Notes of a not-quite-crazy mom

I didn’t cry when I read that Clarence Clemons had died. Instead, I watched a video clip sent via email from my friend Alan with the headline: “Best Rosalita Ever?” It was an old bootleg of Bruce and Clarence doing their thing in black and white. I shared it with my daughter Annie. I also read part of a eulogy Bruce had written, and there was a phrase in it that hit me: “Too Big To Die.” But it wasn’t until yesterday, more than a month after the fact that the tears came.

The emotion was prompted when my friend George Lange, someone who I’ve shared a love for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band with for 37 years (I was 14 the first time I saw Bruce in concert), showed me a video of Bruce and Clarence in Buffalo for what turned out to be their last performance together. In the clip Bruce told yet another highly dramatic version of the magical, night-I-met-the-Big-Man story (scary, dark, Asbury Park) that all Springsteen fans have come to know and love. They reenacted the Born to Run cover pose and then went on into the music.

I was watching while sitting on an old couch my later father had built in a house at the Jersey Shore my parents bought when I was twelve. This is the place where I listened to Springsteen non-stop throughout my teenage summers. I’d lay on an old mattress next to the speakers hooked up in our garage and before or after I worked scooping ice cream or waitressing, or on rainy days or any time I needed company, I’d take in the music. It comforted me. It gave voice to my angst and fueled my dreams. So it seemed fitting this would be the place where it hit me that Clarence was really gone. This was also the place that my dad told me, the summer before he died of cancer, “You reach points in your life when you realize the time to do that thing in your life is over.”

I haven’t seen Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band in a while though I’ve attended about 25 of their concerts over the last four decades. So with the loss of Clarence, I realized with a very tangible sense of finality, that a certain time in my life was over. The end of the POSSIBILITY of that experience and all that came with it, truly hit me. It was more than great music they shared with anyone lucky enough to see them on stage. They shared a love story—with each other and with all of us watching— and it will be shared in the same way no longer.

There are people who think it’s funny that I refer to Bruce Springsteen as Bruce and to Clarence Clemons as Clarence. I get that in the real world they are not my friends, but what they gave me makes them so. And in saying so long to this icon with a saxophone I know I am closing a chapter in my life I was lucky to have. And in a way, I think Bruce was right about Clarence being too big to die. He made himself big to me through the music and the performances and I will carry them with me in memory.

Tonight I am hoping to ride my one speed up the island to have a beer with my friend Joe. We met when he was a line cook and I was a waitress at the Mooring restaurant in Beach Haven, N.J. in 1978 and we’ve been friends ever since. When I was in college, Joe kept in touch by sending “Greetings from Asbury Park” postcards. I am planning to propose a toast to the Big Man and to giving it your all until the time to do that in your life is over.

(written July 2011)

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I was doing some research on relationships recently and I picked up a copy of he’s just not that into you.I know I’m very late on this purchase, but time did not affect the ongoing glee I experienced as I read it cover to cover, laughing all the way. If you hated the movie or liked the movie, it matters not. This is a true work of genius that every young woman should be gifted upon her high school graduation. After reading it I looked up and announced to my girls: “I wish this book existed 30 years ago, it would have saved a lot of time, energy and heartache in my life.”

The book is mostly written from the point of view a guy, Greg Behrendt. He’s caring, insighful and hilarious and he totally gets women—how we behave, how we act and the ridiculous excuses we go out of our way to concoct when men are either a) not interested or b) behaving like jag offs.

It’s a very simple, go-to bible for gals. If you have a question about a guy you know and maybe like or wonder if he maybe likes you, just read this book and you will know what’s what and with great clarity forever more. Sometimes the brutal truth, as it says in the Old Testament sets you free. Of course it doesn’t say this in the Old Testament—heaven forbid there would be something directly applicable in there that didn’t involve sheep. The truth will still hurt, but it will hurt a lot less if you cut your losses early and have someone else’s wise perspective to dust you off.

Anyway, as I look back at my history which contains …well lets’ s see, a drunk, two gay men —my brother Muzz was so right, by the way, when he told me I was a slow learner—and a serial cheater. (These things alone are covered in the following chapters: “He’s Just Not That Into You If He Only Wants To See You When He’s Drunk”; “He’s Just Not That Into You If He’s Not Sleeping With You”; “He’s Just Not That Into You If He’s Having Sex With Someone Else.”) Even more pathetic about that summation is that for me, those men were at one time the A-list.

My inability (until the fortuitous purchase of this book) to really get it when it comes to men is tremendously surprising because I grew up in a home filled with them. I have three brothers and we spent our formative years in a house with a lighted outdoor basketball court. My brothers and many of their friends were all ways around, bouncing the round ball when it was warm enough, playing backyard street hockey during the colder months, and occasionally throwing the football at intervals in between. The toilet seat was always up.

The result was that I grew up in a locker room. I could hang with guys, I could talk sports with the guys, I could have fun with the guys and I could hold my own on a basketball court, but it’s clear now that I was clueless to their true inner workings. I think I walked around for almost the entirety of my dating life with a “DUH” sign over my head.

There are many clear and sad-but-true messages in this book. Peppered throughout are “incredibly unscientific polls,” that I’m sure offer the same information that incredibly scientific ones would. This one stood out: “We polled 20 of our male friends (ranging in ages from 26-45) who are in serious long-term relationships. Not one of their relationships started with the woman asking them out first.” Times have so NOT changed. Of course, this lack of change is not easy to swallow if you’re a gal who likes to take the law into your own hands—if you’re strong, assertive, otherwise intelligent and well, sometimes feel like you need only push fate a tad in your direction. But alas, we cannot overcome biology. We need to read the writing on the scoreboard. We women are like the field of dreams, if they want us, they will show.

Sometimes you will be thrilled at what shows up, sometimes not. Sometimes you will be saved from a train wreck you didn’t see coming. The point is if they’re into you, they will make it clear. No need for interpretations, excuses, or phone machine message playbacks. If they’re not, go dancing with your girlfriends, watch an episode of Friday Night Lights or Modern Family or take a walk in the sun and crank up the Nicki Minaj. If you really pay attention to this book you will accept the signs fast enough NOT to be crushed. Not everyone is smart enough or wonderful enough or DESERVING enough to get the amazing person you are. And if they aren’t, you don’t want them in the first place. Life is not to be spent waiting. My friend Kate Ross and I often quote from the movie version of Neil Simon’s “Chapter Two,” (okay I’m embarrassed that we quote from this because it dates us, but never mind): A Girl Who Sits Waiting By The Phone Sits Waiting By The Phone.

If they want us they will work for it and we need to let them. I knew all this on some level, but until I read this book and felt like someone was holding——with great compassion, humor and no bull shit— a mirror to womanhood, I didn’t get it. We women explain and analyze and rationalize and oh honey, it’s all for naught.

A few years ago, I was out with a friend whose daughter was in her late teens and who, my friend suspected, was beginning to have sex. We talked about at what age we really thought we were ready to have sex. I said, “46.” The sad thing is, I meant it. Physically I was ready in my late teens, but emotionally— 46. Did I mention: SLOW LEARNER? I’m glad I didn’t wait until 46, though I should have held out longer than I did. I will say that growing up in that locker room of boys made me curious to know what the fuss was all about. Unfortunately, while I saw myself as one of the boys and could curse with the best of them, I also thought I was tough like one of the boys and that sex meant the same thing to me as it did to them. It didn’t. I’m also so glad I didn’t wait until 46 to actually have sex because I have two amazing daughters who—thank god—are so much smarter than their mother. My gift to them very, very soon will be this priceless book.

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I have to write about my mother on Mother’s Day. This is the second year she hasn’t been around for the event. Last year I wrote an appreciation of her in Cooking Light magazine and I got a lot of wonderful comments on the piece. But there are parts of my mother that just wouldn’t fly in a national magazine. For instance, I couldn’t have said what her oft-repeated quote about this Hallmark holiday was, and it went like this: “ I hate fucking Mother’s Day. And P.S. don’t buy me anything. I don’t want any more stuff!” Really, seriously, that was my mom verbatim.

Natalie Roth Meyers was not a women of tepid opinion. She screamed at the television set often. When people spoke grammatically incorrectly she was personally offended. If a sports announcer said something stupid she went into a tirade that would have made David Mamet swoon. In college some preppy guy commented on my propensity to use four letter words and said : “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” And to this I replied: “Where do you think I learned it, asshole?”

So my mother’s virulent anti-Mother’s Day stance frees me from the sentimentality that I’m sure a lot of people who have lost their mothers would feel on such a day. I still think about my mom on Mother’s Day and every other day. I’m thankful that she was a woman of huge heart and brilliant mind, but the missing doesn’t go away. The tears that come also have joy. There is joy that my mom was funny and fiery and did not suffer fools. As a kid I was sometimes embarrassed by her directness, her in-your-face willingness to call things as she saw them. I see now as an adult that by doing this, she gave me permission to do the same. To stand up, to say my piece, to ask for what I needed and if a bit of colorful language here and there served to strengthen a point, well then my all means.

If I had one more day with my mom it would be spent holding and loving and laughing, listening to great music and having something yummy brought in —probably Mineo’s pizza and Diet Coke with lots of ice— so we wouldn’t have to spend time cooking or cleaning up. There might be some poetry included and if luck was with us a Steelers game would be on. My brother Muzz tells me she’s here with me and in many ways I know that to be true. I hear her voice in my head. I know when she’d approve and not approve. I know she’d laugh at me losing my patience at the exact same things she had lost her patience over. Take shopping. I used to walk into a store with my mother and within seconds want to join the Witness Protection Program. It would always begin the same way. We’d enter and some sweet sales girl would walk up to us all cheery and chirpy and ask if she could help us with anything and my mother would immediately answer in a direct attack.” If you want me to spend my money in this store you are going to have to turn the music down,” she’d say. As if tasered, the young employee would back away mumbling. I feel my mom’s anger every time I make the mistake of walking my girls into the dimly-lit, music-blaring Hollister in our nearby mall. I don’t attack, though, I usually just turn around, and tell the girls I’ll wait outside, praying that they won’t need me to come in and pay for something.

My oldest daughter, Annie, has her learner’s permit this year. After one particularly fraught ride into town she told me the thing that makes her most nervous when she drives is how I hold onto the car handle above my right shoulder for dear life. I laughed hard when she offered that up because my mother did the exact same thing. I don’t know if my mom was ever was comfortable with my driving and I’m afraid that my daughter and I may share the same fate. I realize now that it had little to do with my road skills and everything to do with the powerlessness you feel over your children in the world and how acutely that hits you when they are behind the wheel of a large automobile.

Last week I had a bit of a crying time thinking about my mom and a friend stopped by mid-cry. She is a very sweet, very well-meaning friend who was very serious about explaining to me that she communicated with people who are no longer living. (You have to remember, I live in Boulder, Co.) So on this day my friend who speaks to the dead mentioned that my mother was talking to her and started telling me what my mother was “saying.” I know my friend was trying to cheer me up and I didn’t get mad at her when she proceeded to say all these sweet things that a mother would say.

Secretly though, I couldn’t wait to call my fiancée and tell him what I didn’t have the heart to tell my friend, and that is that my mother would NEVER have said those things. She didn’t talk that way. She was not a person to speak in vapid pleasantries or spew out stuff that you’d see in needlepoint somewhere. My mother found subtlety difficult and though she was often incredibly kind and loving to me, there was no syrup to it. So I’m thinking that what my mother would have said was this: “If I can communicate with the living , why the FUCK would I be talking to YOU when I could just speak with my daughter directly?!”

And yes, my mother would have told me she loved me and she was proud of me and she also would have insisted that I stop being sad and just go and enjoy my life. She would have used the line she always used when I needed a kick in the ass: “Enough of your self pity, Max.” I dreaded that line because it was always true. Nobody wants to hear words like that, which is why mothers have to say them. As the mom of two teenagers, I now know how hard that is to do, and I love her even more for it.

So today, in my mom’s honor, there will be no tears and no self-pity, Max. I’m thinking a good dose of Nina Simone, a glass of red, some meatloaf, a glob of mashed potatoes and a few choice words: “Happy Fucking Mother’s Day.”

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I have always said that I feel lucky with every birthday I get. With number 50 my luck was enhanced by an extra gift: a colonoscopy. It took me seven months to get around to scheduling my suggested screening so by the time I had booked it and filled out the forms, it was winter. I read and re-read all the information about what you’re supposed to do and not do the few days leading up to the procedure and had picked up my prescription for the foul-tasting colon cleanser stuff that you have to drink the night before. But before embarking on my prep, I was worried about a storm prediction that was supposed to leave us with a foot of snow. Should I cancel? I didn’t want to do that because I was psyched to get it over with, but I imagined the horror of drinking the river of disgusting liquid goo all night and then not actually being able to get to the Medical Center.

In an effort to figure out my best move, I dialed up the very new and glitzy Colonoscopy’s R Us place and explained my worry. “We have never had a day where the docs couldn’t get here and we feel that if the docs can get here then you should be able to get here, too,” the woman at the desk told me, completely unsympathetic to my dilemma. “Well,” I said, “Maybe the docs don’t drive the same car as me. Do you think the Docs could pick me up in their Lexus (Lexii?) ?” I swear I said it in a fun-loving way, but she did not see the humor so I reckoned that she probably wasn’t the right person to chat with about how badly written and confusing the instructions actually were. Instead, I hung up and called in the girlfriend troops with heavy duty 4-wheel machines and put them on warning that I might need back up and began to drink the vile liquid.

I followed the perscription instructions to the letter—one cup every ten minutes until you drink the first half of the zillion-gallon jug. The liquid loomed like an evil trough. Seriously, it was a small tributary of the Allegheny River as far as I was concerned. I’m not a big fluid kind of gal —don’t drink volumes of things I LIKE, so this was very, very hard. But I swallowed like a good soldier, and then—-nothing. I’m talking zero action. I waited an hour and begn to drink the remainder of the batch. My stomach looked like it was six months with child. It felt like there was no more room in my body, but I keep forcing it down. On the fourth go round, my body revolted and the clear liquid re-routed up and out, but obviously not from the intended orifice. I waved the white flag and waited for three more hours until the noxious liquid had had it’s way with me. Lovely, lovely time. A shit fiesta.

I woke up the next morning to a world of white—about seven inches of snow had fallen, but not enough to stop my friend Liz’s minivan and I arrived right on time. The nurse was a guy and when he asked me how I was feeling I told him that the human Drano made me puke. He said that a lot of people report feeling nauseated. “Not nauseated,” I replied, hoping he would show a little compassion. “I’m talking puke. Full on puke.” Instead, of commiserating, he stood speechless—a deer in the headlights in scrubs— and took me to a room where, before he left, he pulled some floor-to-ceiling curtains around me and told me to disrobe and put on a hospital gown. Another nurse, a female, came in for a drug discussion. I asked to be heavily sedated but not knocked out.

I don’t remember much about the procedure itself. I tried to look at the screen so I could see what the doc was seeing but it started to ebb and flow in my vision like a weird video game. I remember twice saying “Ouch” rather loudly because I felt pain. And then it was over. They gave me a clean bill of health, for which I was extremely grateful, and said come back in ten years. I asked the doc why it hurt even with the drugs and he said there were “a couple of sharp turns.” I didn’t say anything in response, but I was thinking: ‘Really? You’re gonna blame it on my colon? As a kind of colonoscopy diploma or parting gift they gave me two stapled sheets of paper summarizing the day’s activity with two pictures: one of my rectum and one of the top of my colon. I wanted to mention to them that the former is a photo no one needs to have, but instead I waited for my friend Jaimi to pick me up—a knight in shining white Honda Pilot— and escort me home.

I had told everyone I knew that I was taking the day off. No work, no emails, no texts, no chores in the mommy department, no cooking. It was ten in the morning when we pulled into my driveway and I was still pleasantly drugged and looking forward to an entire day of NOTHING. I was so happy to be under my comforter with no to-do lists in my head and no work on the docket that when my fiancee called he suggested that I make the colonoscopy a semi-annual event. It was way better than a day off because it was a day off with no expectation. I just need to figure out how to work that into my real life.

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My daughter Emmy’s Gold Crown Basketball coach is a guy named Ernie Kois. He’s in his early forties, works full time and he and his wife Liz have four girls: Morgan, Maddie, Olivia and Lilly. during Ernie holds practice two nights a week for an hour and a half each (he often drives many of the girls home) during basketball season and then spends most of his Saturdays or Sundays driving to games (they’re usually 40 minutes away and played as doubleheaders with a one hour break). I’ve never seen Ernie yell at a kid or a ref. I’ve only seen him give the girls positive feedback and signs of encouragement. I’m a pretty competitive person when it comes to sports and I played for a city championship girls’ high school basketball team in Pittsburgh. We were very good and even though it was a zillion years ago, I find it difficult to sit in the stands sometimes and watch these girls dribble with their heads down or miss layups or their inability to leave the ground on a jump shot. I try to take deep, deep breathes when the sweet ones, with not an aggressive bone in their bodies, neglect to rebound or take an open shot. I have to admit it makes me a little crazy. But I just squirm silently and cheer loudly for the good stuff and keep the rest to myself because as a mom, it’s important to pretend you’ve evolved even when you’re painfully aware of your deeper nature. Also because I know these girls are doing their best.

But Ernie, he just encourages and sees the good. I call him Coach K because there was this one play before the half of a game in Highlands Ranch where our team had the ball with like four seconds on the clock and I think it was his daughter Olivia who passed the ball the length of the court (Olivia weighs like 60 pounds with her ski boots on) that was caught by Allie Scheifele who tossed up a three that hit nothing but net right at the halftime buzzer. It was a Duke play (I immediately thought of Christian Laettner) only more miraculous in my mind based on the size of our players and their probability at pulling it off. (A high scoring game for us is somewhere in the twenties). From then on, I have called him Coach K, because a) I think he deserves the same respect and b) in my heart, he so earned that play as a reward for all he does.

At one point after the burrito buffet at our End-Of-The-Year team party, Ernie was downstairs with all the girls, playing “Just Dance” on the Wii with assitant coach Megan (another one of those angels we parents run into if we’re lucky) and the girls were cracking up. It was a sight, watching him try to imitate dance moves, having fun, not worried about the ridiculousness of a middle-aged guy doing teenage dance moves. Later when Ernie adressed both kids and parents and gave each girl a certificate for her season, he talked about them one by one with much praise for the unique things they brought to the team and the court. He cried as least three times. Once when he talked about how honored he was to spend the time with them and be their coach, once when he talked about the values he hoped they were learning together and once when he talked about Taylor Collins and how much he loved having her on the team and how sad he was she was moving to Ohio. There may have been a fourth time but I don’t remember it specifically. I felt then, and I feel now, that I’m so lucky Emmy gets to have a coach like that. He nominated my daughter for a Student Athlete Award (see above) unbeknownst to us—it was about sportsmanship and game and academics— and when he called to tell us she had won he was as excited as if it had been his own kid.

I am very close with my girls and I often try to point out, in a real world way, why I think certain attributes are important. My daughters have a mother who is a crier—they tell me about something sad they learned in history class and I weep, I hear a brutal news story on the radio and I weep. I tell them about some reporting I’m working on about someone doing really good work in the world and I weep. So I was thrilled to have Ernie in my camp. “Coach ernie really cried a lot.” Emmy observed. “I know Em,” I say, “I think it’s really cool when men are able to feel things so deeply and not afraid to show their emotions.” I thought back to my own dad who was an amazingly wonderful guy and in his 71 years I remember him crying only three times. Once when his own father, who had been invalid for many years, passed away. Once when we were watching “Brian’s Song” for the first time, and once when he said goodbye to my aunt while he was dying from cancer.

I know I am happy that my daughter has already been exposed to the sight of grown men— wonderful, responsible, successful, grown men— crying and that she understands there’s nothing weak about it. I know she understands because one time we were talking about a girlfriend of mine who is a sweet soul, but has not had the best of luck with men and Em said: “Mom, so-and-so deserves an Ernie Kois.” This is a secretly joyous mother moment in which I speak matter of factly and continue to drive the van. “You’re right, Em, ” I say. “ And so do you. All good women deserve an Ernie Kois.”

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