Last week, we had our friends Rick and Deb over for dinner. We were going through an especially rough time, not having seen Dan’s daughter C for a long while and not having access to her, and Rick and Deb have been a strong set of shoulders for us to lean on. We got to talking about what we could do in terms of keeping the faith when Rick suggested we all go to a “sweat lodge.”
I had never heard of a sweat lodge before so I was intrigued. What is it? Do they keep the heat over 75? Do they do hot yoga? Give pedicures by moistening the skin so intensely that it just flakes off on its own—no scraping or rubbing required? Do they let you sample a variety of hydration beverages? Do some sort of mud wrap that brings all the toxins to the surface so you look younger? Have less cellulite? I had so many questions.
So Rick and Deb told me that it was an ancient Native American ceremony of prayer and purification that involved heating rocks in a fire, bringing them into the center of the lodge, pouring water on them so they steam, and praying.
Is there Jesus talk, because, you know, I’m Jewish. We don’t generally pray to Jesus.
No, it’s all very spiritual and soul-cleansing.
Like a colonic?
Well, not as graphic.
Good, because my mother worked for a proctologist when I was growing up and an enema was her cure-all, so I have issues.
Too much information.
Does it involve some alternative language, like Hebrew, say, or Swahili? Cause I don’t speak either.
No, prayer could be words or songs or silence. Even chanting.
I like chanting. I do it all the time in the shoe department at Nordstroms. “Do you really need those? YES YES YES NO YES OH GOD YES.”
This isn’t anything at all like Nordstroms.
That’s okay. Will there be pound cake? There’s usually pound cake after services at a synogague.
Well, no. But there’ll be a pot luck feast, so we each have to bring something to eat.
Oh, okay, good. So you’re saying there might be pound cake, then?
As we played Q&A, I let my mind conjure up the image of a peaceful getaway at a well-kept spa in an exotic location. Where you can call upon the spirits to relax you enough to soothe your puffy eyes, eliminate unnecessary wrinkles, and leave you feeling younger, thinner, and less hungry for pizza or tuna salad with REAL mayonnaise. It sounded like a place to commune with aestheticians for a reasonable price. And then, attend a nice buffet of cold items, perhaps a nice pasta salad with pesto or cold shrimp.
This could be very Las Vegas meets the Berkshires, I thought to myself. Upscale gym meets Ruby Tuesdays. Hot springs meet Denny’s. What could be bad?
I’m in. Let’s do it.
So we did. With much excitement and anticipation, we went on a Sunday night, two days after a late March ice storm that laid a dirty carpet of hard snow on the grass and roads. Dan and I picked up Rick and Deb after a brief stop at Giant to get a set of broccoli and mushroom quiches and a tub of hummus. (Rick had suggested we bring something “sort of vegan-y.”) We were excited. We’d had enough of the cold and looked forward to the warmth of the lodge. I was looking forward to some effective moisturizing after.
As we pulled up a long driveway to somebody’s backyard (who I would later learn was “Jim”), we saw several people standing around a fire by an old garage. A few sat on an old bench next to a wooden fence. We followed Rick and Deb into the old single house to put away the food we had brought for after “the sweat.”
I asked Deb, “Where’s the lodge?” After all, I didn’t see anything in the back yard but the fire, the people, and the garage. Did we have to go somewhere else to get there? Would there be a shuttle? Did it have a bathroom? (I pee a lot.)
She took my hand, led me back out to the people and the bonfire, and pointed to a small blue dome behind them. It looked like a latex igloo, large enough to sleep two at a campsite.
“What’s that?” I said.
“The sweat lodge.”
“That’s it?” My heart started to race.
“That’s it.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Oh.”
—————————————————————————–
Everything after that happened fast. The girls got changed into shorts, tee shirts, and flip flops in what I assumed was Jim’s bedroom, while the guys changed in the old garage. We grabbed our towels on the way back out and covered ourselves with sweatshirts that, just moments later, would be yanked off and flung to the side just prior to entering “the lodge.”
Scantily clad (for me, at least), in bare feet, and shivering, I waited in line behind Dan for safety. When it was his turn to go in, a skinny guy, who was topless, waved a piece of lit sage around his body as if he were drying an SUV just out of the car wash. Then, he instructed my poor husband to get on his hands and knees and crawl through a brown slushy pool of God-knows-what to get into the small latex igloo. I was next.
“You okay?” Dan asked, once I found a place crammed next to him.
“Don’t touch anything,” I whispered, picking a piece of something disgusting off the bottom of my foot and wondering why I wasn’t getting a hot stone facial at Zanya’s. Big mistake. “You don’t know where this dirt has been.”
He looked at me like I had hit my head on one of the tree branches upon entry. “It’ll be okay, honey. You’ll be fine. This is fun. Something different, right.”
I wanted to slap him. Did something in the lodge cause a sudden misfiring of synapses in his brain? Fun? Crawling through winter muck is fun? I look down at my foot. The brown thing isn’t coming off so easily.
Some 15 minutes later, with 28 or so of us crammed together like mixed nuts, Jim, otherwise known as Painted Arrow or some such title, called for the first rock. That’s when one skinny kid yanked a white hot rock from the fire and passed it with something that looked like a pitchfork made of sticks to another skinny kid who dropped it into a hole in the center of the tent. They did that six times as Jim chanted, “Welcome Grandfather”–a nod to the fact that they were very old rocks.
After the old guys were all in, Jim instructed the skinny people to close the flap on the tent, eliminating any remaining light. Since there was no longer a difference when I opened my eyes and closed them, I opted for the latter. (What I couldn’t attempt to see couldn’t hurt me.)
I grabbed Dan’s knee for comfort and grounding, and listened as Jim poured several dollops of water over the rocks, like a gang member firing off an AK47 (or whatever). Steam danced and hissed around us.
We all started to sweat like ice cubes in an incinerator, as Jim led us in a conversation about war, and why our world was in such turmoil. I thought about the lavender-scented fern-decorated old-but-pristine and moderately heated old lodge somebody else—somewhere—might be sitting in, blissfully, and reasonably detoxifying. Lemon water waiting for them when they finished.
How did I get here, I wonder, recognizing that it’s not excess saliva on my teeth, but a composition of oozing fluid and electrolytes? Then I remembered.
Oh Great Spirit, Jim says, we are living in such a volatile time. The girl next to me leans in and quietly informs me she’s not wearing underwear. The girl in front of me (or rather, literally, now ON me, as she attempts to get further away from the hot rocks) starts dry heaving and belching.
“Are you okay?” I whisper.
“Oh yes, thanks. This is normal.”
“Gotcha.” I reach for Dan’s hand and go to my happy place—Starbucks, an egg nog latte has just been delivered to my quivering lips, I prepare to drink..
I hang on to that thought, while the white hot rocks cause me to sweat more than I ever have previously–more than I do at the thought of having actually married Todd Goldman when I was 29 (can you say “sociopath?”). Or, at the memory of walking in the city while, unbeknownst to me, a faulty set of buttons left me exposed to all of 8th and Walnut Streets. (I thought it felt awfully breezy.)
After I listened to a few people pray to the “Great Spirit” for a good bounty, useful creativity, and food for third-world children, I decided to ignore the fact that I was on fire without being in actual flames and participate. So I spoke up, “Oh Great Spirit,” I said. “Thank you for keeping me hyperconscious in this heat.”
Nobody even tittered at the profound realism of my prayer (except, of course, my devoted husband). It surprised me. I mean if you can’t recognize something smart or call upon a good sense of humor when you’ve been spit into an active volcano, when can you? What are you waiting for?
My skin was starting to crisper like an oversized overcooked piece of turkey bacon. I wanted to cry, but couldn’t risk losing the body fluids. And yet, not even the thought of mushroom quiche or lemon hummus could save me at that point. So I had to distract myself from the agony of the man with the trigger finger–Jim and his little bucket of death water.
And then here, I suspect, is where the whole point of the experience hit me.
Because suddenly, like a gold rush, thoughts of wishing we could see C overcame me. I prayed that, if and when we do, she remembers how much we love her. I encouraged myself to get busy writing that book. After all, my time was coming. I had earned it, deserved it, worked hard to get here. It was time to recommit to the momentum—and the task of doing it. And then I thought about my father, who survived lung cancer two years ago. We all live on borrowed time, and I prayed for the longest extension possible from his lender.
In that moment, I gave my sweat reason and purpose. And as it dripped off of me and onto the wet soil under my own dampness, I felt my thoughts lifting, floating straight up through a tiny hole in the blue bubble and onto, well, somewhere.
Suddenly, everything got oddly moving. I wanted to cry for Sophie and for my grandmother, who died when I was 13. If I was a Russian spy, I suspect now would’ve been the time to interrogate me. The heat was like the ultimate truth serum. It was both dangerous and exhilerating.
And as I listened to the girl in front of me belch and Jim chant and Dan breathe in long familiar gusts, and as I felt the girl next to me fidget with her skirt, and as I clung to the cool dirt beneath my fingertips, I stopped wondering why people came to endure such discomfort.
I couldn’t tell if there were tears in my eyes or my corneas were perspiring. And yet, it didn’t matter.
These were all strange revelations—that I was hot and emotional and it didn’t matter—and I detached from them almost immediately. (As soon as Jim said, “That’s it. Open up.”)
I guess you can only hold on for so long after surviving a 45-minute schvitzfest and then crawling out of a tent into 32 degrees. I felt like a drug addict leaving a heroin convention—all woozy, wet, and spent.
“Go ahead and lay on the ice,” Jim says, as he ushers us out like a bunch of termites from a damp basement. “You’ll love it.”
“The man must be drunk,” I muttered to myself as I tried to stand upright on the icy ground without shrieking like an African monkey. My now soaking tank top and thinly insulated Gap Body cotton Capri pants failing miserably. Although, I did manage to find my way to my flip flops and towel rather quickly, an act marked by relative calm and a real feeling of accomplishment. Then, I stood with Dan, wet arm in wet arm, in front of the still blazing campfire to revel in the fact that we had survived.
I had survived, breathing in fire and breathing out something else that let me know I was alive. Now, out of the sweat tent (because I refuse to call it a lodge), back to 98 degrees Fahrenheit, I felt like I had just repaved all the streets in the city in 45 minutes. Overcome a personal hostage situation. Endured a plane crash. It was surprise to me, this feeling that was both thrilling and horrifying.
I could pretty much survive anything. Probably. Yes. I can. Dan’s ex. A publisher’s rejection. Half a pound a week in weight loss.
As I stood there, watching the belcher, the girl going commando, and a crew of others lay down on the ground as if they had been shot by airfire, I had an ephipany. I would not do that. I would be a leader, not a follower. I’d be me, and not somebody else.
After all, while they may have craved deeper meaning in the Jackson Pollack painting of the sky, I craved deodorant, a dry tee shirt, lip gloss, and chocolate. To make sense of any of this, I needed to get back to the real world—my real world—and hydrate. Moisturize. And nurture my body with some very VERY bad carbohydrates.
——————————————
Before the sweat, while I was getting ready, I met a woman named Rosemary in the bedroom. We were down to our bras and undies so there seemed no need for small talk. It was obvious we were both freshmen. “First time?” she asked.
I nodded. She smiled. And we finished changing. It was the kind of exchange you’d have with a woman while you waited to get your first mammogram.
Now, hydrated, dry, and relaxed in the way you are when you know your surgery is behind you, we met up again over a table of curried rice, too much hummus (a popular item), salad, and chili.
“Well?” she said, putting a scoop of brown rice and peas on her plate. “What did you think?”
I thought hard for a moment. “It sure was hot in there.” When it doubt, go with the obvious.
She laughed. “I’ll say.”
I scooped a piece of quiche onto my plate and spread some hummus on top. (I’m weird, I know.) “I liked some of it and didn’t like some of it.”
She nodded her head. “Yeah. Good way to put it.”
“It was hot in there.”
She laughed. “Too hot.”
“Thank you.”
“So hot that I really couldn’t focus on anything other than….”
“How hot you were?”
“Yes.”
Turns out, I wasn’t the only person in there after all. Sensing that we had bonded, I really opened up. “It was just stupid hot.” I wondered if she knew how to play the air guitar.
“Yes. Really. Just hot.”
We shared a moment of soulful eye contact and then, I said this: “Have you tried the hummus?”
——————————————————
The best part of the whole experience for me, at an especially hot moment, when I thought I couldn’t take anymore, was holding my husband’s sweaty palm. And knowing that we were in it for the long haul.
That no matter what happened in life—a dying dog, a real estate deal gone sour, a misguided ex-wife, cancer, old age, a slowing metabolism, menopause, the loss of one daughter, the joy of seeing another give birth, rejection from book publishers and music studios, acceptance from book publishers and music studios, the court’s misjudgement, hearing from an old friend, remembering childhood, making peace with fat knees, forgetting what it was like to have perfect eyesight, laughing, crying, singing, dancing, reeling in agony, and rejoicing—that we would always be okay.
And together.
—————————————————————-
As I look back on the experience, I have to question why we put ourselves through so much suffering to realize things. I think about the contortions of yoga, the exhaustion of aerobics, the pain and agony of self-actualization. I mean, can’t we figure it out on a nice spring day, on a walk with our dogs, smiling at our neighbors? Watching reruns of Jeopardy? Or laying on four inches of memory foam, listening to the toilet drip before we fall asleep?
Can’t we just know because we do that life gives us a little bit of everything and never an excess of anything and that we don’t need to cause our own suffering to come to this conclusion.
I mean, sweating and all is great. In fact, my skin did glow for about a week after. (Although I didn’t lose a pound and we still can’t see or talk to C.) And I might even do it again, if somebody, say, put a Rufie in my drink or threatened to kill my family.
I guess.
Still, I also know here, in the comfort of my temperature-adjusted home with cable and raspberry-flavored Aquafina, exactly what I knew then in the sweat igloo: That it’s up to us.
It’s all up to us. Whatever “it” is? Well, that’s up to us too. It was up to me to sweat like an snowman in Aruba and I got it out of my system (along with who knows what else) and now, well, I’m glad I did it.
But do I need to do it again? I don’t know. For now, I’m just looking for something crunchy. (It’s moon time.)
So, until next time.
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Last week, we had our friends Rick and Deb over for dinner. We were going through an especially rough time, not having seen Dan’s daughter C for a long while and not having access to her, and Rick and Deb have been a strong set of shoulders for us to lean on. We got to talking about what we could do in terms of keeping the faith when Rick suggested we all go to a “sweat lodge.”

I had never heard of a sweat lodge before so I was intrigued. What is it? Do they keep the heat over 75? Do they do hot yoga? Give pedicures by moistening the skin so intensely that it just flakes off on its own—no scraping or rubbing required? Do they let you sample a variety of hydration beverages? Do some sort of mud wrap that brings all the toxins to the surface so you look younger? Have less cellulite? I had so many questions.

So Rick and Deb told me that it was an ancient Native American ceremony of prayer and purification that involved heating rocks in a fire, bringing them into the center of the lodge, pouring water on them so they steam, and praying.

Is there Jesus talk, because, you know, I’m Jewish. We don’t generally pray to Jesus.

No, it’s all very spiritual and soul-cleansing.

Like a colonic?

Well, not as graphic.

Good, because my mother worked for a proctologist when I was growing up and an enema was her cure-all, so I have issues.

Too much information.

Does it involve some alternative language, like Hebrew, say, or Swahili? Cause I don’t speak either.

No, prayer could be words or songs or silence. Even chanting.

I like chanting. I do it all the time in the shoe department at Nordstroms. “Do you really need those? YES YES YES NO YES OH GOD YES.”

This isn’t anything at all like Nordstroms.

That’s okay. Will there be pound cake? There’s usually pound cake after services at a synogague.

Well, no. But there’ll be a pot luck feast, so we each have to bring something to eat.

Oh, okay, good. So you’re saying there might be pound cake, then?

As we played Q&A, I let my mind conjure up the image of a peaceful getaway at a well-kept spa in an exotic location. Where you can call upon the spirits to relax you enough to soothe your puffy eyes, eliminate unnecessary wrinkles, and leave you feeling younger, thinner, and less hungry for pizza or tuna salad with REAL mayonnaise. It sounded like a place to commune with aestheticians for a reasonable price. And then, attend a nice buffet of cold items, perhaps a nice pasta salad with pesto or cold shrimp.

This could be very Las Vegas meets the Berkshires, I thought to myself. Upscale gym meets Ruby Tuesdays. Hot springs meet Denny’s. What could be bad?

I’m in. Let’s do it.

So we did. With much excitement and anticipation, we went on a Sunday night, two days after a late March ice storm that laid a dirty carpet of hard snow on the grass and roads. Dan and I picked up Rick and Deb after a brief stop at Giant to get a set of broccoli and mushroom quiches and a tub of hummus. (Rick had suggested we bring something “sort of vegan-y.”) We were excited. We’d had enough of the cold and looked forward to the warmth of the lodge. I was looking forward to some effective moisturizing after.

As we pulled up a long driveway to somebody’s backyard (who I would later learn was “Jim”), we saw several people standing around a fire by an old garage. A few sat on an old bench next to a wooden fence. We followed Rick and Deb into the old single house to put away the food we had brought for after “the sweat.”

I asked Deb, “Where’s the lodge?” After all, I didn’t see anything in the back yard but the fire, the people, and the garage. Did we have to go somewhere else to get there? Would there be a shuttle? Did it have a bathroom? (I pee a lot.)

She took my hand, led me back out to the people and the bonfire, and pointed to a small blue dome behind them. It looked like a latex igloo, large enough to sleep two at a campsite.

“What’s that?” I said.

“The sweat lodge.”

“That’s it?” My heart started to race.

“That’s it.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Oh.”

—————————————————————————–

Everything after that happened fast. The girls got changed into shorts, tee shirts, and flip flops in what I assumed was Jim’s bedroom, while the guys changed in the old garage. We grabbed our towels on the way back out and covered ourselves with sweatshirts that, just moments later, would be yanked off and flung to the side just prior to entering “the lodge.”

Scantily clad (for me, at least), in bare feet, and shivering, I waited in line behind Dan for safety. When it was his turn to go in, a skinny guy, who was topless, waved a piece of lit sage around his body as if he were drying an SUV just out of the car wash. Then, he instructed my poor husband to get on his hands and knees and crawl through a brown slushy pool of God-knows-what to get into the small latex igloo. I was next.

“You okay?” Dan asked, once I found a place crammed next to him.

“Don’t touch anything,” I whispered, picking a piece of something disgusting off the bottom of my foot and wondering why I wasn’t getting a hot stone facial at Zanya’s. Big mistake. “You don’t know where this dirt has been.”

He looked at me like I had hit my head on one of the tree branches upon entry. “It’ll be okay, honey. You’ll be fine. This is fun. Something different, right.”

I wanted to slap him. Did something in the lodge cause a sudden misfiring of synapses in his brain? Fun? Crawling through winter muck is fun? I look down at my foot. The brown thing isn’t coming off so easily.

Some 15 minutes later, with 28 or so of us crammed together like mixed nuts, Jim, otherwise known as Painted Arrow or some such title, called for the first rock. That’s when one skinny kid yanked a white hot rock from the fire and passed it with something that looked like a pitchfork made of sticks to another skinny kid who dropped it into a hole in the center of the tent. They did that six times as Jim chanted, “Welcome Grandfather”–a nod to the fact that they were very old rocks.

After the old guys were all in, Jim instructed the skinny people to close the flap on the tent, eliminating any remaining light. Since there was no longer a difference when I opened my eyes and closed them, I opted for the latter. (What I couldn’t attempt to see couldn’t hurt me.)

I grabbed Dan’s knee for comfort and grounding, and listened as Jim poured several dollops of water over the rocks, like a gang member firing off an AK47 (or whatever). Steam danced and hissed around us.

We all started to sweat like ice cubes in an incinerator, as Jim led us in a conversation about war, and why our world was in such turmoil. I thought about the lavender-scented fern-decorated old-but-pristine and moderately heated old lodge somebody else—somewhere—might be sitting in, blissfully, and reasonably detoxifying. Lemon water waiting for them when they finished.

How did I get here, I wonder, recognizing that it’s not excess saliva on my teeth, but a composition of oozing fluid and electrolytes? Then I remembered.

Oh Great Spirit, Jim says, we are living in such a volatile time. The girl next to me leans in and quietly informs me she’s not wearing underwear. The girl in front of me (or rather, literally, now ON me, as she attempts to get further away from the hot rocks) starts dry heaving and belching.

“Are you okay?” I whisper.

“Oh yes, thanks. This is normal.”

“Gotcha.” I reach for Dan’s hand and go to my happy place—Starbucks, an egg nog latte has just been delivered to my quivering lips, I prepare to drink..

I hang on to that thought, while the white hot rocks cause me to sweat more than I ever have previously–more than I do at the thought of having actually married Todd Goldman when I was 29 (can you say “sociopath?”). Or, at the memory of walking in the city while, unbeknownst to me, a faulty set of buttons left me exposed to all of 8th and Walnut Streets. (I thought it felt awfully breezy.)

After I listened to a few people pray to the “Great Spirit” for a good bounty, useful creativity, and food for third-world children, I decided to ignore the fact that I was on fire without being in actual flames and participate. So I spoke up, “Oh Great Spirit,” I said. “Thank you for keeping me hyperconscious in this heat.”

Nobody even tittered at the profound realism of my prayer (except, of course, my devoted husband). It surprised me. I mean if you can’t recognize something smart or call upon a good sense of humor when you’ve been spit into an active volcano, when can you? What are you waiting for?

My skin was starting to crisper like an oversized overcooked piece of turkey bacon. I wanted to cry, but couldn’t risk losing the body fluids. And yet, not even the thought of mushroom quiche or lemon hummus could save me at that point. So I had to distract myself from the agony of the man with the trigger finger–Jim and his little bucket of death water.

And then here, I suspect, is where the whole point of the experience hit me.

Because suddenly, like a gold rush, thoughts of wishing we could see C overcame me. I prayed that, if and when we do, she remembers how much we love her. I encouraged myself to get busy writing that book. After all, my time was coming. I had earned it, deserved it, worked hard to get here. It was time to recommit to the momentum—and the task of doing it. And then I thought about my father, who survived lung cancer two years ago. We all live on borrowed time, and I prayed for the longest extension possible from his lender.

In that moment, I gave my sweat reason and purpose. And as it dripped off of me and onto the wet soil under my own dampness, I felt my thoughts lifting, floating straight up through a tiny hole in the blue bubble and onto, well, somewhere.

Suddenly, everything got oddly moving. I wanted to cry for Sophie and for my grandmother, who died when I was 13. If I was a Russian spy, I suspect now would’ve been the time to interrogate me. The heat was like the ultimate truth serum. It was both dangerous and exhilerating.

And as I listened to the girl in front of me belch and Jim chant and Dan breathe in long familiar gusts, and as I felt the girl next to me fidget with her skirt, and as I clung to the cool dirt beneath my fingertips, I stopped wondering why people came to endure such discomfort.

I couldn’t tell if there were tears in my eyes or my corneas were perspiring. And yet, it didn’t matter.

These were all strange revelations—that I was hot and emotional and it didn’t matter—and I detached from them almost immediately. (As soon as Jim said, “That’s it. Open up.”)

I guess you can only hold on for so long after surviving a 45-minute schvitzfest and then crawling out of a tent into 32 degrees. I felt like a drug addict leaving a heroin convention—all woozy, wet, and spent.

“Go ahead and lay on the ice,” Jim says, as he ushers us out like a bunch of termites from a damp basement. “You’ll love it.”

“The man must be drunk,” I muttered to myself as I tried to stand upright on the icy ground without shrieking like an African monkey. My now soaking tank top and thinly insulated Gap Body cotton Capri pants failing miserably. Although, I did manage to find my way to my flip flops and towel rather quickly, an act marked by relative calm and a real feeling of accomplishment. Then, I stood with Dan, wet arm in wet arm, in front of the still blazing campfire to revel in the fact that we had survived.

I had survived, breathing in fire and breathing out something else that let me know I was alive. Now, out of the sweat tent (because I refuse to call it a lodge), back to 98 degrees Fahrenheit, I felt like I had just repaved all the streets in the city in 45 minutes. Overcome a personal hostage situation. Endured a plane crash. It was surprise to me, this feeling that was both thrilling and horrifying.

I could pretty much survive anything. Probably. Yes. I can. Dan’s ex. A publisher’s rejection. Half a pound a week in weight loss.

As I stood there, watching the belcher, the girl going commando, and a crew of others lay down on the ground as if they had been shot by airfire, I had an ephipany. I would not do that. I would be a leader, not a follower. I’d be me, and not somebody else.

After all, while they may have craved deeper meaning in the Jackson Pollack painting of the sky, I craved deodorant, a dry tee shirt, lip gloss, and chocolate. To make sense of any of this, I needed to get back to the real world—my real world—and hydrate. Moisturize. And nurture my body with some very VERY bad carbohydrates.

——————————————

Before the sweat, while I was getting ready, I met a woman named Rosemary in the bedroom. We were down to our bras and undies so there seemed no need for small talk. It was obvious we were both freshmen. “First time?” she asked.

I nodded. She smiled. And we finished changing. It was the kind of exchange you’d have with a woman while you waited to get your first mammogram.

Now, hydrated, dry, and relaxed in the way you are when you know your surgery is behind you, we met up again over a table of curried rice, too much hummus (a popular item), salad, and chili.

“Well?” she said, putting a scoop of brown rice and peas on her plate. “What did you think?”

I thought hard for a moment. “It sure was hot in there.” When it doubt, go with the obvious.

She laughed. “I’ll say.”

I scooped a piece of quiche onto my plate and spread some hummus on top. (I’m weird, I know.) “I liked some of it and didn’t like some of it.”

She nodded her head. “Yeah. Good way to put it.”

“It was hot in there.”

She laughed. “Too hot.”

“Thank you.”

“So hot that I really couldn’t focus on anything other than….”

“How hot you were?”

“Yes.”

Turns out, I wasn’t the only person in there after all. Sensing that we had bonded, I really opened up. “It was just stupid hot.” I wondered if she knew how to play the air guitar.

“Yes. Really. Just hot.”

We shared a moment of soulful eye contact and then, I said this: “Have you tried the hummus?”

——————————————————

The best part of the whole experience for me, at an especially hot moment, when I thought I couldn’t take anymore, was holding my husband’s sweaty palm. And knowing that we were in it for the long haul.

That no matter what happened in life—a dying dog, a real estate deal gone sour, a misguided ex-wife, cancer, old age, a slowing metabolism, menopause, the loss of one daughter, the joy of seeing another give birth, rejection from book publishers and music studios, acceptance from book publishers and music studios, the court’s misjudgement, hearing from an old friend, remembering childhood, making peace with fat knees, forgetting what it was like to have perfect eyesight, laughing, crying, singing, dancing, reeling in agony, and rejoicing—that we would always be okay.

And together.

—————————————————————-

As I look back on the experience, I have to question why we put ourselves through so much suffering to realize things. I think about the contortions of yoga, the exhaustion of aerobics, the pain and agony of self-actualization. I mean, can’t we figure it out on a nice spring day, on a walk with our dogs, smiling at our neighbors? Watching reruns of Jeopardy? Or laying on four inches of memory foam, listening to the toilet drip before we fall asleep?

Can’t we just know because we do that life gives us a little bit of everything and never an excess of anything and that we don’t need to cause our own suffering to come to this conclusion.

I mean, sweating and all is great. In fact, my skin did glow for about a week after. (Although I didn’t lose a pound and we still can’t see or talk to C.) And I might even do it again, if somebody, say, put a Rufie in my drink or threatened to kill my family.

I guess.

Still, I also know here, in the comfort of my temperature-adjusted home with cable and raspberry-flavored Aquafina, exactly what I knew then in the sweat igloo: That it’s up to us.

It’s all up to us. Whatever “it” is? Well, that’s up to us too. It was up to me to sweat like an snowman in Aruba and I got it out of my system (along with who knows what else) and now, well, I’m glad I did it.

But do I need to do it again? I don’t know. For now, I’m just looking for something crunchy. (It’s moon time.)

So, until next time.
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I am a grandmother.
It’s true. I went from being a single woman with as many chances as finding as husband as being picked off by a terrorist to having a granddaughter and a grandson on the way.
Not exactly the most conventional or linear way of going about the circle of life, but hey, I’m here nonetheless.
And I can handle it. I can handle a gaggle of stepchildren and the fact that I’ve completely bypassed parenthood for grandparenthood—the fact that I have pictures of a one-year-old all over my house like my nanny used to have pictures of me and my brother. The fact that I’ve got baby cookies in my pantry and they’re not for me. The fact that I’m looking for inexpensive baby cribs and strollers and accessories to help my stepdaughter Heidi put together another room for another grandchild.
But what I cannot handle, at the less-than-ripe age of 44 (in this instance only) is being called “Grandma.”
C’mon. Grandma? I’m sorry, but I don’t think I fit the traditional picture of a “grandma” (the sexy grandma aside). Now I know what you’re thinking: What is the traditional picture anymore? I don’t know what yours is, but mine is a woman with wrinkles in a neck that jiggles. (Not you, mom. [She’s so fragile.]) It’s frizzy short hair that gets teased and sprayed once a week by a woman named Marlene at a hair salon in a strip mall. It’s a closet full of house frocks made of polyester. It’s furniture with slipcovers. Tissues rolled up in shirt sleeves. And transistor radios in every bedroom so talk radio is accessible when senior hormones keep you from Delta sleep.
It’s not blue jeans and a copper red shag. Four computers and wireless Internet. Tassimo coffee. A new Honda Element. It’s not mountain bikes, guitars, blogs, and novel drafts. My grandmas didn’t have gas fireplaces. They never spent a weekend pulling up carpets to lay their own hardwood. Child custody and visitation issues were discussed on the AM dial. And they surely weren’t newlyweds.
So you can see how I’m struggling with the moniker. Grandma? Who’s that? And when did she get here?
No, no, no. I just can’t do it. I can’t let some poor creature barely on earth for a year indulge such a lapse in judgment. Kylie (and babyX-to-be), let me give you your first piece of advice as your whatever: DON’T CALL ME GRANDMA.
———————————————–
When I tell my friends that I don’t want my new grandchildren to actually call me Grandma, they come up with a set of alternatives so piss poor that I want to eat an entire chocolate Pepperidge Farm layer cake and throw myself into traffic.
“Why don’t you have them call you ‘Nona’? That means grandmother in Phillipino.”
“How about Mimi, that’s grandmother in [insert foreign country since the origin escapes me]?”
“Or chokolatay, which is grandmother in the old Indian language of Ijibaway Reservationo?”
“How about ‘Glam-ma?”
Now, if I was Phillipino, Spanish, Italian, Swahili, Cherokee Indian, or wore anything other than Gap Body black stretch pants and flip flops, I might consider some of these options. But I’m not. And I don’t. I’m Jewish and hardly glamorous. (Sorry again, mom.) And before you say anything, I REFUSE to be called “Bubby.” That’d just send me over edge I now live on.
A year ago, when Kylie, was born, Dan and I agreed she’d call us “Mick and Jeri”—named for Mick Jagger and Jeri Hall, grandparents before their time. After all, we were only 43 and 49 respectively when Kylie shot out of her mother like a kidney stone the size of a refrigerator. Poor Heidi, her labor was more like captivity. (It was so insufferable, her four-day experience became urban legend—the worst of the worst–at the Princeton Hospital.)
And yet, Mick and Jeri didn’t get us very far and for the first year of Kylie’s life, that was fine. But now the little bugger is talking. And we have to give her something to work with or be relegated to whatever she comes up with. And I’m not willing to risk it. After all, if “Poopy and Pop-Pop” sticks, there’s scant little we’ll be able to do about it.
As if that weren’t bad enough, now that there’s another one on the way, the stakes have doubled. So, Dan and I are on the hunt for just the right label.
Last weekend, we thought we had it. We were at the Food Court at the Mall, when it hit us. The perfect names. Kylie would call Dan “Master Wok.” And she’d call me “Sbarro.” Yes, they may be a bit difficult to pronounce in the early years, but eventually, they’d roll off her tongue like a good bit of throw up.
When I told Heidi, however, she laughed for a bit and then said, “You are kidding, right?”
I wasn’t—we weren’t. But I took that as a sign that she wasn’t too happy about it. So, here’s where you come in: Please, sweet Jesus, HELP US.
Now I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but save your grandmother or grandfather in a foreign language. We just can’t do it. We’re Americans and that’s irrefutable. With that caveat, we are hoping (praying? begging?) that somebody somewhere out there can provide us with names more appropriate than “Bain’s Deli.”
Let’s make it a contest, although there is no prize save the fact that you’ll be helping out a fellow American. Like the many advertisements for writers and editors on Craigslist.com, there is no compensation, but millions will be exposed to your genuis.
So let us know what you’ve got. Hurry. Kylie will soon be reciting Shakespeare and planning her wedding. Hit the little “Comments” button below and give us SOMETHING. ANYTHING.
Thank you in advance. And until next time.
  Share

I am a grandmother.

It’s true. I went from being a single woman with as many chances as finding as husband as being picked off by a terrorist to having a granddaughter and a grandson on the way.

Not exactly the most conventional or linear way of going about the circle of life, but hey, I’m here nonetheless.

And I can handle it. I can handle a gaggle of stepchildren and the fact that I’ve completely bypassed parenthood for grandparenthood—the fact that I have pictures of a one-year-old all over my house like my nanny used to have pictures of me and my brother. The fact that I’ve got baby cookies in my pantry and they’re not for me. The fact that I’m looking for inexpensive baby cribs and strollers and accessories to help my stepdaughter Heidi put together another room for another grandchild.

But what I cannot handle, at the less-than-ripe age of 44 (in this instance only) is being called “Grandma.”

C’mon. Grandma? I’m sorry, but I don’t think I fit the traditional picture of a “grandma” (the sexy grandma aside). Now I know what you’re thinking: What is the traditional picture anymore? I don’t know what yours is, but mine is a woman with wrinkles in a neck that jiggles. (Not you, mom. [She’s so fragile.]) It’s frizzy short hair that gets teased and sprayed once a week by a woman named Marlene at a hair salon in a strip mall. It’s a closet full of house frocks made of polyester. It’s furniture with slipcovers. Tissues rolled up in shirt sleeves. And transistor radios in every bedroom so talk radio is accessible when senior hormones keep you from Delta sleep.

It’s not blue jeans and a copper red shag. Four computers and wireless Internet. Tassimo coffee. A new Honda Element. It’s not mountain bikes, guitars, blogs, and novel drafts. My grandmas didn’t have gas fireplaces. They never spent a weekend pulling up carpets to lay their own hardwood. Child custody and visitation issues were discussed on the AM dial. And they surely weren’t newlyweds.

So you can see how I’m struggling with the moniker. Grandma? Who’s that? And when did she get here?

No, no, no. I just can’t do it. I can’t let some poor creature barely on earth for a year indulge such a lapse in judgment. Kylie (and babyX-to-be), let me give you your first piece of advice as your whatever: DON’T CALL ME GRANDMA.

———————————————–
When I tell my friends that I don’t want my new grandchildren to actually call me Grandma, they come up with a set of alternatives so piss poor that I want to eat an entire chocolate Pepperidge Farm layer cake and throw myself into traffic.

“Why don’t you have them call you ‘Nona’? That means grandmother in Phillipino.”

“How about Mimi, that’s grandmother in [insert foreign country since the origin escapes me]?”

“Or chokolatay, which is grandmother in the old Indian language of Ijibaway Reservationo?”

“How about ‘Glam-ma?”

Now, if I was Phillipino, Spanish, Italian, Swahili, Cherokee Indian, or wore anything other than Gap Body black stretch pants and flip flops, I might consider some of these options. But I’m not. And I don’t. I’m Jewish and hardly glamorous. (Sorry again, mom.) And before you say anything, I REFUSE to be called “Bubby.” That’d just send me over edge I now live on.

A year ago, when Kylie, was born, Dan and I agreed she’d call us “Mick and Jeri”—named for Mick Jagger and Jeri Hall, grandparents before their time. After all, we were only 43 and 49 respectively when Kylie shot out of her mother like a kidney stone the size of a refrigerator. Poor Heidi, her labor was more like captivity. (It was so insufferable, her four-day experience became urban legend—the worst of the worst–at the Princeton Hospital.)

And yet, Mick and Jeri didn’t get us very far and for the first year of Kylie’s life, that was fine. But now the little bugger is talking. And we have to give her something to work with or be relegated to whatever she comes up with. And I’m not willing to risk it. After all, if “Poopy and Pop-Pop” sticks, there’s scant little we’ll be able to do about it.

As if that weren’t bad enough, now that there’s another one on the way, the stakes have doubled. So, Dan and I are on the hunt for just the right label.

Last weekend, we thought we had it. We were at the Food Court at the Mall, when it hit us. The perfect names. Kylie would call Dan “Master Wok.” And she’d call me “Sbarro.” Yes, they may be a bit difficult to pronounce in the early years, but eventually, they’d roll off her tongue like a good bit of throw up.

When I told Heidi, however, she laughed for a bit and then said, “You are kidding, right?”

I wasn’t—we weren’t. But I took that as a sign that she wasn’t too happy about it. So, here’s where you come in: Please, sweet Jesus, HELP US.

Now I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but save your grandmother or grandfather in a foreign language. We just can’t do it. We’re Americans and that’s irrefutable. With that caveat, we are hoping (praying? begging?) that somebody somewhere out there can provide us with names more appropriate than “Bain’s Deli.”

Let’s make it a contest, although there is no prize save the fact that you’ll be helping out a fellow American. Like the many advertisements for writers and editors on Craigslist.com, there is no compensation, but millions will be exposed to your genuis.

So let us know what you’ve got. Hurry. Kylie will soon be reciting Shakespeare and planning her wedding. Hit the little “Comments” button below and give us SOMETHING. ANYTHING.

Thank you in advance. And until next time.
  Share