Beautiful Birthday Bonanza

This past week was wild, with the Boston Globe Magazine essay on Sunday and amazing feedback (plus comments and letters from desperate men), two job interviews, the Skirt! photo shoot on Wednesday, chorus rehearsal, writing group, work, another phone interview, and my birthday on Friday. Whew! Even typing that is exhausting.

The rhythm of my days is usually much slower and under some semblance of control. But I’m gearing up for big changes and looking forward to a faster pace, with more stimulation and new adventures.

I don’t want to say much about the job interviews because I don’t know the outcome yet, but I should be hearing back this week. I’m done with uncertainty. Come to me, clarity and structure. I’m ready. (And I'm really excited about one job in particular!)

As to being photographed for the 24/7 feature in Skirt!, I am not a photo shoot person. I don’t like posing and I don’t like seeing myself in photos. Whatever. I better tap into my exhibitionism pretty soon, because the publicity can only help my writing career. So I decided I better get a makeover. Was there such a thing as a budget makeover?

I thought Clinique at Macy’s would be perfect, buy a lipstick and get made up, but they were booked with promotional appointments. So, on Monday, I was buying throat lozenges at CVS and noticed that my checkout woman was wearing a nametag: Liz, Beauty Advisor. Hmm. But Liz’s makeup was overdone and clown-like, with those penciled-in Grandma-like eyebrows. I did not want her to touch my face. I tentatively asked her about getting make up done there. She said she just did sales, nothing hands-on. She referred me to Raquel, the aesthetician. I was wary. I mean, who goes for a CVS makeover? CVS?

Raquel, a plus-size mahogany-skinned woman, was in the cosmetics section making over another very attractive African-American woman who was going to appear on TV. That was reassuring. We chatted briefly, and she understood the importance of my mission, so I booked a 10 a.m. Wednesday appointment, an hour before my shoot.

Late Tuesday night, I dumped every cosmetic product I owned into a big travel bag—Lancome and Clinique samples from department store special offers, lipsticks, brushes, blushes, mascaras, eye-shadow palettes, various shades of under-eye concealer, and a foundation that probably expired before the millennium.

At the appointed hour, I surrendered my face and bag of products to Raquel in exchange for a lip liner and new foundation. She went for the smoky eyes and subtle coloring and, except for a couple of clumpy eyelashes, I looked divine and felt like a star. People gathered around to watch. My stomach was in knots.

The photo shoot itself went by in a blur. I met Alison in the lobby of the Watertown Library. She was with Shannon, a tall blond beauty, who had one of those high-powered lenses like the guys next to the dugout at Fenway. Truly intimidating. But they were both reassuring and patient and I did major deep breathing to get through it. Tilt a little to the right, chin up, now down a little. Good. Click, click, click. It might’ve been a faux pas to ask to look at some possibilities at the end, but I couldn’t restrain myself. Now I wait till April to see the results!

On Friday I turned 55. Very strange. I just can't grasp the number. It was a low-key day, gorgeous weather. Finally, I got to do my Charles River walk after months of snow—the geese are back and the waterfall gushed like Niagara. Later, I indulged in a massage (one of those cheapie intro versions where they try to talk you into buying a package deal, which I didn’t) and then went to my Annual Ladies’ Night Out Party. See my Skirt! blog for a full report.

So, mid-decade, I'm moving ahead. Sometimes it’s so hard to see the fruits of one’s labor, but I think I’m beginning to. I’m getting my writing out there, connecting with new, creative people, and manifesting so much of what I’ve been working toward.

I clipped my astrological forecast from the February 27 paper.

If today is your birthday: Surround yourself with energetic people who can help you pull your ideas together and make them happen. It will be a year of meshing together all sorts of different aspects and elements of the things you’ve wanted to pursue. Don’t fear change when that is precisely what’s needed in order to bring things together for you.

Yes!

Spring Forward

Now that I have my Skirt! blog, I find my writing brain operating differently. When ideas bubble into my consciousness lately, they shape themselves with that audience in mind. So I think Debfeb Diaries may evolve into a more personal journal-type blog, but I will never be one of those “Today I ate French toast” bloggers. It doesn’t matter. As long as I’m writing, I’m happy, audience or not.

The Universe sure is responding right now, just a few days before my birthday. The Globe Magazine essay, renamed “A Mattress Built for Two,” appears tomorrow. It popped up online prematurely earlier in the week because of some weird web glitch, then disappeared, but I got a sneak preview and I’m ecstatic.

Then I have two job interviews, on Monday and Thursday, for good, interesting jobs with benefits. On Wednesday, I have my Skirt! photo shoot for the April “24/7” feature. Me? A photo shoot. Very strange. I am sweating the wardrobe part and the makeup part and whether to spring for a manicure. It's not in my budget, but I think I will.

I’m getting my stuff out there at readings too. On Friday the 13th, I read an essay called “Dear Diary: Where Is Luv?” at the Center for New Words open-mic night in Cambridge. Two writing group friends read too—quite the love fest for those who gathered. There’s nothing better than writers supporting writers. This past Thursday, I read the same essay at another open-mic night at Back Pages Books in Waltham. Besides a couple of group buddies (who rocked), other readers were quite the eclectic bunch, ranging from an excruciatingly well-meaning über-geek and his excruciating “poetry” to a very cute, soulful young man’s soulful love songs. Definitely crush-worthy. Too bad he was old enough to be my son, if not my grandson.

So much activity, so much excitement. I’m more energized than I’ve been in months—it seems everyone is. The sun is stronger, the days are longer, the snow is melting, the air is crisper. Spring is springing. It feels so good.

And on Friday I enter a new demographic group: 55+. How did that happen? Can it be me? I feel like my life is just starting.

Better late than never.

O My Love

In honor of Valentine's Day, here is another excerpt from Where Is Luv? Oh, the drama, the longing, the hormones! If thou can beareth it, taketh thou back in time, and remember.

December 1, 1968

I changed a lot today. I grew up a bit. I discovered something. I don't know exactly what but it was and is beautiful: this feeling. Went to Romeo and Juliet starring Olivia Hussey, 16, and Leonard Whiting, 17. Terribly moving, vivid, exciting, sad, beautiful, expressful, deep. It hit me like a bomb and I have been in a daze all day. I feel I must find someone who loves me and needs me badly! I feel that I will find him soon! I don't know if this is true but I live until that day! I have taken a deeper outlook upon myself.

Oh God. This sounds so silly yet all day I have been captured by this dream and ache for love and beauty, such that Romeo and Juliet shared!! I even wrote "poems"—something I never do! They have probably all been written before and are all clichés but my brain fed the thoughts to my pen and it was a new feeling! I thought Shakespearean—I thought of love and beauty and purity!! Oh! I can't explain it! I cried so hard afterwards and I want to cry now, too!!

Came home in a daze. Ate. Washed hair. Wrote and read. Cleaned room. Prepared for tomorrow (school—ugh! Harsh Reality!!). Tests and Exams and Projects are so superfluous—to my one and only goal ---> to Love or at least to have this incompleteness in my soul fulfilled. "Goodnight, Goodnight! ... parting is such sweet sorrow!!" Ahh, goodnite. Love, Deb

O my love, I seek not for thy body
Only for thy soul
What lies within you is beyond my comprehension
What lies without I only know is mine.
I love thee
But I seek not for that which I may have
I seek for what I cannot have
My soul aches and yearns for love
Love only your soul can return!

Where must I search?
Where does he hide?
Need he but murmur the stirrings in his soul,
Would he then my soul capture!

The love brewing in my heart!
My soul and my mind must be fulfilled!
When not, thence come the expressions of my body: Tears
Tears, the outlet of my soul
The salty droplets have but no meaning to she or he
Only to me. Only to these lips of mine which absorb this dew
My love! When you come not, then these sweet dewdrops
Will turn to frost!
My anguish is none if I know of but one man
To love, so that together our souls may be one.

Payoff

“Making Room for Mr. Right” will arrive at its rightful (read: hoped-for) home after a year-and-a-half-long journey: The Boston Globe Magazine’s “Coupling” column, Sunday, February 22.

As Ed Grimley, the SNL character played by Martin Short, would say, I couldn’t be more excited!

“Making Room” is an essay I wrote about my semi-disastrous experience buying a dual-control dial-a-number bed in the hopes of someday sharing it, only to find that it doesn’t work with only one body. I visualized the piece in “Coupling” before I even wrote it: layout, illustration, byline, the whole nine. So I whipped it out, polished it up, and sent it off, in July 2007. Silence. After a few months, I wrote a friendly follow-up query. Nothing. Nada. Niente.

In November, I opened my Sunday Globe and turned, as always, to the column. Lo and behold, a bed essay written by a widow who was adjusting to her newly mateless mattress. My heart sank. What would be the chances of their running a second bed essay? Slim to nada.

Two months later, I got a nice note from the editor, who said she liked my piece but couldn’t use it because, yeah, they’d already published a bed essay. I tried a few more possibilities but they all felt wrong, and were rejected. “Making Room” belonged in “Coupling.”

That was a year ago. The essay collected dust, or its cyber equivalent, among other things languishing in My Documents, while I focused on other stuff. You know how that goes, oh creative friends. Then, after taking Michelle Seaton’s “Six Weeks, Six Essays” class through Grub Street in the fall, my essay engines got revved. Cranking, writing, thinking, workshopping, polishing, sharing with my 11 amazing classmates.

Some of us formed a post-class writing group—my haven and sanctuary. I love nothing more than hanging with wordsmiths who care about everything from tone and voice to semicolons and parentheses. So I brought “Making Room” to them and, with their help, reworked it to perfection.

This Thursday, I sent it back to the “Coupling” editor with a note reminding her of our correspondence a year ago, wondering if enough time had passed to run my baby. I figured I’d wait another six months, maybe, to hear back. But she wrote right back with a YES.

After some disappointing rejections recently, I seriously had to reread her email before it sank in. Yes! What a lovely word. Yes! She asked me to expand the ending, adding more of a “take-away.” Fifty words’ worth. I'd written 700. She wanted 750. A daunting task, having tweaked the thing to oblivion by now. But what the editor wants, the editor gets. I submitted the new version yesterday, after my friend Susan gave it the Good-Friend-Available-at-the-Last-Second Stamp of Approval.

It’s a go. I get to approve a PDF of the designed page next week. Will the illustrator’s vision match mine? Can’t wait!

Wait. What am I doing? I’m going public, way public, with my singlehood, my sleep habits, my fantasies of sharing my bed with a man. Who would be reading this? My family? OK. Friends? OK. Clients? Eeks. Prospective employers? Hmm. Weirdos? Uh oh. As self-disclosure goes, my work ranks in the PG realm. Given our open-book (and open-everything-else) culture, though, I guess I’m cool.

This is who I am. I write personal essays. I divulge personal information. I am a writer. And it’s so nice to get the payoff!

Cherry on Top: Also on Thursday, I found out I’m going to be profiled on Skirt! Boston magazine’s “24/7” page. Another yes! The Boston editor likes my new skirt.com blog and wanted to know about Mortified. One thing led to another, and we're meeting next week.

I haven’t even digested that news yet, so I’ll leave it aside for now, a big chunk of positive, incredible, heavenly, and fun validation to savor, confirmation that following my heart is the answer. Yes it is.

My Bipartisan Empathy Meter

It’s been only five days since President Obama took office. In some ways, it seems surreal, impossible. Then again, it seems like he’s been president for months, what with all those pre-pre-pre press conferences. What an amazing celebration, and what an amazing view of W leaving Washington. At last, indeed!

I flipped channels the whole morning, aware of feeling anxious, almost agitated, pacing, fussing, trying to keep busy. I still get nervous for live television events, especially ones with security concerns. It’s a boomer thing. You know, JFK, MLK, RFK, George Wallace, Malcolm X, the Pope, John Lennon, Reagan, Ford. All those assassination memories. Very scary. Yay, PEACE!

I’ve been posting on the skirt.com blog all week, which is fun! They’ve been featuring my stuff on the home page, so I get more readers and maybe some random agent will catch a peek! My writers’ group is submitting and applying and doing readings and getting published, so that’s been a fun boost too. Write On!

Anyway, I couldn’t let the week end without at least acknowledging some inaugural attendees who got my empathy this week, deserved or not. I can't help it. I'm a social worker.

Dick Cheney, for the whole wheelchair thing, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I’m sure it wasn’t the image he would’ve wanted to project at the End Game

George Bush, for having to sit there and take it, to the extent that he actually listened, which is probably not a lot, come to think of it, nevermind

Hillary Clinton, for whatever moments of “if only” she endured

Barack Obama, for Roberts’s botched oath, OMG that was a mess, couldn’t they have done a runthrough?

Michelle, for the invention of high heels, and for ten long dances to “At Last.” But you sure looked beautiful and so in LOVE!

Sasha and Malia, for all the attention and for subzero privacy for the next eight years

Yo Yo, Itzhak, and the quartet for being criticized . . . I mean, would you bring your Stradivarius out in 20-degree weather?

Aretha, maybe you should've prerecorded too. That was, um, not your best work . . . but the hat was divine, dahling!

And to the millions who walked and waited and shivered and froze—my heart goes out to you and I’m envious of your once-in-a-lifetime experience. Someone called it Woodstock without the fighting and mud. Yeah, baby. Barack On!

Expanding My Horizons

I launched Debfeb's Blog this week at skirt.com and I'm excited to join that community of very cool women blogging about women! It took a few months from inquiry to acceptance, but it's a new and, I must say, groovy forum.

I have no intention of abandoning the Debfeb Diaries, but I have to take stock and figure out what, where, when, how, and why I want to write what, where, when, and how!

Two essays are still under construction: "My Night with Igor," about my experience in a sleep lab; and "Space Invaders," about personal space challenges in public places. So stay tuned!

The Mortified podcast is up! Yup. About halfway through the audio, I'm reading from my 1965 diaries, from when I was 10 and 11. My love for Ricky. My clashes with Mom. My budding body. My romantic dreams. My pubescent take on the world. It's all there, with a live audience sharing the angst!

This coming week, I can't wait to watch the inauguration and the unfolding of history and hope for a new administration. Goodbye, W. I will miss your gaffes on Letterman and The Daily Show, but I will miss absolutely nothing else. Happy brush-clearing. Have a nice life.

Now, let's get down to business, Barack! Well, go ahead and enjoy the festivities first. But by Wednesday, I expect you to fix the world. OK?

So, there's more to come verrrrrry soon! But right now I have to get to the gym before my muscles go on strike!

Peace at Last

We buried my uncle Addy last Sunday in a plot that my grandfather bought decades ago, a plot that I will also occupy when my days on earth are over. It was brilliantly clear and bundle-up cold but not bitter on the hillside of Sharon Gardens, an idyllic setting a few miles from where my parents live. That’s where they will be buried too, not now, not soon, but someday.

Addy died peacefully at 6:15 p.m. on New Year’s Day. Joyce and Bobby and Nancy held him and watched him breathe his last breath. In the past, when I’ve heard people say about their lost loved ones, “At least he’s at peace,” “Thank God she’s not suffering anymore,” or “He’s in a better place,” the words felt empty, as if rationalizing the trauma would dampen its impact.

But Addy was suffering, the chemo having failed, ultimately, to reverse the cancer; the medications having failed to shield him from pain; the onslaught of time and disease and what I gather is the natural order of life having impaired his eyesight and speech and physical strength. He was ready. Before he slipped away, he began to write his obituary with Joyce. It was his time.

When we celebrated his 85th birthday in early December, he was with it. Weak but with it. It was what a celebration should be—to his life, his friendships, his loving family. We sang skit songs, read poems, gave tributes, and remembered the happier times. We didn’t know how long he’d be around, but we knew it didn’t look good. The hugs were more precious, the jokes funnier, the appreciations more heartfelt. He knew. He took it in. He cried and laughed. We all did. It seemed the natural thing to do.

At his funeral service, people talked about Addy’s sweetness, his creativity, his musicality, and his even temper. My parents each reflected with humor and caring. I’d forgotten how active the four of them were, and the trips and cruises and bridge games they'd shared. My mind kept flashing forward, wondering who would be eulogizing my parents when their turn comes. No, don’t go there. Deep breathing grounded me back in the present and I cried for Addy. It wasn’t meant to be. But it was. What is the alternative? It’s the natural order of things.

Bobby spoke softly and lovingly, holding back tears with his sweet, sad smile. He had bathed and dressed and lifted and tended to Addy in his final weeks. When Nancy had joined the vigil, the three of them talked with Addy for as long as he could talk, sang with Addy for as long as he could sing, and shared their strength with one another. Joyce wasn’t ready. How can one ever be ready?

I wanted to share a eulogy, but I didn’t know what to say. So I convened a chorus instead. My brother Don, his wife Jo, their son Nick, and my friend Susan and I offered Gerald Cohen’s “Adonai Ro’i,” a sublime setting of the 23rd psalm, “The Lord Is My Shepherd.” Singing is the deepest expression of love and soul and comfort. Addy heard us. Or so I’d like to believe.

Last July, when my fellow Zamir singer Jody died, I wrote about the electric spark I experienced at her funeral. Carpe diem. Life is not a dress rehearsal. I felt freed up and intensely alive, no more wasting time, no more inertia or passivity. Life is short! Act now!

But at the cemetery, standing beside Addy’s grave, seeing his wooden casket with its carved Star of David already in the ground, I felt empty. Among the parent generation, Addy was the first to go. Now Joyce was a widow. What will happen next? We huddled together, family and friends, as the young cantor spoke kindly and prayed and chanted, including “Adonai Ro’i” and the traditional memorial prayer, “El Maley Rachamim,” or “God full of compassion.”

Just then, we saw Jeanne and her newborn baby, swaddled in pink, walking toward the site. I hadn’t seen Jo’s sister since she gave birth in October. A passing train whistled. The sun cast shadows across the snowy landscape. It was almost too poetic. The circle of birth and death, the inevitability of time and passage and life and loss.

We shoveled dirt onto the casket, one by one, tucking Addy in with a blanket of earth, as the cantor suggested. “OK, kid, here ya go,” said Joyce. The dirt smelled rich and deep and warm.

Life goes on. And with it, certain death. But when and how? With suffering or suddenness? No one knows. But I know Addy is at peace at last. God bless you, my dearest uncle. I love you very much.