this way because our children are focused on what lies ahead, and we parents are equally invested in avoiding thinking about what their loss...and that is the key word...what their loss will mean to us, to our home, to our relationships.  And so we all conspire to avoid thinking about what is about to happen.

I remember how our son left home. 

Zack's departure was more complex than the norm.  Our family was in a state of very happy transition, about to realize a long-held "impossible" dream of leaving our Philadelphia suburb and moving to Vermont.  It was the end of June, and Sherri had already gone north to start her new job.  Jessie had begun her final year at summer camp.  Zack and I remained at the house. 

I packed, while Zack celebrated his graduation from high school with a round of farewell parties.  His plan was to spend the summer working at the New Jersey shore, living in a 2-bedroom "genteel poverty" flat with a group of between three and eight other kids.  At the end of August he would continue on to college in North Carolina.

At that time Zack was driving a 1984 Volvo sedan.  I bought it new, thinking that it was the kind of car that I could use, then pass on to Sherri, and later, perhaps, even to the kids.  At 124,000 miles it came into Zack's possession, and on that June day it was packed to the ceiling with all that was important to its owner.

"Gotta split, Dad.  Josh is waiting at his house and we're going to drive down to the shore together.  Bye."

"Bye."  Is that how childhood ends?  "Bye?"  Just like that? 

As I headed out to the driveway I started to think of a stroll I'd taken 18 years earlier, down a hospital corridor that connected the delivery room with the nursery.  Beside me a nurse guided a bassinet which contained a brand new person.  And the novel thought kept racing through my mind, I'm taking a walk with my son.  With my son! 

The screen door slammed behind me, a needed shock to my system that reminded me to stop being so damn lugubrious.  After all, Zack was about to grab his independence.  We raised him in that direction.  He's just doing his job of separating, and he's doing it well.  And besides, I would visit him at the shore in a few weeks.

But still... But still...

I walked over to the car.  Looked it over, inspected the tires and rearranged a piece of clothing that had gotten stuck in the door.

"Really, Dad.  I've gotta go.  Josh is waiting."

We gave each other a hug and a kiss.   One of us had tears in his eyes and even down his cheeks, while the other gently broke away, started the car, and backed out of the driveway.

Zack paused in the road to shift gears.  Then he slowly drove to the foot of our hill, towards the intersection where he would turn right and disappear from sight.  I stood alone, watching as he edged away.  A blurry maroon object growing smaller and smaller.  A car, and my son, leaving his childhood home.  Leaving his childhood.  Forever. 

And then my vision cleared slightly.  I noticed that the old car's tailpipe was loose, sort of hanging by one clip.  The forward thrust of the car made it flutter up and down, so gently, almost in slow motion. 

It was phallic. 

And it was waving to me.

That was probably the most highly charged, symbol-laden experience of my life, and I still have no idea exactly what the symbolism meant. 

But I remember that wave.

       *                                               *                                               *

Four years later and it was Jessie's turn.  By now the old Volvo had been handed to the youngest Alper, and with 187,000 miles on the odometer it was about to head towards another college.  Jessie had blossomed into a free-thinking, independent, self-assured young woman, and since I could not guard or protect her any longer, I channeled some of my paternal caring into her car.  At least I could feel useful during the countdown days before she, too, drove away.  

They say history repeats itself.  Ecclesiastes reminds us that there's nothing new under the sun.  Yup.

Before it could pass the Vermont State inspection and the more stringent Robert Alper inspection, the Volvo needed the following: Four new tires.  Rear brakes.  Shocks.  Struts.  One headlamp. A rear muffler.

And a tailpipe.

A few weeks later a caravan comprised of two cars, two parents, one freshwoman, and one dog named Gideon drove the 2 1/2 hours south to Jessie's new college.  A sensitively prepared schedule suggested we arrive around noon, help our child settle in, and join the president, faculty, and freshman class for a late afternoon reception.  Then we were equally sensitively urged to LEAVE.  Which we did.

By 6:30 we found ourselves on the Taconic Parkway heading north.  One empty car, two parents, and a dog.  No radio.  No conversation. 

A few minutes into the trip a wave of righteous canine indignation overcame the dog when he realized that someone was occupying his seat next to the driver, his beloved master.  Giddy was insistent, and Sherri in no mood to argue.  She spent the entire trip home with a fifty-five-pound dog sitting in her lap.  It provided needed diversion.

Later that night, after the answering machine was tended and the mail sorted, after the car was cleaned out and the throw rug Jessie decided she really didn't need was wrapped and placed in the cellar, I walked into her room and sat alone on the bench next to her picnic-table desk.  The room had a sudden neatness about it that I knew I'd hate.  I looked around at the hat collection, the posters on the walls, the rejected CDs and the cluttered high school notebooks strewn across the closet shelf. 

I thought about the events of the day, thought how happy I was for her, and how proud.  And also how sad, how selfishly sad I felt at her departure.

 

Sherri called out to find me, then came up to Jessie's room where she quietly joined me on the bench.   We sat in silence for a while, just looking around.

Pivot Point

Just before the summer -- at a rehearsal dinner for the wedding of dear friends -- I was asked how I felt about "having had children so young."

The query came courtesy of someone I do not consider a friend but whose social circle certainly overlaps with my own. I have nothing against this person -- a woman -- but no particular fondness for her either.

The question arrived early in the meal, spring-loaded, as if the asker had harbored it for a long time. It flew out of her mouth like a long-stored rocket...and landed in my lap, impossible to ignore.

At least 10 years my senior, the woman also has children, but mine are older. My eldest -- Big Babe -- just turned 29. Her youngest is still in high school...or elementary school, I'm not really sure.

I became a mother just shy of 24. She was pushing 40.

Now, at 52, I am becoming an empty nester as Little Babe prepares to leave for college. It hadn't happened at the time, but as of the writing of this blog, Middle Babe is engaged to marry her Gentleman Caller.

Wow. I thought, sipping my glass of Pinot Noir. Haven't heard something like that in a while. Long ago, I used to get variations on that question from the still-single peers of my husband. They were always delivered with the hint of a sneer.

What a peculiar question to pose, I thought, especially on this occasion. Would I ask this woman (or anyone) how she felt "having her kids so old?"

At 52, I'm at a pivot point, packing my youngest kid off for Muhlenberg College, posting Facebook pictures with my daughter's engagement ring and the super-romantic way her Gentleman Caller proposed.

At 52, my after-hours social and cultural life is richer than it has ever been, a counter-balance to my varied and busy work life.

At this age, with my love of dancing, singing and adventure, I've emerged as a born-again party girl.

But man, have I put in time over the past nearly three decades of being a mommy! Without resentment (really and truly) I spent hours in playgrounds, parks, libraries, museums and children's movies. Joyfully, I read zillions of books, cooked innumerable meals, packed untold bags of snacks, bought shoes and clothes and diapers of all sizes. I have toilet trained and taught to walk and talk. I have eaten baby food in an effort to entice. I have breastfed for a total of six years. I have attended first and last days of school. And parent-teacher conferences! And tedious performances by my talented kids.

I have stayed up nights and talked through heartache.

I have advocated for, and intervened.

I have challenged doctors and experts and authority figures. And mostly prevailed.

I have edited and tutored and studied with.

I have reread classic works of literature.

I have climbed jungle gyms to retrieve terrified toddlers from high bars. I have waded in baby pools. I have sat on beaches watching little ones play in the waves. I have been peed upon. I have been thrown up on. I have endured dizzying rides at amusement parks; then again, even the Flying Dumbo ride seems scary to me.

I have staged birthday parties and b'nai mitzvah. And partied with my kids like it's 1999, which once it actually was.

I have conducted Back-to-School shopping expeditions...most impressively in the days when we had no money.

I have buckled baby seats and toddler seats and airline seats.

I have lifted toilet seats.

I have spent the equivalent of years in disgusting bathrooms in supermarkets, gas stations, department stores and once, a funeral home with a wake in progress.

Open casket.

We found that out when we couldn't find our way back to the front door except through the parlor where the wake was going on.

For the better part of two decades I never had more than a glass of wine at a time or hard liquor (that started changing about ten years ago) and aside from some hash biscotti and the stray joint at a smattering of parties and a sojourn in Amsterdam and New Year's Eve in Berlin and some crazy events in the mid-80's when Big Babe was tiny, I have done virtually no recreational drugs since my adolescence.

How do I feel about giving the "best years" of my life to these endeavors and others that are forgotten?

Delighted. Honored. Happy. Blessed.

My kids have been part of my adulthood...right from the beginning. I have been able to parent with energy and flexibility and creativity.

When Big Babe was a toddler, I would turn on MTV and watch the great music videos with him. We have pictures of the two of us jumping on the bed together. I was a Mommy who loved Duran Duran and Madonna and Cyndi Lauper and The Talking Heads and I shared that with my kid. We had adventures together, in matching denim jackets. I hated the concept of bedtime for my boy, so his early childhood featured experiences that most kids of older parents (or more conventional parents) never have.

Working as a freelance writer, I had loads of elasticity in my schedule. Short of money for babysitters, I sometimes took Big Babe with me on assignment.

When Middle Babe arrived four years after her brother, I was still in my twenties, living in a beautiful old house in Westchester. We were still kind of broke. Middle Babe became Big Babe's sidekick and the adventures continued, with with a car and a backyard. HOBB would often come home at night wondering where his family was. We were at the movies and late night at the library and friends' homes. We were out having fun. All of us, probably me most of all.

And even when my youngest was born seven years after his sister our family environment was unconventional though by this point my work life was more structured, something I rebelled against. Being broke was no longer an option with three kids and Jewish Day School so I changed my professional life, becoming a publicist, writing on the side, publishing when I could. Several years into my career as a publicist, I started my own business.

I had flexibility once again...but was busy all the time. I worked around the clock and on weekends and on vacation and at parties.

There is no point in denying the sacrifice that went into raising my family. I would have preferred to remain a full-time writer. Money has always been a struggle. I was more stressed out than I would have liked to be. For years, I hardly had enough time for friends.

This is simply the truth.

But other blessings came along the way. I traveled a lot, sometimes with my family, other times alone. I gained expertise and access. I have been at the hub of many exciting social and cultural happenings. I have encountered extraordinary people. I earned a graduate degree along the way. I built a business. I learned a heck of a lot.

And there have been three remarkable new souls in my life, from the moment of my young adulthood. Three now-grown human beings whom I adore and enjoy -- the loves of my life.

If I count the love of my husband/friend/helpmate who shared the incredible journey every step of the way, the blessings are quadrupled.

I suppose that what I did is front-load the work of raising a family.

Now I can party.

Sitting at my friends' wedding rehearsal dinner at the beginning of this pivot point in my life -- my baby soon to leave for college, my daughter a few months before her engagement, my eldest just a year and change away from 30 -- I abandoned the training in self-effacing graciousness I received from my mother and responded frankly to this odd query -- how did I feel about having had my children "so young?"

I hate to gloat, I said, taking note of the weary bags beneath her expectant eyes, but I'm pretty damn happy.

Love is a Hamburger...or The View from Mt. Fuji

This has been an unusually eventful week.

Earlier this evening I arrived home after a five-day trip to Japan, which took me to Mt. Fuji and Tokyo with Neshama Carlebach and Josh Nelson for the 9th Annual Symphony of Peace Prayers conference, a global gathering of peace activists and religious leaders.

To say that my Japanese adventure was extraordinary is an understatement. I spent several days in the company of remarkable people of various faith communities who had gathered to create momentum for the prospect of peace in our lifetime. I heard their life stories and their life's work. We shared meals and programs and bus rides and a large-scale public event this past Sunday where Neshama offered her prayer for peace -- songs by her father, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach -- her husky/sweet voice filling the open field, drizzling down like honey on the thousands of people who had gathered for the event, faces and palms uplifted.

The multiple gifts of Japan overwhelmed me. In particular, I was touched deeply by the grace, hospitality and warmth of the Japanese people. The patience I saw reflected in the postures of the assembled on the grass of the Mt. Fuji Sanctuary was a lesson for this antsy New Yorker.

While deeply stirring, the program was overly long. Looking across the field, I was impressed by the ability of the Japanese to be fully present even as I was agitated. They had come to receive a blessing. They accepted it in its fullness.

Though the trip was filled with encounter groups and discussions, I was also able to eke out time for solitary exploration, walking in the misty early morning in the Mt. Fuji region, exploring Tokyo by myself on my final day in Japan.

Even when I crave solo adventure, I often have to overcome an initial resistance to setting out on my own in an unfamiliar setting. Perhaps my reticence is rooted in safety concerns. On this trip, as always, I delayed my departure a bit -- both in the Mt. Fuji region and in Tokyo -- finding activities to do, such as answering non-urgent emails from the safety of my hotel room, but was immediately rewarded for my spunk within seconds of setting out on my own.

Hitting the trail in the Japanese mountains, I filled my lungs with the sweet fresh air and my ears with the songs of unfamiliar birds. Walking along a road, I passed a steady stream of Japanese hikers, running slowly but steadily uphill. Many were not young. We bowed to each other as we passed.

Having glimpsed Mt. Fuji between the trees in the early morning hours, I now have a new understanding of the concept of awe-inspiring.

Personified as "shy" because of the overcast skies in the region, Fuji put me in mind of Mount Sinai. Even to look at the photo I took during my morning walk revives that sense of wonder I felt when the mountain unexpectedly came into view.

The Sinai-ness of Mt. Fuji moves me deeply for I arrived in Japan on the heels of the festival of Shavuot, still touched by revelation and Moses's ascent up the mountain to commune with God and the Children of Israel assembled fearfully below.

As for my Tokyo journey...I had a moment of sheer panic standing in the Shinagawa train station just shy of 9 am. All around me, Japanese people strode in business attire and businesslike pursuit while I stared at the multiple gates, entrances, subway lines and options.

What if I get lost and miss my limousine ride to Narita Airport, I thought. What if I miss my plane back to New York? It was certainly a possibility.

But my craving for the experience of walking through downtown Tokyo drowned out my reticence and I soon figured out how to buy a 160 yen ticket to Shibuya...and was on my way, riding the subway, exploring the streets and shops and singing at a karaoke club and buying a pastry and soaking in the sights and smells of this sweetly kinetic city.

Since landing at Newark around 4 this afternoon I went through various phases of exhaustion but valiantly pushed through in an effort to obliterate my jetlag.

Now, well after midnight, I am astonished to find myself wide awake.

But not really.

My mind is racing.

And my soul is restless.

So much has happened over this past week that I require consciousness.

Indeed, what jolted me out of bed (where I had retired in a reasonable quest to fall asleep two hours ago) was the sudden realization that exactly one week ago TO THE HOUR I had stood on the stage at the JCC in Manhattan's all-night Tikkun Leil Shavuot -- a festival of teaching and culture that honors the Jewish tradition of staying awake to study Torah on the first night of Shavuot -- performing the World Premiere of my one-woman show, The Rabbi's Girl Presents: Songs of Religion and Rebellion.

My performance was ambitious and experimental, messy and magical, the first public presentation of a concept I hope to perfect and produce in many venues around the country and even the world.

I am a writer -- not an actor -- and am filled with retrospective awe and horror that I had the nerve to perform an autobiographical show, with songs and dance, in the middle of the night on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

My audience was robust...and kind. I saw people smiling and laughing and clapping hands. Some even got up to dance with me.

From the vantage point of a week, I am incredulous that people came to see me sing, dance and tell my story -- of growing up religious in an age of rebellion, a rabbi's girl in the 1970's.

The following morning I awoke to equal parts relief and giddy joy. In truth, I had been in a state of semi-hysteria prior to taking the stage.

A large part of the hysteria came from the realization that shortly after my show I would be heading to Japan.

And now this extraordinary week has come to a close.

The performance is past. I am back from Japan, sitting in my dark living room as if I had never been gone, Alfie and Nala the Pomeranians at my feet.

I am dazzled and dazed by what has taken place within these past seven days.

Yet, a side effect of solo travel when you are part of a family unit is the rough re-entry.

Telling the Three Babes about my adventure -- Big Babe and Middle Babe by phone; Little Babe at home -- filled me with a peculiar melancholy and I realized I missed my family on my trip.

Having an adventure of this magnitude without them made me feel oddly alone, though my very aloneness was exhilarating...most of the time.

But HOBB made me hamburgers for dinner, heeding my one complaint about Japan: as a kosher observer who doesn't eat white rice and avoids MSG, I found very little to eat during my journey.

"What is your dream dinner?" HOBB asked when I called him early this morning from my room at the Tokyo Prince Hotel where I was cranky and uncaffeinated and procrastinating about setting out to explore the city.

I hardly had to think.

"Hamburgers," I replied. "With Gulden's Spicy Brown Mustard."

And that is exactly how HOBB welcomed me home -- preparing large and juicy hamburgers, a delicious, white-rice and MSG-free vegetable and tofu stir-fry and decorating the table with the largest bottle of Gulden's mustard I had ever seen to ease my bumpy return into the atmosphere of my family, which is two seasons away from becoming an empty nest, which is morphing into a new entity I have never really known -- a universe of just me and HOBB with beloved but grown children who have embarked on their own journeys and now come home just to visit.

Mad Men, Mortality and Morality

I had a novel reaction after watching last night's Mad Men episode, meaning that I had a thought that was new to me, though not necessarily unique.

Watching the show's characters react to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I realized that I have lived a certain amount of years and that I am a long way from the millennium into which I was born.

I felt my age, in starkly temporal terms, and thought of how my life has intersected with world-changing events.

I felt rooted along the continuum of human history, leaving a footprint at a particular moment.

At the same time, I acknowledged that I belong to something larger than the present.

And in so doing, reached beyond my life span, thinking of my legacy.

Two years past the fifty mark, I thought of that great expanse beyond the parameters of my own life and wondered how what was happening now would appear to denizens of the future.

I was grateful for this Mad Men episode in which neither Don nor Pete nor anyone else betrayed their spouse. I was relieved that Joan's bosomy bitchiness was constrained. I was annoyed at the (once-again) cliched portrayal of Ginsberg's meddling yet good-hearted, Yiddish-inflected immigrant father.  I found myself nastily hoping that Don's crucifix-wearing Jewish doctor's wife mistress Sylvia would get killed in a race riot in Washington, DC after Dr. King's assassination.

I'm not certain what the writers of Mad Men want us to think of their characters. While the show has entertained me -- and previously even charmed me -- I find myself lately wishing to bolt from the America it depicts.

Several seasons in, the characters have grown shallow, dismayingly selfish and graspingly ambitious.

After some sparky, creative campaigns and empire-building, the tensions, transactions and dramas of the advertising world now seem especially inconsequential. Watching the mad men and women at work, I am filled with despair. Even the admirable Peggy seems a slave to a soulless system.

Is that the point? 

Maybe I am spoiled by the moral absolutism of Carrie Mathison from Homeland, which I began watching obsessively with HOBB a month ago, pigging out sometimes on double episodes in order to get catch up with Season Three. Even with her insane and unethical entanglement with Nicholas Brody, the woman is driven by a grand and greatly important ambition. She is heroic in her own deeply flawed way because she has a purity of purpose.

Mad Men has no such character. I pinned my hopes on Ginsberg for a while, but he has become generic and undistinguished after a few chutzpah-fueled outbursts last season. Right now, Trudy Campbell, who threw her cheating husband out of the house, seems to be the only one with backbone and integrity.

But I know it's unfair to compare Mad Men to Homeland.

Stalking terrorists is a far more noble pursuit than selling ketchup, shtupping your neighbor's wife or bossing around terrified underlings at your workplace.

And despite the precious, intellectual scribblings about the show's subtext -- especially regarding the season premiere's numerous allusions to Dante's Inferno -- the dark broodings of Don Draper do not count for anything transcendent. A season back he held some promise but now, who really cares about this lying, hypocritical monster?

Instead, the America that Don Draper is building together with Roger Sterling and company is the America that 21st Century madmen are hellbent on destroying. I can see how the Sodom and Gemorrah-like morals of Madison Avenue, as depicted on Mad Men, justify America's designation as Big Satan in the minds of religious extremists and ideological purists.

It's not such a stretch from Mad Men to Homeland, after all.

Knowing the seismic events that ushered in the new millennium, I keep wanting to encounter a character in Mad Men who is capable of seeing beyond him or herself into the near future and understand something critical about the time in which they are living, have a meta-moment about the consumerism they are aiding and abetting, see the impact that the world-shaking events of their day will have on those of us living in the 21st Century, send us a message from the late 1960's in America.

A Walk in the Park. Bungalow Babe Gets Dressed...as a Dominatrix.

I left my sneakers in the gym yesterday so when I got dressed for a morning walk with HOBB through Morningside and Central Parks, I had no choice but to wear my Doc Martens.

"You look like a German dominatrix," HOBB observed when I emerged from our bedroom wearing running shorts and black hiking boots.

Checking my reflection in the mirror, I had to agree. Partially. Leather was needed to complete the look. So I grabbed my sleeveless faux leather motorcycle vest from H&M.

"I actually think I look more like a gay guy circa 1985," I opined, presenting my complete outfit.

HOBB rolled his eyes and seemed to reconsider whether he wanted to be seen with me in public.

The thing about Manhattan is that no matter how extreme your outfit, you tend to blend into the general landscape. Last week, when I was bolting through Times Square, the sight of The Naked Cowboy -- in his signature tightie-whities -- seemed as tame as the giant plushies that have taken over that part of town.

Faces lifted towards the sun, we walked east through Morningside Park, which might as well have been a lovely Dutch village, with all its tulips and daffodils. We proceeded into Central Park, filled with runners, bicyclists and a police investigation. Heading toward the reservoir, we began discussing plans for upcoming dinner parties.

A disagreement ensued.

As I remarked to a friend yesterday, of the two imperfect states of being -- singledom and marriage, by which I mean a committed partnership -- marriage is the less imperfect.

Nevertheless, it should not be confused with a relationship of eternal harmony.

Constructive arguments are an essential component of good communication.

Some relationships that appear admirably peaceful are actually parve and devoid of passion.

I admit I am a warrior, hard-wired to fight for what I believe in.

Yet, if I go too far, I shape-shift into a dominatrix, whipping things back into shape, restoring the integrity of the life-long partnership that is perfect in its very imperfection.

Healing in the Age of Breaking News

Last Monday, I got to physical therapy just as the Boston Marathon bombing story hit the airwaves. 

I know, because the super-sized flat screen TV against the 5th Avenue wall of the therapy studio was on, bringing us the story live from Copley Square, in all its drama and chaos.

Between my massage, my recuperative exercises and heat therapy, I learned the facts -- one, no, two explosions took place at the finish line, people were injured, no idea how many, white smoke, an elderly runner was filmed falling down as he ran, footage of people running past the site of the bombing, confused and scared.

By the time I left, two fatalities were confirmed. Authorities were in a complete fog about the perpetrators.

On Friday, I arrived for my morning appointment to learn that one of the now-identified suspects -- brothers from Chechnya!! --  was dead, the other on the loose and the city of Boston on lockdown. At the end of the week, three were dead, with nearly two hundred wounded, many with lost limbs.

At yesterday's appointment, I watched legal experts discuss the possible progress and outcome of a trial for surviving Boston Bomber Dzohkhar Tsarnaev.

I also learned that officials had uncovered an Al Qaeda plot to blow up a passenger train from Canada to the United States.

As I work to strengthen my core and build up the muscles of my back to support my curving spine, I wonder if my hard and focused work is an exercise in futility.

Dark Side of the Rainbow. Sunday Edition.

Little Babe was awake at 9 this morning, an unusual event for a Sunday morning.

In the time-honored custom of American adolescents, my youngest child tends to sleep in on weekend mornings, but today he was hunched over his laptop in a posture of intense alertness as I shuffled, zombie-like, into the kitchen in search of my Zabar's Dark Espresso blend.

"Hey, Mom. I downloaded Dark Side of the Rainbow," he informed me. "You gotta see this. It'll blow your mind."

Dark Side of the Rainbow is a pop culture phenomenon, a "wacky coincidence," according to Little Babe, of synchronicity that results from the creative coupling of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon album and The Wizard of Oz.

When Little Babe first explained Dark Side of the Rainbow to me, I had a vague notion of a stoner experience invented by teenage boys, a musical-cinematic pairing that would likely have as much appeal as, say, Cheetos and red wine.

Indeed, when I mentioned it to a group of twenty-something lads at Funkadelic Studios last night (I had come with my drum sticks for their twice-monthly Open Jam), they nodded sagely. 

One guy said something about dropping acid to enhance the experience.

Another described it as "far out."

I tried not to smirk, so as not to sully my image as a rocker chick, that is, morph back into the very thing that I am -- a mom of people their very age.

So this morning, when Little Babe offered to show it to me pre-caffeine, I was disinclined to believe that Dark Side of the Rainbow would have any appeal.

However, his desire to share this cultural find with me was so sincere that I relented, settling down next to him at the dining room table with my coffee mug in hand.

"Check it," he said, pressing play.

Within moments, the haunting Pink Floyd music I first fell in love with at his age animated The Wizard of Oz in a marvelous, magical way, replacing the dialogue, giving the film an eerie, hallucinogenic quality. Without its original score, The Wizard of Oz became a disturbing dreamscape, evoking the sensibility of Maurice Sendak.

Serving as curator, Little Babe showed me key scenes, cutting to incidents of especial coincidence, showing how here the lyrics perfectly illustrated the action on the screen, how there, the music fit the mood, how everywhere The Dark Side of the Moon served as midrash for the MGM movie.

His tour was a great success. I sat transfixed to the computer screen, witness to a fascinating, if strange, artistic collaboration across decades and genres, something providential, if not intentional.

Shortly, Little Babe had to finish a school paper so I dove into my day -- one of my favorite kinds of days -- filled with too many things and plenty of wacky coincidences: a conference call with a favorite client about a forthcoming trip to Japan; vigorous morning exercise; a trip to a used book and record shop on West 72nd Street to buy a turntable for Little Babe who has become a vinyl enthusiast; a visit to my 35th High School Reunion (cue to the years of my most intense Floyd fandom); an Earth Day fair in Union Square where a cover band was playing The Wall just as I showed up; an extraordinary Ballroom dance workshop in the Flatiron district where the instructor channeled me, stating that the key to successful dance partnership was being Picasso-like, with both eyes on one side of the face; a late afternoon walk and sunbath with HOBB along the High Line; a leisurely bus ride up 10th Avenue on the M11; delicious Shabbat leftovers for dinner back home; old episodes of Homeland; an attempt to watch the new episode of MadMen before our television set lost sound.

I was uplifted by the group goodheartedness that accompanies the arrival of a bonafide (if chilly) spring day in this winter-weary city, the collective gratitude for the gift of sunshine, the thrilling, thrashing multi-media symphony of sounds and smells and attitudes and offerings and hassles and spectacles and excessive everything.

Today, there was the marvelous too-muchness of Manhattan.

Because I crave too-muchness, I am often at one with this city, deliberately designing days that are full-unto-bursting, reaching for excess of emotion and sensory overload.

Living according to the credo that to feel properly is to feel deeply, I aspire to be overwhelmed and enveloped. I know that I should also pursue serenity and sometimes I do, but my default mode is the extreme.

When I first experienced it this morning, I was seduced by Dark Side of the Rainbow, for what it does is utterly overload one's sense receptors. It also messes with one's mind, producing a rush like that of revelation. 

Conceptually, Dark Side of the Rainbow is completely contemporary, though it was produced in the late 90's. It is a multi-media mash-up, about ten years ahead of its time.

I have repeatedly marveled at the extent to which my sensibilities have been shaped by each of my children. Big Babe has sent me books and operas and films and Middle Babe has been a personal guru on the zeitgeist of her generation. Little Babe fuses the music of my adolescence with his own, expanding my oeuvre and appreciation. I see this upward vertical influence as a unique feature of my generation, stemming from a new and widespread willingness of adults to listen to the younger generation. It didn't happen when I was a kid; my parents would not have cared to listen with me to The Dark Side of the Moon when I stumbled onto it as an awestruck young teen. 

Dashing and dipping into today's offerings, I heard Pink Floyd's music in my head, animating the drama around me, providing midrash, rooting me to my past, linking me to Little Babe, giving me far-out insights and a mind-blowing sense of synesthetic wholeness.

Why We Need Homeland

Last night, as tonight, in an effort to tune out the awful images and heartbreaking story coming out of Boston, I snuggled up to HOBB on our dog-chewed black leather couch and lost myself in the final episodes of Season 1 of Homeland.

As I posted yesterday on Facebook, I was deeply unsettled to see the depiction of a suicide bomber's vest -- loaded with ball bearings to inflict maximum damage on the human body -- on the penultimate episode of the season.

The architecture of the bomb on Homeland was just too eerily similar to what had happened that day in Boston and, for several instants, the escapism factor of this drama was compromised by its too-immediate imitation of life.

Indeed, as I watched the season finale tonight, I had to ask myself just why Homeland, which is a nail-bitingly suspenseful show about terror, betrayal and ambiguity, is such a huge hit in post 9/11 America.

Homeland presents the very stuff of our waking nightmares, the questions we have, our suspicions and (for many of us) barely-articulated critiques of our government's activities, actions and policies during the administrations of George W. Bush.

Homeland shows the ugly and the vulnerable in our heroes and ordinary citizens; it allows us to smoosh the black and white hues of absolutist American ideals so as to create a palate of innumerable shades of grey.

It makes me proud and disturbed about my country.

But I know the answer even as I ask the question because Homeland functions as all art does, permitting us to interpret reality, providing us with a portal for filtering experience. Homeland curates the mess of contemporary life. It manages our fear, or focuses it on Carrie and Brody and Saul. It permits us to create galleries of grey awareness.

Homeland is as part of the zeitgeist as Girls, another compelling and disturbing (if also funny) show whose first season I recently completed watching.

What both have in common -- aside from sharp writing and plot development -- is their message to Americans:

You are being screwed in ways you cannot even begin to understand.

Night of A Thousand Blog Posts

I began this blog post the very same way I step onto a scale: grimacing, hand covering my eyes.

It's the number I'm afraid of, of course. 

In this case the date of the previous post. 

So long ago. So far away.

And yet, so thematically linked to what I wish to write about tonight.

This post contains the granules of a great many posts that were thought or spoken or left unsaid over the past four months of Bungalow Babe radio silence.

Some of these stillborn posts were spoken in locker rooms or on buses or on phone calls or in emails or around the Shabbat Table or in shul.

Others were said to friends and sympathetic strangers met at Starbucks or Fairway or on line for the bathroom at a movie. Or to a random person on the #1 train or the flight to Tel Aviv who liked my Doc Martens or my fedora or my dress or my necklace.

It doesn't take a lot for me to open up.

Contained here are the seeds of a thousand posts or more during a season of transition; meshes of my heretofore undocumented months: 

My end-of-December trip to Israel for SOBB's (Sister of Bungalow Babe) 50th Birthday and subsequent adventures in the Holy Land; the milestone of Middle Babe starting a job and moving out of the Urban Bungalow and into a place of her own;  the intensity of Little Babe's college application process -- trips and applications submitted at deadline, his initial deferral at the college that won his heart, the nail-biting weeks after petitioning the administration, his eventual admission, our relief and celebration, the mind-blowing fact of my youngest going off to college; a new deeply intimate phase of friendship for HOBB and me, including trips -- an exquisitely romantic getaway to Cancun, Mexico, weekend travel to Durham, NC, relaxing Shabbat weekends and the usual whirlwind of parties; a trip to Boca Raton, Florida to visit my parents with SOBB; monologues and open mic and karaoke performances and swing dance and all kinds of joyous movement; drum lessons and building up the courage to show up with my sticks and play with the guys at Funkadelic Studio's Open Jam night; shows and movies and Sunday afternoons at museums and precious time with family and friends and epic Skype conversations with Big Babe in Berlin; and the reading of Anna Karenina (and several other books while I was reading it); and the intense but deeply satisfying experience of hosting my extended family for Passover, sleepovers and all; and visits to the gym and too much red wine and coffee and chocolate and work and mischief and the stuff of life and getting pissed about middle age weight gain and taking note of (but not action against) new lines in my face, and the joy of weddings and the shock of terrible, terrible tragedy and untimely death and the gift of ideas that create brushfires in my mind and causes that ignite my soul and songs that make me happy to be alive and not enough sleep and sweet passion at stolen moments.

And so much more.

Oh. I wrote a play during this time.

And then a second one, based on the first one, which will be performed in Manhattan this May.

I articulated a new focus of my work: performance.

And created several performance-based works. 

Some of which I will be staging in the coming months.

I experienced -- more than once, more than twice, often, in fact -- ecstatic religious experience, a way in which to be fully Jewish, engaging my body, my spirit and my mind at Romemu. I have called myself a Romemoonie to HOBB who does not quite share this religious passion of mine, whose spiritual home is elsewhere.

For Passover, I had the extraordinary privilege of hosting my parents and brothers' family. I did not take for granted my ability to handle the strenuous preparations for the holiday, together with HOBB. I realized that I am lucky to understand the meaning behind the rituals of this nation-making festival. 

Together with my table of intimate guests, I fulfilled the mitzvah of seeing myself as personally having been liberated from Egypt, a transformative journey I have undergone since early childhood.

With no apology to my children, I have embraced the arrival of the empty nest -- and with it, time to sink deeply into friendships, to explore my own passions and step far outside my comfort zone. Last month, a woman at a dinner party -- about ten years my senior -- asked how I felt about having had children "so early" when she had not. (The woman in question had actually given birth at the tail end of her fertility.)

I got the sense the woman wished to hear bleats of regret...."if only I had waited!"... but it took everything in me not to gloat.

My children's respective childhoods were magical realms in which I played king and queen, wizard and court jester and princess and dragon-slayer. Yes, I sunk deeply and happily into the role of mom at an age deemed "early" by the standards of Manhattan's Upper West Side and I wouldn't have traded my adventures for anything. 

Man, did we have fun, me and my brood, whose respective births spanned eleven years! There was the luxury of time... as I was young. There was a lack of parental neurosis...as I was young. There was the ability to breastfeed and stay up nights and work throughout my children's childhoods...as I was young. 

From the MTV-watching 23-year-old freelance journalist I was when Big Babe was born to the 27-year-old columnist and writer I was when Middle Babe was born to the 34-year-old full time public relations professional I was at the time of Little Babe's arrival to the 52-year-old writer, performer and promoter of cool causes that I am today, it's been a high-speed ride, sometimes by the seat of my pants. 

I improvised a lot.

I operated from intuition.

Yes, I became a mother when I was young -- too young to be cranky. Or a diva. Or bitter. Or pissy. 

I was fully immersed in the marvelous mash-up of my life, starring in a great piece of performance art: the raising of my three remarkable kids.

Emerging into the spring time of Little Babe's senior year of High School, the full impact of this transition is upon me. Big Babe and Middle Babe are in graduate school and Little Babe heads off to college at the end of August.

All three of the Babes have significant others in their lives.

I am awed at the arrival of this moment.

Shehechiyanu, v'kiyamanu, v'higianu la'zman ha-zeh.*

This summary was written in a rush because it was lived in a rush of great chaos and joy and laughter and sometimes anger. It was written by moonlight as my days are full unto bursting. There was frustration and sadness at the discovery of an internal wound -- a physical deformity, my twisted spine. 

But there was mostly wonder and laughter and tremendous gratitude for the blessing of being awake to the gift tucked inside the struggle and the push-back of life and challenging circumstance. 

"I don't know why, but I have often have to fight for what is important to me," I told HOBB today, as we walked down Broadway, bound for the Museum of Modern Art. The midday sun was high overhead. It was almost possible to believe that the brisk day had suddenly become spring-like. "It has turned me into a warrior," I said.

My last post, four months ago, was about recognizing myself as a Picasso Woman -- a physical description with deep metaphorical meaning. I thought about my revelation as I stood, earlier today, in front of Picabia's La Source, an homage to Picasso's rose period at the Inventing Abstraction exhibition at MOMA. In the planes of the giant canvas I saw myself moving and bending, dancing into and away from a definition of what it means to be whole.

La Source seemed to me like a huge field for the game of midlife Hide 'n Seek. Pondering the painting, I sought myself therein. I hid from myself. I discovered myself.

I laid claim to the abstraction I had invented for myself, the identity of Picasso Woman. 

I owned it again.

This post, containing a thousand posts, is about the winter of this woman whom I first came to fully inhabit at autumn's end.

Picasso Woman's first season was like a great opening at an art museum: filled with dazzle and people and food and laughter and wine. And oohs and ahhs. And sparkling reviews.

Gathering courage, she/I remove our hand and look at the number we were afraid to see and realize it is not shameful. December 19, 2012. Perhaps it was important to preserve that particular post, to ponder it and plumb its manifold meanings. 

In a rush of sun-warmed inspiration, beyond the boundary of midnight, I reflect back to the beginning of this long and arduous New York City winter, recalling the very moment I felt the sharp pain in my back...and knew that it was the source of a realization that would change my life. 

 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*The blessing one recites at having arrived at a momentous occasion.

Picasso Woman

Two weeks ago, after returning from a business trip to Las Vegas, I felt a sharp pain in the left side of my back while getting out of my car and knew that something dramatic had befallen me.

The sensation was alarming. Over the next few days, a thought became lodged in my mind -- my body is broken. Heeding the alarm, I decided to investigate.

One trip to the Emergency Room and several exploratory doctors' visits later, I learned that my childhood scoliosis had quietly progressed over five decades so that not only was my spine woefully twisted, but my left ribcage painfully lifted, my neck unnaturally extended forward, the muscles in my middle back rendered useless, a nerve pinched, my sacrum jolted out of alignment...and a host of related complications had developed.

Left untreated, said Dr. Liu, the intuitive acupuncturist, palpating my back while I yelped in pain, people like me often end up confined to a wheelchair. While pressing and prodding several points on my back, he asked me about other, less painful symptoms and was thoroughly unsurprised when I told him of my excessive thirst, my frequent bathroom visits, my rushes of overwhelming heat, my thyroid medication.

Dr. Liu drew the connection between spine and bladder, hormones and health. He located the origin of my thyroid condition to the hypothalamus. He asked if I had been forgetful lately (I had). He asked me if I noticed that my hands were cold, despite my hot flashes. (I had not). He praised my energy and penchant for exercise. The good news, he reassured me, is that by first healing the pinched nerve and balancing the body and then strengthening the back, I could regain my health.

I nearly cried at his optimistic prognosis. Growing up with a mother who had a chronic back problem, who had surgeries and wore special metal braces and was restricted in her activities, I could not bear the idea of being similarly afflicted. Indeed, my childhood athleticism, my penchant for riding bikes and climbing trees and jumping off high walls and the roofs of garages was a defiant refutation of her and her physical limitations.  My vigorous tomboyishness was yet one more way in which I, her adopted child, was fundamentally different from her.

The pain-free adulthood I had enjoyed thus far seemed my birthright. While I watched friends, my husband, my sister and strangers cope with back problems, I clucked in sympathy, all the while feeling smug, boastful and secretly superior.

Yet while laying on Dr. Liu's examination table, I recalled two instances I had conveniently banished from memory: physical exams wherein doctors had noted that my scoliosis was significant, expressing surprise that it had not been corrected in childhood.

The defect was there all along. Reveling in my body's wholeness and strength, I ignored it and now I was broken.

Did I want to regain my health? Dr. Liu asked, peering seriously at me.

Yes! I replied. Yes and yes and yes!

Then you have to listen to me, he said.

Though it sounded rhetorical, Dr. Liu's question was a serious one. Did I want to regain my health? Of course I did!

But what this meant was following his advice and taking the rigorous treatment seriously. Not only the needles, but the massage and the electrical muscle stimulation. I have now had three sessions. The treatment is exhausting, difficult yet transformative.

But what Dr. Liu was asking me as well was whether I was willing to become an active participant in my healing. Was I willing to work towards recovery? Was I willing to learn about my body and honor its holistic integrity? Was I willing to take responsibility for my healing?

The prospect of partnership made me nearly giddy with joy. This quest is an essential one in my life. I seek partnership creatively and spiritually. I believe in Buber's I and Thou paradigm for a human-God relationship. I crave collaboration in work and friendship. My entire life has been spent seeking a true yedid nefesh -- soulmate.

In partnership with Dr. Liu, I have consulted a spine specialist whose findings confirm his. In the manner of females the world over, I have begun sharing my story with friends and hearing their stories in return, getting names and recommendations, learning about the benefits of swimming, special shoe inserts, vitamins, Feldenkrais, Alexander Technique, special pillows.

During my first session with Dr. Liu, I knew I had walked through a portal of self-discovery that would yield insights about much more than my body.

I understood that the imbalance in my spine and skeleton was metaphorical.

It is truly my life that is out of balance.

The crisis of the discovery of my degraded scoliosis is a grand opportunity to address that imbalance.

Last night, HOBB accused me of being obsessed with my back problems, boring him with endless conversation about it. I admitted that I was obsessed but found it an utterly compelling topic.

Just yesterday, as I stood in the office of the spine specialist, I told him that I always had a sense of my body as lopsided, that I recognized myself in Picasso's cubist depictions of women.

"I am a Picasso Woman," I said, while he measured my hips, the rotation of my neck, the extension of my arms and legs. The young doctor paused, considering my words. "The imbalance of your spine is the problem. The pain is just a symptom. Most people only seek relief for the pain without addressing the real problem," he said.

I am a Picasso Woman and this moment of crisis is a portal to self-discovery, a new palette for a beautiful and complex and possibly painful work of art.

Connecting the Dots: from the Gym to Shul to Lincoln to The Moody Blues. Bungalow Babe Gets Dressed. Episode 8.

Because it is anyone's guess how long these awesome polka dot tights will last, I asked HOBB to photograph me in my shul outfit just after Shabbat.

About the outfit:

• Tights from Hue
• The Dr. Martens ankle boots I have worn in virtually every photo.
• Ann Taylor Loft black dress with cap sleeves and silver buttons down my back, (like Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack.) bought about four years ago.
• H&M boiled wool black jacket with military styling and bold buttons, bought also around four years ago.
• Chanel costume pearl necklace with pendant from my late mother-in-law Judy.

I wore this outfit to Congregation Ramath Orah, arriving in time for the kiddush, having spent most of my morning at the gym at the JCC in Manhattan. (This was actually my plan as I prefer davening in an egalitarian shul. In this behavior, I know I am hardly alone; indeed, when it comes to Orthodox synagogues, I proudly own the mantle of being a JFK Jew: Just for Kiddush. About the gym on Shabbat morning... Yeah. Well, every now and then I take a break from formalized prayer services. And I was still feeling buoyed by the Friday night service at Romemu.)

As I write, I am plotting what to wear for my evening plans, which include the 7:20 p.m. showing of Lincoln with HOBB and friends, followed by who-knows-what.

Shavua Tov. May it be a good week.

Postscript

Though I got the sense that everyone in the theater LOVED Lincoln, I was bored silly. It was too epic, too important, too serious. Never for a moment did I believe that Daniel Day Lewis was Abraham Lincoln, nor Sally Field Mary Todd Lincoln. It felt to me like a school assignment. I became the teenager whose parents forced her to watch the long historical movie on Channel 13 while she wanted to watch the Rolling Stones perform live on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert. 

Mine was a minority opinion in my group, though I was pretty sure that no one actually loved the movie, with the exception of possibly HOBB, who has been listening to Team of Rivals on audiobooks.

After the movie, we went to Bella Luna on Columbus Avenue. Two glasses of Shiraz -- and a lovely Sicilian salad and tilapia entree -- later, I forgot about the movie.

Besides, tomorrow night I get to do better than watch a rock band perform on TV.

I'm going to the Moody Blues concert at the NYCB arena in Westbury, LI with bungaleer buddies.

It feels like my reward for sitting through a long and boring history lesson.