Writing

Shorn

2012-05-18T23:02:27Z

This morning I looked into the mirror and slicked my hair back with my hands so that I looked bald, and thought, "I should shear my head."

Fleeting thought.

Hours later I went to get a truckload of composted manure at a friend's. Her husband looked at me and said,

as if the fleeting thought was still visible above my head,

a cue for his part in the production:

"I should shear your head."

So I just had to let him.

Then he said, "You are pretty darn brave, Roach."

And we laughed.

And I felt good. I’d rather be considered brave than beautiful.

Later my boss said,

“What happened, did you get your head caught in a lawn mower?”

And I still feel good.

Fat, Fear, Love

2012-04-17T19:35:44Z

When my husband left me (for another woman), I lost 25 pounds. I didn’t set out to lose weight. I just stopped eating.

And I cried. I drank too much. I listened to music. I sang at the top of my voice. Linda Ronstadt: “I’ve been cheated, been mistreated, when will I be loved?” The Eagles: “I’m already gone, I’m feeling strong.” My little daughter cried and asked me not to play that music. And I stopped eating.

A friend told me that her mother said that a man leaves his wife for a reason. I cried and pondered: Was I too serious, too tense, too caught up in school? Was I too attentive to my daughter, not to him? Was I . . . was I . . too fat?

Was I fat? I prided myself on the fact that I didn’t look bad in a new bikini when my daughter was six months old. But in taking care of a child and going to graduate school and being poor over the next few years, I’d let my body, well, grow. I wore peasant shirts, elastic waist bands.

At first I didn’t notice weight loss, but then my clothes no longer fit. Friends told me I was too skinny. But I loved my new body. I began to look in the mirror again. Began to appreciate myself. I looked good. I let my hair grow, highlighted it with blond streaks.

My little daughter watched. She learned resiliency. And what else?

* * * * * * * * * *

My father never had an extra pound of weight on his body. Never. He had some sort of internal mechanism, I guess. He ate ice cream every night, sitting watching TV in his big brown recliner. When he finished he’d call the dog to lick the bowl. It didn’t take long for the dog to simply hear the bowl being scraped to come running.

But, if my father somehow perceived (what did he see?) that there was extra weight on his body, he’d stop eating ice cream And in a week or two he’d resume his nightly habit.

I was a pre-teen when I noticed my father’s careful observance of his weight. Both my parents were careful about their bodies. They didn’t use the word dieting, but after vacations my mother would talk about having to fit into this or that. Somewhere along the way, I even managed to put a name to my parents’ attitude toward fat: prejudice.

I never thought much about my weight or my body when I was a kid. But I watched and I listened.

* * * * * * * * * *

When my mother was ill in the years before she died and weighed less than 100 pounds, she once said to me: “I still find myself sucking in my stomach.”

* * * * * * * * * *

My children are all slender. My youngest son, who went through a brief bout of chubbiness in pre adolescence, would—after he became slim—pinch a piece of his skin between his thumb and forefinger and say, “I’ve gotta lose this.”

“That’s skin,” I’d answer.

I think my older son takes a kind of secret pride in the fact that at 135 pounds, he weighs less than his mother, his sister, and his wife.

I asked my daughter recently if she felt an excessive attention to body size, if I made her worry about her body. She generously answered, “Well, no, but you always seemed to be on a diet.”

It’s true. I’ve always been on a diet. I’ve done a bunch of fad diets—Nutri-system, the Scarsborough diet, several rounds with Weight Watchers. I’ve kept up fitness regimes—step class,es, aerobics classes, Jazzercise. bicycling, and hiking.

Self-control and self-indulgence are in a constant battle.

* * * * * * * * * *
I’ve always thought my daughter was beautiful—from the time she was born.

Did I say that too much? Too little?

* * * * * * * * * *

I watch my daughter with her little twin girls. She’s never been happier, she tells me. They make music, read books, take walks, have picnics, sing songs, play hand and toe games.

When John comes home from work the four of them have dance party time, all of them laughing and bouncing to the music, before settling in for bottles and stories and bed. I watch a little jealously her fulsome expressions of love to her husband and children, the bright ring of family she’s constructing.

My daughter fusses about the stubborn remaining pounds after the babies are born. “Give yourself time,” her husband reassures, supports.

* * * * * * * * * *
John’s father died when he was twelve year old. Emily’s father left when she was four years old.

“He’s afraid I’ll die; I’m afraid he’ll leave,” she once told me.

A Heartbreaking Girl of Staggering Beauty

2011-10-21T16:35:42Z

I know exactly the angle at which my face looks best in photos. Or at least I thought I did. My chin is tilted slightly down and to the right. I smile, but not too big because my natural smile shows too big teeth and a lot of gum. I believe that this pose conceals, or at least mitigates, many of my flaws- the bump on my nose, my crooked right tooth, and my weak chin. I feel bad that I know this. I wish I didn’t care. Funnily enough, people often tell me that I’m photogenic, which I take to mean, prettier in photographs than I am in real life.

After the birth of my daughters I’ve become concerned about how my self-consciousness may affect them. I’ve been considering how much time and energy I’ve wasted worrying about the way I look and wishing I were different. In a culture that exerts such enormous pressure on women and young girls, I want to be part of their remedy not the poison.

I want my girls to be soccer players not beauty queens. If they must date, I hope they date boys who love them for their minds and strongly held opinions. I hope they have friends with tangled hair, dirty jeans, and make-up free faces. I hope they discover beauty and fashion late enough that it gives them amusement and pleasure, but in no way affects their sense of self. In short, I want them to be nothing like me.

As a teenager I cared inordinately about the way I looked. I know that’s fairly typical for an adolescent girl, but I think I was worse than average. My Halloween costumes reflect my obsession with ultra-feminine ideals- a cheerleader (MSU), a Miss America contestant (Texas), a southern belle (seriously, I wore an old hoop skirt from my mother’s prom dress) and many early years as a fairy princess. True, the pageant contestant was done with a hint of irony. I played it for laughs. But I secretly longed to be one of those impossibly shiny and immaculate girls.

I was a ballerina from second grade to my junior year in high school and there are many pictures of myself that I find painful to look at in overdone make-up and tutus. I’m not sure who to blame for this. My mother, a professor, feminist and civil rights activist among other things, wears almost no make up and questions the morality of pedicures. My best friend growing up was an extremely bright and levelheaded girl who was not particularly preoccupied by boys or appearance. Actually, in hindsight I’m not sure how or why she put up with all my silliness. I’m not sure why I did either. I was fine looking growing up- pretty enough to have dates to all the dances with boys that other girls liked. Pretty enough to attract sufficient male attention and the occasional jealous look from other girls, but I knew I wasn’t one of those heartbreakingly exquisite waifs on the covers of magazines. I had plenty of other things going for me- I was smart, a good dancer, funny and friendly, but it worried me, it niggled at me this lack of perfection.

Why did I want to be beautiful so badly? Why was pretty enough not good enough? I still don’t really know, but when I’ve tried to look at it honestly what I come up with is power. To simply walk into a room and be special before doing anything else, saying anything else seemed enormously desirable to me. I suppose too, like lots of girls, in spite of everything else I could do, none of it seemed as valuable as being spectacularly gorgeous. I’ve come some distance from the ferocious longings of my adolescence, but I still feel it as a lack, a little ache where my beauty should be.

When my daughters were about seven months old my friend Mia took a photo of my baby Rose and me. Rose’s face is leaned against mine and I am holding her close, smiling wide at the camera. We are sitting on our sunny front porch and we are beaming. In this photo I’ve forgotten everything I ever thought I knew about how I look best and, actually, I look fantastic. I mean I look exhausted. My crooked nose and tooth are clearly on display. But I look happy. And this photo does what, it finally occurs to me, photos are supposed to do. It records a moment in time so I can have access to it forever. I remember this day very clearly. It was the first day my old friend Mia met my girls. With every person who met my daughters it was like I re-experienced the thrill of their existence. I felt absurdly proud of their every smile and babble. It was like my heart was saying, “look, this is me as a mother, isn’t it amazing, can you even believe these beautiful people are my daughters?” And Mia is one of those generous souls who loves other peoples’ joy. She is happy to have a little more happiness in the world. It was a clean, bright day that made worry trivial. Now I have this photo of my flawed and glowing face reminding me of what I’ve always known: beauty is not perfection.

Right now in my life as a stay at home mom I often look bedraggled and a little haggard. Sometimes I look in the mirror and wish I had my old problems. But here’s the thing, for a very long time my imperfect face was the only one my daughter Eva wanted to see. Everyone else made her howl at the moon. My voice was the one my daughters wanted to lull them to sleep. And I sing a lot. Ever since my girls were born I sing them little made up songs. I don’t have a voice- and that’s putting it kindly, but babies don’t care, they are soothed just as well by the hoarse and the tuneless. For months I have been singing them the same tune. It is one I couldn’t place, though I knew it wasn’t my own. I was humming it to people asking them if they recognized it. No one could name it. Then one day recently I heard it on a classical music for children CD I was playing to the girls in the car. And I am struck when I find out the title by the accidental enormity of all my good fortune. I am struck by how in spite of my haplessness and superficiality I have stumbled on so much grace. It turns out that this song I have been whispering in my babies’ ears all this time is Ode to Joy.

Untitled

2011-10-20T18:20:39Z

When I was nine years old, one day my mother made an offhanded remark about how ugly I was.

Before that day, I loved to sing, act, write, dance -- for as long as I can remember, since I was three years old at least. After that day, all that mattered to me was being seen as physically beautiful, or, failing that, desirable because I possessed some undeniable talent, or, failing that, becoming so famous that I would no longer be invisible - I wanted to be seen, appreciated, which for me meant that I would be loved.

For me, “ugly” meant “worthless.”

I sang, but the thought “you are ugly” would cause my voice to falter and crack, and eventually I stopped singing. I danced, but the thought “you are ugly,” underlined every gesture I made, and when my dance teacher praised me and encouraged me to become a professional choreographer, I didn’t believe her. I wanted to act, but I convinced myself that I was too ugly to ever work as an actor, and I ran off to Paris, abandoning the last thing that gave me joy.

I spent an inordinate amount of energy and time trying to be beautiful, wishing I were beautiful, hoping that someone would find me beautiful. I spent too much money on clothes, makeup, and fashion magazines. I spent a lot of time hating the way I looked.

Then one day, in desperation, and realizing that life is indeed too short to live unhappily, I decided to give acting a true try.

That was twelve years ago. I have not achieved success as an actor, not by the common definition of the word, but I remind myself when I am low that I have done more than I could have imagined thirteen years ago. And that at least I gave it a shot.

Some years ago, I had misplaced the passport I had when I ran off to Paris twenty years ago. Last year I found it, and when I looked at my passport photo, I was stunned. I was beautiful, and never knew. I was beautiful, simply because I was.

What is more, all these years I was so focused on my face that I was blind to true beauty, the only kind that lasts, and the beauty that is truly seen, appreciated, and makes one beloved. This beauty has many faces: kindness, generosity, honesty, courage, humor, devotion, selflessness, love... You will add more to the list as you live your lives, I am certain. Just know, that you are worthy, simply because you are. Embrace your life, and love yourself.

Untitled

2011-10-20T18:16:38Z

I was born with long, curly, flowing hair, my mother chopped it all off and ruined my life. That’s not entirely true, but that is the story I told myself for years. There are pictures of me as a toddler with curly, long hair. I was so pretty and girly at the age of 2. The story told to me by my mother says that those cute, girly curls were a bear to get a comb through. Even going through bottles of “Johnson’s No More Tangles”, I would scream and cry as she pulled on my curly, tangled hair. (I don’t remember that part.) So one day, she just couldn’t take it anymore and got out the scissors. It was finally short – and straight (the curls had only been on the ends of the hair). And that is how it stayed for the next 20 years.

I think I was in kindergarten the first time it happened: an older kid at school looked at me and asked “Are you a girl or a boy?” I had never been more embarrassed or more angry. Because he was right. No one knew my gender. Girls were supposed to have long hair and wear dresses; boys wore pants and had short hair. How else would you know who was who? Even hours and hours of watching “Free to Be You and Me” couldn’t convince me that girls – pretty girls anyway – should have short hair. Well, I concluded, maybe I can’t have long hair, but I can dress like a girl. And I made a vow right then and there to always dress like a girl.

I spent all of first grade in a dress. Or a skirt. Or the one pink polyester pantsuit I had. Rain or shine, all through the Minnesota winter, walking to school every day in tights. I was determined that no one would EVER mistake me for a boy. My mother tried to make me part my hair on the side, rather than in the middle where it had been for a long time. Part my hair on the side just like my brother’s hair! I would have none of it. I was old enough to refuse that at least!

It was clear from television and movies. Long hair was the way to go. All of the pretty women on TV had long hair. I watched Charlie’s Angels religiously. The cast consisted of the pretty blonde, the pretty brunette, and the ugly but smart one, who had short hair. I gazed longingly at Princess Leia with her braided buns, knowing that it took a LOT of long hair to make those braids. I loved Little House on the Prairie, and was fascinated when Laura became a teacher. Her outward sign of adulthood was that she took her long hair, which had always hung straight down on her shoulders, and put it up into a very grown-up bun. With little ringlets on the side of her face. She was so pretty.

The ‘80’s happened when I was in Junior High. All the popular (read: pretty) girls had big, bouncy, curly hair. Now, ever since “the big cut” at age two, my hair had been straight as an arrow. This clearly would not work for me when I turned 13. I started getting permanents. My mother tried to perm my hair at home at first. She put a bunch of curlers on my head, willy-nilly, and started to apply the ammonia solution. I gagged. My eyes watered. I felt like I couldn’t breathe! But the thought of curly hair kept me going. At the end, when she took out the rollers…nothing had changed. The curls fell out as soon as my hair dried. I was heart-broken. I wept and wailed. How could I go back to Oak Land Jr. High with this terrible straight hair?!? My mother finally relented and took me to a professional stylist for the perm. Images of Blair from “The Facts of Life” and Morgan Fairchild went through my head as the stylist rinsed out the curlers that had been pulling on my head for a half-hour. Then we went back to the mirror. My hair was definitely curly…like a brunette version of Little Orphan Annie. Tight, kinky curls that I couldn’t brush out were plastered to my head. Once again, I thought, I looked like a boy. My dreams of being popular were dashed.

Not much later, no one would ever mistake me for a boy again. I started developing womanly “assets”, and I learned how to work the perms that I got continually. I spent hours in front of the mirror with curling iron in hand – 2 different sizes of curling irons – and a big bottle of hairspray. I finally got my hair to do something resembling what I wanted. It still wasn’t long, but at least it was big.

In the ‘90’s, styles changed (as styles are wont to do), and I was able to let go of my perms. Instead, I experimented with color: blonde, red, and that unfortunate period of jet-black hair which certain people will not let me forget. I also started to grow my hair out for the first time. I was elated when I could actually put it up in a pony-tail. Although as it got longer and longer, I started to see that long hair was a lot of work and ended up with it in a pony-tail more often than not.

When I hit my 30’s, I began working professionally as an actor. The main tool I have as an actor is my “headshot”. It is my calling-card. It is the first thing I do at an audition: hand the director my headshot. And the most important rule of auditioning is: Always Look Like Your Headshot. So I finally developed a personal hair style. I settled on a bright red color that I had to touch up every 6 weeks, because reds fade fast. And I had lovely shoulder-length straight hair with long bangs. I felt pretty, I felt feminine. And after moving to a new city, everyone thought of me that way: with long red hair. I was content.

Then, a bomb-shell dropped in June of 2010. I was diagnosed with breast cancer. When I received the diagnosis, I sobbed from the shock of it, and as the nurse practitioner told me about my options for treatment, it became clear that I was going to have to get chemotherapy. My hand instinctively went to my hair, and the nurse practitioner saw it. “Yes,” she sighed, “We might be able to save your breast, but I’m sorry, you will probably lose your hair.” More tears flowed.

I became determined to beat the disease. I learned all I could about breast cancer. I spent hours on the internet researching. I bought dozens of books about how to cope, and I embarked on my year of cancer treatments. After weeks of tests, it was determined that I could keep my breast and have a lumpectomy: a surgery during which they just take out the tumor, but leave the rest of the breast intact. I was relieved and went through the surgery without many problems. I was sent home to heal for a month before I started on the chemo. I was to have 4 ½ months of chemotherapy and a full year of another I.V. treatment called Herceptin.

I became more and more convinced that I could live and thrive. I found a website called “Bald is Beautiful” which had dozens of pictures of beautiful bald women. And not beautiful in that “oh, isn’t she strong, as you feel sorry for her” type of beautiful. These women were seriously HOT! I had read in all my research that when the hair falls out, long hair can sometimes be uncomfortable. And having watched many made-for-TV movies about women with cancer where they stand sobbing in front of the mirror as they brush their hair and clumps fall off in the hairbrush, I decided to take the bull by the horns. I was going to decide when I lost my hair, not the chemo. So several days after my first treatment, I went to an acquaintance who was a hair stylist, and had her shave my head.

My first instinct was to put on a brave face despite my fear that I would look like an old man, and Shelley, the stylist, tried to make the afternoon as fun as possible. I took a deep breath when she got out the clippers and took the first swipe. There was no turning back now. My beautiful red hair floated quietly to the ground, and I realized I was free. I even started to have fun, and a friend took pictures. Eventually I became the punker I had always seen when she shaved me down to a mohawk. And finally just down to my bangs. Then it was gone. The most amazing part was that all of the other stylists in the salon kept coming by and telling me how beautiful I looked. “Oh, you have a perfectly shaped head!” They cried, and “Your eyes are so blue.” Or “I can’t believe how gorgeous you are without hair! You should have done this years ago!” Shelley washed my head to get the little hairs off of me and I looked in the mirror.

I had to admit, I looked way better than I ever would have believed before this experience. I had brought a pretty blue scarf and she showed me how to tie it around my head. We took a picture, and I was….well….beautiful. Getting rid of all that hair left me with just me. There was nothing to hide behind. No distraction of long red hair. I had believed that my long red hair was what made me beautiful, and for the first time in my life I realized what made me beautiful was that I was my SELF. There was no one else in this world like me. I was strong and resilient, I was facing down a terrifying illness and I had faced it head on by shaving my head. There was going to be no more running away from who I naturally was.

It sounds strange, but as I write this, exactly one year after that day shaving my head, as I sit here with short, straight hair that I absolutely love, I am actually grateful for the cancer. It is not something I would want for anyone else. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, but I have learned so much about myself. About my capacity for acceptance, my ability to recognize and receive love, and about the peace that lies inside myself. I know now that everything will be alright, no matter what happens next, and no matter how my hair grows.

Untitled

2011-10-20T18:15:38Z

There is a moment, in canoeing...

Must be extreme canoeing, because it's not

anything I have ever experienced or

I''d be all done canoeing...

It's called a "horizon drop"

meaning, all of a sudden, you can't--

you just cant see the river, it has

dropped away from you, and until

you get to the edge of that drop, you

don't know how far you might fall.

The dilemma is: do you get out and walk along the bank

safe and dry, and check out that drop before you get there?

Or do you trust the map, the guidebook, the guy you met

around the campfire last night, that this is just part of the fun...

you might break a bone, but you won't die,

and you will have such a story at tomorrow night's campfire.

Raising children is one long string of horizon drops, that's

what I think. Only it's not you that might be trapped at the bottom of the falls

slowly drowning in the furious bubbles...

It's not you who might be sailing, singing, over the rapids...

It's that little beast who has made every day a day of worry

interrupted by moments of creation-worthy joy.

And who are you to say, "portage, you must porTAGE" or

hell, go for it, you only live once...either could be such bad advice.

You are no better than that drunken camper you toasted the stars with last night

Except, you are all bound up with love, and so

here you go, or don't go.

Already, you have been so brave.

New at the Korner Keg

2011-10-20T18:11:47Z

She is efficient and strong behind the bar.

Last night she was a customer, got drunk

and got hired. Apparently, she's pretty funny

when she's drunk.

She tells my friend, over the whoosh of glasses

being washed, that she got fired

from Kohls. She was selling cosmetics and

well

who knows why they let her go. "Funny, I thought

that was one thing I was actually good at."

She glances to her left...

"Wake up, Robbie, we can't have you sleepin' at the bar"

and the old gent ruefully rubs his eyes to comply.

She draws three beers in about ten seconds, places them in front

of the right customers, and makes change. "I never tended bar before"

she laughs, as she turns back to us.

I know better than to ask for white wine. Bourbon's what I drink,

anyway, And when she places it in front of me I want to say,

I'd be proud if you were my daughter.

You are good at landing on your feet.

Body Wash

2011-10-20T18:10:39Z

Some days the soap doesn’t work in the shower—

the shampoo just won’t lather,

and after, you still feel tacky

as if, instead of water, you rinsed with grape jelly

or shellac. There’s no reason for it,

it’s the same soap, the same water

at the same temperature,

(too hot for your last boyfriend)

the same fiberglass insert

with the same bar of Ivory melting in the corner pocket,

the same chamomile conditioner.

It just won’t work,

and you dry off and dress and nothing’s right

the skirt of your dress is too short

hitting above the knee as if you were still 28

instead of at the knee—you’re in your 40s.

And your sandals give you blisters

before you’re finished making the toast

and maybe the toast burns

while you’re changing shoes,

and there’s dried egg on your plate

it won’t come off, even with a scrubby.

And all the while

as you grumble about the crumbs in your bra

and how much trash is left in the car—

old tissues and gum wrappers—

it isn’t the soap

or the shower

or the toaster

or the trash.

It’s that third set of pictures

they took of your left breast

and the waiting for next Thursday

and the biopsy

that makes your body-wash fail.

That makes you so unclean.

When It Happened

2011-10-20T18:09:38Z

I should have gone to the funeral

booked a plane ticket

packed a bag

and come to stand with her

beside the short casket

in the midst of wreaths, roses and baby's breath,

twined with rattles.

I should have sat down and called

listened to the the stories:

first bath,

first smile,

when she found her in the crib

still and cold in those footie pajamas.

When it happened,

I should have slid a fountain pen

from its velvet sheath,

carefully refilled the well,

and inked calligraphy onto linen paper.

I had no words to say.

Looking back, I should have stopped

in the card aisle, pulled any one

from among the condolences.

I could have signed it with a ball point pen,

a dull pencil,

a permanent marker,

the stub of red crayon,

the black tar of my own fear.

Body Language by Devon Brenner

2011-10-20T18:07:03Z

At the seminar the speaker

tells us that any message

is only 3% the words

and the rest how you say it,

the pallate of tones painted in the voice

and the pacing of the breath,

the angles of the shoulders,

the semaphore of hands

carry the message, she reports

in even tones,

with good posture and eye contact,

and as I sit here struggling,

no—tussling, no—grappling with line

breaks and white space

and the spider’s web a metaphor weaves

it’s the words I savor

now he’s spoken them

all three of them,

whispered

against my body

late into the night.