The Perfect Mate

The other day I was dining with three friends, two of whom are single and looking. The inevitable topic of finding The Right Guy brought out some of our beliefs about love. One woman, Hermione*, said that she'd rather be alone than settle on something less than perfect. Another woman, Magdalena, chimed in that you just need to find the person who is perfect for you. At this point, I voiced my opinion that I actually don't believe it works that way. That perfect simply does not exist. At which point the third friend who is married, Lilith*, said something like "Yeah, remember I was just saying how I wanted to rip Peter's friggin' head off the other day, he's driving me out of my mind!"

I think that often it comes down to the sort of person you are: tolerability, adaptability, willingness to compromise and your commitment to working at it for the rest of your life. If forever is what you are aiming for anyway.

How deep your commitment is to a person and to the institution of marriage will determine longevity. I'm not breaking any new ground here and yet I'm truly surprised by the number of women in this city who keep looking and looking for Mr. Perfect (no longer Mr. Right) and finding themselves consistently disappointed.

The more I look at my own relationship (together total of 12 years, married 5) I see that it comes down to a few things: Laughing, Talking, Crying, Listening, Compromising. And not necessarily in that order.

You simply find someone who complements you, who you laugh with, can cry with, and who doesn't get on your nerves the majority of the time.

*Ordinary names changed to make it a more interesting read

The Non-Walking, Creeper Crawler

My nearly 14-month-old is still not walking but she's creepy crawling all over the place. That's what my husband and I call her movement style. Sophia kind of looks like Igor, one knee down as she drags the other straightened leg along, jettisoning across the hardwood floor. A master cruiser, she is actually rather graceful despite the Igor reference, moving from coffee table to sofa, crawling along the floor and then over to a chair and up, up, up into my arms. She's super fast and often appears right under foot when I'm at the kitchen sink when just moments before I saw her clear across the living room. Quick and quiet. Except of course when she's yammering on about one thing or another. We assign all sorts of topics that she's enjoys speaking about, pretending she's made a fascinating point about the Obama campaign or about a classical piece of music we're listening to.

I Am A Writer

OK, albeit not a published one.

But I'm a writer.

Can millions of believers in The Secret be wrong?

So what the hell? I'll just go out on a limb (hey no one actually reads this blog anyway so in fact it's not all that risky)

I'm a writer. I'm a published, successful, happy, fulfilled, financially-abundant writer.

There, I said it. Typed it, at least.

So Universe, I'm ready now.

You can go ahead now and summon the Agents.

And bring on the Publishers.

And let us not forget about the zillions of Loyal Readers of my blog and soon-to-be published stories.

Or wait, I think I'm supposed to say it as though it has already been published, right? (Shit, if that's the case then I better start writing)

Yes, that's right, I remember now. It's all about using the present tense. To think, speak, act as though whatever I desire is happening right this instant.

Let's try this again.

Thank you, Oh Wonderful Universe, for the millions of dollars I'm making as a writer.

Right now.

Thanks for the loyal following of so many readers, the countless lives I've impacted with my prose, for helping me to make this world a little bit brighter.

And with all this financial abundance, I'm buying my dream farmhouse up in the mountains right this very second. As I'm signing the contract, simultaneously I'm also signing autographs at the local Barnes & Noble for my latest brilliant book of short stories. I've already closed on my summer home in Greece and currently spend three months each year on Santorini except of course when I'm on location elsewhere for the film I've written, directed and produced.

Wow, I really love you, Sweet Universe. You are very kind and generous. I think I've really gotten the hang of this whole Secret thing.

And I'm really, really psyched to be booked on the Oprah show.

So thanks, Universe.

I won't let you down.

The small print: The thoughts expressed in this piece are strictly those of the author and have not been endorsed by The Universe.

Ode to the O (For Parents Only)

Oh, dearest O

I knew the day would come

I just didn't think it would be this soon

So long, dear beautiful Cheerio

The first love of my daughter's young life

Oh how she once loved you so

You won't be forgotten

What I Won't Miss About City Living

• Hoarding quarters for laundry
• Alternate side of the street parking
• "Sorry, Ladies & Gentlemen. We're being held in the station due to a Sick Passenger."
• City supermarket shopping with a one-year-old (no car, no shopping cart)
• Having a teeny tiny bathroom (with no window) no matter what size my apartment is
• Manuevering a stroller down subway stairways and through turnstiles
• The smelly, scary, insane guy with a kitten tucked into his filthy army jacket barking about the war, abortion, taxes, how he's being followed and would all of us crazy fucking people on the C train just shut the fuck up, he's not crazy, we're the crazy ones

Not Playing Around

I have an extremely low tolerance for forced relationships. Does it make me totally shallow to admit that I thoroughly enjoy and cherish super easy friendships? Maybe it's because I've had various difficult personalites to deal with in my life (read: family) that it has led me to feel so strongly about those friendships that happen naturally and effortlessly. Those people with whom I feel I can totally be my silly, sappy, ridiculously emotional and raw self. The special peeps in my orbit who every single time I get together with them there is such raucous laughter, prolonged witty banter which no one else quite gets, and such honest-to-goodness great fun that it could be days later when I'm riding on the C train and I smile to myself, already reminiscing about our last get together and how lucky I am to have such wonderful friends. Ahhh, if only everyone I knew could offer such richness to my life (and I to theirs, of course. Two way street and all).

So it should come as no surprise that playgroups are fairly high on my hate-to-do list. Not that anyone in particular has a gun to my head but somehow I feel the pressure to attend. Not often, but sometimes. Despite being armed with the simple truth that playgroups suck in my humble opinion, there are times when that little thing called Mother Guilt comes a-banging on my door, and I feel I must answer her call.

The next thing you know I'm bundling up my poor girl and trudging over to go to a playgroup at some random person's house (from a posting on a local parents message board for an open playgroup that afternoon) who I don't know and probably won't like very much. I don't mean to be harsh but as time passes and seems to actually speed up as I'm advancing in age, time is my most valuable commodity and so whom I choose to spend my time with is of utmost importance. Why then would I ever actually choose to sit crossed-legged on the floor of some strangers' house, not being offered a morsel of food or a drop of water, rather than visit with a cherished single friend or have another visit with dear old Grandma? Mostly I blame those damn parent magazines that get me reeling in the first place, all those stories and blurbs specifically designed to make you feel guilty and inferior at every turn. Seriously, my kid eats organic food much of the time, never watches TV, has jazz and classical music playing softly in the background every day and yet still there might be the simplest little line in a magazine about the importance of interacting with other tiny people of similar age and it will get me thinking that somehow my child is not being properly socialized and it's all my fault. Because honestly, when you think about it, how long can a reasonable person continue to delude herself that staying at home all day with her thirteen-month-old, dancing our asses off to Confessions on a Dance Floor (I love you, Madonna) can somehow pass for one of those fancy Music & Me classes?

So every once in a great blue moon, I find myself smack in the middle of a mommy playgroup with a bunch of random mothers and babies of varying ages, when a wave of recognition floods over me that yes indeed these groups really do suck. They're no fun for anyone including my thirteen-month-old daughter whose only desire is to press down on a four-month-old's head just because his face is funny or squishy and feels nice or whatever her reasoning is. And she's totally bummed that I'm stopping her. I swear that I've seen a passing look on her face that says something like "Mom, please. Let's get outta here, head on back home to Madonna dancing and call it day. This party stinks and you know it." (I realize this might seem implausible since she's so young but if my girl is anything she's super expressive.) It's either that, or I spend way too much time alone, lacking sufficient adult interaction thereby having to resort to projecting greater meaning onto my toddler's simplest mannerisms.

So anyway, back to the playgroup. Just as I'm politely waiting for a lull in the forced conversation, silently concocting my escape plan, there inevitably comes that moment when one of the moms makes a seemingly innocuous comment. Perhaps it's a newbie Mom, an innocent who truly doesn't know any better, but singlehandedly she cracks open the seal, the floodgates burst forth and spill all over the parquet living room floor.

What I'm talking about is when one mom comes out with a doozy like "I dunno, I just feel so, um, inadequate sometimes....like, why can't I get little Caleb-Cody-Dashiell-Whoever to sleep and my husband can? I mean, I'm his Mom and I just feel so, uh, like I should be able to do it, like what's wrong with me?" And then like a pack of wild hyenas who have just found their prey, all the others join in, clawing and gnawing away with all sorts of deep confessions and/or rantings. And no matter where the conversation started, it could have been about solving sleep issues or how to switch to a sippy cup, eventually it comes to this: "And geez, what ever happened to having a sex life, right ladies?" A collective ha-ha-ha. As if it's not bad enough that I'm not getting any at home, but I'm supposed to now laugh it off with a bunch of other sex-starved, sleep-deprived mommies. Mental note to self: Cancel Parents magazine. And New Year Resolution #1: No More Playgroups in 2008.

I suppose all of these true confessions come forth as an effort to feel connected with Moms Like Me. But really it only serves to push me further away and I just want to high tail it out of there, buy a large pizza and a tub of Ben & Jerry's Peanut Butter Cup ice cream and go gorge myself. Anything would be better than having to have the I'm So Uncertain of My Mothering Skills talk. I just hate it. And I'm not very good at when it really comes down to it. This of course now leads me to my dirty little secret. The one that I've secretly held even while my girl Ol' Soph was still in utero. Perhaps it's the only thing that I truly know for sure about myself.

I'm a damn good mom. Period.

What?! Did I just say that outloud (well, type it)? I know what you're thinking. But really, I think I'm pretty darn good at what I do. In fact, no job I've ever had in my whole life has ever suited my skill set better than being a Mom. Plus I love my boss, she's super cool and funny and really smart and kind of kooky but in a good way and...well, I could go on and on about her but I digress. Back to my original point here, which is that I really love my job and I think I do it very well. I realize that this is such blasphemy to be so certain and secure in this age of inappropriate confessions on television and questioning every single move we make as parents, but it's just how I feel.

Lest you think that the author here has a split personality, I think most parents would agree that even the most secure among us has her moments of weakness, when doubt comes creeping on in, an uninvited guest but there he is. I'm wondering now if perhaps what I need is a Playgroup Sponsor, someone to call when I'm feeling particularly weak and might resort to using. Someone who will listen to my yearnings (But Sophia needs interaction with other children her age) and then gently remind me that there's another way: Honey, go live your life. Meet a friend. Go out for a cup of coffee. Hell, meet a friend for a cup of coffee. Take a walk. Go shopping. Visit the library, the zoo, a museum, you know do whatever you like to do.

Finally, along these lines, I heard an acquaintance once say that you don't have to sucuumb to only baby-friendly activities once you have a kid. In fact, he said, you just bring the wee one into the fold. That's right, just fold them right into your life. Now, that's more like it.

I Hate Fairway

I hate Fairway. I admit it. It took a visit with my husband and ten-month-old girl this past weekend – complete with two walk-outs, more than a few harsh words and the ol’ silent treatment on the drive home – for me to finally just say it: I can’t stand Fairway. I know, it’s completely insane. Almost criminal. I live in Brownstone Brooklyn, complete with a private garden out back, hardwood floors, exposed brick, a cat, a baby, a husband. Plus I have a car. How can I not shop at Fairway? It’s just pure blasphemy, I tell you. What must the neighbors think?

In fact, I fear that I may be kicked out of my neighborhood, forced to move back to The Other Brooklyn from where I originally come. (Oh please don’t make me go back to that two-fare zone working-class neighborhood of my youth, taking the local D train and switching to a twenty minute bus ride to my house. I’ll eat only organic foods if you promise to let me stay here).

I imagine a duo of granola-eating, vegan, community-garden planting representatives from the neighborhood on my doorstep, their badges cut from hemp-infused, pure cotton remnants (all profits made from the sale of this article of clothing goes to charity, of course). I answer the door in Gap pajamas, hand-sewn by eight-year-old children in a third world sweatshop, and politely get hauled (ok, escorted) into the backseat of a hybrid where they serve me organic apple juice and ask me if I don’t mind answering a few questions. After a polite chat and a few lies on my part (“I shop at the Farmers’ Market at Fort Greene Park every Sunday instead”), they release me from their environmentally friendly car with a slight wag of the finger (“Oh, and for the record, Ma’am, the Farmers’ Market is on Saturdays). They tell me that they’ve got their eye on me. A few more slip-ups and I’m out.

We arrived at the Fairway in Red Hook at around noon. On a Sunday. Clearly, we are amateurs. Plus, we’re toting around a stroller with a sick child. Before the automatic doors even opened I could have written the ending to this tragic story. But we forged ahead, despite the ominous foreshadowing, and within twenty-two seconds of setting foot in the store, my husband who hates to shop for anything, spins his empty cart around and says something along the lines of “You know what I see here? I see a shitload of food in our fridge two months from now that we’ve got to throw out”. This was in response to “Honey, so what kind of vegetables do you think we should get?” It would come out much later – literally eight hours later as I still stewed about our unsuccessful trip to the market - that my husband told me why he had immediately hated the place. A scraggly-bearded father was thoughtfully fondling mushrooms with the intensity and pomposity of a new wine aficionado just as we walked into the produce section at the front of the store. The timing could not have been worse for our doomed excursion. Admittedly, had I witnessed this scene myself I probably would have spun around my Peg Perego (note: not the requisite Bugaboo in my ‘hood. Which, by the way, is Clinton Hill), marched out to our Honda and driven straight over to our local Associated where regular folks shop.

And in fact, I actually did march out. But not because of the Mushroom Fondler. No, I knew on a guttural level that only bad things could come if we were to proceed after such a damning comment from my husband. And I almost made it into the car, wheeling my little baby’s stroller like a racecar driver, but my husband convinced me that ‘hey, we’re here…so let’s just give it a shot’. Given the fact that we order pizza on most nights (we’ve put the pizza man’s son through college and graduate school by now) because we literally don’t have any food lying around to cook up, we probably should have started our food shopping campaign (“Damn it, John! We’ve got to start cooking and feed our daughter some real food already!”) on a smaller scale. Baby steps instead of trying to run a marathon. But no, that wasn’t to be. Today, we were totally going for it.

There’s no rhyme or reason to Fairway. At least to the amateur eye there isn’t. There’s certainly enticing food every which way you turn, I’ll give you that. And that’s coming from someone who doesn’t really like to eat or cook. Someone who truly doesn’t mind having pizza literally every single night. So enthralled by the market, I even stopped to try a spicy tapanade on a teeny cracker, which in and of itself is so unlike me that my husband was down an aisle and had loop back around to get me. He looked puzzled as I chewed, as if he were thinking “Hey, who is this woman? And what did you do with my wife, The Pizza Eater?” But on this day, I thought to myself, oh yes, this is who I want to be. A family that shops together at a gourmet market on Sundays. We’ll try new things and we’ll take our time shopping. Hey, we can make a whole day of it. Food shopping is not a chore, no, no! It’s an experience! What a revelation!

I could tell that my husband was confused by the layout of the store, and admittedly so was I. We’re people who find comfort in a grid. Sure, straight up and down aisles are monotonous but they’re easy to navigate. And they make sense. Plus there’s no way that you’ll miss anything. In Fairway, there’s a very good chance that you’ll bypass an entire section of good stuff and who wants to walk away wondering if you’ve missed the best of the best, right? I tried to go to the B aisle, sticking to my usual compass of start at one end of the store and weave up and down the aisles in an orderly manner. Turning around, my husband and the cart were missing. I found him grabbing a box of Clif bars and he seemed momentarily thrilled to have found such goodness. He pays two bucks per bar in the City, he told me. Buy the whole box here and it’s half the price per bar. Nice. Times are a-changin’, I smiled to myself.

Next, we moved onto a little aisle where I found some caffeine-free tea. I’m normally a coffee drinker but recently I decided that indeed I would become a tea drinker as well. Coffee for the morning and a relaxing tea at night. Like bookends for my day. Across from the fourteen thousand choices of tea were peanut filled containers that churned out rich butters of different flavors. John’s eyes filled with glee like Christmas morning when you know you’re getting your first bicycle. He reached for a container to start the churning and I gently reminded him that we had an ocean of a store to swim and to not get too carried away at peanut butter that cost $6.99 per lb. With being a full-time mom in a now one-income home, I’m the counter of pennies these days. He obliged by choosing two flavors but in small quantities. I like how this fella operates, I thought, and we continued on our way.

I won’t go into every other aisle we meandered down or every product we carefully considered partly because that’s just too tedious. But mostly because in the end there weren’t a whole lot of items in our cart. Shortly after the euphoria of the Peanut Butter Experience, John came over and asked if $5.99 was a lot to pay for a jar of tomato sauce. He hadn’t realized we were now onto Organic Foods and that they cost a pretty penny more than our Manager’s Special of Classico for $1.99 at our local store. He seemed to accept my response with no argument, when all of a sudden he was behind me saying: “You know what?! We’re done here! Let’s go to our Associated. You know what they say, Know Thyself. And this isn’t us! We’re outta here”. Or at least that’s what I heard him say. I could see that he was overwhelmed by the place but I was too irritated to try to help him navigate it. Next, wheels are spinning angrily to the checkout where we ended up with forty dollars worth of Seventh Generation laundry detergent, organic pasta (on sale), some churned peanut butter and decaf tea. Not only were our cupboards going to still be empty but so was my hope for the Life I Wanted. Scene after scene played itself out inside my head, each quickly vanishing as I tried to retrieve it. We’d never become the environmentally-conscious, organic-eating, Fairway-shopping family I so desperately wanted us to be. We’d forever shop at local bodegas to pick up a tub of butter at the last minute because we again forgot to shop that week and it was so late that even the local supermarket was closed now. We’d never, ever get our act together. I felt like such a loser.

Ugliness ensued and for my own sake, I won’t repeat the nasty words I launched at my poor husband who was oblivious to the little picture perfect image I had painted inside my mind for us. All that I will say is that we lost this Sunday, never to get that time back again. In the end, the angry words and actions I chose are out there, also never to be retrieved. And all for what? About food shopping? Weren’t we past all of this kind of nonsense having been together for eleven years now? What can I say? We’re both half Italian and hate to miss a good chance to scream rather than speak about something calmly. Or that’s my excuse today. When really I’ve spent my entire life dreaming about becoming someone else. Shedding my ugly old skin for a more beautiful one that’s worth more in the eyes of others. And it’s my husband, my loud, gregarious, heart-on-his-sleeve, thought-in-his-head-comes-right-out-of-his-mouth, tough-talking-yet-truly-gentle-soul, (and damn it), honest-to-a-fault, love-of-my-life, who is simply who he is. He does not put on airs and can’t stand anyone who does. I admire him for that. Or I fight him tooth and nail. It really depends on the day (not to mention, the time of the month).

As my energy to fight my husband began to deplete, we figured out what The Fairway Incident was all about. Or at least we laundry listed some of the reasons for such lunacy. Jumbled in there were the matters we’ve been dealing with lately: a serious, all-consuming family illness, extreme pressure at his job, my feelings of powerlessness in not being able to bring money into the household because I’ve chosen to raise our daughter full-time for now. Throw in some existential questions for good measure and you’ve got a bouillabaisse of Issues To Be Worked Out In Red Hook. As I approach my thirty-eighth birthday next week, I find myself scrawling in my journal “What really is my purpose in life, anyway?” And comments like "I’ll never become a dentist now!” keep coming out of my mouth. Which is kind of an inside joke but actually it’s simply a commentary on all the things that I won’t be accomplishing in this lifetime, an acute awareness of the passage of time and my fear that I’ve already squandered so much of it with such pettiness like Sunday’s episode. (But for the record, I never had any interest at all in dentistry so it’s really not such a loss after all.) Anyway, you could call it a perfect shit storm of the realities we’re dealing with at the moment.

At the end of the night (or so goes the story I’m telling here. Perhaps I even went to bed still upset. But that doesn’t sew up the story the way I want to), he asked me quite simply:

“Tell me the truth. Did you like Fairway?”

Deer in the headlights, naked in the light of day. Looking him in eye, I could not lie to him:

“No,” I said sadly.

“You hated it as much as I did, didn’t you?,” he asked, not to rub it in or to score the point. Simply wanting to know how I really felt.

“Yeah. It’s just too much,” I added. “Too confusing.”

“So, fine. Let’s just shop at Associated down the street. And then maybe someday later on, once we’ve got the whole shopping thing down we could try Fairway again?” he offered.

“OK, fair enough,” I said, happy to try to wind things down once and for all. But secretly, my true self emerged with a loud, booming voice in my head and she said “No fucking way!” Not because of the fight we had or the fear of a sequel. But because in the end, you can take the chick out of Gerritsen Beach but you can’t make her shop like a Park Slope gal.

(October 2007)