The Unbearable Downwardness of Gravity

Word has it that Nora Ephron has been feeling bad about her neck lately. All I have to say is, “Boo-hoo.” I saw a picture of her in a New Yorker article over the summer, and if the state of her neck is her biggest beef, I’ll trade places with her tomorrow. I want to IM her a mouthful or two of invective, write her a tsk-tsk email with pissed-off emoticons pasted all over it. How dare this stunning, successful woman, who at sixty-something looks like she’s still got the world by the you-know-whatsits, complain about her neck? She should come over for coffee and get a gander at the kind of indignity that gravity and middle-age can inflict on an unsuspecting schmuck like me.

I blame gravity for just about every physical inconvenience I’ve suffered since having kids; every embarrassment (ever farted during yoga class despite your tightest tight-ass efforts?); every shift in my weight or mood. Pregnancy and childbirth may have contributed some here and there, but gravity is the real bad guy. It sneaks up and shoves us down the hill, when we’d rather stroll and enjoy the view. My body’s battle with Public Enemy Number One began around my 40th birthday. I knew something was up when, one night, my husband and I were out to dinner, and I couldn’t read the menu. The letters were too small, I said. Did they really expect people to be able to decipher microscopic print by candlelight? My husband, who is as blind as Mr. Magoo, rolled his eyes at me, held up his menu across the table and said, “Read this.” I rattled off every dish like a pro. Turned out the problem wasn’t the menu, it was my arm. Not long enough.

What did gravity have to do with my nascent far-sightedness? Something, I was sure. It was probably tugging on my tired, overworked eye muscles. Anyway, I broke down and got half-moons with bumblebee frames. Granny glasses, I moaned. No, no, said a male friend of mine. Sexy glasses. Librarian-sexy. The kind of specs that you fling across the room when you take the pins out of your luxurious, swirling mane of chestnut hair. Right. I learned to keep the glasses hidden, but handy. If only glasses were the worst of it…

A year later, I was looking in the mirror and saw that one breast was lower than the other. Way lower. Wait, they were BOTH lower. My once perky girls looked more like a pair of war-weary veterans. They weren’t just sagging; they were further south than Miami. What’s worse, after showering I had to lift each one up and dry underneath. Still do. If I don’t, I am sure mold would probably start growing there. Now every day brings a new discovery of droop somewhere on my body. My butt cheeks are distinctly more oblong than round, and I’ve recently noticed a slight, insidious overhang around my jaw line. Not extra flesh, just flesh stretching downward, reaching for the ground despite itself, unable to resist the siren call of gravity. What’s next? Wattles where my triceps used to be? Liver spots? Crow’s feet? Knees without caps? Saggy eyelids? Longer hair?

Maybe I’ll just email Nora Ephron and get her personal trainer’s number.

Who Stole My Mojo?

It’s official. I’m torching the mom jeans and sensible clogs, trading in my solids for Pucci-inspired prints, coloring my hair and hitting the road with My Morning Jacket (well, hitting the carpool line in my minivan, with My Morning Jacket at volume 40). What has inspired this midlife identity meltdown? My much-loved mojo is MIA, and I want it back.

It all started with a birthday party. My cousin was turning 50. I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t even say it aloud without breaking into a peri-menopausal sweat. Just a few years ago, 50 was a distant land that others visited; it sounded so old, so foreign, so AARP. Then suddenly, WHAMMO! It’s breathing down my neck, no matter how fast I run.

So Cousin Marge the jewelry designer was trumpeting the arrival of her 50th year, kicking and screaming, with a girls’ throwdown in Manhattan, a family-only sleepover at Cousin Mary’s West Side swankienda (she’s single, well-heeled, successful, driven and gorgeous – want to slap her, don’t you?) Needless to say, I packed in black, from my underpants and bra to the raincoat and shirt I wore on the train from Philadelphia, even my purse and shoes. This provincial soccer mom was going to New York disguised as a Sicilian widow.

The slumber party kicked off with a mid-afternoon fashion show. Cousin Marge showed off some supremely chic trinkets she’d bought at some fabulous online boutique; Cousin Mary modeled a pair of boots that could have paid our mortgage for a couple of months; and Cousin Carol, who is 46 and has three boys, just stood around, all five feet, nine inches of her, looking incredibly young, blonde and glamorous in her biker boots from Nordstrom. It was downhill from there. A glass of wine, and we were off to Bloomingdale’s, where the blue jeans cost more than a plane ticket to Los Angeles, and all the clothes are made for waifs and wraiths, not for women with curves and boobs and short waists. They pestered me to try things on (forget the price tag! try it on for fun!), but I was unmoved. The tops were too sheer, the sweaters too tight, the shoes too high, and the pants – well, let’s just say that they were low-cut enough for my belly to spill over the edge, like laundry on a clothesline.

At some point, I looked at them and said, “What I really need is a pair of loafers.” Who knew that was such a conversation stopper? You’d have thought I’d just farted in front of the Queen. After some knowing glances and an awkward pause, Cousin Carol patted me on the arm, eyeballed my Gap jeans, and said in a low voice, “Honey, you’ve just lost your mojo. We can take care of that.” Cousin Marge nodded, “You’re in mom mode, sweetie. It’ll change. Don’t worry.”

Wait a minute, I thought. They’re moms, too. But Cousin Marge looks 35, not 50, Cousin Mary has no kids to chase after and a wardrobe worth killing for, and Cousin Carol, well, I’m convinced she’s has a sinister self-portrait hidden in the attic of her Boston home. Somehow they have all persuaded their mojo to hang around, while mine has hung me out to dry. Power, charisma, sex appeal, spells, personal magnetism – according to dictionary.com, these are the definitions of mojo. And apparently, I’m all out of it. Next time I’m at Target, I’ll see if they have any in stock.

Dancing with Fidel

(I am currently working on a collection of poems about tyrants and the women who love them. This poem is the title poem of the group. Can you guess who it's about? (besides Fidel Castro) Know who the woman is? If so, email me. Good luck!)

A dance at the country club in 1953, a chance

brushing of elbows, the clink of cut crystal,

a slick, slinky mambo and some Benny Moré,

an affair studded with surgeons, lawyers

and políticos, it all sends her sprawling

down the treacherous incline of lust, a fall

from which there’s no getting back up.

On the ballroom floor, a meeting of green

eyes the color of the sea just beyond the breakers

and an educated peasant’s chin, a promontory

carpeted so long in tight, dark pubic curls

that no one remembers the Kirk Douglas cleft

or the scar etched into his jaw when he was eleven,

a bastard son’s souvenir from his father’s left hook

and a sharp silver ring.

The eyes and the chin swish and sway

through the crowd, past the martinis, the gimlets,

the rum cocktails, the filmy bubbles of gossip

that pop and blow on the wind of conversation.

All it takes is the dull repetition of days

and nights for a doctor’s young, elastic wife to stray

from the infinite languid line she walks between

who she is and what she wants.

She’s hooked from the first moment

he reaches out and reels her in, a luscious, desperate

fish on a short line, from the first dip when the floor

brushes past – and misses – her careful coiffure.

She craves his difference, his certainty, his fugitive

status; she crumples when the police arrive,

and he disappears.

For two years they write, the bastard and the socialite,

with a devotion the Brownings would admire. He by

matchlight from a solitary cell, with only cucarachas

for company, and she, between engagements, from her

beachfront mansion, which she knows is just a cloister

of another kind.

The letters tempt and persuade; they promise everything.

Their words leap off fine linen stationery, rolling paper,

ad pages furtively ripped from the occasional magazine;

they tighten around her throat like a noose until she can’t

swallow or breathe, they surround his balls and squeeze

him to the floor in one long groan of enchanted agony.

This is love, this startling pain, this intangible brew of untested chemistry.

When he arrives at her door one afternoon, it’s as though

she has been waiting for him, pacing the widow’s walk high

above the street, casting an eye for a light, a signal, any sign of life.

He nourishes her neglected body, French in his attention to detail

but Latin in his impassioned humping and thumping,

in the way he growls out her name over and over.

Before he leaves, before her husband returns

she gives him money and a key to the front door, whispers

that she’ll sell the emeralds, her wedding ring, the sapphire jewelry.

She won’t need those baubles in El Máximo’s just, new paradise.

She’s on his side of the trench now, a drummer for the cause.

© Cristina Adams 2009

Recession Obsession

As recessions go, this one really bites. I think about it every day, every night, in the middle of the night when I go toe-to-toe with insomnia. It's affecting virtually every aspect of my family's life: going out to eat, grocery shopping, taking vacations, keeping our jobs, educating our children, even where we buy socks. And then there's recession stress. I'm stressed, my husband's stressed, and that makes our marriage a stressful place to be. It's bad enough when I feel guilty about spending money on lip gloss. Does my relationship with my spouse have to suffer as well? You betcha. I think the phrase "toxic assets" has more to do with our monthly bills than with any floppy sub-prime mortgages. Since the economy started its descent into the toilet, we alternate between ignoring the elephant in the room and talking about it until we're shouting at each other. Neither scenario really works.

The reality is that this recession is affecting nearly everyone, even Warren Buffett, even those of us who are well educated, financially responsible and good enough at what we do to command a respectable wage. Here's the rub. We have two kids in private school, and we've worked hard to be able to keep them there. But now we're faced with having to take one of them out next year and put him in public school, unless we can pull a financial rabbit out of our collective hat in the next nine months. I'd rather eat beanie-weenies for a year than deprive either of my children of a top-notch education. But have you seen how expensive beanie-weenies are these days? Never mind private school tuition.