:: Dictated But Not Read ::
Musings from the ''Miracle Girl''| [::..archive..::] |
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| Things That Have Been Said About Me |
| You are the Minx. |
| She plays taller than her height. |
| You have a refreshing attitude. |
| You're such a renaissance woman. |
| She's not much of a biller. |
| You are very angry. |
| You are so self aware. |
| You need a more sophisticated haircut. |
| You are not afraid of anything. |
| You have a great attitude. |
| Your life is like a Seinfeld episode. |
| You are winsome. |
| You look great in hats. |
| Miracle girl. |
| I am belligerently conciliatory. |
| You've got it big time. |
Sunday, January 26, 2003
Not so far from heavenWhen I was six years old my father killed himself in our garage. I don’t really talk about it. Some of my friends do not even know it. I remember when someone I had been fairly close to for about a year learned about it. G. was over at my house. It was during the time I was separated from my then husband but before the divorce. We were drinking, probably something and tonic. I was sitting on my kitchen counter. She said, “Wow. That’s some baggage.” I guess she’s right. It is some baggage.
I like to keep my baggage and my messes in the back of my closets, out of view. Most people think I am exceedingly, maybe even obsessively, neat. My home looks incredibly tidy most of the time. However, open a drawer, a closet, or a kitchen cabinet and you will likely be bombarded with clothing, a box, or a file folder. You are subject to injury at any time. But things are put away so I do not have to worry about them.
I treat my painful memories and embarrassments the same way. My father’s death is considered a shameful event in my family. We don’t talk about it. We sweep it under the rug. My mother’s position on painful events is that one must move on, keep going forward. So my memories of my father and of the day of his death are limited. I am not even sure if the memories I do have are my own or my sister’s memories of my mother’s memories. I do remember that my parents used to fight. They were loud horrible fights. I remember that once they were getting ready to entertain and one of them threw an entire bag of M&M’s. We had a split level house, brown like the Brady’s house. The M&M’s flew everywhere and were on three separate levels of the house because some of them hit the stairs. I remember that my father loved to listen to Dr. Hook and throw a plastic ball back and forth with me in the front hallway of the house.
I remember the day of his death but only slightly. Mostly I remember my sister and my mother both being in the hall bathroom while I was lying on the bed in the guest bedroom across the hall, on the scratchy green bedspread. I do not know what they were saying a minute before, but suddenly my mother turned to me and said to my sister, “Look at her. She doesn’t even understand what is happening.” Thus began the habit of talking about me in the third person which my mother and sister continue even today. I was irritated because I thought that I most certainly understood what was happening. I was perfectly aware that my father was not coming back home. Maybe I was told he was in heaven, maybe not. It did not seem all that dramatic to me. In some ways it still does not. Life goes on.
Intellectually I do not agree with the “life goes on” theory, I believe that is important to experience pain and live through the pain not just put it away in a drawer. Still, I have noticed that my behavior reveals that I have internalized the message. For example, I connect totally and thoroughly with men and then they do me wrong and I can write them off, move on, and connect to the next man. I do not do this intentionally or to be cruel and my connection is real at the time but then it is just gone, totally and inexplicably. Recently I dated someone for six months. He did something mean and hurtful to me. I just cut off contact with him. Yes, I was sad and angry but I was also “done”.
I can move on remarkably efficiently. And I come by it honestly. My mother’s message was: Yes, there your mangled bicycles are in the driveway where your father’s car rolled over them as it rolled down the driveway and across the street. Yes, there are lots of cakes and adults you do not recognize standing in our kitchen. No, you will never see your father again. Yes, there is a funeral to attend, but not for you. You go to school. You must move on. Life goes on, keep moving. And so I do.
D.B.N.R.
Friday, January 24, 2003
Can you tell me how to get…When I was about 6 years old a distant cousin of my family was working for Sesame Street. He went on to start “Rechov Soom Soom”, the Israeli version of the show. At the time though, he was still with Sesame Street in New York City. As a result I had an in to get an interview to be one of the kids on Sesame Street. (This is akin to how a certain George W. landed himself at Yale.) As a six year old child I could imagine nothing as cool or as exciting as being on Sesame Street. If you knew me as a child you would know that nothing but nepotism could possibly get me an interview on Sesame Street. I am not saying that I was an ugly child but I certainly was not an especially cute child and when you think of the universe of children out there who could be on Sesame Street I would not have been anyone’s top pick. I would like to say that that is why I was never on Sesame Street but I do not think it explains it entirely. I failed the interview miserably.
The day of the interview I was beside myself with excitement. My mother had gotten me a new little suit outfit. In retrospect it was ugly as sin. It was light beige vest and skirt thing. The kind of outfit that did not survive past the 1970s. We took the train into the city from Hartford which was a rare treat. I do not remember the entire interview but I do remember being asked to make certain faces: happy, sad, angry, etc. I did fine with happy. I have never had a problem with smiling. Where I got into trouble was with sad. I was simply unable to turn my mouth downward. The interviewer said, “No, make a sad face.” I could not do it. My mouth is permanently turned upwards. So, I was rejected by Sesame Street.
This defect continues to provide entertainment in my professional life even 26 years later. In my files I have many, many deposition transcripts where an agitated witness says, “Why do you find this funny? Are you laughing?” Of course, I am not laughing about her affair or his outrageous spending habits but I cannot keep that mouth of mine from turning upward. The smile serves me well as I intimidate witnesses, get judges to smile and nod in agreement with my position, and successfully flirt in bars, but I still wish I could have enjoyed a few sunny days on Sesame Street.
D.B.N.R.
Monday, January 20, 2003
Beautiful as you Feel(With apologies to my sister)
There are just the two of us. My sister, K. and I. She is four years older. I have always thought of myself as the happy sister, the one with the positive attitude, the one with the ever present smile. And largely it has been true. K. and I have been closer than ever in the last couple of years. We were both single and sharing the ups and downs of dating. We took fabulous vacations (Australia and kayaking with the whales in British Columbia) and talked on the phone daily about our lives (everything from torn panty hose, to fights with mom, to the latest diet and exercise routines).
My sister is the spacey one in our family. She has missed planes and routinely sends birthday cards and gifts via federal express. The gifts are always fantastically generous and thoughtful but sometimes a bit late. Until recently I also thought she was the unhappy one. She always seemed less than thrilled with her life. Sometimes I worried but mostly I just thought that was the way it was for her.
K. is a beautiful person inside and out and always has been. She would give you the shirt off of her back which would be the latest fashion because she is very fashionable. Like most of my friends she has dated some pretty awful men over the years. The worst was the one she was with for about 7 years. He was, in my opinion, mean. So, when, about a year and a half ago she met a man who she seemed quite happy with and who she said was sweet to her I was understandably skeptical. I was worried he would be another one who would try to give her lectures on various subjects and send her self-help books or he might have been another one who would just ignore her completely. So when I flew up to visit her last October I was shocked to meet a truly kind man with a happy disposition. He seemed to really understand and value my sister. She seemed genuinely happy. Since then they have had some ups and downs and missteps but through it all she has maintained that he is the kindest man she has ever been with. And it is true. He even understands our bizarrely close relationship and is respectful of it. I am always welcome in their homes and have been never ever been made to feel like a visitor or an intruder.
This past weekend they got married. It was the most wonderful wedding I have ever attended. There was no moment that I doubted the appropriateness of the union. That is a big deal for a divorce lawyer. Their love and respect for one another was apparent to everyone who was there. I made it through the whole ceremony with my traditional beaming smile. I only lost it and started bawling when they danced their first dance to “Years from Now”, Dr. Hook. I never understood before when people said they were proud of someone when the person was getting married. In my cynical way, I thought that anyone could get married. Why be proud of that? I could not be more proud of my sister. She has made an excellent choice for her life’s mate. K. was more beautiful than ever on her wedding day and I know that it was her love and happiness that made her that way.
D.B.N.R.
Thursday, January 16, 2003
If it was a snake…I got married at age twenty-five and a half. In the case of my heavily sheltered life, that was way too young. It explains, very well, my currently unmarried state. He seemed to be all that I wanted and all that I needed. He was not.
The first inkling that maybe things were not what they should be was on our honeymoon. His parents paid for our honeymoon which was very generous. Even more amazing, we went to Italy. We arrived in Florence on a Thursday night at about 9:30 p.m. We had literally been traveling for more than 24 hours. We flew to Heathrow transferred to Gatwick, flew to Pisa and took a train to Florence. We had not had a real meal since leaving home. We arrived tired, excited, and starving in Florence. The lovely man at the desk of our hotel was happy to recommend a restaurant around the corner. When we go to the restaurant we found it was just about to close. The restaurateur was very friendly though and suggested another restaurant in the neighborhood with later hours. We fairly plopped into the chairs in the restaurant. I have a unique brand of religious observance. I am Jewish but I do not keep kosher per se. However, I do not eat pork or shellfish. Still, I am opposed to anything that makes me into a high maintenance person so when traveling abroad I sometimes suspend the rules. The waiter at the restaurant was most excited for us to try some antipasto del mare. It was a plate of marinated shellfish. I cannot remember everything that was there but I definitely remember something that looked like octopus. I ate quite a bit of it and then something else that I do not remember.
I woke up at about 1:00 a.m. feeling completely nauseated and felt certain I was going to puke any minute. I woke up my new husband, J., and told him I felt really really sick. He said, and I quote, “Go back to sleep. You will be fine in the morning.” I was not all fine. In fact I spent the first two days of my honeymoon vomiting. J., meanwhile, continued to eat shellfish for the rest of the week although I sometimes had to leave the table because the smell made me woozy.
On of my favorite movie moments is when Buckaroo Banzai says, “If it were a snake, it would have bit me.” He has just realized that this crazy woman he has run into is the twin sister of his dead wife. Of course, there was no way for him to know that. The twins were separated at birth. It’s a hilarious moment. Of course, the moment when J. told me I would be fine in the morning is quite funny in retrospect and I do feel that if it was a snake it would have bitten me. I should have gotten on the first plane out and never looked back.
D.B.N.R.
Saturday, January 11, 2003
One of Those WomenAt my last job I worked with two women and we practiced exclusively divorce law. We were fond of complaining about women who were putting up with jerky men who were cheating, mistreating them, and generally being awful. These women would continue to have relationships with these men or would agree to ridiculously bad settlements in their divorces so as not to upset these men. I remember one day asking one of the women I worked with for a recommendation for a therapist for a client of mine and she said, “Oh, have her go to this psychologist, she specializes in back bone implants.” Since then I have made reference to people who need back bone implants regularly. I have used it to refer to clients and friends alike. I say it with a certain air of superiority. I would never need such a thing.
When my marriage went south I got out pretty quickly. A scant 9 months after my husband almost let me die by not taking me to the hospital when I had a horrible case of pneumonia I kicked him out of the house. I mean, it is true, that I supported him financially while he pursued his new hobby/career, but only for 3 months and then I insisted he pay his share of the expenses. Yes, I did watch while he ordered a $20 container of salt and I did watch him continue to drive around his sporty BMW while his financial contribution to our family unit was very much in the negative. But I did not do it for long.
So, yesterday, when a client of mine, for the millionth time, told me that she had essentially lied to me the week before about something that very much impacted my representation of her, I went ballistic. She said she promised her husband she would not tell. She was referring to her husband, who she is divorcing and who is a crazy drug addict. Infuriating! I told her in no uncertain terms that I could not represent her and that no one could represent her if she was not going to be honest about what was happening.
When I got off the telephone, I went to discuss the situation with my boss. I wanted someone else’s input on the situation. She agreed I had said the things that needed to be said under the circumstances. I told her that based upon my experience with a client with similar circumstances and similar behavior a few months ago that this client would probably continue to ignore our advice. As I was leaving her office she said to me, “Aren’t you glad that you are not one of those women?” I said, “Yes. I would hate to have so little sense of myself.”
As I walked back to my office I thought, “Am I one of those women?” Yes, I got the divorce. No, I have never been in a physically abusive relationship. I maintain that I can walk away from a relationship where I am being mistreated at any time and be fine and I have many times. However, there is a small voice inside that says I am still “one of those women”. A few days ago I contacted an old flame. I really like this guy. He has made it clear to me in the nicest possible way that we have no future together beyond maybe a fun weekend now and then. I would like much more from him. I determined a while ago that I could not spend time with him because I would be in danger of misinterpreting his every compliment or kind word as a declaration of his secret love of me. So, I politely told him that I could not handle a casual relationship and I would have to cut off our communication. So why did I call him the other day? Because much as I like to play superior, I think we are all “one of those women” in our own way. We want to trust and believe. But it is so frustrating to watch someone else doing it.
If you are looking for me, I will be checking the classifieds for back bones available for rent or purchase.
D.B.N.R.
Thursday, January 09, 2003
Minor ChargeI think there was a moment in the late 1970s when being a single woman with a kid or two had a certain cache. It was the era of The Goodbye Girl, Kramer v. Kramer, and An Unmarried Woman. I only saw the last of this trio for the first time a few weeks ago. It brought back a barrage of memories about my own experience as a child of a single mom in the later part of the 1970s. Of course, it was not all that romantic. My sister and I survived an interesting cast of boyfriends. There was “the man in clogs”, “the nose picker”, and the “one with the obnoxious kids”. The man in clogs sold needlepoint for a living and my sister took it up. It seems to me that she was working on a needlepoint of Groucho Marx for years. It was probably only a couple of months. The nose picker, did, all the time, in public.
The one who lasted the longest, before the one who has now last 25 years, was the one with the obnoxious kids. The obnoxious kids went to the same school as we did and we all attended the same synagogue. Friday nights would find us leaving synagogue in two cars and going to Bonanza or Red Lobster for dinner. The best part of that relationship, from the kid perspective, was the CB connection. Think back before cell phones, there was a time when CBs were quite popular. My mother had one and so did the one with the obnoxious kids. If you have a CB, you have to have a handle. So we all had handles. My mother came up with hers first, she was Master Charge. My sister got to be Junior Charge and I was Minor Charge. The handle pretty well summed up my role in the family at that time. So, all the way to Red Lobster or Bonanza (at least 10 minutes) we would fight over being the one to talk on the CB. It’s hard to say why certain things matter so much to kids. I remember “Lucy” in The Goodbye Girl basically flirting with Richard Dreyfuss. I think we probably thought we were “dating” these guys too. I just know that if The Goodbye Girl had taken place in Connecticut instead of New York Marsha Mason and Richard Dreyfuss would have had CBs.
D.B.N.R.
Thursday, January 02, 2003
Lost in (Central) AmericaI like to think that I am adventurous but actually I know better. I am afraid of horses and scuba diving and am happy enough to have no plans to overcome either one of those fears anytime soon. I am, however, quite skilled at appearing to be adventurous. So much so, that a colleague in my office once commented, with a combination of admiration and perhaps slight loathing, “You’re not afraid of anything, are you?” Rather than admitting the many, many ways in which I am a chicken, I flashed him a smile. He had made his decision about me so I did not feel the need to set him straight.
Most recently I made myself seem adventurous by going on a vacation to Honduras, alone. Of course, I was going to an island that caters to scuba divers, no irony there. It is a beautiful little island called Roatan which is filled with luxurious resorts and hostels for diving nuts. Also, while I was going there alone, one of my dearest friends, S., is currently living there and since he is like a big brother to me, I was not exactly going to be alone. So, as I got ready for my trip, I enjoyed the reactions of friends and acquaintances who seemed impressed that I was going to an exotic locale, alone. I usually confessed to the details immediately but I did enjoy the initial double take, especially from the lawyer friends. Meanwhile I was thinking that I was setting off a luxury vacation and a fun time with my friend, not an adventure.
The adventure began on Saturday morning when I arrived at the Miami airport at 5:00 a.m. having slept a full 2 hours because my flight into Miami the night before was several hours late. I was carting what I consider to be an excessive amount of luggage, a small rolling suitcase packed to the gills and a fairly full gym bag. I walked into the terminal where the airline I was flying was housed and was amazed to be greeted by extraordinary chaos at 5:00 a.m. The airline is brand new. I did not really realize that when I booked the flight. I thought they were new to flying a direct flight to the island. They only have one direct flight per week and it leaves at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday morning. Not surprisingly, the airline is called Solair. (In case I need to spell it out, it could also be S.O.L. Air.)
The first thing I realized when I walked into the airport was that I had clearly under packed not over packed. It seemed that were about 500 people in the various lines (and I use lines lightly here) each with one to two suitcases that were easily as tall as my waist and as wide as two of my suitcases. The next thing I noticed was that there were signs for each of the destinations where Solair was flying that day. People were vaguely lined up in front of each sign. The lines were already long at 5:00 a.m. The destinations listed were: Managua, Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula. This was a bit unsettling, my ticket said Roatan. There was no mention of Roatan on the signs. I asked a few other people in line and felt comfortable I was in the right place. A few minutes later the line had not moved at all and I asked the woman in front of me if she thought I was in the right place. She did not.. She was going to retrieve more of her suitcases and offered to inquire for me. She ascertained that I was, in fact, in the wrong line. I moved from the Tegucigalpa line to the San Pedro Sula line which did seem to be a bit shorter. I watched in amazement as it took as long as one-half hour to check a family in. I noticed one family, which included three generations, including a grandfather in a wheel chair, standing at the counter for forty-five minutes. I finally reached the ticket counter at 7:00 a.m. By this time I had some inkling that things were going awry. I had heard something about someone being rebooked on another flight because their flight was full and other such unpleasant things. Still, I thought, I have a ticket and a seat number, no problem. When I got up to the counter, the woman took my ticket and showed it to the man standing next to her and miraculously he gave a nod and said, “Accept that one”. I felt lucky, chosen. The woman ticket agent seemed to be writing up my boarding pass. Note, I said writing, because Solair does not have computers. They have handwritten boarding passes and handwritten passenger manifests. It was when she started to put my name on said handwritten manifest that things took a turn for the worst. Another ticket agent or supervisor or whatever, grabbed it out of her hands and started speaking rapidly in Spanish. She then tore up my erstwhile boarding pass. A man came to the counter and said, “I’m sorry the flight is full.” Now, it is important to note that at that point I had not had an actual vacation in about 18 months and was about to go out of mind. I looked at him in disbelief; remember there is one flight a week. I said, “But I have a ticket”, and then more condescending, I pointed to the ticket, and said, “See Miami to Roatan, seat 19D.” He said, “I am sorry, but we can send you on a flight to Tegucigalpa.” I said, “And then what?” By now, I am somewhat hysterical and I notice that the middle generation of the family who has been at the counter for, at this point, over an hour, is pitching a similar fit, to mine.
Within twenty minutes, there were no ticket agents behind the counter, no passengers on the other side of the counter, except me and my new adopted family. One of the ticket guys disappeared with my ticket and passport. At one point, they came out and told us they were going to put us on American. I did not want to upset the family but I did not really believe it. I was having horrible back problems and finally had to sit down under the ticket counter, careful of course not to actually sit on the luggage scale, lest my weight be revealed to anyone loitering around the airport.
At about 9:00 a.m. we were told that we could indeed board a plane to Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. We were not told how we would then get to Roatan. I started demanding a ticket that would get me through to Roatan. The prospect of being stranded in the middle of Honduras with my non-existent Spanish was rather unappealing. The man behind the counter became belligerent; this was a new guy, not Oscar or Juan Carlo, with whom we had previously been speaking. Those two had mysteriously vanished. The new guy said, “Do you want to go or not?” My adoptive family said in unison, “Yes!” Well, I had could hardly be the lame ass who was not determined enough to get to Honduras so I went along, reluctantly. We were rushed to the plane through a back security entrance. We boarded the plane and I started to feel better, after all I was on my way some place. I was exhausted, hungry and in pain but at least I was on my way to Honduras. I figured out where Oscar and Juan Carlo were, they were two of the flight attendants.
As the plane was taking off one of the flight attendants announced, “This is flight 924 to Managua, Nicargua with continuing service to Tegucigalpa, Honduras.” No one had told me that I was going to Nicargua but still I was on my way to Honduras. The geography of Nicargua is startlingly beautiful, at least as viewed from a plane. We landed in Nicargua and sat on the runway for about an hour. We then flew to Honduras. On the way to Tegucigalpa I made a new friend. She grew up in San Pedro Sula and now lives in Miami. She flies home to see her mother each Christmas and assured me that while she had not flown Solair before, there are frequently problems with travel to Honduras at Christmas time and that it is necessary to take the attitude that you are not worried about it and that you will arrive eventually. She herself was not sure how she was getting from Tegucigalpa to San Pedro Sula. We laughed and talked and I realized she was right. The journey is what life is all about and this was turning out to be quite a journey. Our pilot pointed out an erupting volcano as we flew past it. It was an incredible view.
Much to my surprise, Solair kept its promise and contacted its people in Tegucigalpa. They had booked us on a small local airline, Solais, to Roatan. I was immediately given a boarding pass, albeit handwritten, and my bags were tagged to Roatan. The man behind the counter could not tell me whether or not I would be making further stops along the way but he did assure me that I would be in Roatan by 4:00 p.m. I was elated! I spent a few hours wandering and sitting in the Tegucigalpa airport. I bought and ate a bag of plantain chips. I did make it Roatan that day at 5:00 p.m. Roatan time, 6:00 p.m. Miami time. We were supposed to make another stop in the coastal city of La Ceiba but the airport there was closed for bad weather. I think that the family and I were the only ones on the small plane going to Roatan. All of the people going to La Ceiba were probably stranded in Roatan for the night.
The long day of travel certainly paid off. The beach and the water were fabulous. I read 2 long novels, swam, drank lots of Sal Vavida and Port Royal beer, had long talks with S., slept an insane amount, played with dolphins, snorkeled, and generally relaxed for the first time in months. The trip home? That’s a tale for another day.
D.B.N.R.
