Just for Men

My husband Keith has been having a midlife crisis for the past few years. His long blackish brown hair has a few strands of gray in it, and his beard began going gray recently. An old time friend saw a picture of Keith, and commented that he looked the same, except the gray beard. Keith freaked out.

He announced that he was going to dye his beard at once. "Gray just isn't me," my husband declared and headed straight to the store to buy a box of Just for Men. You know those cheesy commercials where they show a couple relaxing on their couch, the husband gets up to look in the mirror and is horrified by his gray hair and beard, and voila! He paints Just for Men on his hair, and he looks twenty years younger!

Keith is convinced he looks like he's in his thirties since he started using Just for Men. I won't tell him that he actually looks the same, just like a middle aged guy who paints his beard.

After one episode of beard painting, Keith started sharing his Just for Men syndrome with me.
He started bugging me constantly about my gray roots. "When are you going to dye your hair?" Keith would ask about ten times a day.

"I'll get around to it," I answered. I secretly enjoyed putting off coloring my hair, just to torture Keith a bit longer. After awhile, I think I was torturing myself more than him. I really started to get a complex. Did he think I looked like an old granny with gray hair? Would he start making passes at younger women? Would he start dating a Just for Women model?

After a few months, I gave in. I have to admit, I was looking kind of grannyish with the gray roots. The hippie look just wasn't doing it for me. I just purchased some medium ash brown hair color, it's sitting on my dresser waiting to be painted on. Yes, I still look like a middle aged woman with dyed hair.

But that's okay. I accept my aging body, and still think I look pretty good.

Women's Circle

Hi Mom,

It's Jennifer, again. I went to a women's circle last night. This was the first time I've ever been to a women's circle. We all got to speak about ourselves and I talked about how sad I am that you're not here.

I'm sad that we didn't really know each other and couldn't be friends. I wanted to talk to you Mom, but I don't think you really understood me. Maybe you thought I was a weak person, not fierce like you. I think it takes a strong person to be vulnerable in front of other people, and I can do that, Mom. I cried in front of a group of women I didn't know, and we all held hands and supported each other. I don't think you could have done that, Mom. I'm stronger than you think.

I wish you were at the women's circle with me, Mom. I guess you were there, in spirit. The leader said your name when we joined hands, to honor you. I hope you were listening. Just know that I want to be your friend.

Love,

Jennifer

Letter to my Dead Mother

Dear Mom,

I'm making cranberry sauce today. It's Sunday morning, and I also made pumpkin muffins with Dylan. It's November, it's getting close to Thanksgiving. Remember, we used to make cranberry sauce together? I loved sipping the hot, sweet cranberries, mixed with water and sugar, as it was cooking. I tasted the hot cranberry juice today, and I was thinking about you. I'm going to make pumpkin pie this year with Dylan. I've never made pumpkin pie before. I hope it comes out okay.

We're going to have a quiet Thanksgiving this year, just the four of us. Remember how much fun we used to have on Thanksgiving? We used to help you make the apple pie and the stuffing, and always pick at the stuffing. You made the best Thanksgiving food, Mom.

I started a new job this year. It's really busy. I wish I could talk to you about it. I'm sure you would be proud of me, being a working mom, just like you were. I don't know how you juggled raising the three of us, and working full time. I'm having a hard time, Mom. But don't worry, Wendy is helping me, she's giving me advice.

It was Halloween Friday night. The kids had fun. Dylan dressed as the man with three arms, he had a fake arm in his pocket and his real arm went through the middle of his jacket. Summer was a furry gray mouse, and she was really cute. She loved trick-or-treating this year. Remember we used to hide the candy in the sideboard in our hallway, and secretly start eating the candy out of the bag before Halloween?

I miss you, Mom. I hope you're not too cold out there. I wish I could bring you a nice warm blanket. I love you, Mom.

Love,

Jennifer

Confessions of a Secret Sprinkle Eater

My sister Wendy and I have food allergies. We are both allergic to wheat, dairy and sugar. It's difficult to avoid these foods, so of course, we cheat sometimes.

Last night on the telephone, Wendy and I admitted we fell off the wagon. "I ate sprinkles for dinner the other night," I said. Wendy had never eaten sprinkles for dinner, but she encouraged me to continue my confession. "I drank a whole bottle of maple syrup once, and I felt stoned. I had to immediately go to bed."

Wendy admitted to drinking the same fluid, straight from a maple leave-shaped metal tin. A few days later when her husband was looking for it, Wendy pretended not to know what happened to the decorative container.

"I ate a whole bag of marshmallows the other night, and I toasted them over the stove and got melted marshmallows in my hair," I boasted. Now we were proud of our sins, like two bragging drug addicts.

"I squirted a whole tube of icing in my mouth," Wendy said gleefully. "Me, too," I said.

But the ultimate, most delicious and sinful item we'd both eaten within the last seven days was cookie dough. Our bodies react so violently to this perfect food, that we can only eat the very smallest amounts of the heavenly nectar.

I wish all food didn't exist and I could just live on cookie dough. In my dreams.

Pot Mitzvah

I'm at my niece's bat mitzvah in Portland, Oregon. She is a poised, popular, giggly girl. My sister and brother-in-law said she was born laughing, and that's true. Her mission in life is to have fun.

I remember my bat mitzvah in 1977. I wasn't as confident as my niece Samantha. I was shy, a little bit awkward, and just becoming interested in boys. I had braces, just like Samantha, or Sam, as her friends call her. I loved studying Hebrew with the cantor, a chubby man with swollen fingers resembling sausages.

My mother had a nervous breakdown right before my bat mitzvah. She was briefly hospitalized at Morristown Memorial Hospital's psychiatric unit. This wouldn't be the first time a family member stayed there. She was spouting jibberish, and couldn't take care of herself or her kids. My sister Wanda and Lolli ended up doing a lot of the bat mitzvah planning.

Wanda had a little business going at the time as a pot dealer. She gave me a half ounce for a bat mitzvah gift. It was the best gift I received, and I proclaimed this to some friends one day in a marijuana-induced stupor. "Hey, my sister got me a half ounce for my pot mitzvah." I thought this was hysterically funny, but my friends just stared at me. They didn't get it.

Well, times have changed. There was no pot smoking going on at Sam's bat mitzvah, although there was definitely some dry humping happening on the dance floor. Wanda and Mark are involved parents and fully aware of the trouble teenage girls can get into. They open Sam's e-mail, and follow her around when she hangs out with her friends. I used to think they were over protective, but now I know they have their eyes open to what's really going on - girls creating fake My Space pages for parents to read, and another one with body part photos; Halloween parties where girls show up as Victoria Secret models.

Maybe times haven't changed that much after all.

The Nose Knows

My nose has caused trouble for me my entire life. As a young Jewish girl growing up in the suburbs of New Jersey, I was teased for having a big nose. John Cepparulo used to ask me, "Is that your nose or are you eating a banana?" I never did answer his question, but it occurs to me now, that as a young Italian boy, he also had a big nose. Perhaps that's why he noticed my prominent shnozz.

As I got older, my nose developed a large bump and wide nostrils. Not too attractive. I decided to forgo a high school trip to Israel in favor of a nose job. A great gift for a nice Jewish girl. I flaunted my bandages and black eyes and even have a picture of my bruised face, flipping the finger to the camera.

After getting a nose job, you never quite regain feeling inside your nose. I have to do booger checks quite often with a tiny hand mirror I keep in my purse.

As I get older the pores on my nose are getting large and dark. Gross. I didn't really notice this until I was on T.V. Kevin was working for The Geraldo Rivera Show and I was in a reenactment about a woman who allegedly killed her boyfriend, and then called a radio station to brag about it. There were a few close ups of my face talking on my cell phone and I was horrified to see my disgusting pores magnified on television!

I had also developed a small red spot right on the end of my nose after years of sun exposure. It looked like a zit, but it wasn't. I used to cover it with makeup, but decided after years of carrying around this tiny dot, to have a dermatologist look at it. On the day Kevin planned to have a release party for his new book, the doctor sliced off the end of my nose and put a circular band-aid on the end of it. I was horrified! I had to go to a party with all of Kevin's friends with a band-aid on the end of my nose? I tried about five different shapes and sizes of band-aids, and finally settled on a flesh colored rectangular bandage. Luckily, my sister-in-law Lola photo shopped it out of the pictures from that night.

Now I have an infection in my nose. My entire nose is swollen, red and painful. It's bleeding and oozing and even my doctor doesn't really know what's wrong with me. My nose is a pain in the ass! Some days I wish my most prominent feature would just disappear.

Cruise to Nowhere

I went to a 50th birthday party on a boat yesterday. Kevin's cousin Andrea turned 50, and her husband Gerry threw her a surprise party on a small cruising boat. It was a chilly, gray day and the boat was covered in red and white striped plastic sheeting. It didn't protect the passengers much from the wind, but despite the fact that everyone was freezing, we all had a good time.

We don't see Andrea and Gerry much, probably once every few years. They haven't even met my daughter Esther. Kevin and Andrea were very close growing up, so we show up to their parties when we're invited.

Andrea and Gerry's old friends were there - girls from the neighborhood, old work friends, cousins and sisters. They were all outer boroughs people, mostly from Whitestone, Queens, where Kevin and Andrea grew up.

I opened a bottle of white wine, and sipped from a pink plastic cup. I was getting a nice buzz and joking around with one guy who worked in the garment center in Manhattan. He is selling Yo Gabba Gabba clothing for children, from a kid's TV show featuring a green striped creature that looks like a hairy pickle, according to my three-year-old daughter Esther. His wife, Dana, laughed about one creature that looked like a "nubby dildo."

One passenger on the boat had on a CBGB's shirt, and we reminisced about downtown Manhattan in the early 80's, and about all of the long gone bands and clubs from that time.

Everyone was balancing paper plates of baked clams and ziti on their laps, trying not to spill their drinks on the rocky boat. The food was heating in metal tins over cans of sterno. Carol Moscowitz and her husband, a pair of dentists from Kevin's neighborhood, were warming their hands over two cans of the purple sterno, like they were having a campfire.

By now, I was on my second cup of white wine, and Kevin and Andrea were talking about Andrea's mentally ill father, Mel. He sent some pornographic images to Andrea, with captions about her mother and aunt. He expected some return comments from his daughter, but Andrea was horrified and vows never to talk to him again.

Andrea and Gerry and their friends love to smoke pot. With Jimmy Buffet playing on the stereo, joints were passed around, and then cigars. The red and white plastic sheeting covering the boat started to fill with smoke.

Suddenly, I looked around at everyone's faces on the boat, and they all seemed old and wrinkled. I felt the passage of time , surrounded by a bunch of ex-hippies, reminiscing about the good old days. I started to feel depressed, and then suffocated.

The cigar and pot smoke was mixing into a rancid smell and I had to get some air. Bruce Springsteen was singing on the sound system now, about being young and racing cars on the highways of New Jersey. I was one of those young Jersey girls once, riding in cars and feeling free.

Now, I'm just a middle aged mom, trapped on a boat. I stared at the water and wanted to go home.