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. 

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*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.

Subway Stations and Bomb Shelters. Bungalow Babe Gets Dressed, #7

A mere two and a half weeks after Hurricane Sandy brought the mighty MTA subway system to a standstill, the trains in New York City are (mostly) up and running.

So reliably are they operating now that I actually forgot that there had ever been a transit shutdown.

So, on Thursday night, returning from a performance of the marvelous off-Broadway show -- The Lobby Hero -- which stars the gifted Noam Harary (the son of my friends Miriam and Ralph Harary and childhood friend of Big Babe's from Rosmarin's Bungalow Colony) I had to pause and capture the moment at the 116th Street Columbia University station.

In this picture, I am wearing houndstooth patterned tights from Hue; a black cocktail dress from Second Time Around (purchased for $25. A metziah!); an ancient Old Navy peacoat acquired about 15 years ago; and my Dr. Martens Darcie ankle boots. I also have a Kenneth Cole handbag in faux gold distressed leather, that I bought this summer at Woodbury Commons for a pittance.

This picture was taken Thursday night, as the situation in Israel and Gaza was beginning to escalate, the result of Israel's assassination of a Hamas leader weeks after the country had been under prolonged rocket attack from Gaza. On my way to the theater, I passed by a pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel rally in front of the Israeli Consulate. Tucked into the crowd were the usual anti-Zionistic Hasidic men, a sight that typically makes me want to scream and laugh all at once. This time, I also saw a breed of protestor I had never noted before: young Jews bearing signs announcing that they were Jewish and against Israel.

Holding their signs aloft, they lustily joined the chorus of voices denouncing the Jewish State.

Noam Harary's mother, Miriam, is Israeli. As I walked towards the theater district with HOBB, we spoke about the situation, trading news of what we had heard and whom we had spoken to. We talked about Miriam and her family, my sister, her husband, his extended family and their three boys -- one in the IDF, the other, a reservist -- and my brother and sister-in-law and their two tiny boys and the innumerable friends we have in Israel. We knew that they would be spending many hours in bomb shelters; some had already spent a portion of the previous night there.

Just as the Upper West Side was spared entirely from Hurricane Sandy's wrath, in New York City, we are are entirely protected from the terrifying assault of rockets or the knowledge of an enemy who dreams of our demise. At moments like this, the magnificence and strangeness of being a 21st Century American Jew overtakes me. As a result, riding the recently-hobbled subway, thoughts of our local hurricane accommodate another awareness: of missiles whizzing overhead, of sirens blaring, of people huddling for shelter, of injuries and trauma, interrupted lives, inevitable death.

This awareness is the occupational hazard of being a New York Jew who loves Israel.

As war simmers on the horizon of a nation half the world away, I attend an off-Broadway show. The drama absorbs me and I applaud the son of my Israeli friend for his stellar performance. And then I leave the cocoon of the theater and my prior consciousness returns.

At the 116th Street Columbia University subway station, no one watching me pose for my husband would have guessed that my carefree pose was an utter lie.

If you look closely, you will see that I am grimacing.

Leaning into the steel beam, my mind was far away, my heart heavy, fear running like lead through my veins.

postscript

Thinking about this post all day, I was troubled by the seemingly frivolous fashion digression in the midst of a serious meditation on being an Israel-focused Jew in post-Sandy NYC.

At first I wondered whether I ought to remove the mention of my outfit, but then, visiting Facebook, I saw several posts by people in Israel pondering what is appropriate or not appropriate to wear into a bomb shelter.

After running into her building's bomb shelter wearing a Victoria's Secret nightie, one woman wrote that she resolved to sleep in sweatpants and baggy shirts during this crisis. Girls on the Tel Aviv beach discussed the politics of wearing their bathing suits into the miklat. Other people made note of their lack of appropriate foot gear as they scrambled downstairs during the night.

What to wear into a bomb shelter is not a screaming magazine headline but a pragmatic consideration during a moment of life and death.

As for me, the impetus is much more simple.

Remembering what I wore helps me remember where I was during pivotal moments in the history of the world.

After A Late Quartet. Bungalow Babe Gets Dressed. Episode 6.

Yesterday afternoon, HOBB and I joined half of the retirees of the Upper West Side at the 5:30 showing of A Late Quartet at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema. Having just submitted the manuscript for his forthcoming book on the quest to master the cello in middle age, HOBB had high hopes for the film, anticipating that he would be able to relate to its characters -- aging musicians in a Manhattan string quartet.

When he fell asleep a mere ten minutes into the film, I should have realized how severely his expectations had been dashed. Having jostled his arm to wake him up, I later regretted my decision for he proceeded to spend the duration of the film vacillating between deep boredom and disgust for the characters' immorality and self-absorption.

As for me, I was simply astonished at the film's lack of authenticity, its wooden dialogue and the predictability of the plot. I also found A Late Quartet shockingly shallow, with pretensions of high culture. It was frankly depressing to watch such fine actors inhabit roles that were two-dimensional, at best.

My favorite movie moment came early on, when a bag of Zabar's coffee is visible on the counter of Philip Seymour Hoffman's character's kitchen. My least favorite moment was when the twenty-something daughter of Hoffman and Catherine Keener -- who is having sex with her mother's former lover -- breaks into gales of giggles when her mother shows up at her place.

In what realm is the prospect of your mother finding you in bed with a guy she also screwed an occasion for hilarity? Also, in what realm would you actually be interested in having sex with your mother's ex, who, incidentally, had watched you grow up?

Still, it was fun to grab a movie with the early bird special crew. And it is always fun to find fellowship with your spouse over a film that you mutually hate.

Notes on my outfit: In this picture, I am sitting on our dining room table, wearing a pair of tasseled black knee socks from H&M that I bought five years ago, a Vivienne Tam black dress with a swingy skirt, bought at Loehmann's, a burgundy scarf from Zara's in Venice, given to me by Big Babe, a black, faux leather motorcycle jacket from Bagatelle, also purchased at Loehmann's, and black Aletta ankle boots from Dr. Marten.

Trip to Goshen

Little Babe, my seventeen-year-old son, is a natural born driver.

The first (and only) of my three children with this proclivity, he received his learner's permit last summer, two months after his sixteenth birthday. Living in Europe for the past six years, 28-year-old Big Babe has no use for driving; planes, the U-Bahn, S-Bahn and Eurail take him where he needs to go. Similarly, 24-year-old Middle Babe, living in our Manhattan apartment, has not been particularly motivated to acquire her license, satisfied as she is with subways, taxis and car rides with her Gentleman Caller.

It's not that he fantasizes about getting his own wheels. Little Babe is captivated by the prospect of the open road and the promise of cross-country trips with friends.  Like me, he equates driving with freedom. Getting behind the wheel, he attaches the radio's auxiliary cable to his iPod and a curated musical journey commences.

"Cake has the best driving music!" he proclaimed this past Friday as their wry and mournful song, "Wheels" filled our vehicle while we drove over the Tappan Zee bridge on our way upstate, wailing the song's final lament in unison: "Why you say you/Are not in love with me?" Minutes later, he switched tracks and we were rocking out to David Bowie's buoyant "Modern Love," taking turns with the call-and-response chorus: "Never gonna fall for Modern Love (walks beside me)/ Modern Love (walks on by)/ Modern Love (gets me to the church on time)/ Modern Love (terrifies me)/Modern Love (makes me party)/Modern Love (puts my trust in God and man)."

So exuberant are our music-drenched journeys that I sometimes feel as if our destinations are incidental; the spatial equivalents of Hitchcock's MacGuffins.

Yet some destinations are essential, for instance, Goshen, NY -- the setting for Little Babe's pending road test.

A bit of background: after racking up more than 80 hours on the road (30 more than the required 50) and having completed the mandatory five-hour pre-licensing course (twice), Little Babe was crushed when his appointment in Goshen had to be cancelled two weeks ago because our Honda had no gas... and neither did any of the nearby gas stations in post-Sandy New York City.

In the context of Hurricane trauma, Little Babe's cancelled road test was a minor inconvenience, still, it was disappointing. The cancellation also rendered our loopy adventure the previous night -- when we journeyed to a driving school in a terrifying and remote Bronx neighborhood that administered the mandatory pre-licensing test after discovering that Little Babe's safety certificate from the previous summer had expired two months earlier -- idiotic, dangerous and unnecessary.

The cancellation of Little Babe's road test further meant a six-week wait time for a new appointment, which stood to delay Little Babe's dream of driving to his high school by more than a month.

In the manner of mothers everywhere, I was certain that through sheer ingenuity and tenacity, I could bypass the system that stood to make my kid miserable.

A Complaint is a Gift...or the Art of Haute Kvetching

On October 4th, following a disappointing trip to the Bronx Zoo with Big Babe and his lady love, I dashed off the following letter of complaint:

Dear Bronx Zoo,
I cannot believe that I am writing to you -- one of my favorite NYC venues -- to let you know how disappointed I was at my most recent visit....which was this past Sunday, September 30th.
Arriving at the zoo around 3 pm with my son and girlfriend -- who live in Berlin -- we were presented with two levels of payment: basic and the all-encompassing exorbitant fee, which included rides and special exhibitions.
We decided that as we had about two and a half hours, the basic fee would suffice.
Sadly, because so many important attractions are now behind a paywall -- and other exhibitions were just empty -- we saw pathetically little for our $16 admission per person.
The zoo does, however, have a new Disney kind of look. It seems that Halloween cannot arrive early enough...with all the spooky decorations....more than a month before Halloween itself.
I call that cheap and infuriating.
Your patrons would prefer fewer gravestones and more animals.
And speaking of gravestones, unless you pay through the nose, it seems that the average person's trip to the Bronx Zoo is going to be kind of...dead.
How can you address this problem?
First off...I believe you have an obligation to inform the public at the entrance if key exhibitions are closed or under renovation. Signs at the entrance heralding the closing of an iconic exhibition such as the Monkey House would have been greatly appreciated. Even the Zoo employee outside the building agreed that it was not fair to patrons as he absorbed our shock and disappointment when we arrived to find a "Closed for Renovation" sign on the building.
But that was hardly the only problem.

Menschiness as Religious Calling

Maybe it's because I'm a PK* but I've got this stubborn belief that people of the cloth need to be, above all, mensches.

"Zay a mensch!" my Grandpa Leon would admonish us, looking like a fierce teddy bear in his wire-rimmed glasses and Winnie-the-Pooh belly. The Yiddish commandment to be a good human being was one of the mantras of my childhood, stated often, modeled by the adults in my life who were unfailingly responsible, fair, honest and decent...often boringly so, in my estimation.

In my childhood neighborhood of Douglaston, NY, it seemed to me that there was a maddening epidemic of menschiness. For evidence of grown-ups being thrillingly bad, I needed to look towards Great Neck (where I went to school), Manhattan (where I aspired to live as soon as possible), or the movies, where all manner of delicious misdeeds were being perpetrated by parents -- divorce, alcoholism, gambling addiction, drug use, adultery, white collar crime.

Locally, it was Vanilla City -- good marriages, intact families, responsible parents, school buses arriving on time, new outfits and shoes for the holidays, business as usual, blah, blah, blah, blah.

(Of course, being the height of the sexual/youth revolution, the local teens conducted their own business, which was far from vanilla. Still, the message from the adult world remained zay a mensch.)

Within this Xanadu, the mensch of all mensches was my father, the charismatic Conservative pulpit rabbi who bore an uncanny resemblance to the late, great American president, John F. Kennedy with his blue eyes, wide forehead and imposing stature. In his social-justice-saturated speeches and empathetic interactions with congregants alike, my dad was wise, kind, caring and committed to practicing what he preached. More than anyone I know, he walked the walk.

To this day, I have never seen another person bring as much comfort to the bereaved or throw a lifeline to the despondent or be such a loyal spouse and parent. The ultimate badge of my dad's popular appeal is that even the rebellious teens of Douglaston loved him.

As a rabbi, he was a rock star of righteousness.

Decades later, the retired rabbi and psychologist still plies his menschlichkeit from his impromptu pulpit -- the hospital bed at the rehab center where he has graduated to, following hip replacement surgery last week -- being kind and appreciative to the staff, his roommate, his family and visitors alike.

And when I shared with him, earlier this morning, a disturbing story of a religious leader whose ruthlessness was rapidly becoming one of the most striking features of their personality, he asked why no one had publicly censured them.

Fear, I opined.

Of what? he pressed.

Of what, indeed. Even ruthless people are mortal.

I have been shaped enormously by my upbringing as the daughter of a righteous rabbi and the granddaughter of a rabbi who preached the gospel of menschlichkeit. Rather than run in horror from people of the cloth, I have actually gravitated towards work with religious leaders, gratified by the menschiness of most I have worked with.

As a PK, I will readily admit that my expectations for clergy are high.

But I believe I am right to expect sterling character of someone who bears the title of spiritual leader.

Obviously, it is no chidush** that clergy are people too, with needs, wants, insecurities and flaws and it is wrong to have unrealistic expectations.  Over the past few decades, we have seen just how flawed clergy can be. As with the general population, the spectrum of clerical misconduct that has come to light ranges wildly -- from mild misdeeds to outright criminality, including sexual abuse, theft and even murder.

What is interesting to me is that another category of clerical misconduct is often overlooked and that is behavior and speech that is rude, hostile, abusive, dishonest, mean-spirited, obnoxious and unkind.

I am not referring here to a one-off intemperate utterance or an isolated instance of poor judgment or a rare, rash decision made under great duress.

I am not wagging my finger at ordinary shortcomings, missteps and failures that are part of being human.

What I am talking about is an ongoing pattern of inexcusable behavior that makes you wonder why the person in question chose to be a practitioner of the ultimate people profession.

Those who have been ordained as men and women of God have an overarching responsibility -- call it a calling -- to be mensches.

The way I see it, the misuse of one's status as spiritual leader is a grave violation that demands an outcry from a congregation of good people.

Or a few brave individuals.

Or even one lone voice.

So here's another lesson from my childhood, this one from my mother: People who are ugly on the inside cannot conceal their true nature from eventually springing forth. Meanness plays on a person's mouth, turning it into a permanent sneer. Hatred mottles facial skin. A Machiavellian mind puts sharp grooves in one's forehead. Scheming squints one's eyes.

In other words, the failure to act like a mensch is not an invisible affliction. It is a character defect that one ends up wearing, a mask of metaphysical and moral ugliness.

_______________________________________________________
*Preacher's kid
**New teaching

Hurricane Ann

A year and half after I disconnected our cable TV -- finding it too noisy, too expensive, too time-wasting and too distracting -- HOBB resubscribed.

"Join me," my husband implored, last night, from the living room couch where he was avidly watching the Republican National Convention. Having recently arrived home after a day at North Shore University Hospital with FOBB (father of Bungalow Babe), followed by a trip into Brooklyn to retrieve Little Babe from an end-of-internship dinner, I was happily seated at the dining room table, replying to work emails.

"Ummmm. O....kay," I reluctantly assented, abandoning my earlier plan of achieving Nirvana by watching a few episodes of Law and Order: SVU on Netflix.

Plunking down on the adjoining couch, instantly joined by Alfie and Nala the Pomeranians, I arrived just in time to watch Ann Romney take the podium and enchant America with her captivating kindergarten teacher cadence and her message of "Can't Help Loving that Mitt of Mine."

And while I admit to being less horrified than I thought I would be by the prospective president's wife, I was demoralized by the mythology of America that she perpetuated and the real life cluelessness she cannot help but exude.

"Oy, it's the Hallmark card candidate," groaned HOBB, buried beneath Mrs. Romney's plentiful platitudes and smiley-faced sentences. My snark-o-meter began flipping out with every emphatic pronouncement. From my Morningside Heights apartment I was morphing into the elitist Democrat that the new GOP fears.

"Could she be more shallow?" I mumbled.

As Ann Romney delivered her speech, I thought of the vast (and dare I say goyische) America outside of the borders of New York City and felt zapped back to an unwelcome childhood feeling: of being a foreigner, a member of a not-especially elite minority.

Mrs. Romney's blond ambition for the White House -- coupled with the confidence that her vanilla, robotic Ken Doll husband can restore the greatness of America -- made me shudder. Was there ever a more extreme counterpoint to Michelle Obama, both visually and substantively?

Listening to her address the American public with the authority of a mother and grandmother and hitting all those high notes that her advisors and speechwriter included with the hope of appealing to the average American woman (whoever she is) reminded me of being a pre-pubescent tomboy with short, dark hair and scabby knees who looked at the available female role models... and declared them dismal beyond belief.

As I watched Ann Romney unpack her message of "I'm just a regular gal," it was painfully obvious just how irregular she is. It is probably safe to state that the majority of American women do not know anyone who is anything like Ann Romney. Yet, the semantic sleight of hand she performed last night was intended to make female voters think, "Omigod! Ann Romney is just like me!!" or perhaps wish to be her BFF.

If ever there was a poster couple for the One Percent, it is the Romneys.

And while it is not a crime for a person to be without a profession, my vision of the 21st Century precluded coiffed and coached characters like Ann Romney being held up as paragons of female achievement.

Mrs. Romney's message of love to America, alluring at first, ultimately made me queasy because in her party's playbook, all Americans are created equal but some are more equal than others.

And that ethic worries me not only on behalf of my children but for my increasingly vulnerable parents.

Paraphrasing Anatevka's rabbi from Fiddler on the Roof: "May God bless and keep Ann and Mitt Romney...far away from us!"
_______________________________________________

Alessandra Stanley's analysis of Mrs. Romney's speech is especially on target, I think.

Garden of Earthly Delights

Today, Middle Babe went to the New York Botanical Garden with her Gentleman Caller to view the Monet's Garden exhibition.

My giftie? The photo above, captioned by my girl as follows:

red hot chili pepper arch at the botanical garden

Middle Babe obviously knows that the way to her mother's heart is through references to her favorite rock band of all times.

And while God's creation needs no improvement, I did think about some additions to my ideal garden. I think I would start with one of these:

The Melancholy Beauty of the Woods in August

I don't do sick well.

During this, the third-to-last weekend of my beloved bungalow summer, I have been in what I hope is the last act of a mysterious illness that came upon me without warning and wracked my body with fever, weakness and strange aches. Though I felt optimistic on the ride up to Monroe on Friday -- a multi-leg journey which included a stop at La Guardia airport to pick up Little Babe, who just arrived back home from visiting his girlfriend in Birmingham, Ala -- my temperature rose upon our arrival, demoralizing me.

Tired, emotionally labile, headachy and listless, I spent Shabbat overcome by a deep sorrow that my favorite season is almost over and I hardly even had a chance to inhabit it. Arriving, as it did, at the end of a busy summer, it was hard for me not to feel persecuted by this unwelcome illness.

Adopting the mantra of kids everywhere, it just wasn't fair.

Though I felt unwell, Shabbat had its moments of grace -- a tranquil hour spent reading outside the bungalow, the sunlight jewel-like, the air sweet and clean; a visit to the shore of Walton Lake, the view of the mirror-like water, the reassuring sensation of being nestled in the bosom of Mother Nature, the privilege of hanging out with Little Babe as he played guitar, singing the songs of Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles, Coldplay, Pink Floyd and, of course, The Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Resting on a humid mattress inches from my 17-year-old son, I was stirred, as I always am, by his soulfulness and artistry. Though I had been crying earlier, I felt uplifted and reassured hearing Little Babe's sweet voice and confident command of the music. Some of his favorite songs are my own -- "Wish You Were Here," "Homeward Bound,""Norwegian Wood" -- and some I have come to love through my son's renditions -- "Green Eyes," "Wednesday Morning, 3 a.m.," "Brendan's Death Song."

I remembered this moment last year when "I'm With You," the Peppers' new album, was just being released, our shared excitement as we discovered each new song. I remember hatching the plan to go see them perform, which we did, this past April in Greensboro, NC, on the fourth night of Passover.

Recalling our trip, recalling this very moment last summer, tears filled my eyes once again.

Exuberant by nature, I am also given to a certain melancholy and suffer from sentimentalism.

And when I get sick, it is an easy slide from sentimental into the home base of maudlin.

So there were maudlin moments aplenty, crying jags and a feeling akin to regret. There was palpable loss. I had wanted this to be a different kind of summer -- rich with friends and exploration and Sunday adventures and culture and time to write -- and of course, there was some of that, for there were weddings and times with friends and the birthdays of our three children, and some enchanted summer days with HOBB and an extended visit from SOBB (Sister of Bungalow Babe) and a short visit from Big Babe and the absolute, over-the-top joy of watching Little Babe perform at the day-long end-of-summer performance at the remarkable BIMA program at Brandeis and seeing him with his arm around his girlfriend, happy and complete.

At the end of this summer, I note that my three children are happily coupled.

That is no small blessing.

There were moments of splendor and now I mine them for reassurance that I inhabited the magic kingdom of summer even ever so briefly. There were moments but I wanted hours, days, a solid season of splendor.

I am greedy with want.

It is now noon on the third to last Sunday of the summer. We have friends coming in a few hours. I am shaky but fever-free. The air is cooler and the sun patterns on the lawn are classically Augustine. In the blink of an eye I've crossed over the midpoint of the month into that final back-to-school stretch. I cannot believe it.

I have been very lucky, I suppose, if I am complaining so bitterly about a disappointing summer, experienced once, a quarter of a year away from my 52nd birthday.

Perhaps I am even spoiled.

Yet I know I am not alone in perceiving the melancholy of the woods outside my bungalow porch on a Sunday in August.

The sadness is inherent in the soulful swaying of the trees to the maudlin, late summer music, all but inaudible to human ears.