Cool things.

It seems I’m not a very faithful blogger, posting only when the mood strikes me, but I have reason to post so infrequently. Not because I’m down in the dumps—-really, I’m not. I’m on a great upward swing in my teaching career and am carving out a path for myself in which I feel confident and calm. This past week I’ve been wrapped up in creating a film of my class and just this morning we had our Premiere.

This first half of the year, we’ve been studying ancient India and in the last three or so weeks, we’ve been working on The Ramayana, the story about Rama and Sita and their great love, separation, and reunion. It’s a bit like the story of me and Dennis when I was in Brazil, minus the ten-headed demon, a talking monkey, and all the other stuff. So the kids had to memorize a bunch of lines, we filmed them, and then Dennis gave up his entire Sunday to edit it all together so I could preview it at school on Monday to make sure it worked. It did, of course, and this morning at 8:35, I walked into a room full of parents who were eagerly awaiting the screening. My kids were jittering with nervous energy, excited (or not) to see themselves on the screen, and when it was all said and done, I think both the kids and the parents were happy. BIG exhale.

Now it’s onto China and sadly, I know nothing about it. So this vacation, I will be studying up on the basics—something like a thousand or so years of history—so that I can share it with my students when we come back from break. I’m sure, because it always happens this way, I’ll freak out after the first week because I’ll realize just how little I know and how much effort it will take to teach the kids, but, like I’ll good teachers, I’ll do my best and hope they pick up at least a little of what I lay down.

It’s hard to believe this is the last week of school before winter holidays. The week before the end of school in Brazil I think things felt a little more calm—kids started trickling out of school to go on extended vacations with their families (even though the break was already a month long) and we wrapped up major projects and whatnot. I feel as though this week has come upon us too suddenly, as if I will be cut off mid-sentence and made to wait two weeks before being able to finish.

An interesting thing happened on the train today, something that brought me back to Brazil in a very funny way. At Grand Central, I boarded the 7 train to take me back home. I sat down across from the German equivalent of Brad Pitt, Russell Crowe, Chris Elliot, and a very pretty Ralph Fiennes (not that Ralph Fiennes isn’t pretty, but this guy on the train was too pretty, almost impossibly pretty. Not hot, mind you, but disturbingly pretty.) They blabbed back and forth in German the whole time and I sat staring at them, mostly to figure out which actors they most closely resembled so I could write about them later on the blog. It occurred to me after a while that I was staring at them. I guess that means I’m not aware when I’m staring, but that’s beside the point. It struck me that I was staring at them because their language caught my attention. That I noticed them based on their German made me then drift off into the Land of Celebrity Look-Alikes, and then it occurred to me that I had been in the exact same situation on trains in Brazil, but on the other side.

This is not to say that people stared at me in Brazil because they were trying to figure out which celebrity I look like. That’s actually impossible because I don’t look like anyone. But on the train in Sao Paulo, trying to get from Estacao Tiete out to Avenida Paulista (where the closest Starbucks was, of course) I can’t tell you how many people stared at our group of English speakers. I used to get a kick out of how my language called attention to people on SP trains, and how I felt so different and obvious. Like I was in a fishbowl of sorts. I never really considered what it was the people were thinking while staring, only that they were staring. I used to feel insulted almost, and I remember calling Brazil a staring culture. I remember feeling eyes rest on me because I thought I was different and that didn’t sit easy with me.

But tonight, when I caught myself staring, I smiled. I smiled because I finally knew about the staring. I wasn’t staring because I thought these four guys were different. Their language had triggered for me other thoughts and I stared while lost in those other thoughts. Nevermind the fact that two of them had severe underbites and that the other two were wearing the exact same army green jacket. I found myself on the other side of the coin tonight. How interesting it is that language is the thing that got me there.

Renewed.

Well, sorry for the long pause there. I’ve been out and about, upstate, downtown, and all over the place. This past weekend, I went to Bard College, where I and another colleague took part in a writing workshop. It was a small gathering of people, just 12 other teachers and professionals from around the country (indeed as far away as California!) and we spent our time writing and thinking about writing.

I am somewhat of a Professional Development nerd, in that I’ll take whatever comes my way with nowhere near your average teacher groan. Sometimes I’ll fake an eye roll here or there, but for the most part, I look forward to stepping outside of my classroom world and learning something new. This weekend, since it was about writing, I was pretty much in paradise, and not just because of the workshop. I got to stay in a hotel.

There’s something magical about staying in a hotel, in the same way that stopping at a McDonald’s is magical when I’m on the 6-hour drive from NYC to Vermont. It’s a departure from routine and a welcome one. This is not to say that my life in Queens is anywhere near a routine, nor is it needing a break from routine. But I do love to get away and then come back home again, which is something I don’t think I’ve quite gotten over since returning from Brazil. There’s something special about coming home, especially when I get to come home to my best friend and my best cat.

Dennis is nearing the end of his production and these days we rarely see each other. We have such opposite schedules—even on the weekends!—that it’s almost a surprise when we find each other sitting at the table together having a meal, or (this week) even being awake at the same time. He won’t be home until almost midnight tonight, and that’s a full two hours after I’ll have gone to bed. In the morning, there’s no need for him to wake up until after I leave the house at 6:30…and so, there you have it. Like ships passing in the night.

Remember that recent post about how I thought I was changing, standing up for myself, and whatnot? Well, it’s coming even more into fruition. Lately I’ve had a very hard time at work finding my place, my voice, where I fit into the grand scheme of things, in amongst the tradition of this private school. Today I took the first big step and announced at the faculty meeting that I was looking for other teachers who might be willing to open their doors to other teachers, purely voluntarily, purely out of a desire to share teaching. Not in any kind of critical way but instead with the intent to help create an environment that makes teaching at the heart of what we do. I know this is a school, and I know that teaching is (or should be) at the heart of what we do. But these days, I’m just not feeling it. I don’t feel like a teacher and any heart that’s there is beating slowly and faintly. A sleeping heart, if you will.

And so I said, “screw it.” This isn’t just going to change overnight and certainly not without my calling attention to what I need, so, in the spirit of change, in the spirit of standing up for myself, I said I was trying to find teachers who might be open to sharing. I got two responses. But then again, we’d just spent an hour in a faculty meeting in which we learned, via PowerPoint, about e-mail: what it is, how to use it, the challenges of it, and what to avoid. I am not joking and I’ve never wanted to be joking as badly as I do right now. And you ask why I might be feeling confused about the value of teaching in the school. It makes me feel sad to be in a place where passion for teaching, real love and interest IN it, seems hidden. Where we can shout: “We love the kids!” instead of “We love what we do! Come look at what we’re doing and join us!” Shouldn’t we be saying both? I’d be crazy not to say the first thing about this school, but I’m really feeling the absence of the second one. So? Rather than sit and bitch? Do something, right? Right. We’ll see where it takes us.

Shuddering.

The rate at which I am going grey astonishes me.

Thanks Given.

And so we find ourselves in December. Thanksgiving has come and gone, the winter holidays are just ahead. We are sandwiched right in the middle and it is hard to believe the year will turn into another so soon. I can’t say I’m not thankful for that as there’s a lot about this year I’d like to put behind me.

I spent a good while in Anthropologie today, wandering the aisles and taking down any number of outfits I thought would look good on my little lumpy body, but, lo and behold, come Dressing Room Time, I stood there like I knew I would, hair tousled, skin dry, bags beneath my eyes sinking lower, and not a thing managed to make all those imperfections look any bit better. There’s nothing good about going shopping for clothes at 6pm on a Monday. Especially after a Thanksgiving vacation. I should have just come home, warmed up a piece of pizza, and gotten into my pajamas. Defeated, I threw myself into the subway and slunk home, where now I sit at the dining room table with a warmed up piece of pizza. And I’m too lazy to get in my pajamas. 

A word about Thanksgiving. It had been almost six years, we figured, since I’d joined my family for this meal, and nothing beat the feeling of walking into a warm Albany house and seeing all those familiar faces, wrapping up in warm embraces, introducing Dennis to that half of my heart. There was a new baby, who I held, who cried only when I held him. I didn’t mind at all because I knew he was crying because he was hungry and not because he took offense to me; therefore, I didn’t take offense to him, and rather than passing him off to his parents, opted to hold him a little longer and rock him while standing up, trying to find a way to soothe his little infant worries. It was nice.

We feasted on home cooked everything, welcomed pies and stuffings and mash into our bellies, declared ourselves full. And it was at that point my happiness turned a little sideways. It is a tradition in our family to go round the table and say what we’re thankful for and as the time drew nearer in the evening to do so, I became nervous, afraid of saying what I really felt: I wasn’t thankful for very much. It was a rough year. One I don’t want to remember save for just a few bright moments. Having made a stalwart resolution not to cry, having thrown on a brave face and blurred my focus a bit, I said the year had been a hard one, that I was thankful for coming home, for having Dennis as my best friend, for seeing all those faces again. And that was true, those words I said. But words don’t cover an abyss and I left myself suspended from those gossamers for the rest of the evening, slipping farther away from the rest of the people there, and held on as best I could through the morning. As Dennis and I drove away in the morning back to the City, I felt myself relax and exhale.

A few hours later, we were with his family, huddled around a little table with a spread to challenge the one from the night before, albeit with a Russian twist. There, I ate as if I hadn’t had food in weeks, laughed loud like I know I can, and fell back into my skin. I looked around the table, shared warm true smiles with the few people there. Felt nourished, not neglectful. There, I didn’t need to feel the history or the expectation to repeat history. I was thankful for this family, the one that’s not even mine. It was almost, almost like it used to be when nothing was wrong. There was dancing and laughter and singing and I was finally thankful for real, the kind of thankful I wish I could have been the night before with the family that is mine. 

And that there is the truth. I know no other way of saying it.

Balls.

I wrote the other day, somewhere in my comings and goings online, that I am growing balls. Not so much in the physical sense (actually not at all in the physical sense) but moreso in the emotional/self-esteem department. I came to New York a newbie to this world (and New York City is indeed a world of its own) and along with that newness came, from somewhere, a sense of unworthiness. Of sensitivities of the eggshell variety. I was afraid to storm down the street, to walk boldly where a million trillion other footsteps have fallen. I was overly kind, not nearly assertive enough to even save my place in line in Target, easily trampled over by the New Yorkers who I felt had every right to do the trampling. “It’s alright,” I’d tell myself, “one day I’ll get there. I’ll be bold someday.”

Folks, that day has come. I am SICK of being the tiny voice. I am SICK of being the “excuse me” in a city where people smack elbows into each other’s sides without a second thought. Ah ha! No More Country Mouse! This is MY city too! I live here! I chose this place! And despite the bumping elbows, it’s welcomed me into its huge concrete and glass arms and hugged me tight with all the bodies pressed together in its subway system. Good God I love this place!

But back to the balls: People, never in my life have I been bold. And this city is changing me for the better. I push right by people on the sidewalk. I lengthen my stride. If we bump, we bump. If someone bumps me and doesn’t say sorry, I get an attitude. I talk to cab drivers. I laugh out loud on the bus. I talk to people on the subway about what they’re reading. I stand up for myself at work: I have opinions and I share them. I tell the truth, even if it sucks. I don’t leave room for insecurities.

People say this is a hard city to live in, to adjust to. I say it’s just what the doctor ordered.

Contentment.

I had started to write a post this week but couldn’t bring myself to the piece. I mean, I couldn’t think of more than just the first two lines or so and then, when frustration overcame me, I gave in and put my attempts to rest. This blog is supposed to be about the good things, and frustration is not one of them.

This weekend was a good thing, though, that’s for sure. It had the perfect balance of relaxation, exploration, good food, work, and through all of it ran a thread of love.

So when Dennis came home at 4:35 in the morning on Saturday after his day of work, I woke up to greet him as he was bent over the sink brushing his teeth. When he comes home that late at night/morning, I rarely open my eyes. But because it had been almost 24 hours since I’d seen him last, and because he’d left the hallway light on, I decided to wake up and stand in the doorway until he saw me. At which point, he jumped, and then smiled, and then we both snuck back to bed and slept late. I’d planned an adventurous day for us on Saturday so when I woke up, I was ready to get started. 

It began with a foray into Brooklyn, a rarely visited but highly romanticized borough, where we went to Patisserie Colson, where my friend works. We had delicious sandwiches, a chai latte, and desserts to fill our bellies before heading to Manhattan. The ride on the subway took the better part of an hour, which was nice only because we were out of the freezing Brooklyn wind, and by the time we walked up into the sunlight of Manhattan, we were ready to have something to do. We walked just a few short blocks, and one really cold one, to a museum. My mom doesn’t want me to tell you which museum we went to, but this is my space, and so I’ll tell you. We went to the Museum of Sex, located on 5th Avenue and 27th. And there were three exhibits, the first of which was called “The Sex Lives of Animals.” And trust me, at first I was giggling, but by the end I was nearly gagging. Seeing that many animals and that much sex was too much for me. I almost welcomed the exhibit of human pornography with open arms. Almost. 

Watching porn in a museum (traditionally a place of quiet reverence and intellectualism) with forty other people is just about the creepiest thing I’ve ever done. And I felt conflicted: how intimate and personal sex is—and there we were, a bunch of strangers all crammed together watching it on twenty different screens, no one making eye contact with anyone else, giggles from some people in some corner, looks of total bewilderment on others’ faces. Was I supposed to be studying these videos from an artistic perspective? Should I have been appreciating the beauty of all the junk on the screen? (Plus all that audio?!) We spent an hour there trying to be as serious as we could, but I soon realized that although the museum took up two whole floors of a corner building on 5th Avenue, there was no room for seriousness. We left the museum laughing, which I guess is how it should be. We can’t be too serious about ourselves, now can we?

For dinner we had Indian back in Queens. This Biriyani House is just a few blocks from our apartment and makes the best chana chat masala I’ve ever had. (Actually, it’s the only chana chat masala I’ve ever had, so by default it’s the best.) We ate heartily and then promptly fell asleep on the couch and slept solidly there from 8pm until 1am. After stumbling to the bedroom, we slept again until almost 10. 

Today I pledged to do some work. Work included cleaning, laundry, and grading kids’ tests and paragraphs. I went to Starbucks by myself where I sat for nearly five hours and pored over my kids’ writing. It was tough at first, but after about an hour I got the hang of it and was pleased to see their writing skills improving. I love teaching how to write a paragraph and it’s especially exciting for me to see kids using the structure I developed to get them to organize their ideas. It’s so clear to me when kids are using that structure because their writing just makes sense. I was so happy to see many of them use the tools I’d given them as they expressed some very complex ideas in very straightforward ways. So I left Starbucks feeling very happy.

 

Now I sit on the couch again, pledging not to fall asleep here. It has been such a wonderful weekend and it’s come at a great time. This is a short week of work and my favorite holiday, Thanksgiving, is just around the corner. We’re going to Albany to be with family, my first Thanksgiving in two years in the States. I love this time of year and I love spending that day with those people. Dennis will join us, too, and so I know it will be a lovely day.

Blog Secret: the day has arrived!

A couple of posts ago, I wrote about participating in an Internet-wide voluntary Blog Secret event, whereby people write anonymous posts and share them on each other’s blogs, using the wonder and magic of Nilsa over here. Today is the day where nearly 100 secrets are hidden all over and I am lucky to be able to hold one of them right here. What follows is a beautifully written, achingly brave self-reflection, and although it would be so nice to meet this person, I honestly have no idea who wrote it or how to find the author. Nilsa has been sworn to secrecy to keep writers’ identities under lock and key, and that is something I respect tremendously. So read the words below, leave some thoughts. And next year, if Nilsa does this thing again, maybe you’ll want to share a secret you’ve been holding in!

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AA
 
Many consider me to be my city’s life of the party. Drinking, as a result, was an escape mechanism for my social anxiety to transform into that VIP person. After another painfully familiar break-up, I took part in Opening Day festivities downtown for baseball season – alone. I proceeded to get smashed beyond recognition.
 
Sadly, that was not my first drunk black-out.  Partially as a result of another blackout that week, I had cheated on my boyfriend, kissing somebody else in a bar. And I didn’t even remember it.
 
I have scattered memories of that opening night – most of which I pieced together with text messaging the next morning. The most horrible incident, is that I walked several blocks back to my car, up five flights of stairs to the top of a parking garage and fumbled for my keys – all in an effort to show up at my ex’s place drunk and desperately wanting. 
 
I had a guardian angel that night. From the little that I remember, a girl and her boyfriend stopped me in that garage, and asked if I needed a ride. I was frank and adamant that I would be driving myself home that evening, thank-you-very-much.
 
Thankfully, she did not allow it. She took my keys, put me in my passenger seat and somehow I gave her directions as to where I lived. Her boyfriend followed in their car. To ensure I would remember the memory perhaps, I threw up in my own car during the commute.
 
After I arrived at my apartment, I remember peeking out the blinds and watching her get into her sedan and drive off. To this day, I still have no clue who that couple was. They probably saved my life that night – or the life of somebody else.
 
The next morning I was embarrassed – albeit extremely hungover – and feeling horribly alienated. I looked at text messages from my ex, which I’m sure had a part in my excessive over-partying. I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry after viewing pictures of people that I don’t even remember meeting. I had a breakdown – a complete mess of a mental breakdown. I imagine the despair I displayed that day was similar to one who feels their life is over. Most of us through the angst of our teenage years feel displaced and suicidal, and that day as a grown adult, I felt similarly finished. The prior night was the climax on a pattern of drinking in which was becoming increasingly difficult to deal. It was making me depressed . And even though having many bar acquaintances, I felt incredibly alone.
 
That night, instead of picking up another bottle – or worse – I showed up at an Alcoholic Anonymous meeting. I cried listening to their drinking stories. I cried introducing myself. I cried when men and women of all ages were inscribing my Big Book with their contact information. I needed help – maybe not even particularly with drinking – but maybe more with what was causing my out-of-control decisions. Drinking had taken over every part of my life. I had no desire for any of my daily activities. I wasn’t even sure if I was even ready to label myself an alcoholic, but I was experiencing a downward spiral to which I had no idea how to crawl out.
 
I stayed sober for a total of six months. I went to 90 meetings in 90 days. Every single day. After the initial three months, I would attend meetings about three times a week. I stood up at some of those meetings too, and shared in the pain and memory. I prayed more then than I had my entire life – not particularly sharing their ideological viewpoints, but a quiet acceptance of my personal Higher Power.
 
This was over four years ago. Today… I drink. Today, I even party more than I should. And many around me probably feel that I still belong in AA. But today, I feel a purpose to my life. Today, I feel a level of control that I was unable to years ago. But four years ago was a leap into accepting responsibility for all my actions – something that I rarely did. I was accountable for everything that  occurred in my life.
 
I have to be cautious though. Because if I learned anything in those meetings, I know that demon will always exist within. 

“Treasure your family and memories!”

Tonight I married Ira Glass. You know Ira Glass, the voice of This American Life, maybe the greatest radio program in modern day Anywhere. If you haven’t listened to it yet, you should start. And then you will become intimately familiar with my new husband and will also want to marry him yourself. You should feel free to want to marry him because I took the liberty to do so tonight and it felt great. I had absolutely no qualms with the fact that he is already married, or that this marriage took place entirely in my imagination while I was supposed to be listening to him speak an introductory piece about a book at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. He stood within a few feet of my beating heart and I swear to you we made eye contact. It was, in that moment, that I married him. And so now you may call me Mrs. Ira Glass. Two. 

 

You are probably asking yourself what Ira Glass and my marrying him has to do with anything. And, quite frankly, it doesn’t. Just a little anecdote to prepare you for the recommendation of this book, a talk about which I heard tonight by the author. She tells the very true story of her search for the family that saved her mother from being murdered in the Holocaust and to hear her speak brought tears to my eyes on more than one occasion, including when I asked her to sign my copy of the book and came out with something like this: “Hi, my name is Gina, and what you did was amazing, and I can’t really talk about it,” and then quickly choked back tears long enough to ensure snot didn’t run down onto her hand while she wrote a note in my book. (The note is the title of this post and I think couldn’t be more true.) This means that of the two authors I’ve met personally, who signed books directly in front of me, I have not been able to offer a single moment of coherent or intelligent conversation but instead rely on my social awkwardness and cry. David Sedaris was the first author I ever met and I was so incapable of speaking, he proceeded to have a conversation with his publicist who sat next to him. 

So listen to my weekend! I went to DC! I saw my best friends! I stayed up past midnight! Twice!  There was salsa dancing, homemade pizza, a lounge owned by Thievery Corporation, a clothing swap, a reunion with high school friends, and lots and lots of talking about Brazil. I bought a $45 roundtrip ticket and got to watch a movie, grade papers, sleep, and drink Starbucks. I slept SO well and came back to NYC on Sunday totally refreshed and excited for the week.

And then came today, Ye Olde Monday, and despite the fact that my morning was awesome, my afternoon came crashing down and by the time six o’clock rolled around, I was yet again questioning why I’d chosen the teaching profession five years ago. The Fight or Flight instincts were rising in my blood after a particularly difficult conference in which I felt wholly responsible for one child’s entire future and guilty that I hadn’t taken action sooner. Noticeably absent from the “Fight or Flight instincts” was the “Fight” component, and as the clock struck 6, I was ready to go home and begin writing my letter of resignation. But somewhere, deep down, the calm, lispy voice of Ira Glass welled up in me and I asked the cab driver to please take me to 108 Orchard Street, where not ten minutes later, he yelled at me because the credit card option wasn’t working on his meter and I was “supposed to have money with me all the time!” Apparently I’m not allowed to get into a cab with just a credit card. He freaked out and, after I patiently tried to explain that I’d be more than happy to go to an ATM to withdraw money for him, he continued to berate me for not carrying cash. After I returned from the ATM I handed him a $20, and while I waited for him to count the change, I bent over and leaned into the window. “Look,” I told him, “I’m a good person. I didn’t do anything wrong and I didn’t appreciate that you got mad at me.” And while he continued counting out singles, he mumbled, “That’s okay, that’s okay.” And I wanted to say, “Dude, I wasn’t apologizing. It wasn’t okay what you did.” But coming out with that would negate the good thing I’d just said, the assertion that I was a good person. And that was the only time in my life I’ve said that to another person. And it’s true. I am a good person. 

And I can be a good person and still make mistakes. I can make mistakes and not be held responsible for a child’s future. And I learn from my mistakes. So I know what to do now. 

And so I celebrated my little personal assertion victory with a few sips of complimentary red wine as I wandered around the museum space. I moved aimlessly around the gift shop, picking up mugs with “Tenement” written across it, thumbing through books about immigration and personal memoirs, and finally rested my hands on a flat magnet in the shape of the Tenement Museum itself. And suddenly, raising my eyes to gaze around the growing number of visitors eager to hear Erin Einhorn tell her amazing family story, they fell upon a gentleman’s bespectacled face, salt and pepper at his temple, and loose leaf in hand. The pit in my stomach softened and the frustration of the previous two hours dissipated in the next sip of Cabernet. I could hear the familiar stuttering search for words, his thoughtful pause between phrases, saw him blink twice. And I knew: it would be a beautiful wedding.

Blog Secret.

 

So one of the things I’m taking on here with this new blog is the opportunity to involve myself more with the blogging community. Nilsa, mother of the blog SoMi, is always full of excellent blog ideas and has a loyal following of readers who are engaged, intelligent, and kind. Nilsa’s started up a Blog Secret idea, wherein bloggers write anonymous posts, send them to Nilsa, and she then connects those anonymous posts to different bloggers. Sounds complicated, I know, but the effect will be very cool. Therefore, on November 18th, if you visit my blog, the writing on there won’t be mine. It’ll be a secret from another blogger, one whose identity I don’t even know. It seems like an exciting project! 

 

In other news, I’m going to Washington D.C on Friday to visit three good friends for the weekend. I’ll see my best friend Drew, who I went to kindergarten with, my friend Erin who I went to middle and high school with, and my friend Mandy who was my closest friend in Brazil. What a lovely reunion it will be!! I’m sure to have lots of photos from the weekend. I won’t be blogging over that time, but I hope to come back with lots of stories.

 

And in other other news, did anyone see the November Anthropologie catalogue? Hellooooo pages 37, 50, 51, and all of page 41.

Motivation.

I’m sitting now in front of my computer at home, well after my Monday work day has finished. It’s not often I enjoy Mondays and this day is no different from all the other Mondays that have come before. Normally, while I might have bemoaned today simply because it is a Monday, that’s not the case today. This morning, my mom left New York, and so I am a little down in the dumps.

I know this blog is called “Oh, the possibilities!” and that it’s supposed to be uplifting and positive. But let me qualify my first paragraph by saying that the only reason I’m down in the dumps is because of how wondrous this weekend with her was. It’s been a full three months since I’d seen her last, at which point she was still frail from this summer’s treatments, so I’m not going to lie and say I wasn’t nervous about seeing her again. How much of  my help would she need? How much extra time would she need to get ready in the morning? Would her bones stick out of her skin like metal coat hangers through a silk shirt? I was nervous, and my own appearance probably showed how frazzled I actually was: pink flip flops, jeans rolled up like I’d been wading in a river all afternoon, a purple “Yes We Can” Obama shirt, and a green canvas jacket. All this topped off with glasses (that’s a bad thing) and my bangs pulled all the way back (even worse.) I paced the arrivals area like a panther and finally got kicked out of the booth where magazines are sold because, as the employee informed me, “Miss, we have a policy that if you are reading a magazine, you are reading it.” The italicized reading, of course, implied that I should be buying the magazine, and rather than politely put it back on the rack or enter into any kind of civil conversation with the man who was, for the record, just doing his job, I mustered all my bitchery and slammed closed the article about Katie Holmes, threw the mag on the rack, said “Yep” to the guy, and walked away. Not much bitchery, I confess, but for a Thursday night I was a top notch asshole and definitely deserved any kind of name the man may have muttered under his breath as he stared at the back of my head. From across the twelve foot hallway, I glared back at his general direction, not totally brave enough to make eye contact. (This, I think, is called being “passive aggressive.”)

And what of my mother? I waited. Every few minutes my eyes would dart to the gate where I saw passenger after passenger greet friends or family or, more often, just walk out alone greeted by no one and exit the building. Where was my mother? Had something gone wrong? Was she getting wheeled out in a wheel chair attached to tubes and oxygen tanks? I paced some more. And glared only when I knew the man wasn’t looking. Next to the magazine booth there was a rack of pamphlets: hundreds and thousands of informational pamphlets about tours and exhibitions and hotels. I took note there was no employee or security guard present who would care if I were reading the pamphlets and so I gathered a few in my hands and read them thoughtfully, more thoughtfully than I would have done had I not just been kicked out of the magazine booth. Thus, thumbing through stacks of cardstock advertising the Top of the Rock Observation Deck with a $2 coupon, the Circle Line Sightseeing Cruises, and a Free Wall Street Walking Tour, I came across a brown tri-fold marked “The Chocolate Show: November 7-9.” 

Our weekend was planned. 

If only my mother would arrive.

And, lo and behold, she did. 

One of the greatest gifts I have is the gift of exaggeration. Trust me, it induces my mother’s gag reflex when I harness all its powers and release a description to the eager ears of listeners to my stories. But this gift came from somewhere (likely developed in utero as my embryonic tail split into legs that never really grew much longer than the two inches they were right there in the womb) and if the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree then we can all safely point our fingers at my mother and say a resounding: “She learned it by watching you!” In any case, as much as I love to utilize exaggeration (or, as the highly literate might call it, “hyperbole,” and this blog is clearly for the highly literate, so congratulations) I cannot use it here. Although this next statement might sound hyperbolic, it most definitely is not. 

The woman–my mother–has never looked better in her entire life. 

Granted, I haven’t been around for her entire life, but in the part of her life in which we have been acquainted, I’ve never had a more beautiful, more vibrant, more courageous, more fabulously dressed mother. 

She was wearing jeans! REAL jeans! Not “mom” jeans. Real jeans. And a shirt with bright flowers and very tasteful sparkly beads. And—–biggest shock of all——new shoes. 

Not to mention the fact that her hair, having fallen out a month or so ago, is now coming in salt and pepper rabbit fur. She is the hippest, coolest mom and I swear to you: I envied her her hair. I spent more than a few minutes over the weekend imagining what I’d look like if I cut it like hers and concluded that if I did take scissors to scalp in the style a-la-Mama, I would look like the son she never had. 

After a few welcoming tears and more than a few OMGs, we went home to Queens and commenced our mother-daughter-occasionally boyfriend weekend. I’ll just re-cap here because I know my mom on her blog will painstakingly recount each passing minute, including the several times when Dennis and I fell asleep on the couch before she did. (I said it first, mom!)

• Dinners: good foods from Grand Central Market, the restaurant Quaint, and Diner in Brooklyn
• Breakfasts: waffles on Sunday by me, leftover coffee from wherever she could find it
• Lunches: ranged in quality from popcorn to designer chocolate
• Activities: Spa treatment at Pure, The Chocolate Show, a failed trip to my school, and a foray into Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to visit family .

So now that my Monday is done, after my weekend—that seemed exceptionally long, I might add—has come and gone, I sit here at the dining room table (that now my mother can picture so she doesn’t have to ask me questions anymore about what color it is or how many people it seats or how close to the front door it’s positioned and can I hear my neighbors through the wall if I’m sitting at it) and compose this post, mostly to say this: my mother is my motivation. I looked at her this weekend and thought, time and again, if she can go through all this cancer crap, if she can lose her hair and spend time in hospitals and lose weight down to near nothingness (and that’s no hyperbole), then I can do something for her. And while I can’t go into her body and carve out her liver and replace it with mine, or with bits and pieces of everyone’s livers who might want to donate some to her, I can build strength and gain strength in other ways. I can fight a little battle myself here in the only way I know how. So with this Monday, November 10th, I am going to start running with the intent to run a marathon. The NYC 2009 Marathon is in November and although I don’t know how I’ll get there, I think I can. 

Obama and my Mama are both living proof that the “Yes We Can” mentality works. And so, again I call into use the apple, the tree, and hyperbole: if she’s got it in her, then I can’t deny it’s somewhere hibernating in me. It’s time to wake up, Little Miss Endurance; there’s a long road ahead of you. Let’s see where it takes us.