Breakfast at Every Meal

June 10, 2016June 10, 2016 / roughwighting / 117 Comments

I’m not great at looking at things logically. I’m not good at anything that entails studying one point and logistically figuring out how it’s supposed to connect to the other point. I prefer the intricacies in between. The emotional connections, let’s say, instead of the linear ones.

That’s why I’ve been a bit morose this week. A logistical, practical woman would think, it’s my son’s birthday– hooray. I, on the other hand, have been teary-eyed. Thirty-five years ago my little boy was born 10 days too late and too big to come out the ‘normal’ way. I tease him that it explains his personality.

Back then, as labor pains progressed and I was stretched out on the surgery table, I insisted that the doctor could not perform the caesarian until the mirror above me was placed just so. Just so I could watch the baby’s birth. I was tied down and could only see the ceiling and eyes staring out of the doctor’s mask. But I needed some control, so no cutting until the mirror was adjusted. Continue reading →

Have Your Cake and EAT IT TOO

March 11, 2016March 9, 2016 / roughwighting / 86 Comments

My mom shows her great-grandson how to eat cake.

The subject of aging seems to fascinate my daughter and son and their spouses. Most particularly,

A bd cake, no matter how you slice it.

…my aging. And my guy’s.

I haven’t figured out why. Perhaps it’s because of my upcoming birthday on the Ides of March.

They seem to expect some kind of terror in our response to their teasing, asking if we have “chair rails” on our new stairs – ha ha, and telling us that perhaps my guy is eligible to use the town’s “senior center.”

A Singing BD Cake Delivery

Never mind that both of us are crazy busy in our careers and our social life. Continue reading →

A Luscious Shade of Young

December 4, 2015December 4, 2015 / roughwighting / 83 Comments

“I luuuv your hair,” my daughter’s friend says to me. “You’re so lucky to have so much of it. And the color and natural highlights! Just luscious.”

Luscious? First of all, who calls an over-50-year-old’s hair, luscious? Only another woman, of course, and at 30-something, a rather naïve woman.

(I note, by the way, that her hair is teenage blonde, straight and long, pulled into a perky ponytail as she shuttles her kids form soccer to ballet to gymnastics.)

But I digress. Continue reading →

Looking in the Mirror

October 24, 2014October 23, 2014 / roughwighting / 59 Comments

Frederick Carl Frieseke,
Femme qui se Mire

Early in the morning, and she’s already been up for half an hour, writing. Her eyes show it: glazed light blue icing, or are they dazed? Slightly bloodshot, with puffy fleshy bags underneath her lower lids.

She remembers when the bags underneath her eyes, rare and only after long bouts of studying or handling petulant babies, were smooth. But now, lines are etched at the bottom of the puffiness. They won’t be as visible after she washes her face with cold water and walks briskly in the fall air, but still, they’re always there now. Continue reading →

BACK TO SQUARE ONE

March 15, 2012 / roughwighting / 20 Comments

Baby Pam

Today’s my birthday. A big one. I’m not big on birthdays. They make me think too much. Let’s go back and observe…

I’m 6 years old. I look out my bedroom window for answers. Who am I? What the heck am I doing here? Where’d I come from?

The clouds and the sky and the next-door neighbor’s dog, barking at their front door, give me no answers.

Who am I?

Now I’m 13. I look out with the same questions, same bedroom window. I concentrate on the trees with deep intensity. The leaves turn florescent blue, the tree bark purple, the sky pink and sparkly. The answer is there – I can almost see it, feel it. My arm extends, hand reaching, reaching, but comes back empty.

At 19, I stare out that bedroom window, anxious to say goodbye to my parents’ view of life. I understand everything now. I’ve read Joyce and Woolf, Kierkegaard and Bonheoffer, Freud and Erickson.

I know all the answers…. Don’t I?

2nd baby, no time for questions

At 33 I don’t care who I am, where I came from, or what I’m doing. I’m too busy making babies, nursing babies, loving babies, and caring for my family. I’m too tired to ask any questions, much less search for answers.

Where'd the time go?

I look out the window now at 48 and wonder where my babies have gone. Off to college and their own quests.

The quiet is unnerving. What should do I do now? The swaying trees are whispering, whispering, but I can’t hear what they’re saying.

Grandbaby 5, born March 1, 2012

And here, now, I’ve arrived to this new number on the aging chart. I dare stare out another window at hummingbirds whirring, flowers swaying, the sun winking, as I wonder: Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going?

BACK TO SQUARE ONE