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My Profile
Gift from Hil Part 2 - 2014-12-30
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5:18 a.m. - 2013-07-21
Well here we are again. Up in the wee s'mas. Going backward. Not in a bad way. After 16 years of very fraught mom duty my natural night-owlishness is reasserting itself. I rather like it. Makes me feel more like myself than I've felt in a long, long time. I love my kid and don't regret any of the massive life upheavals of being his mother, it's just as the need for me to be Mommy-on-the-spot wanes the LA-who-used-to-be is coming back. The night crawling isn't the only thing either, I'm inhaling books again. Gads I missed reading. I know I've mentioned this before but I truly cannot remember a time when I couldn't read. Family lore pegs me starting to read well before my third birthday. I do remember reading things while we still lived in Nanuet and we moved to Hometown when I was three. So. Anyway I'm reading new books. During the intense Wolf's mom years I read, but only familiar favorites which I could drop on the instant without a pang. I 'read' but the books were just cue cards, nudges along stories mostly memorized so when the crashes and bangs (or worse the ominous too-quiet) demanded I go investigate NOW I was able to carry the narrative in my head. I'd mop up the mess and/or the blood/vomit/poop with my hands while my brain still kept on 'reading'. Oftentimes I'd pick up the physical book hours/days later and immediately skipped ahead to where the mind story left off. Flipping pages, skimming key words until I found the right place. No need to physically re-read chapters 3-7 I'd told them to myself already. Another thing reasserting itself? Being a water baby. Hit the pool at the folks' house twice this week. Astrologically necessary. Aquarius and in the Chinese zodiac I am a water tiger. Salt, fresh, chlorinated, matters not. What counts is me being able to swim. Putting aside summers at the shore (that was a whole package dealie of minimal parental bullshit, running with the pack o' kids from our summer rental neighborhood, boardwalk hilarity, sand chafing, and an olfactory bliss made up of equal parts- sea air, Coppertone, hot grease from dozens of boardwalk griddles, dead fish, and the iodine smell of drying seaweed) the happiest I've ever been was doing laps in the high school pool in the early, early morning. Just me and the water. And my most excellent boyfriend Richard stretched out on the bleachers snoring. Champ that he was Richard would pick me up in the icy dark pre-dawn and drive us over to the school. At the side door to the pool gym I'd peel off for the locker room to suit up and he'd walk the long hall down to the spectator's entrance, climb halfway up the bleachers, shuck his sheepskin-lined denim jacket, make a pillow of it and would be dead asleep by the time I came out in my suit and earplugs. I'd do laps until just before the buses arrived then take a quick shower, re-knot my wet hair into its usual nerdy librarian bun, dress and go wake Rich just in time for us to skedaddle upstairs for homeroom. Giving me a quick kiss at the door to Mr Dunkin's room he'd slip me a baggie full of his mother's homemade cookies. Breakfast of champions. Yet one more shade from my LA-who-used-to-be, tomorrow (?) tonight (?) Sunday evening at 7:30pm I am attending a lecture at a local art school hosted by Code Pink. One of the things I miss most about me is being part of something. Of course I understand the futility of cause and the sometimes snarky infighting that goes on amongst the do-gooders. Yet how does it go? 'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.' I need to re-involve myself with something outside my own small life. It feels like I've gone so far up my own butt the only time I see daylight is when I yawn. I'll be honest here and admit my motives for attending this lecture aren't wholly altruistic. At 50 the window for making new friends is terribly small. If by going to a talk aimed at likeminded people nets me a few contacts that have the potential to evolve into friendships I'll be a happy girlie. This is not to say that I am only there to score someone to have coffee with. If the book sounds worthy I'll buy it. If the cause and the group seem like they'll jibe with my own views I'll sign up to help. Political activism is one of those pieces of myself I let slide during the Wolf/divorcing/year of silence/ the advent of Mick time. But formerly I had my hand in since the second grade when I tried to join the Cub Scouts and was roundly mocked and humiliated for my effort. Being an involved political person is also a big part of me. There's a framed pic of five year old Wolf on the bookcase in the foyer. That pic was taken in Washington DC when a gang of D-landers got together to join the march for Women's Health. For sure that day didn't turn out like I'd imagined it would. I was feeling too shitty to march from the mall to the White House so our group except for Darling Deb who'd stayed behind to keep me company went on without us and somewhere in there Hil got lost sending Melissa into a tizz, and unhappily that was also the day Michael Jackson fired his lawyers during his pedophilia trial and ALL of the major news outlets ignored 1.25 million people marching to the Bush White House to protest the horrific depredations on women imposed by the President and his GOP pals in Congress in favor of covering a pop star's change of legal team. After such a long time apart I'm not prepared to dive in headfirst, but a lecture and meeting some folks is a start.
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