Low Rise Jeans

I was at a birthday party for a friend's son's birthday, who also happens to be friends with my son, when I looked around the room of eclectic parents from Brooklyn. There were the really old looking parents, a few with adopted girls from China, there were the Lesbian moms, and then there were the hip-40 something moms dressed in the uniform for this group: low rise jeans, t-shirty top, and some kind of boots on their feet. I know this uniform intimately since I am one of these 40-something moms, who tries to be hip.

There was one woman, in particular, who made me reassess my group's efforts to dress like we were still 20-something, or worse, 30-something when our lives were much different than they are today. This woman, who was quite tall, had on jeans much too tight, and much too low on the hips to hide the lumpiness of her 40-something body after a few kids. The assemble would have been bad enough with the jeans if she'd thrown on a baggy sweater on top, but instead she went for the whole shebang and wore a thin, body-hugging t-shirt, the kind that really highlights back fat, stomach rolls, and other unattractive sights of our age.

In essence, she was dressed as if she were still young. Yes, I know the new 40 is the old 30, but give me a break. Our chronological age is that of a 40 year old, no matter how our generation, or each generation, seems to be in a constant regression. Might I add that this regression of each generation claiming to be a decade younger, in spirit and attitude, is a mass market push by the Baby Boomers to stave off the eventuality that is facing them: a lifetime of golf in sunny climes, bingo games, and complaining about the chronic aches and pains of old age.

It's true we, women my age, look far more youthful than our mothers would have at our age. We tend to wear our hair in styles that wouldn't mark us as moms or matrons. (This dressing as if one is much younger is de rigeur in Southern California where every mom walks around in hip-hugging jeans) We take better care of ourselves, or so we're led to believe. But more important than the physical differences in maintenance, we are just more immature in our thinking, perhaps adding to this sense of perpetual adolescence that seems to cling to women my age.

Is this a result of us having put off those responsibilities of marriage, children, and house till we were much older than our mothers? Whatever the various causes, I sat and reevaluated the slew of hip hugging jeans in my own drawer at home as I watched this mom doing that familiar tug of pulling up jeans too low on their hips. I realized it might be time to put them away for good, relegated to a life of high waisted jeans.

Blind 'Friend' Dates

I have had three blind 'friend' dates this past week, having been set up by three separate people from LA with friends, good friends, here. And so, I got dolled up to meet these strangers I've only communicated with via Email and one phone conversation. Women, as everyone knows, dress for other women. We are forever putting together outfits, not to attract the whistles or cat calls from men, but to get affirmations from our own gender. We doll up, try to look cute, all for the satisfaction of knowing our girlfriends appreciated the effort, or better, to receive that compliment and cooing when something you're wearing is envy worthy.

This position of being set up is a new one for me. I've never had trouble meeting people or making friends. If anything, I am a pathological people collector, the crazier the better, as my husband likes to say. And with most of the people I know living in the suburbs or in Brooklyn--I am still artsy enough to have quite a few contacts out that way--I have found my social calendar in the city quiet. This quiet for some would be a source of sadness, but for me it has served as a nice refuge from the social whirl of my life in LA and my summer on the Vineyard. But I knew this solitary life would, should come to an end with each passing week.

It's interesting to experience being on a 'blind date' even if with another woman as a possible friend candidate. The expectations and same anxieties prevail despite this meeting not being determined by the possibility of an attraction. Or isn't it? Aren't female friendships as fraught with the same emotional intensity as relationships between men and women? Aren't these relationships also relationships of the heart. Aren't these relationships as time consuming? And aren't these relationships also devastating when a relationship comes to an end? So, there I was, sitting and waiting at various restaurants or venue across the city, all with the same anxiety of: I hope they like me.

Each meeting brought forth another potential friend: one woman, definitely a 'girlfriend' of the drinks and kvetching variety, another of the proper lunch and tennis date variety, the other the one you make yourself see because they are connected enough to warrant time. These blind dates made me think about how we sound on the phone versus the way we actually look. Since I'd had opportunity to speak to only one blind date, my opinions were formed from email correspondences, not the most reliable way to envision someone. Each of us, all at varying stages of Motherhood, bonded over the fact that we were connected to someone they cared deeply about and for. So, each meeting was a total surprise, in a nice way. All of my 'blind friend dates' were a success. I could see the potential for these relationships to flourish in a way most conducive to the personalities involved.

This new life where relationships, each one a brand new start, is a good place to be for now. I wouldn't wish for anything else. I am happy to correspond with strangers, hoping this new connection may be the relationship that will make me feel tethered to this place. But if that weren't to happen, I always have all the other days when I'm quietly thrilled to be here, to be living my life in this city that I'd always dreamed of living.

The Wahoo Girls

The Wahoo Girls, three of us, are the kinds of friends where the cliche, 'letting our hair down,' is a mild understatement for what happens when we get together. Yes, we're somewhere between Carrie Bradshaw and crew from, "Sex in the City," and the old broads on the "Golden Years," and certainly not "Desperate Housewives." There's lots of wine when we get together, as well as, honest, funny conversations. And since we need so little excuse to eat, drink, and enjoy one another, we used my impending departure as the excuse for yesterday's get together. What's so reassuring about these friendships is how each of us has not forgotten who we had been before becoming mothers. We don't get together to sit around talking about our kids, but instead talk about life and all of the complexities that we encounter. We also don't sit around discussing or dissecting our marriages, not that we couldn't discuss any of our concerns if we had to. It's funny how unspoken this is, our time together extending beyond the parameters of our every day lives. Whenever I leave one of our gatherings, I marvel at how much fun it had been, and how intimate we are with one another. I feel fortunate to have friends where there is so little artifice since artifice, especially in a city like LA, is worn daily, constantly.

Our conversations don't so much as end, but is merely suspended, to be picked up when we get together again. I revel in the fact that we, each of us, recognized in the other, the potential to be a Wahoo Girl. Yes, when we were younger, more adolescent, we were the fun-loving girls, who could always be counted on to liven up any gathering. And believe me, we, collectively, celebrate this aspect of the other. It's rare to meet someone, particularly among women, who is confident enough in themselves to just let it all hang out, as they say. And that is what I love about my Wahoo Girls, the ones I would call in a heartbeat to say, 'hey, get your ass on that plane because I'm bored without my Girls!' Each gathering now is one away from that day when I leave. So, each time we toast our glasses, we don't say it's a toast for my departure, but rather our friendship.

Book Club...Goodbye

Last night, my book club attended a reading given by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of, "Eat, Pray, Love," at Vroman's Books in Pasadena. I know, you can imagine how long it took me to get there from my new location sans freeways. Once there, my club was there along with 50 other women (a huge, huge, number for any reading), and one lone man. It seemed all the women belonged to some book club, and I don't know why this is, but so many of them looked so familiar to me. Actually, I did spot two men among the hordes (an exaggeration) of women. The talk, rather than reading from the book, was reassuring to me because she was so human, much like her book. She doesn't profess or pretend to know anything other than what her experience has been. And like the rest of us, she has nary a clue as to what is coming around the bend. After the talk, we convened at a Thai restaurant in Pasadena. And there, we fell into a familiar pattern of discussing a multitude of topics, our thoughts and opinions shared so freely, weaving our way, finally, to the book.

I started this book club, some 7 years ago, after coming back to LA after finishing my graduate school. I started this club, selfishly, to gather with smart, book-loving, women to discuss "literature." And during these last 7 years, the club, its members, have morphed, all of it rather fluidly. I remember when I started it, I was a bit chagrined to tell people I had started a 'book club' since the idea of it seemed, and still does, a bit suburban housewifely--an association which, you all know, can make me apoplectic.

What I didn't realize 7 years ago, since my head was still at graduate school where thorough, and I mean, thorough discussions were required, was that this club, this sorority of women would provide a much needed foundation to my life. This club of smart, sympathetic women, helped me, individually, but collectively through some of my bleakest days. When my son was born, one member, who is a dear friend, hosted the evening at her place since I lived very close by, thereby insuring my participation. This gesture was like being handed a buoy after barely staying afloat for endless hours. These women, some mothers, some not, some married, some not, some white, some not, some older, some not, are some of the most interesting people I've met in my life. Yes, I did invite each of them, with the exception of one, but I take no credit for the chemistry of this club, the culmination of which ended up with the book club road tripping this past January. Each one, unique and individual, with a life experience that is as complicated as any of the books we've read, have held me up. And so, in my doggedness for intellectual stimulation, I got something far greater...friendship, empathy, sympathy, security. See, no matter how hard a month it had been, no matter how pissed-off I had been, no matter how sad I had been, this monthly meeting was the one constant where I knew I could go in my fragile, pissed-off, sad state, and be met with a calm understanding by each. Never did I feel the need to wear a mask of invincibility--yes, we all know I'm incapable of such a thing. I know I just posted that piece about chatter...this group was incapable of such pettiness. Not once, did I ever feel any of their judgment about the vicissitudes of a life that felt so awry to me, some of my complaints, I'm sure, ridiculous, the rantings of a spoiled brat.

Like most book clubs, this gathering of women was so rarely about the book, the book merely a backdrop for something far greater. It was at the various tables, where we sat together, that each of us learned something about ourselves, each other, but sometimes life itself. There was lots of wine consumed, so that my husband referred to the book club as the wino club. We, the club that is, never did come up with a clever moniker for our group. I'm relieved that we never did--nothing so cute as the Jane Austen Club or the Sylvia Plath Club, if we were a group of depressives--because it spoke to the diversity of our group being not so easily categorized.

We didn't really discuss that last night was my last with the club. It was too heartbreaking for me to say much beyond encouraging them to carry on, even if I was no longer here to drive the oxcart forward, as they say. Our table closed the restaurant, not a hard thing to do in LA, much less rocking Pasadena. Each of us hugged one another quickly, some saying that dreaded word, 'goodbye,' to me. Some merely hugging me. I woke up this morning with the weight of this loss on my chest. I sent them an email, again, encouraging them to continue reading together. I'm hoping they read this post, so they can understand what a heartbreak this is for me, and how much they have meant to my life here these last 7 years. Why I can't say that to them...well, writing for me is way I work out my stuff, where I feel the safest to lay myself bare, something I can't do in my every day life.

So, this post is a loving tribute to a group of 6 women, who have been the other pillar in this precarious house of mine. They were the graceful columns holding up the ramshackle, much spackled box, that was the place where I held my fears, hopes, dreams, whimsical craziness, the very essence of me, sheltered inside.

Chatter,Chatter, Chatter

Chatter is what the chattering class does, and does rather exhaustively and extensively. Chatter is what I hear, none of it scintillating, none of it original, but most of it incredibly gossipy and, at times, a bit mean-spirited. Yes, I'm talking about adults, and not those that are under four feet. It's fascinating to me how so many conversations are centered around others and not ideas-- no never ideas. Why is it that people with leisure time spend so much of their time obsessed about others? What I find so endlessly amusing is how all of this talk is, in the end, so circuitous. X is doing so and so, said by Y. Then X will discuss how Y is doing so and so to T. T will then tell Y how X is doing so and so. You can see what I'm saying, right? It's a bit like the algebraic equations that made my life a living hell in 8th grade. And in the end, each person will get discussed by the other to one of the other in the group, thereby making a perfect circle if one could diagram the talk. I suppose this is more geometry than algebra, both of which made my life absolute hell. I won't get into what Calculus did to me or that ridiculous AP Physics class. It is a bit Dorothy Parkeresque, if only any of them had ever read Dorothy Parker.

Anyway, I'm not claiming to be above the fray since I'm usually X or Y, depending on the circle. But rather, I'm just alarmed and dismayed that this circle of talk seems to occur more often than not. This chatter doesn't occur with all my girlfriends. I do have a few, those that are keepers on the friendship shelf, that can, and do have conversations about so many other topics other than people, or people we know in common. This chattering seems to reach a crescendo pitch in certain communities like churches, schools, sororities, secretarial pool (is there such a thing anymore since all secretaries are now referred to as assistants), English departments, any place where people spend an inordinate amount of time working, believing, supporting, and socializing. And with my penchant for joining groups, I find myself involved in lots of chatter.

I'm not a poet by training, although that is a secretly held dream of mine. Yes, my husband would surely be upset now since we know how much money poets make in this world. I mean, everyone reveres John Ashbery, well, language poets do anyway, but how many people actually buy his collections, right? Or know who John Ashbery is for that matter? And like I had said about chatter in English Departments, albeit a rather eloquent chatter, poetry workshops were notoriously contentious and mean-spirited. I heard from many poets that the rooms would divide between language poets versus narrative poets, all in the fight to death about which form is the valid form. All funny stuff, really, but very serious to the participants.

Nonetheless, I have started to write a poem or two. Nothing grand, nothing publishable. But this chatter to which I was referring was something that was the genesis of a poem I was recently working on.

I will share here...please bear with me as it is many drafts away from being ready.

Whispers, secret glances, flowing hair huddled together.
Why do we pretend we are all friends?
Why do we keep up social graces?
Keeping up the charade all is perfect.
As whispers gather, each utterance about someone we know
The cumulus of deceit darkening our pristine houses.

Whispers, secret glances, shoulder blades jutting together.
Invitations extended and rescinded.
Words now louder
Gusts of gossip, careening through our sedate streets
Overturning sedans, uprooting the ficus tree.

Whispers, secret glances, hands clasped together.
Competition to be Queen Bee
Now a thundering stampede
The ground quivering under the weight of such busyness
Toxins seeping into our water.

And so we say we are all friends.
Glasses clinked in celebration.
As one more heart is savaged.
Another Queen Bee's coronation attended.