Holding Hands

I used to believe that Nico would always want to hold my hand or my hair. When walking became available to him, he would take my hand. Easily and naturally. Walking on 24th street near home, crossing an intersection. As soon as we left the house, our hands met as we meandered.

He moved between my breast and the bottle until he was one. I held his tiny warm foot as he nursed. When he found his words he would announce, “Give me some hair,” as the bottle was presented. I always loaned him some of my long, still red hair. He held his bottle with confidence as he held tight to my tresses, as if doing so would make the milk flow. We had to strike a bargain about releasing the bottle when he was 4 or so. I can’t remember and wonder now if there was a right time to negotiate with him. It seemed almost seamless, this leaving the breast and then the bottle. But thankfully holding hands continued.

Warm and small and then somewhat bigger. I used to believe he would always want to hold my hand. To have me guide him through the world or up a hill or down the street. I don’t remember when his tiny hands grew bigger than mine or when he held other hands. Or the paraphernalia of adolescence. A tennis racket, a burrito, the girl whose name I can’t remember who he shyly brought home one afternoon. I am sure he held her hand.

Out at Slide Ranch he loaned me his hand as we scrambled down a path to the beach and scrabbled over the rocks. I don’t remember if I was in danger of twisting a limb or meandering off the path, but his hand outstretched with fingers and a palm much longer and broader than my own. The contact was relatively short, but the memory is as if it happened yesterday. Perhaps he was returning the favor of a safe childhood. Holding hands and hair and feet.

Some years later, as his mania enveloped both of us and the alcohol announced that it wasn’t leaving, at least not yet, he lay on his bed in our hotel room and wondered who he was. Feeling alone and scared, but not yet ready to carry the responsibility for his mania and addiction. His vulnerability, his fear and his bravado were equally present. He talked as he fell asleep. I held his bare foot, the one with dry, cracked skin and unkempt toenails, the one neglected almost in protest of the call to sobriety which he was not yet ready to heed as his own.

His foot was so much bigger than the one I had held close to my breast. The tiny foot was soft and smooth and fit into the palm of my hand. This foot, now on his bed at the hotel in Portland where I had come in hopes of rescuing him, was a size 12 to my 8. My hand could not reach around to hold all of him. Different than my heart, which still and always carries his 5 foot, 10 inch frame inside.

 We hiked together recently, now that he is almost 6 years sober, I worry less. Much less. But still there are moments when I fear for the world that is his future. The crazy unknown.

I know I will always be holding him. Even if his big hands and large feet move further from San Francisco than the 8-hour drive to Los Angeles. I will be holding his hand and he will be holding mine. I used to believe that Nico would always want to hold my hand. Or ask for some hair or a foot rub. I knew he would grow up and separate as is right and appropriate. I could only hope that we would stay close even if his room wasn’t just down the hall. This mother’s day he wrote, “thank you for being the greatest Mom in the world.” Tears present themselves every time I read this line. I keep the card on my desk, still in its envelope. Available when I miss his tiny, soft, warm hands. Perhaps holding his hand has become these words which will forever keep us in each other’s hearts.

Self-portrait With…

My inclination is to write about all the self-portraits in all the museums I have been to. Most recently Alice Neel’s at the De Young. I had never seen one like it. She painted herself as older, naked.  Sitting on a chair. A Victorian arm chair. Was it covered in purple velvet? She is holding a paint brush. Her breasts hang and her belly is loose, a bit jelly like. She looks satisfied, whimsical, as if we are included. I had never seen a self-portrait like it. Modigliani was elongated and wan. Van Gogh was colorful, but we know he wasn’t well. Mostly men.

I don’t think I will soon forget Alice’s. A self-portrait with honesty? Without fear or apology? With humor? With warmth and humanity? Explaining oneself, myself. How do I want to be portrayed? But am I talking about how I will be seen after I am no longer here to portray myself as I would like?

 No, I think too much about death these days. As the world keeps crumbling while I try to patch it together with my optimism which was certainly an integral part of my mother’s self-portrait. An optimism which could sometimes annoy me as it didn’t leave much room for my sadness and self-doubt.

Could I sit naked like Alice? As my body changes, could I allow a self-portrait with wrinkles? A belly which persists in spite of all the ab work? What about a self-portrait with regret? That I started the motherhood journey a bit late and in such unconventional circumstances. There wasn’t time for more babies. Even as I continually marvel at the one precious being who did crawl out of me.

Perhaps a self-portrait with fear? Of dying? Of leaving Nico in a world which feels so fragile? But just as quickly the optimism simmers below the surface as I attach myself to the immense gratitude I feel. For all of the opportunities I have had. The dancing, and the writing, and the home I have created. For the friends and the family, all of the travel and adventures.  

How does all of this translate into a self-portrait? And is it “one with?” And if so, with what? In this one I am confident, in this one I am afraid, in this one I am sad, in this one I am relieved, in this one I am hopeful, in this one I am dancing…and on it goes.

What I really want to say is that I am rambling and I can’t quite find what I can attach to. Perhaps that is the self-portrait. It is one with attachment. To the self in whatever moment. Now there are two deer quietly grazing below Liz’ deck, here on this Sunday afternoon.  I am smiling as I watch them, seemingly unafraid. We gaze at each other. Are they eavesdropping? Am I?

I am distracted as they move. Tails flicking. Staring at me. She sees me. What does she see? What is the self I want to portray to these animals? Kind, gentle, no one to be afraid of. They run off.

I hope they saw me as I would like to see myself. But I am not sure I would ever let them see me naked.

Going Barefoot

I was sure I wanted to be a ballet dancer. It began with a costume. The tutu, the pink tights, the ballet shoes. Mom enrolled me in David Lachine’s ballet class. He was Russian. His wife Tanya too. There was a staff involved. A stick. Never to touch us, but for him to pound the floor as she pounded the piano.

 One recital was all I managed. I was so excited to wear the costume on stage at Marymount High School. In the huge auditorium. Soon thereafter it was time to reframe my desire to dance. Mom was no longer interested in a stern, somber voice which didn’t hesitate to hint that none of us were bound for the Kirov. She wanted something freer.

So Mom found Gertrude Knight. Something called creative movement. That was for after school. And during the school day there was rhythms in the spacious room with cool, shiny linoleum floors. I don’t remember who taught rhythms at the University Elementary School ( UES), the laboratory school next door to UCLA where my parents enrolled us to have a more liberal, innovative education. Nothing like that which I was sure existed at Marymount, just across  Sunset Boulevard.

In rhythms I found my feet. My bare feet. After we lined up our shoes and tucked in our socks. From then on I tethered my desire to dance to my bare feet. Through high school and college and beyond. I did return to ballet shoes, but only to augment the rest of my body which needed the discipline.

In high school we were the Terpsichorean, the Terpsies. My first real audition. Even now thinking about auditioning for approval and acceptance makes me uneasy, nervous. But I quickly reframed this need for acceptance into my love of performing, on a stage, in bare feet. It has stayed with me, even if now only in memories tethered to VHS tapes, a few newspaper reviews and the periodic reunions of those I danced with.

I spent a number of summers nursing bare, cracked heels as I danced daily at summer workshops In Seattle and North Carolina. They, the heels, bled sometimes. I discovered pumice stone, greasy creams and white socks to protect and nourish as I slept. There was a stint or two with shoes. Performing in Cabaret in San Francisco at the York Theatre. A few jazz classes in soft, black, flexible ones. But mostly barefoot and mostly modern.

And then there is the barefoot beach. Endless walking on warm and sandy. Feeling my toes, messaging and crinkling. Robert doesn’t like to go barefoot, even on the beach. In Half Moon Bay last week he walked on the beach in his hiking boots. Asher ran, always the barefoot dog, frolicking through the waves. Later Robert complained about the sand and the dog; he was tired. I didn’t hesitate, perhaps without empathy, to criticize the boots. “How can you go to the beach and not take off your shoes? “

I knew the punchline. His mother didn’t like him to get muddy or dirty. To play in the dirt. But then she died when he was 9. He never got a chance to go barefoot.

Barefoot in the house, on smooth hardwood is not as safe as squeezing sand through toes sinking into cold, northern ocean. At least for me. Who looks up and momentarily forgets to notice the arrangement of objects which will undoubtedly stub or sprain or even fracture little ones? It has happened twice now. Years ago in the Pilates studio. Who manages to catch a baby one on a soft mat? Or last week, stubbed on a plastic crate which sat on my office floor? I couldn’t go to dance class for two weeks. Soaking in ice water, messaging with Arnica. Better now.

Pedicures. I love the soaking and the pumicing and, when I indulge, the warm wax. And no one could rub these bare feet often enough. Perhaps it is about not feeling tethered. Feeling freer, even if it starts and stops at my feet. At being barefoot on the sand, in a studio, on a stage. I loved holding Nico’s soft, bare, baby feet in the palm of my hand. And now Asher’s bare paws, even with their rough, leathery bottoms.

Learning to Ride a Bike

I don’t remember when I learned to ride a bike. I imagine it was when we lived in the flats. We called it such, those tree lined streets of Beverly Hills. We lived there on Camden Drive until the house in the hills was finished. My siblings and I would have preferred to stay there. Floating in the backyard pool and walking to school. The house in the hills showcased the mid-century modern and my father’s unrealized dream of becoming an architect which he disregarded in favor of the medical career his own father encouraged because, “You’ll never make any money as an architect.”

 So the house in the hills was a chance to liberate his creative side. His less anxious, depressed side. I don’t remember ever riding a bike on our hilly Loma Vista Street. Perhaps in the driveway, round and round as we must have pretended to be somewhere else. I must have learned on Camden. I was 7 or 8 when we moved to the hills. The “Hills of Beverly,” not unlike the Clampetts. But there was no granny with wire rimmed glasses. Just the 5 of us and later the dogs, Kimberly and Lady Buffington. I would never name a dog of mine such.

I don’t remember that the kids had any input into the naming. My mother chose the names, female and, at least to her, elegant. Kimberly became Kimmie and Lady Buffington was Buffy. I picture the dogs and bikes with training wheels. But I don’t remember the chronology. The years have multiplied so much since then.

 I don’t remember teaching Nico to ride a bike. It must have been his father who at least visited enough to teach the basics. I still have Nico’s first, red tricycle. In the storage unit on Treasure Island. It is a treasure of his childhood, like the Radio Flyer red wagon I took with us each week to the Farmer’s Market. First in Marin and then to the city markets once we had moved. Perhaps red was his father’s favorite color. He chose the vehicles even if he didn’t choose to live with us. To marry me. To be a full-time father. The wagon and the trike will not vanish, even if I can’t remember all the vehicles of my past.

Bike riding is most associated with the years with Nico’s father. He still rides…everywhere. We rode together in wine country, in Marin, on our weekends. I bought a bike to be included in his world. It was a road bike with purple and yellow detailing. From a shop near Golden Gate Park. I don’t remember at what phase in our relationship, but I am sure it was early enough to showcase a common interest In the hope that our love would multiply and he would disregard whatever doubts eventually led to his leave taking, but not before he loved me enough for Nico.

I do remember riding that bike from my house in the city to the ferry terminal and riding across to Marin, to meet Bruce and go on to his house in Fairfax. Long before Nico. I do remember falling off that bike, as I must have disregarded trolley tracks on my ride through the city to the ferry. But with a helmet and gloves, I don’t remember if there were scars or scrapes. I definitely did not ride my bike to the ferry terminal just days before Nico was born. My huge belly floating above as I would soon and forever be liberated from the everyday.

 Bruce was in Larkspur, or somewhere similar, waiting for me. We had plans to visit with his friends who had just returned from a train trip through Russia. I sat next to a woman whose son, Forrest, cuddled on her lap. I thought Forrest would be a good name for a boy. I don’t remember our tentative list of names, but Forrest was not among them. Bruce said I could choose the name and whether or not the baby should be circumcised. After all, he might not stick around.

 Nico was born and I couldn’t decide among the names. I do remember that circumcision was a definite. Though other Jewish friends had decided not to put their tiny boys through such. Not in a hospital and not at home with a mohel. For me, it wasn’t a question. A tradition, my father, not hiding that my son was Jewish. Years later Nico did wonder about the uncircumcised boys he shared the bathroom with at his Spanish immersion school. I don’t remember that he challenged my decision, he was just curious.

I don’t remember exactly who taught Nico to ride a bike. But I know he rode most freely on the dusty roads and trails of Camp Mather. I did too. Camp liberated both of us. I no longer needed to impress Bruce with my purple and yellow road bike. Nico had friends and their fathers to teach him the finer points of riding and swimming. Jumping off rocks at Carlon Falls. Wading across streams, catching pollywogs, clowning it up at the weekly talent show, though I don’t remember all the details.

I don’t remember if my father thought learning to ride a bike was important. I don’t remember if I ever saw him ride a bike. But my son’s father is an avid rider. Nico rode on campus when he was a college freshman. Up in Olympia, Washington. When drugs and alcohol made riding precarious. After sobriety and sanity prevailed he rode the used bike his father bought him when he lived in Salt Lake City. He had returned to school. Safe and sober. I don’t remember  exactly who taught each of us to ride a bike. But we learned. And we continue to ride.

Laundry

The first time I went to his house, he showed me the backyard and the laundry hanging from rope lines tied between tree trunks. He took a picture of me standing among the sheets or shirts or tablecloths. I can’t recall. But never mind, the point is I had let a stranger, albeit a dark, handsome Italian one persuade me to meet him after dinner. He found me when I was walking from my hotel near St. Mark’s to a trattoria.

On my own, traveling for several months, while my son’s father was trying to decide if he was going to stay in my life long enough so I could become a mother. Which of course I eventually did. And he eventually did. But never mind, this is about the Italian and his laundry and the extra time I spent in Venice so we could have lots of sex and eat the meals he cooked for me.

He hardly spoke English as I used the Italian I was determined to perfect. Never mind about the Italian, I never minded that there wasn’t much talking. But then he got angry that I wasn’t always available, that I had a journey to continue. That staying an extra week was not enough. I don’t remember how we said good-bye.

Laundry, hanging and blowing and moving as if choreographed, is framed in every photograph I have taken over many years of travel. In Madagascar, Croatia, Portugal, Peru. Where is there no laundry? I taught Nico to do his own laundry when he was young. I probably didn’t emphasize enough the importance of flossing. But laundry was a game changer. He did his own throughout high school. The principal was impressed and said such a talent would make him very popular at college.

I am not sure how much laundry he did as a college freshman, living in the dorm and too distracted to separate the whites. Today, in sobriety and sanity, he still calls to ask how to remove a particular stain.  What exactly determines the choice of a gentle cycle or using cold water instead of warm? Rarely, I caution, should he use hot.

I had a dance solo years ago. A duet with laundry. I swiped at the air with a sheet. I flung articles of clothing as if possessed. It was exhausting and cathartic. As if the laundry represented parts of myself or my life that needed to be exorcised. I am not sure why Mary gave me that solo in the piece she called, “Life Can Never Be Too Pink.” We moved across the stage wearing 50’s house dresses. The choreography was reminiscent of a time before the feminist era we all then occupied.

There was the Italian seduction and teaching Nico the finer points and now there is the laundry which ties me to the present. It simplifies and frames this time. Long ago I agreed to become, once again, a wife. The affairs and flings with foreign men, unattainable men and others have ended. Never mind my storied past. Now there is the laundry I choose to do.

 Separating the whites, putting my underwear in mesh bags, treating the remnants of food  with one or another of the array of stain removers Robert has accumulated is reassuring, The repetition, several times a week, reassures me that I am present. A tangible sign of life when all around there is war and Covid and the multitude of threats to take away what I probably took for granted.

Never mind. I don’t intend to enter the political fray and my anger about not being able to choose. This is about laundry and its constancy which inscribes me in the continuing book of life.

Flying

It is hard to imagine being one of those people who wishes to fly. I am reluctant to go up in an unfamiliar elevator or step out onto a balcony or walk across a bridge, too close to the guard rail. I am wary of small spaces with only one way out. Of malfunctioning doors or windows.  Is this a fear of heights or flights?  Or both.

I am okay in an airplane hermetically sealed from whatever lingers in the great beyond. I wish I could surrender these  fears and unpack whatever psychology lurks behind. What happened was when I was 3 or 4, so my mother recalled over the years, I locked myself in the bathroom. I wasn’t occupying the space voluntarily. I had gone inside to undress or impress with my mastery of using the toilet. But for some reason I locked the door to the outside world. And what happened was I did not know how to unlock the door to get out.

 I still wonder if the lock was some sort of 50s version of childproof, but from the wrong side. Or if I was particularly clumsy with fingers unable to unpack the design and free myself. My mother recalled that she soothed me through the closed door. As meanwhile she had called the fire department who arrived with long ladders to rescue me from within. Climbing up the side of our house to the small, bathroom window. I certainly didn’t fly from the now open window into my mother’s arms. Like a wee one returning to her nest. Hardly a flicker of tiny wings. But happy I am sure, returning to safety, and relieved.

Over the years this memory of disorientation has repeated itself. I read the Fear Of Flying when I was in college. Erica Jong and memories of a story in which there was much undressing and lots of sex. Long about the time I was surrendering to urges not present when locked in a bathroom. But the literary flying was not what scared me.

Was it the being out of control? I wasn’t in control much of the time as I flew through years of doubt and insecurity. Do the pilots of these airplanes always feel in control? They always seem to be tall with good teeth, in shape with good posture. Looking self-assured in a way which only flickers occasionally.

What happened was that over the years I became less and less interested in small spaces, in high spaces, the airplane being a notable exception. On a family trip to Portland I requested nothing higher than the third floor. And I would not sleep next to the window. The men were bemused, but agreed. I was willing to travel to the top of the World Trade Center and the Empire State Building. But only to stay a distance from the guard rail, even with glass surrounding. Was this a fear of jumping? Did I ever wonder what it would be like to take a leap? Would I float or sink?

What happened was my father was depressed. When I was in high school he unpacked his mood. “Elizabeth, when you get to be my age, you should take a big leap off of a tall building!” Was he contemplating suicide or a wish to fly? I have recalled this undressing of mood, his sadness and  his fears as inappropriate sharing to his oldest daughter who could occupy the role of caretaker when so moved. Perhaps his fear of flying, of death, of being out of control is rooted inside of me. When a little girl found herself in a tiny bathroom she was rescued by tall, handsome and capable. My father was all of these things, but he was better at nurturing his own fears than helping me to unpack mine. Mom got me out of the bathroom. Where was my father? Probably drinking skim milk.

A Comfort Zone

I still don't understand electricity. This language of currents and something moving through the air to light what is at the other end. My husband understands everything about electricity and gadgets and the mechanics of everything. That is his comfort zone. He is less so with large groups of people, those he doesn't know. With dancing and the unexpected. Even now, after being together so long, I am sometimes bewildered at what can throw him off the steady, predictable path he always prefers.

 I don't think he understands, though he now accepts and sometimes admires, my willingness - even when cautious - to move from my comfort zone of knowingness to being even slightly bewildered by what might come next. Walking out in to the world of the unknown holds the promise of excitement for me. Even if only to find a different route, a new group of people, or something foreign on a menu ,  I am the one more than willing to adjust the parameters of my comfort zone.

But my zone also reverberates with a hesitancy of its own. It is not clear of fear or trepidation. Robert isn't afraid to take medications long after their expiration date so clearly stated. I periodically riffle through the piles and discard. He finds them in the trash and tucks them away. Leftovers haunt me, and my zone has no space for anything left too long to fester in the fridge.

I want life to be less predictable, he would prefer it to be more so.  Our zones overlap, at least. We sorted through lots of overcrowded drawers when a shared zone was forced upon us two years ago as Covid invaded everyone’s comfort zone. Sorting through outdated manuals, gadgets whose purpose even he could not discern, remnants of our other dog's life which reminded us only of the pain of losing her. We found in this cleansing a zone we could both equally inhabit. It held us for a while. But then I longed to be back in the world as he relished, as the proverbial introvert, this Covid excuse to stay put, alone, with distance.

I don't understand electricity, the mysteries of the Cloud, and where the photos reside on my laptop. He doesn't understand why liquids should be measured in the glass, Pyrex instead of the stainless cups, and quarters and thirds. I don't understand how he can forget to call his son whereas he wonders at how Nico and I can stay on the phone for over an hour. We love them each and both, but the comfort zones with our own children are vastly different.

When we met I was sure there was no delineation between us. That I had found my missing piece. Like the Shel Silverstein tale which my therapist from long ago had given me in consolation when I divorced my first husband. To remind me that I was whole, that nothing was missing, When I met Robert I went back in time to the wanting phase. A partner, a father for Nico, someone to love me more than I loved myself. Gradually as we evolved, I was confident enough to see that we were not always living in the same zone.

Luckily, our combat zone has always been small, or at least short lived. We live in the naturally segregated world of white, middle-class San Francisco, but we would never knowingly prevent others from entering our zone. But these zones we do not share with each other no longer threaten me. I don't understand electricity, but I finally understand that my husband and I can be very different and still share the comfort, if not the zones we each inhabit.

Avoiding or Repeating a Mistake

If I could I would avoid making mistakes. At the very least I would avoid repeating the same mistake…something like, those who don't remember are doomed to forget. That was about remembering to remember the past atrocities. So they aren't repeated. The curse of forgetting to remember.

I often talk to myself as I drive or walk to the next appointment, the next obligation. "Elizabeth Jane, what were you thinking? What were you going to do?" I use my middle name as if it will create in me some sort of determination not to forget what it was I am trying to preserve lest it go the way of other bits of thought and purpose.

I write notes to myself all through the night. After visiting an Andy Warhol retrospective at the SF MOMA a few years back, Nico and Dasha gave me a cube of note paper. With "Brillo" planted on the side. A cube with a hole for a pen. But only the black, roller ball. The ones I use for everything. I hope never to repeat the mistake of carrying one of these in my green, nylon Japanese folding backpack. The one I bought years ago at another MOMA, this one in New York. The pen periodically lost its top and finally the top stayed off long enough for the pen to leak onto the green nylon.

If only I could have retrieved all of those leaky pens before they ruined clean, soft fingers or white  t-shirts. Worst of all during miles suspended while traveling to meet family or to wander foreign streets and unnamed museums. Leaky pens, I would avoid.

 I talk to myself as if in anticipation of the next omission. I want to stay on track, not get distracted. I would avoid the distraction which Robert is sure has led to any number of falls. To being subverted on my path to a meeting or a restaurant as I engage a cell phone conversation I am sure I must have, now.

 I have tripped in my own house, rushing to get a toddler ready for school during a remodel which left a large, gaping hole into which I fell and scraped. Finishing a lovely meal on my birthday and then falling forward, tripping over rough sidewalk while distracted into the phone. Breaking both wrists. Years later more broken sidewalk, gleefully ignored after finally getting out of the womb of home to swim in the local pool and suspend the notion of a shut down and being inhibited from just living.

If I could, I would remember all the details without the late-night notes or talking to myself, addressing Elizabeth Jane as if she was a child to be warned, reprimanded, reminded. If I could I wouldn't forget names, like Bill and Michael who I see every week at the Farmer's Market. Tall and slim, but they look alike. And their names are too deceptively simple to remember. But they lavished so much attention on Cinnamon, how dare I forget their names even if they minimize such a lapse.

We are supposed to learn from our mistakes. As if each time there is one, there will only be a new one, not the same one. I have learned to write everything down, somewhere. I wonder if I stopped doing so, would the pile of post its which line my brain and the Brillo pad on the dresser suddenly become blank. Would there be more space not for avoiding or repeating, but for growing and flourishing. For newness and surprise. Rather than for a stern talking to: "Oh, I'm so stupid. How could I forget?" Perhaps Elizabeth Jane would be just a bit kinder and more forgiving. She forgives others so much more easily.

An Exit or An Interruption

What happened was Putin decided he had had enough and invaded Ukraine, an independent country and no longer, “the Ukraine,” as it was referred to during Soviet times when it was part of Russia. I was only recently made aware of the importance of dropping this antiquated article during this terrible time which continues to bisect each day as I read the New York Times while tears threaten to jeopardize the early morning I so carefully set aside for my caffeine, and this small bit of levity which hypnotizes me into thinking the world is better off than it was when Trump and his antics dominated the news.

Is this war an interruption to the carefully orchestrated life I work daily to balance with the reality of my worry about Covid, whether the dog has a bad tooth, what I should make for dinner, will an agent ever respond, will my body keep allowing me to hurl it through space week after week in the dance classes which rather than interrupting the flow are in fact what sustain me?

My grandmother was from Kiev, before they changed the spelling, to the Ukrainian form which certainly dignifies rather than erases as Putin would choose. Many years later, I imagined going to Russia to find what remains of my history. I knew it would more likely be a trip of wonder and newness rather than the discovery of family bits waiting to be unearthed. But the war has interrupted these plans, these dreams perhaps forever. Now there is Dasha and her parents and her brother. She lives joyfully with my son. Her parents, having immigrated before she was born, lavish attention on my son and erase some of the missing which I feel as he makes his life in Los Angeles. He is studying Russian so he can talk with Dasha's grandmother, who was also spirited away long ago. As was a sister and an aunt. All thriving in Los Angeles. Now frightened for friends and family still in Russia and Ukraine.

Will cousins fight and kill each other, as some young men I will never meet live in each of the two countries as it is no longer possible to balance the existence of the two? Is this war an interruption or an exit? Will Ukraine leave and never come back? Will Russia go back to wherever it came from?

What happened was we scheduled a visit to an Airbnb in Kyiv that we have no intention of visiting, at least not now. I wanted to install myself somehow in the hearts and minds of a place at war where bodies are lying in bags on the sidewalk, pregnant women and young mothers with newborns in their arms are dying in makeshift, basement hospitals and people are banding together as I am sure we in this country could not do….to remain in their homes, in their hearts and in their country.

Valentin, a handsome thumbnail, accepted our request to visit within a week of my request to interrupt this life and exit to the place where my people, my Jewish people began. After this ghostly visit, I reviewed his home, answering the standard Airbnb litany as if I had indeed gone for coffee each morning, visiting churches and museums as previous visitors described the central location, and the clubs with the best techno pop in Europe. Valentin then replied with his review. Thanking me for the support and inviting us to visit after the war. Like a dinner invitation. Or tea. Maybe caviar.

Nico says I should talk with Yakov, Dasha's father, about caviar. He has a friend who imports it and Yakov buys it from him. Years ago my mother and her elegant, New York friend took me to the Russian Tea Room. We sat at a round table with a white cloth cascading to the floor. I have no idea if we were served Beluga or Sevruga or Ossetra, but each very small serving of caviar arrived in a glass bowl floating atop a larger bowl of crushed ice.

Yakov, with his wide smile and impish ways, certainly fluent in English, often prefers to speak in Russian. After all, this is the language and the land and the people where their lives and love began.

Yakov and Tatiana, Dasha's mother, met when each was on vacation in Estonia. Tatiana was from St. Petersburg and Yakov from Moscow. Estonia was part of the Soviet Union then, now it is an independent country. Ukraine is now independent and Russia is trying to steal it back.

I can only imagine how Dasha’s parents must feel as Putin and his cohorts commit such atrocities which constantly interrupt any semblance of the morning which hypnotizes me into thinking this day will be different. These headlines.

 I used to fantasize about traveling on the Trans-Siberian Railroad which we had hoped to take on the fictional trip which may never happen. The one in which Dasha's parents, the ones who adore my son and lessen my missing, and me and Robert and Nico travel together to discover and rediscover. But for now, this fantasy is another interruption to the reality of war and death and suffering.

I cannot exit this reality just as I cannot hypnotize myself into being younger and agile in the way of the dancers I watched last night. The company of youth and vibrancy moving to the music of Leonard Cohen, the bard and poet of my past but also my present. Still revealing to me the hope and beauty and melodies which I pray will help me regain my balance as the world spins out of control and caffeine is only a temporary exit from the headlines and havoc and hell.

Above Average/Below Average

They harangue me with monthly regularity. These notices from the electric company and the water company. For years now, I have felt compelled to explain to someone, if only I could explain to myself, why our water consumption and our energy usage are above the average of some invisible pool of houses whose usage is much below average. Isn't the goal to be labeled as "above average?"

I  have never wanted to be demoted to "below average." But each time I chew on these graphs, I feel I must testify to the utility jury about why our household gargles too much water or spews electrical currents. But there is no one there. No one to listen to me explain as if I would even know what to say. Our little yard is blanketed with tiny pebbles instead of grass. LED lightbulbs are on course to replace every light source in the house. Toilets don't get flushed after midnight. But no matter.

When Nico was born and moved through elementary school with a range of accolades, I was sure he was "above average." I could prove to everyone that my decision to bring him into the world at 42 without a husband or committed father was hardly flawed.

People would marvel at him. His chocolate brown eyes, his non-stop gift for conversation and concentration. What I wanted was constant affirmation of my meandering path to motherhood. When Nico and I had to contend with the blistering landscape of high school and all that came afterward,  I feared we had been demoted. I might have seen his trajectory as part of the whole of life rather than the point at which I felt shamed into wishing things were different. Looking back over these challenging years,  I wonder about this notion of "average."

What does it mean to be above or below? Is it like floating on the surface and then diving down to retrieve a starfish? Is the ocean average while flying among the stars puts us above the fray? The notion of average feels bland to me, without much of interest to hold my attention. To be above seems the goal, while below means I must contend with disappointment. If I consume just the right amount of water and electricity, I will be average and when I open the monthly envelopes, I will no longer bring up those memories of inadequacy.

Survival Strategies

So many years ago. At 40 I took the trip I should have taken in my twenties. But instead I got married then. It was not a bad marriage. But one I had to survive to get to the next place. The strategies then were of mixed results. Cooking, having sex when my husband came home for lunch. Even if my mind was on dinner. Up in the middle of the night with warm milk and graham crackers. Sometimes I was happy enough considering that even just before our wedding I considered calling the whole thing off. I did, 4 years later.

I spent the next number of years moving and dancing and having sex at all hours of the day and night. Approaching 40, wanting desperately to become a mother, I left my ambivalent boyfriend and traveled the continent.

Survival strategies…traveling alone for the first time in my life out of the country. With a round trip ticket that had me veering about for 2 1/2 months. In Switzerland, in the German part, it was less common to see a woman traveling alone. In order to survive what felt like the disapproval of diners to see an unaccompanied, female foreigner,  I slowly drank a glass of wine and wrote in my journal. Writing then was a survival strategy. I could disappear into my aloneness and find strength and who cared what they thought.

On the train through Germany, heading for Austria.  Looking outside to the forested land, I could only think of Jews running ..away from Nazis and vicious dogs and certain death or imprisonment. My survival technique when police boarded the train in the middle of the night to check passports was to sit among the group of young travelers who had adopted me for the brief journey. Quiet. I showed my passport and resisted imagining they would see I was Jewish and pull me from the train. Sometimes my imagination takes me right out of the present.

 In Poland I met up with George. A friend's ex. And my traveling companion for a few days. Considering we didn't know each other very well, we survived a few awkward days together. At least I got to hike the border and venture into the countryside.

 Often it was about eating. Immersing myself in a menu and practicing my Italian with handsome waiters. Loneliness was unavailable if I was eating pastry or pasta. And the coffee! I think Italians are truly happy because they have the best coffee in the world.

Hiking in Switzerland I almost crossed a rushing river. I don't know why I stopped. Was I remembering Betsy who at 16 tripped and fell and hit her head and drowned? Her parents such close friends of my parents. Meeting the family when I spent a summer in Cambridge at Harvard summer school. Betsy and I met for the first time. She told her Mom that if anything ever happened to them, she would want me to be her Mom. I was a sophomore in college. What did I know then about being anyone's mother?

 They all went camping and then there was the fatal accident. I spent days at their home. Passing pastries and offering tea. Included in the Shiva as if I really had been her mother.

That same summer there with Charles, whose wife was very sick. I don't even know how we met. He included me in his group of friends. We never had sex, but somehow I comforted him.

Caretaking of others…is that one of my survival strategies? It takes me away from my fear and worry. I focus outside of myself. I get distracted and I forget, momentarily, the fear. Lots of therapy to come back to myself. To stop considering others in lieu of staging my own survival.  Or is it that I want to thrive? Survive to thrive…some rhyme here…maybe a song lyric?

I have stopped running, for the most part. No sex with virtual strangers. Less need to bury myself in the needs of others. To make them feel comfortable even if I am not. Well, at least not most of the time.

Favorite Sounds

I like the silence as long as it is not sustained by my worry. Here it goes again…the worry about what new variant awaits. The silence seems to sustain my worry, particularly in the middle of the night. At 2 am when Asher beckons to go out. Last night, walking on the silent sidewalks. Not stopping for treats or a sniff or the trainer's suggestion to say, "yes, " whenever he turns to grin at me as opposed to lunging or barking because being leashed on our block encourages his long, protective gaze. Otherwise, the sweetest, most affectionate. There it goes again, my needing everyone to like and approve. Such is the inner voice that always breaks the silence.

One of my favorite sounds is the ocean. It amazes me as as it swells from the outside as well as from the inside. The waves crashing and the ceaseless merging of sand and air and water. It soothes and reassures as nothing else. The ocean in Kauai where we managed to land in August in between surges and variants. Walking each morning to the soft, warm sand. At sunrise there were the sea turtles gathered silently and motionless. Later there were the sounds of children and bits of conversation, all in service to the surf. Beaches in Marin or Pacifica. Bits of sound heard from a hilltop or right in front of me as Asher runs and rolls and digs and amazes with his boundless energy and joy.

One of my favorite sounds is the ring tone I reserve for Nico's phone calls. It beckons me from wherever I am hiding. Buried in a book or my writing or cooking. It announces that my son with the chocolate eyes is calling. To elaborate on his day, always described in slowly paced, complete sentences. How is it we cannot talk for less than 60 minutes? I grin inside each time I hear the familiar ringtone. Whatever worry has filled the hollow place is gone. With that phone call.

One of my favorite sounds is Asher's. Not so much the barking, but the soft whine which beckons me to attend to him. Often it is the silence of his presence which moves me. I fill the silence with questions. I confess…I believe he is always thinking. Forming a question or a request which becomes a head tilt, a walk to the back door. A tail wag. In this silence I am not worrying, but filling in the missing pieces. The words he seems not to have.

One of my favorite sounds is to hear their breathing. Asher and Robert. Lying next to me or curled on top, if it is Asher. A woman wrote somewhere that even with nighttime wakefulness, unwelcome interruptions to a full night, she was reassured to hear the dog and the husband, Their breath and their life. Reassuring and an antidote to her frustration and impatience that they were sleeping and she was not. I think of her, imagining that somewhere as I lie awake others are also. That in this nighttime silence I can move from solo worrying to the community of others waking and worrying and not sleeping in the hollow of their silence. Perhaps we are all being nestled and cared for as we wait quietly to slumber. There is community in this silence. Together and quiet. But not alone.

A Lifeline

If it weren't for the pandemic, I would be traveling. If it weren't for the issues of time and money and work and family, I would be swimming in warm water somewhere. The ocean is a lifeline to freedom and buoyancy and ease.

 Years ago, when my blood pressure shattered a night's sleep once again, we found the emergency room, once again. The lifeline was the drip, drip. It was a hose, but not from the backyard spigot to nourish the herbs and the lemon tree and the jasmine climbing up the back wall. This hose was moving from a loosely hanging bag brought to my bedside by a soft-spoken nurse, inviting me to relax and take deep breaths. Sometime later there was a definitive diagnosis and the lifeline leading from one kidney to my heart was augmented to keep the life line open and the blood flowing freely.

 Chocolate has been a more recent lifeline. Snacking chocolate with almonds and coconut. The name implies something better, something justified. Just a little bit and all will be well. If it weren't for the pandemic I would be eating chocolate in Morocco or Berlin or the Galapagos or Mexico or Italy. And swimming, replaying my life without this pandemic or those years of hospital emergency rooms. If it weren't for having to wrestle with blood pressures, for me, or alcohol, for him,  perhaps we would not have found the lifelines which invited us to live. A lifeline? A line from potential death or illness back to health. Like from the world of Hades back up to the surface.

I am swimming among images here. Wrestling with metaphor and wondering if it weren't for the pandemic, where would I be right now? Not in front of my laptop on a sunny Sunday. Perhaps choosing between meandering some cobblestone street far from here or dancing and sweating at an outdoor concert in Madagascar. Like the one we wandered by so many years ago when traveling with our sons.

If it weren't for the pandemic would my lifeline be the freedom to just pick up and go? Not to leave forever, but just for now. To be free to choose. Perhaps my lifeline is choice. Not to feel obligated. I want to be responsible,  but the masks and the caution and the warnings about where to go and what one can do are not a line to the life inside of me. The constant juggling and having to choose what risks to take. That there are always risks now, so it is a matter of which ones can be tolerated. If it weren't for the pandemic I would take my stable blood pressure and my sober son to Russia. The Trans-Siberian railroad beckoned last week. Before that it was Patagonia. So many places I have never been.

For now my lifeline must be the places I have gone. Among others, Croatia and Portugal  for us , and Madagascar with our sons in tow. The future and hope and possibility, these are the lifelines now. Slowly dripping from an IV bag, into my days and nights. If it weren't for the pandemic…

A Role Reversal

To reverse is to go backwards? Is a role reversal when the roles we play return to those of an earlier time? Or it is when we reverse roles in the current reality?

The child becomes the parent when the mother gets dementia or the father shuffles slowly, though still able to enjoy his favorite peppermint patty as Parkinson's slows his gait?

What happened was I bought two tickets for Mom and I to go the ballet. It was my birthday…or was it hers? The roles so reversed that I can't remember if we were celebrating my birth or hers. We had good seats, and she smiled. We moved slowly out into the aisle so she could use the bathroom at intermission. We returned to share a chocolate bar. I helped her stand to applaud and guided her into the arms of her black, wool coat. The woman in front of us turned to speak just after the last curtain call.

"It is so wonderful that you are taking your mother out, and spending time with her."

Mom wasn't able to speak anymore, just to smile in gratitude or nod with pleasure and sometimes frown her refusal. I wanted to appreciate the acknowledgment that I had been able to put the car in reverse. I was touched and sad.

Reversing course to care for Mom was unexpected.

The car was always in reverse with Dad and me. He came without his mother and so we all became his. Me most of all, perhaps as the oldest.

It started when I was very young. He held my hand as we walked on the Beverly Hills sidewalks before, as my mother would say, they were overrun with "people who don't really live here." Rodeo Drive was no longer her place. It was for the tourists and the Middle Eastern money which she held accountable for the rash of ugly, residential architecture. But this was before that. When Morley Drug Store had a soda fountain and Pioneer Hardware sold sets of colored Pyrex bowls and the only ethnic cuisine anyone had ever heard of was Chinese at Ah Fong's restaurant.

Dad and I were walking by the stone pond where a flock of ducks and their offspring glided amongst shiny, green lily pads. He had let me climb through the twisted limbs of the massive trees that looked as if money had created them for the sole purpose of entertaining small, privileged white children.

We walked across Santa Monica boulevard to Nate  'n Al's for corn beef and dill pickles. There was the me with a tiny hand, holding onto my father and looking up at him and asking, "Are you having fun, Daddy?" It should have been him asking the very young me. He should have wondered if I had enjoyed tree climbing and feeding the ducks some crumbs from our Friday night Challah.

And when the car once again lurches forward, I remember returning to Nate 'n Al's so many years later as he shuffles with his Parkinson's. We finish lunch and he methodically removes his credit card to pay the bill. There is a bowl of 2 cent peppermint patties by the register. Instead I suggest he get one of the giant ones. He smiles impishly. "Your mother would never let me have one of these!" We walk outside, and he shuffles as he eats. The car is going forward and the roles don't feel reversed, just as they have always been.

A Recurring Dream

In this recurring dream I am lost. Sometimes on a beach, sometimes in a building I don't know. The searching for an out, an exit unleashes all of my anxiety. Robert says I could lucid dream. He advises waking up while in the dream and telling myself I am dreaming so the fear might turn into wonder. I am not sure I believe it is possible. I would rather avoid the anxiety all together. Is this recurring dream another product of this endless pandemic? Do I believe it will ever end?

I imagine crawling through a tunnel. Endless. Aren't there supply tunnels into the occupied territory in Israel? For supplies? Residents there must feel abandoned by the government. The right side so intolerant of anything that is not kosher or observant or Jewish. Perhaps it is the Covid tunnel I am lost in. Dark and narrow. Like a maize. Light appears as hope, vaccines and boosters. A cure? No, just another variant.

I got a break on a Friday afternoon. Anne and I took in a movie. My first theater outing in over two years. Except for the live one in New York last month. Anne and I saw "West Side Story." In this one, there is Robert Moses showering Manhattan with dust in order to build Lincoln Center. Displacing Puerto Ricans and others to wonder at the skyline. In this one Tony is tall and white and Maria is petite and looks more like a teenager than the stunning Natalie Wood. Rita Moreno, now 90, has a new role. Doc's widow who is wise and beautiful. Face lift? Or just amazing?

In this one the music and lyrics still transported me as so many years ago. The links again to my family. Dad ministered to the Mirisch brothers, the Hollywood conglomerate which produced the original film. A distant cousin, Larry Kert, was Tony in the first Broadway production, but was too old for Arthur Laurents to cast him in the movie. He died of AIDS many years ago. But he still has a Wiki page. In this one some say the dancing is not as dynamic when those Sharks and Jets collide, unleashing energy and choreography in a New York intersection of worn shops and bodegas. No matter the small changes or disappointments voiced by some. I loved it. I sobbed.

 In between moments of aggravation that a few seats over some small group chatted as if at home in front of their own, private Netflix. "What a weird transition?" Etc. Commenting as if alone in a Zoom bubble. Mic off. I didn't want to interrupt my own dream, this one in wonderment that love could come so instantly, so deeply. Marriage in the Cloisters where movie Tony took Maria. But they hardly knew each other? In this one, in the other one. It didn't matter. Romeo found his Juliet. Was this like life before Covid? Believing all would always be well. Aging was relative. But then Anita was almost raped when she came to report Maria dead, a lie in anger that her beloved Bernardo, leader of the Sharks had been murdered by Riff. Tony, who wanted to do good, to stop the fighting as Maria requested, then killed Bernardo. Two beautiful men. Not lost. Just dead.

 I cried as if it wasn't just a movie. For what we are losing, for the homeless man, probably crazy and overturning trash cans as I made my way from the parking garage to the theater. Throngs downtown for early shopping, but rather than feeling the "joy of the season," I was back in my dream. In the tunnel. Trying to get supplies for my family before the exit closes and the gates shut. Will we be shut inside again this winter?

Nico is disappointed we won't dine inside on Christmas Eve. Our crowded Chinatown restaurant where yearly we come for fried chicken wings. Cramped and happy. We won't go to a movie theater. Afraid that Jews on Christmas Eve will sit too close together and it will be less like the practically abandoned theater where Anne and I reclined to see West Side Story. Like Passover. West Side Story wasn't particularly about Jews, but generally about anyone, all of us, who feel the effects of racism, phobia of one kind or another, classicism, sexism. What is the ism of these Covid times? All of the above in addition to this recurring dream. I am lost, I am afraid and running and trying to breathe. To wake up. Perhaps I can lucid dream my way out of Covid. And unleash everyone's tears. Of relief.

Winter

I used to live where winter meant snow and ice. In Ann Arbor, Michigan. Walking across the law school quad in a long, brown, wool coat. Too many years ago and before Patagonia. My grey, 2002 never left the parking lot behind my apartment. I only remember studying inside warm libraries or my tiny living room.

 In Racine, Wisconsin there was the tiny cottage, just up from the lake. I had an internship at The Racine Journal Times. I worked from a small office, in Burlington, Wisconsin. A town of less than 10,000. A 40-minute drive from Racine. There was only my editor, Don, and me and the secretary whose name I can't remember. I do remember her surprise that I was Jewish. That I did not believe in Jesus and such. She had bible study class regularly and what I imagined was a very restrained marriage. She was probably younger than my 20 some years. She liked me, though could not understand me. We talked. She was concerned that I would go to Hell for not believing as she did. Eventually, as my tenure ended, she was reassured that I would survive and my beliefs could be tolerated.

 The cottage where I lived was not winterized. There was plastic on the windows and the wind made too much noise at night. I had found the sublet when I was in a local grocery store, and a couple overheard me ask the clerk if he knew of a place I could rent until December. That I was a journalism graduate student from the University of Michigan and looking to plant myself in Burlington, this resort town with the lake, not far from Chicago. The couple rented me their summer cottage.

 It was cold…inside. There were space heaters. I took a warm bath almost every night. I met Judith too. She lived in a converted school house which fed my fantasy of living in barns or other such converted structures. She was an artist and a teacher. Single and bohemian for this conservative town. She was a bit older and she helped me survive winter.

 My brother came to visit. On his way to various medical school interviews. Dad was worried Charlie didn't shower often enough to make a good impression. No matter that he had graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford. My parents visited from the place where it never snowed. And then John came, my fiancée who now lived in Greeley, Colorado. The winter place I would move to after finishing Wisconsin and earning my Ann Arbor degree.

Winter in Colorado sounded romantic and athletic and pristine. It was, sometimes. We also lived in a cottage, this one across the street from a tiny café which featured rich, dense and doughy cinnamon buns. Winter in Colorado meant I could wear the Antartex, sheepskin coat my mother had bought me before Ann Arbor and Greeley. There had been a stint in Boston. Another winter tucked between Santa Cruz, graduate school and my wedding. All those winters.

It is winter now in San Francisco. The winter of my discontent? Or is it the summer? The temperature hovers at 50 or so, on the coldest mornings. Now I wear lots of down and Patagonia. Inside I still take lots of baths. "Warm water is good medicine, soak in it." The line on a jar of bath salts I bought at the beginning of the pandemic. I still sit in the bathtub several late nights a week. It is the closest I come to memories of snowy walks across campus or deicing the lock on the door of my 2002 or driving to the mountains to ski with the husband I wanted to love more than I did.

 I miss the snow sometimes, but really what I miss is the way it marked time and created contrast. Last winter was unlike any other I have lived through. No sheepskin coat required to stay warm while clearing a snow-covered windshield in order to drive across the flatness to a job at Aims Community College in Greeley, Colorado. As hard as those winters were, as I struggled to grow into myself, the snow was predictable. The cold was predictable. I could count on a warm bath or a doughy cinnamon bun.

Now, in the comfort of a house with good heating and with a husband I love enough, there is more uncertainty than the facts of my life add up to. I did become a mother, a dancer and a writer. So many questions got answered about how it would all turn out. But here, now with Zoom and a wardrobe of masks, I suddenly do not know how it will turn out. Perhaps if there was snow outside, I would be reassured that Spring would come and light and sunshine would prevail.

A Broken Promise

My father was an organized, methodical man. Losing his mother when he was 12 made it imperative that he control the world around him. To organize his life so there could be no ugly surprises. He bundled his anxiety in an attempt to shed the sadness. I am not sure how well it worked for him, but if I am really being honest it was hard for me and at times, I resented his unspeakable loss.

 It was perhaps not a promise, but I took it as such. He wanted to buy me earrings, diamond studs from Boris who worked in wholesale jewelry. At the Los Angeles Jewelry mart. Doesn't this sound like the perfect profession for an immigrant Jew from Russia? Like my uncle JB who sold shoes and made custom for my father. I sat for an hour at least while JB placed my father's foot in warm, white plaster to make a mold for the black leather, orthopedic model. Not the strange looking "space shoes" full of asymmetrical holes for the laces. Doctor's shoes. For comfort. Before Dansk and clogs.

 Dad's were smooth and hardly noticeable as therapeutic. He had his shoes custom made and his shirts monogrammed and twice weekly golf games and popcorn every night and a swim every morning. Perhaps his way to celebrate life while trying to dissolve the never-ending grief bubbling just below the surface.

It meant a lot to me that he wanted to buy me earrings, that he was at least willing to also bundle his benevolent narcissism to celebrate my successes. But he was not willing to change his Saturday morning golf game. I had only a couple of days in Los Angeles before returning to dance rehearsals and my shift at the Coffee Cantata in San Francisco. Serving drinks to tables full of narcissistic men, but less gracious than my elegant father with the monogrammed shirts and the custom-made suits.

It was challenging for my father to accept this life of mine after divorcing the husband he was sure was my fortunate destiny. So, the earrings and the promise meant something. He asked me to reorient my trip so that we could shop for the earrings. I wanted Saturday morning so I could have lunch with a close friend on Friday. He chose golf and I, uncharacteristically, said "no' to dissolving my plan. If I am really being honest, I was probably angry, maybe masquerading the hurt that me and my earrings weren’t important enough.

 The promise didn't dissolve. We referred to the possibility of buying me earrings periodically over the years. But he died first. I channeled my disappointment by telling my second husband the story. He was not yet my husband and he never met my father. When our kids were young, and our relationship new and challenging, we took our sons to Pt. Reyes. To lunch at the Olema Inn where many years later we would get married. Desert came and Robert pulled out a small box. The boys were old enough to gasp a bit and the couple at a neighboring table looked over. I was nervous, not yet wanting an engagement ring.

 It was a white box with no card and a narrow ribbon. "Open it!" one of the boys requested. Inside were two, tiny diamond, stud earrings. This man, who had also lost his mother when he was very young, had organized his life to buy me the earrings my father had only been able to promise. Years later, after our beautiful wedding, I lost one of the studs. I didn't tell my husband.  In the interim I went to the same jeweler who made me a match. And then some time after that I found the lost earring.

 I think finding the lost one, was like finding my father. Perhaps a sign that the promise wasn't broken. The way my father could love me was regenerated with the return of the lost earring. A sign that he was always there, even when distracted by his own grief and anxiety. My husband echoed my father. Perhaps one picked up where the other left off.

Restoration

"Let's drive by Mom's house." Robert and I were in Los Angeles with a couple of free hours.

It wasn't just Mom's house, but Dad's of course and the three of us. We moved in when I was 6 or maybe 7. Dad died there so many years later and Mom grew old and then she, too, died. Barely in the hospital for only a few weeks.

Neither the three of us or our offspring wanted to live in the beautiful house in the hills, so Kathryn, Charlie and I hired the realtor who advertised his specialty as selling homes that buyers wanted to preserve rather than destroy. To restore.

 How much control could we have over who would buy the house in Trousdale, overlooking the flats where we would have preferred to live so we could walk to school. I did, once or twice, with Jill my friend from the next street over. We were in the 8th grade and it took us a long time. We made it in time, but buffered the walk home with a pint of coffee ice cream and what were labeled as "diet cookies," made of sugar and sawdust. 

Mom's house, our house, was sold in 2006 to a Hollywood manager who went to a Jewish day school in Fairfax. Many years our junior, his father had apparently driven him through our hills and he had always admired the one-story homes with swimming pools. I didn't like most of the other houses in the neighborhood, knock offs of a miniature Versailles or someone's version of a sheikdom. But Mom and Dad chose differently. They built a mid-century modern, one story with center patio and terrazzo floors. And radiant heating and furniture by Eames. I knew nothing of mid-century as we grew up, complaining about hilltop living while nestled in white privilege and comfort.

 At least there was our reform temple and trips to the outer reaches of East LA and my father's preaching against the Vietnam war and racial indignities. We were protected, but not so much that all was concealed from us.

Robert and I drove up into the hills which had shrunk over the years. There were two cars in the open carport of the house that Mom and Dad built. I was feeling brave and unencumbered as my birthday was approaching and why not ring the doorbell even if I had not been back for so many years. A disembodied voice, kind but suspicious, answered my ring. "I am Elizabeth Kert. I grew up in this house." Just a minute she said.

The new owner returned and with a verbal swoon he flung open the door. For the next two hours he escorted Robert and me and Asher, the energetic puppy, throughout the house which he had indeed preserved and restored. There were even more terrazzo floors, filling the living room and replacing the carpet I never liked. The Navajo rug is now in Nico's room, here in San Francisco, but he had filled the space in which it had previously hung with a piece of modern art, Warhol-like in its repetition of the word "fragile." He had restored my father's office and the living room bar with the warmth of new wood to protect the past while giving life to all of my memories. Of course, there was a newer kitchen, but the new sink and stainless appliances were placed exactly where Mom had cooked waffles or washed dishes.

 In the backyard he told us about the tree that a few years earlier had fallen on the house. Old with weakened roots. The arborist said it should be removed, as it leaned precariously. The new owner refused. "That tree was here long before I came." And so, cables were attached and the tree was pulled upright.

 He gave us kumquats from another tree and offered cans of sparkling water and a bowl of food for Asher. We wandered slowly through every room. My bedroom and my sisters had been joined into one. There was no more sandbox or treehouse. Windows had become sliding glass doors but their handles were fabricated to perfectly match others which had been there long before.

We saw pictures of his movie stars and talked about Barbra Streisand, Dad's patient. How I met Steve McQueen and sat on Groucho Marx's lap. He talked about my mother's spirit which he is sure resides with him in his million-dollar restoration. He has copies of her books and was sure the television in her room was turned on the day he moved in.

 Seeing the house again, after so many years. Walking leisurely through every room, noticing all of the changes and what vestiges remained, I knew that he had not extinguished the light of my mother or my memories of pool parties and meals at the glass table in the center patio where Dad held court with a flyswatter in hand on balmy, Beverly Hills nights. Before the new bamboo floors and the open kitchen. Before the tree fell or the new hot tub was added for what I imagine are Hollywood soirees. Before the restoration was featured in Architectural Digest years after Mom died. Wouldn't Dad have been so proud that his desire for a new, modern house became the dream of another nice, Jewish boy.

The Other Door

What was behind door #1…or 2 or 3?  "Let's Make a Deal," was all about the prizes, as host Monty Hall bantered with his guests, encouraging enthusiastic contestants to choose. Possibilities were a red Pontiac, a seven-piece, yellow Hotpoint kitchen or a puppy and a year's supply of dog food. The anticipation was mesmerizing.

My parents were very strict about how much television we could watch. Rarely on school nights.  Friday nights, however, were always available. After dinner and Sabbath candles and roast chicken or pot roast. "Bonanza" or "The Donna Reed Show" or " Leave it to Beaver." Or the game shows…the doors and the spinning wheels. My favorites were, "Let's Dance," and "The Roaring Twenties."

Of a theme they were, as they sustained my dreams of romance and endless glitter. My father was a wonderful dancer. He taught me the Cha Cha and from television I learned to Charleston. He was tall and elegant and I was able to reconcile his silence and busy doctoring schedule with his love of movement. I learned the Fox Trot from him. At weddings or Bar Mitzvahs or Sunday nights at the country club.

When Mom and Dad left us at home to indulge in Swanson's TV dinners -fried chicken and peas and mashed potatoes -or tins of Jiffy Pop, I watched carefully to see what dance steps I could rehearse after lights supposedly out. Lillie, who stayed with us through TV dinners, gathered us in her tiny room to watch television. My brother, the blessed boy among the three of us, got to sit on her lap. Kathryn and I on the worn carpet and I mesmerized by the gyrating strangers.

Could dancing really be a way to sustain life?  I imagined myself as a dance contestant, able to unlock all the daydreaming parts of me. My theme song was something about a quiet, reserved girl with freckles and blond, hairy arms. Tired of being the big sister, the good one. Hoping to find behind door #1 or 2 or 3, the nimble, handsome stranger with whom she could move in perfect sync. To take the steps from her father in order to sustain her dreams.

I unlocked my fantasy life on Friday nights with TV dinners and television augmented by dances with my father. Behind each door, presented with great fanfare by a tall, statuesque blond, was a prize, a gift, a future for the lucky contestant. Waiting for the tally on “Let's Dance” was equally exciting. Who would win?

I didn't know what the future would bring as we ate fried chicken from divided aluminum. Suddenly I am writing about sitting on the floor of Lillie's room and imagining myself dancing with handsome strangers, or finding gifts behind heavy curtains. I am not sure how to reconcile these memories with the life I have now, but they must be serving some purpose on this sunny, Sunday. Perhaps to remember my father and the root of my agility and grace.

Waiting

I tell myself I am not just waiting…for the pandemic to end, for life to return to whatever was normal, for the Afghans to be rescued by some divine intervention, for the fires to cease, for acceptance and space to dance and for Asher to be less nervous when strangers enter our house. Strangers to him, but not to us.

I bruised myself several times over the past two years. Some visible as when I tripped over the broken curb on the gloriously sunny day after I had finally been able to swim in the one outdoor pool in San Francisco. The fall derailed my plans to return to the dance studio, finally able to move with others in real time and space. So, I waited to heal from the fall. I tried not to gorge on chocolate and to maintain the litany of exercises recommended by the set of medical professionals I am lucky to have in my corner.

The scrapes on my knee healed. The knee specialist reported there was no arthritis and no need for surgery and, in some diplomatic way I cannot recall, that I was in better shape than most 70 year-olds he knew, but likely he only knew those waiting for surgery. Next came the shoulder doctor, commenting on how strong I was as I leaned in and pushed his outstretched arms aside, the isometrics to prove myself.

Waiting…to find hope among the news stories I seem to be gorging on. Waiting to extract reasons to smile instead of cry which I do regularly over coffee each morning. I tell myself that it is okay to have a home and food and the love of my family. I tell myself that it was only by chance I was born here instead of in Kabul or Palestine or with black skin. I teeter at times on a high wall, like Humpty Dumpty, with fear on one side and my mother's optimism on the other. Like the Berlin wall.

Waiting …to see if I will ever make the trip to Eastern Europe that we had to cancel years ago when I had the first fall. This one so much more violent with two broken wrists and weeks of therapy. Now with plates and screws I do planks and quarrel with the calendar…can I really be 70?

My handsome, gifted hand surgeon just wrote that he is retiring. I tell myself I won't have need for him again. I tell myself that the plane won't crash as we head to Kauai. That Nico will arrive safely on his drive from Los Angeles. I am waiting not to be afraid of transportation.

 As I quarrel with myself that what I really want to do is run away from the waiting. To be standing still surrounded by hope and peace and clear air as far as the eye can see.

What I really want to say is I am teetering on a balance beam, waiting for change, acceptance, good news. A cup of coffee without the saltwater of tears and fear and guilt which I must reconcile as so many others teeter and fall into sadness and fear and horrors I can only imagine even with the help of the New York Times.

What I really want to say is that waiting is hard. I strive to be in the moment, to watch the sidewalk for the bumps which could derail me or Humpty Dumpty. To notice when a piece of the curb is missing so I will step carefully. I tell myself that if I can pay attention and stay focused, I can keep putting foundations under those castles in the air that I cannot stop building. The hope that Afghan women and young girls will still flourish, that shades of blue and clarity will emerge as the flames retreat and that this pandemic which has consumed us all will subside.