Push Me Pull You

8wks2 (1)

Anna Lee Foster entered this world after thirty hours of back labor. My husband and I, like so many first-time parents, had our hearts set on natural childbirth, but after about fifteen hours of agonizing pain, I took the meds which, of course, slowed “progress” down to a crawl. I developed a fever and she began to show signs of distress, so they decided to go to plan B which was pulling her out with a baby-sized plumbers friend. The dance went like this: at the beginning of a contraction I would push and they would pull. We could do this only three times, they said. Then they would go to the dreaded plan C. We pushed and pulled unsuccessfully through two contractions. And then on the third and final push and pull out she came with a bruised and slightly misshapen head. The nurses scooped her up, cleaned her off and placed her in her father’s arms. She gazed into his eyes, breathtakingly beautiful.

Few rites of passage exist in our modern world. And fewer of them consciously acknowledge and value those corner-turning moments of our lives. However, something dawns on me when I look at photos from Annalee’s prom. The dress is sage colored. Strapless. Flows from a sequined bodice in the style of a Greek goddess. She smiles at us, a mix of bubbly soda and sophistication. Grace frozen in time. The moment is truly ceremony. A step toward leaving home.
A little family secret is that during most of her senior year, Annalee lived hermit-style in our house. Her room fell into an abysmal state. Like Thoreau she saw mostly no one, appeared for short mandatory visits at mealtime then disappeared again into some foreign and probably exotic place behind her bedroom door. I understood this need for disconnection and trod gingerly when gifted with her presence. Until, of course, I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Annalee…your room….the house will be condemned if anyone steps in there…” And “If you live like this next year your roommate will hate you.” And “…you need to get a haircut to boot.” She rebelled quietly. The room began to smell.
And then……she was gone.

The dance of push-me-pull-you is over and I am left with absence. Her vacant room has taken on a new identity. The door, closed for the past year, now always stands open. The bare bed she left behind has been remade with fresh sheets and a Mexican blanket. The room is clean. Floor, uncluttered. The books that did not go with her are neatly shelved. Old journals are stacked on her desk. I rifle through a couple of them. A few months ago Annalee would have howled at this invasion, but now,  her ghostly presence just shrugs nonchalantly. An unopened carton of organic hearty chicken soup stock (good for colds!) sits left behind on her dresser. It is a reminder of how this corner-turning is about choice.

For Annalee and me, the daily dance of ‘push-me-pull-you’ is over forever. This truth hits hardest during my meditative stretching class. It is evening and the lights are dim. Soft music plays. As I reach my arms up to the sky, grief washes down over me like blood, and I feel the primariness of my relationship with my daughter flow out of my hands and disappear into the ether. My years of big influence are over. Even if she comes back to live in her room, our relationship will be different. I will step back so that she can step forward. Musical notes tumble out of the window into dusky night. As our stretching winds down, the wave of grief subsides, but I am glad for the soothing music and comforting darkness.

 

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How do I look?

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A youtube video of Dustin Hoffman being interviewed made the rounds on facebook about a year ago. In the moving interview Hoffman recounted revelations he had had while portraying a woman during the filming of “Tootsie.” He realized that he would never approach his female self at a party because, let’s face it, as a woman, he was not very “attractive”. And on the heels of that realization, he understood something profound about the female experience and his own bias towards appearance.
After watching him shed a few tears, my mind flashed to an afternoon  when I walked out of my free make-over at Merle Norman Cosmetics crestfallen that the makeover hadn’t worked. I was not any closer to being beautiful. Not one iota. I looked the same fucking way. Only more so. As Dustin Hoffman put it, this was as good as it was going to get. I brushed all that makeup off my 25-year old self and never told anyone.
Dustin’s tears made me grieve a little for my own struggles with appearance, especially as I begin to age. Of course there are all kinds of platitudes about inner beauty and the various forms of beauty. And how old, lined faces are beautiful. They are all true, but it is still a shock to see an elderly version of my mother’s lined face staring back at me from mirrors and shop windows.

In high school, my friend Rab (short for Barbara) would walk around and sing Janice Ian’s song “Seventeen” looking especially pitiful turning the phrase ‘ugly duckling girls like me.’ But Rab really wasn’t an ugly duckling. She had many pleasing features. Nice hair and skin. Big, blue eyes. Radiant smile. But her perception of herself was of someone shamefully unattractive. Well, she was rather a Miss Know-It-All, and this did not procure her many  boyfriends. And she was wicked bright to boot which also probably scared guys off. All the same, her desire to be viewed as attractive was fierce.

When I was barely thirty, a drunk man in his fifties or sixties came up to me at a bar, stared at me for a long second and told me I was sure going to be an ugly old woman. It was so spontaneous that I shamefully felt there must be truth in it. However, when I told my husband about that incident twenty years later, he laughed. He was right. It was ludicrous. What a bizarre thing for a lumbering drunk to say. And I laughed, too. And to laugh together with my husband at that man’s audacious comment did something to assuage that small, decades old hurt.

Aging brings with it all sorts of mania about one’s physical appearance. I seem to be of two minds. On one hand, aging is kind of a mirage. Anne Lamott has written about looking at photos of her younger self and being pleasantly surprised by the beauty staring back at her, but knowing how self-critical  she had been at the time. I think this happens in each cycle of aging. I look back, “wow… then I thought I was pudgy and getting wrinkles, but I looked great! But now…well, now…..”
And on the other hand the waning of my physical “beauty” is very real. When I was forty, I thought aging was a breeze. I thought fifty was good because it gave me freedom to not care that much. Wrinkles were, like they say, prizes for a life well-lived. But now — now the beginning of ‘real’ aging seems to be setting in and I am no longer merrily coasting along.  I have reached the age where, seriously, if Dustin came into the room he would likely pass me by and not see any potential for an interesting conversation. On good days, I envision my future self to be a slightly eccentric, radiant old woman who people might find interesting. However, on other days I feel I am already a shadow on the road to invisibility. The truth is, as I age, I will sometimes be overlooked. Perhaps often. Sometimes by choice. However, I know how to take some responsibility for my experience. Indeed, I can walk up to people and say hello. Or step into the middle of a conversational floor with my own thoughtful opinions. It is also just as likely that in ten or twenty years I will look at photos of my fifty-seven year old self and say, “wow…I looked pretty damn good!”

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