What our Mothers Do to Us

I will never turn into my mother. I know, I know; we all say that. But, in my case, I can promise you it won’t happen. 

I will never look like her. Unlike me, she never carried so much as an extra ten pounds on her svelte self, excepting, of course, when she was carrying nine-plus pound babies. Unlike me, she never had to tame thick, frizzy, locks. Nor did she ever limp around from bad knees, aching hips, or bulging bunions.  

I will never be like her. I never came close to mastering the fine art of formal dining, let alone executing consistent family dinners. I didn’t inherit her flair for incorporating contrasting palates and patterns into picture-perfect living spaces. Nor did I pick up her penchant for perfect present wrapping. No one was happier than I was when the gift bag came into vogue. 

And I will never, much to my chagrin, act like her. I simply don’t have the calm gene, the keep-your-thoughts-to-yourself gene, the live-and-let-live gene, or the feign-love for the family dog gene. Instead, I proudly and loudly proclaim my perceived rights and slights, and transgressions of others.

But, of course, I am an anomaly. 

At a certain age, as we grow into grown-ups, so many of my friends shriek with horror as they recognize that they have, indeed, turned into their mother. 

For some, it starts with something as innocuous as tube of toothpaste. Arthritic hands wail for relief as day after day, the tube is squeezed and rolled and flattened, trying desperately to save three, maybe four cents worth of Crest. It could be an old-fashioned adage like “I’m sweating like a whore in church,” that rolls right off the tongue. Or recognizing that Mother’s meatloaf has unwittingly, but undeniably, become the ultimate comfort food of choice. 

And for some, it’s not a specific thought, word, or deed, but a rite of passage of sorts, an unsuspecting seeping of one soul into another. 

I’ve had myriad relationships with my friends’ mothers. Some wished I were their own, while others wished with all their hearts that I had never befriended their own. And that goes both ways. Patty’s mother is one who endured the test of time, as we all revolved and evolved through the years.

I can still picture Mrs. Ellis perched on the couch in the living room on Beech Lane, giving me an all-in-one eye roll, smirk and back-flip wave of her hand.

“Please. Just call me Jean.”

And, then she pushed the glass ashtray to our end of the coffee table in a, “You think I’m stupid?”  gesture. 

“Go, have fun,” she’d say as we broached the subject of taking the little tan Corvair for a spontaneous spin down to the shore. We lied to the other mothers (sorry, Mom), assuring them we were spending the weekend at a friend’s parent’s house when actually we had no idea where, or with whom, we’d be staying.

Patty, of course, had the advantage of being the youngest of three; her two older brothers, Steve and Jimmy, were even more, shall we say adventurous, than Patty and company, and had come out the other side, if not unscathed, at least alive. So, perhaps that’s the reason Jean was a little more permissive with us.

But, it may just have been her deep faith in God, mankind, and the revocability of mistakes. 

Jean was lucky in love. She was also unlucky in loss, seeing both of her husbands through not-so-great deaths. But, Jean pulled up her boot straps and prevailed. 

At some respectable point after Patty’s father succumbed to ALS, Jean found herself at Fingers, a favorite local restaurant, bantering on a barstool with Bill. Bill was a fun-loving, no holds-barred type of guy, ready and willing to accompany Jean through Act Two of their lives. We all were invited to their wedding. Patty, Steve, and Jim’s friends ate, drank and were merry, toasting the new couple as if they were peers, not parents. 

When Patty moved to Florida and met her future ex-husband, they had the northern version of her wedding celebration at Fingers. When Patty and I were both in town for holidays, we’d meet Jean at Fingers for a cocktail. And when Bill died about 10 years ago, the repast was held at Fingers. 

Fingers isn’t Fingers anymore, but our memory of it is filled with Jean.  

It wasn’t until Steve spoke at the covid-compliant, socially-distanced, live-streamed, funeral service that I realized that it had happened. Steve spoke of Jean’s passion for the written word, her love for all things sports, especially the Phillies, her wanderlust, her social life. He reminded us (as if we needed it) how much she loved her family, her friends, her kids’ friends. But most of all, she loved life. She loved to have fun. And loved when her loved ones did the same. 

Yes, I smiled, and nodded my head into the abyss of the Facebook funeral. 

But, it wasn’t until I read her obituary that I laughed out loud. 

“She would also want you to tip your favorite server or bartender in her memory.” 

Yup. For sure, Jean had indeed osmosed into all three of her kids. They are all well-read. They are all sports fanatics. They all love to have fun. 

Patty and I shared Phillies’ season tickets in our formative years, dreaming of meeting Manny Trillo and Shake-and-Bake McBride. I believe our seats were bequeathed to us by Steve or Jimmy, or both, when they took off for Florida. Patty and I talk about our book clubs, sending reading recommendations back and forth. “Just try it!” she’ll exclaim when I say that Erik Larson way eclipses my Jennifer Weiner pay grade. 

And, anyone who knows me knows that the great highlight of my year is my cruise with Patty. After all this time, we’re pretty compatible, meaning that she knows it will be smooth sailing if I get my choice of beds, shore excursions, and sundeck locations. But, tipping is one thing we do squabble about. 

I am way cheaper than she is, and now I know exactly where she gets her generosity. 

Patty and I were on the last cruise out before Covid struck. As a matter of fact, it hit hard while we were on the high seas, every day waking to news of another institution shutting down on the mainland. 

Getting on the ship was a bit of an emotional challenge. I flew down to Patty’s house in Florida the night before, as I always do. It was a bit out of character for me to be nervous about something that was still so unknown, but my ever-loving and never-over-reacting spouse thought it was a bad idea for us to go. A very bad idea. Especially because, in early March, people were getting quarantined on cruise ships at an alarming rate. 

Patty wasn’t the least bit concerned, but acknowledged my stress as text-after-text came in from my spouse citing horror stories, which in hindsight, were hardly horrific considering what was to come. 

“Let’s call your mother,” I said as I shoved a handful of m&ms in my mouth while sitting at Patty’s kitchen table. “See what she says.” 

Jean was on the cusp of turning 92 years-old and had finally and reluctantly moved to Florida to be near all three of her kids who had permanently migrated to the Sunshine State. She lived in one of those cruise ship-on-land graduated living communities to which I aspire, refusing to give up her independence and move in with one of her children, all of whom had plenty of room. 

Jean didn’t hesitate. 

“Go!” she said. “Life is short. Go and have fun.”

And so we went. 

The celebration of Jean’s life brought me back to our last day on board with Patty and I bickering back and forth over how much to leave our favorite servers. 

“We prepaid our gratuities!” I argued. 

“Think of all that extra bourbon they poured in your drink,” Patty retorted. “Besides, they count on their tips for their families. And who knows when they’ll even sail again.”

“Oh, please,” I said, tossing another 50 dollars into the till. “Watch, this Covid thing will be contained in two weeks.”

Gulp. 

Because we had been on a cruise ship during the outbreak of the virus, Patty wasn't allowed to visit her mother for two weeks, so Jean missed out on our annual vacation debriefing. Instead, when I got home, I mailed her a copy of Susan Orlean's The Library Book and shortly after received a gushing thank you note saying, "Thank God for books or I would be a nut case with this lockdown." 

She signed it, "Stay close to your buddy! Love, Jean."

While Patty and her brothers would be reluctant to recognize themselves in their mother, the truth is, she managed to get under their skin in the best ways possible. She was fun. She was kind. She was generous. 

And in her death, she did what all good mothers do. She took that last long breath and smiled, sending the best parts of herself off into safekeeping, into the souls and spirits of those she loved the most. 

It is What it Is

“It is what it is,” the late, great Tim Moraski said after my son was benched mid-inning in the middle of a baseball tournament. You know, the stakes-are-high kind of tournament at which college scouts swarmed.

I could have confronted the coach. But anyone who knows Coach Leon knows that that tactic wouldn’t have gone over real well. I could have placated my little baseball star with dinner at  Fuddrucker’s, and probably did. I could have jumped ship, giving up my prestigious Team Mother position, which I didn’t. Or, I could have just bought into Tim Moraski’s ever-calming candor and repeat his mantra in tumultuous times, which I did. And still do.

Tim didn’t coin the phrase. As a matter of fact, it was so commonplace that I came across an It is What it Is T-shirt in a mail-order catalog and sent to him anonymously. Now, a lifetime later, the words have resurfaced as both a dis and a dose of reality in today’s covid-cluttered political arena. But, to me, it’s still as bi-partisan a sentiment as the Serenity Prayer, silently uttered to help us get through the trying times.

No matter which side of the party line you’re toeing, these are indeed trying times. Covid-19 has spent the last six months snatching away our schools and sports, celebrations and ceremonies. And while many people are feeling a newfound sense of freedom as they’ve learned to navigate the ways and means of the virus, I think it was much, much easier in the beginning when the lines weren’t quite as blurred. Back when a trip to the grocery store was both an outing and an ordeal. When we were zooming with long-lost middle-school friends and playing Boggle after family dinner with spouses we had barely seen in the past 30 years. When we all just stayed home like we were told.

My faraway friends mock the me I’ve become. I was always one to throw caution to the wind, to leave the umbrella at home, to go on a cruise the week the world closed down. Now I cringe when they suggest a weekend away and they teasingly promise they’ll all wear PPE and institute hourly temperature checks. Of course they won’t. And of course I’ll go. I’ve long suffered from the fear of missing out.

But, I try to explain, it’s not my fault that I’ve got a touch of Covid fear in me. Living in the nation’s first epicenter did it to me. No one within a stone’s throw of Teaneck, New Jersey has ever so much as whispered the word hoax in conjunction with Covid. Our friends were sick. Our friends were hospitalized. Our friends were dying. We were scared. We were traumatized. But we were united. We shared toilet paper and jigsaw puzzles. We got cookies from neighbors and fed the elderly. We dropped paperback books on our friends’ porches and forwarded town texts about the rising, then falling numbers. We placed bets on when the world would reopen and we were all off by months. We cheered in July when the email blast said NO Covid cases in Holy Name Hospital! It was both a blessing and a curse to be literally face-to-face with this virus.

I am so thankful that Covid hit when it did. I have said no less than 10,000 times how lucky I am that I don’t have a kid missing their high school prom, their college graduation, or their wedding. I am so, so fortunate not to have to entertain adolescents, hawk-eye teenagers, or rally for in-person, or virtual classrooms. I am so happy that I am not a 22 year-old who would surely be at one of those 200-person parties, that my hard-working spouse is still working hard, and that I have enough work to sustain my chocolate habit. I praise my new knees and freelance freedom that allow me to go for hours-long bike rides and walks, have lunch on my mother’s deck with my Pennsylvania people, and paddle in Kathy’s pool with Holly and Ann who graciously allow me to repeat, and re-repeat, from six feet away, the stories that the people I live with 24/7 won’t.

When I have a cocktail or ten with Jean and Tom, when Claire comes by for a sit on my front porch, when I talk and text with Mary Anne, Lisa, my sisters, the daughter, when I collude with the college girls, the high school girls, the local girls, the church ladies, the writer's group, the book club -- the conversation always comes back to Covid.

I scroll through social media way more than I ever did, cringing when I see ten unrelated humans arm-in-arm, holding red Solo cups in the Caribbean Sea. I wince when I witness a group leaning in for a picture at a picnic table. I furrow my brow as people travel from coast-to-coast, completely oblivious to the concept of quaranting.

And the truth is, I’m not even a Covid fanatic. I have taken my share of risks. I participated in a crowded Black Lives Matter march, I visited my college friends who had been here, there, and everywhere. I spent the day at a lake with eight other people, five of whom had just flown in from red hot states. I have friends who chide me for my mask-free backyard socials, for not wiping down groceries, for using public bathrooms.

Yet, my fingers ache from all the responses I’ve written, and promptly erased. All the “So much for social distancing!” All the “You know, this is why the virus is still spreading.” All the snarky, judgmental remarks that are swirling through my head. Because we are all, every one of us, making up our own rules, pushing our Covid comfort zones, and just hoping for the best.

And to be perfectly honest, I’m just plain jealous.

I want to go to the shore and stay in a cheesy motel with a polyester bedspread. I want to walk on a crowded boardwalk and ride on the Tilt-a-Whirl without being sprayed with sanitizer. I want to eat at a table-clothed restaurant and chide the waitperson for forgetting my extra glass of ice. I want to fly to California and meet my grand-puppy, Rocky. I want to go to a party where I don’t know a single soul. I want to be simply grossed out, but not terrified, when a mask-less runner hawks up a loogie at my feet. 

I want to go see a play, sit alone in a movie theater, and make the mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving at Emily's. I want to bring back our annual Christmas bash, socialize without asking, “Masks or no?” and walk in any direction I please in the supermarket aisles.

I want to go to Charleston, play mahjong with Susan and Janice, do a Woolley weekend. I want people to walk in my house unannounced again. I want to belly laugh with Theresa and Karen, go to Outback with the Hargraves, walk in Overpeck with Grace, meet the daughter in a Brooklyn bar, check out Madge's new digs, and play hearts at Bob's lake house.

I want to go on a cruise with Patty, laugh my way through Aquacize class with Cynthia, go to a wedding without a mask, and watch the Mets lose, in person. I want to resume our monthly rendezvous with Ann and Gail at the 101 Pub and have Friendsgiving Eve at the Schaeffer's.

I also want to lose 20 (okay, 30) pounds, get a new kitchen, become a famous novelist, and meet Taylor Swift.

In the meantime, I just have to hope that the risks we take won’t take our lives, hurt our families, or turn us into the told-you-sos of our social circles.

That we forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And that most of all,  since we can't control anyone's behavior but our own, that we just bite our tongues behind our masks and instead, think of what Tim Moraski would say.

It is what it is.

Farewell to a Friend

“I am so jealous of you,” I whispered across the church pew, back in the days when we could belt out Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee at the top of our off-key lungs without worrying about cross-pollinating covid. 

Jack smiled, knowing exactly what I was talking about. 

Every Sunday, I jockeyed for position in the back quarter of the right-hand side of the sanctuary, my ever-loving spouse always on my left so I could be closer to the Peters family on my right. Sometimes, when the whole gang was there, they’d take up two pews, one in front of the other. They could all fit in one, but my Christian spirit only spreads so thin. If I gave up my God-given right to my personal pew, I wouldn’t be able to make faces at Matthew sitting in the shadow of his maxi-me, gentle giant of a grandfather. 

Karen and Jack grew up in Leonia. A teenage love story that lasted; they married young, reproduced early and raised two daughters with dueling personalities but similar senses of service. Kristen is a middle school teacher and mother of Madison and Matthew, a funny kid who looks, acts, and loves all things firefighter like my own son, Max, had at his age. Maryellen, is a New York City hospital nurse who fearlessly fought through the darkest days of the Covid virus. She, too, has a girl and a boy, Maesyn and Jackson. Kristen and Maryellen’s spouses are both firefighters, and one is also a police officer. Jack, a retired Leonia cop, was, among other things, a volunteer firefighter for 47 years. Both Karen and Jack have been active in our church and community their whole adult lives. 

This is a family who knows the meaning of giving back, paying it forward, and doing the right thing.

And though being a cop, being a firefighter, being a pillar of the community, was a huge part of who Jack Peters was, that's not who Jack was to me. 

I wasn’t in his fraternity. I wasn’t his confidante. I wasn't the girl whose pigtails he pulled in algebra class. But, I was his buddy. 

We’d sit next to each other at church meetings when we both served as elders, he a little less irreverent than I. But, he knew how to keep things in perspective. In the midst of the most contentious of conversations, he’d give me a surreptitious nudge, directing my eyes to the phone he held on his lap, offering me live updates of the Mets games. 

All the while, he was a die-hard Yankee fan. 

For years, I watched that man with those four grandchildren of his, green envy oozing out of my pores, knowing that I would never have what he has. He lived a lifetime in Leonia and his children and grandchildren live one block and one town away. The four cousins, ranging from age 11 to 6, have no idea how lucky they are to be in such close proximity to each other, but more importantly, to their grandparents. 

“Can’t make it, the kids are coming over,” I heard Jack say once or twice, or a hundred times since the oldest was born. 

Jack, just three years older than I am, had the good fortune to become a grandfather back when I was still in the throes of raising my first go-round. 

“I’m so jealous of you,” I whispered across the pew as my ever-zealous spouse elbow-jabbed me in the ribs and recited The Lord's Prayer. 

“There’s nothing better,” Jack said, pulling one of his blessings close.

Jack, on paper, was a perfect person. I’m wise enough to know that, in real life, there’s no such thing. But, he perfectly portrayed a person filled with compassion. Honor. Pride. Loyalty. And something we all need a little bit more of. 

Love. 

I adored Jack Peters. 

And I will miss him terribly. But, in his death he left me the gift of hope. Hope that, like him, when I am blessed with my own little grandkiddies climbing on my lap, no matter what faux pas I've committed, no matter what words misspoken, no matter what actions incongruous, that those little faces will love me unconditionally, fully and forever, carrying a piece of my truest self courageously and confidently out into the world.

What a Difference a Year Makes

“We can get you in the last week of June,” my smiling orthopedist’s happy assistant announced. 

“That soon?” I lamented.

“That soon,” she confirmed. 

“But…”

But if I get both of my knees replaced the last week of June, I can’t work on the food truck in Vermont and Carrie will never forgive me (she did). But, if I get my knees replaced, I won’t be able to drive, exercise, cook, clean, vacuum up dog hair, socialize in the manner to which I am accustomed. But if…

If I’ve learned anything in the past year, it’s that life is filled with But ifs… and There’s No Ways…  and that most obstacles are temporary and, in my case, often the product of overactive and misfired mind games.

The pain in my knees had gotten so bad that I basically crawled up the stairs to Ann’s yoga attic, grimacing through a series of downward dogs, praying for the end when she buffered my knees with a bolster for shavasana. I was the limping lady escorted to one of the coveted chairs in Gail’s living room when I stopped in for a Shiva call. I was the one dragging my sorry self around Overpeck Park with Grace, oh so proud if I could hit 5,000 steps on my Apple watch. I dreaded grocery shopping, getting out of a chair when anyone was watching, or even when they weren’t, and navigating CitiField.

I opted to fight New York City traffic, pre-securing parking in steep-less ramped garages, as taking the bus from my corner would mean hobbling my way down the Port Authority stairs. I made exertion vs pain calculations in my head when planning my day, sometimes grossly overestimating my capacity. Like thinking I'd be able to manage an afternoon of trying on dresses for a wedding. Or imagining I'd have no problem hiking a wooded trail with quite modest hills. Or being able to endure two-inch leg room at To Kill a Mockingbird. And, of course, I ordered everything online, from aforementioned toilet paper to Hershey’s kisses to huge bags of food for the aging canine, all to avoid a trip to the store.

I lumbered through life with the utmost certainty that I was more comfortable with my known discomfort than that of the unknown. I wasn’t the least bit afraid of the post-surgical pain of a double knee replacement; that I could handle. I was petrified of the post-surgical agony known as inconvenience. 

There was no way I could give up two months of my life recovering. No way I could give up my independence. No way I could fit in weeks and weeks and weeks of physical therapy to my busy schedule. No way that I could sleep flat on my back with immobilizing braces on my knees for six weeks. And absolutely, without a doubt, no way that I could make it through a night without getting up to pee.

Spoiler alert. I did.

I flushed the opioids after two weeks, and to celebrate, picked up the vacuum and resumed laundry duties. I danced at Michael and Kristen’s wedding at week three and drove the following day. At five-and-a-half weeks I was taking two mile-long walks a day and drove to Pennsylvania for my sister’s birthday barbeque at the Schaeffer’s. At six weeks I got on my bicycle and pedaled around the block, and at nine weeks, rode 19-and-a-half miles. I did my physical therapy with Brittany three times a week, religiously for three months.

And, for 31 nights, after disposing of sleep aids and painkillers, I laid flat on my back with those dang immobilizers, not dozing for a single second. People told me to just ditch the braces, that their doctors didn't even prescribe them. My doctor even told me I could ditch them two weeks early. But, I didn’t. I was a rule follower. All night long I played Words with Friends, read books on my kindle and watched the clock tick slowly and surely toward 6:00 am. Then I’d rip off the braces, run, well, wobble, to the bathroom, and then snooze in the La-Z-Boy recliner for four hours straight. 

I didn't cheat a single day. But, you better believe I threw the braces in the trash can on the morning after the night that marked six weeks post-surgery.

And, that was the end of that.

When I got off my bicycle today after a 28-mile ride through North Jersey, I thought about how far I’ve come in a year. Every day I walk at least five miles or ride at least 20. I look forward to my outings at the grocery store. I’d kill to go to a Mets game. Or a Broadway show. Or take the bus into the city for dinner with the daughter. 

But, alas, we can’t have it all.

So, here we are, a year later. In March, while on the last great cruise of 2020, the world shut down. Talk around the cocktail table turned to Coronavirus. Some pronounced that they would voluntarily quarantine for two weeks after getting off the ship. Some were awaiting permission from their employers to return to the office after taking the cruise gamble. My ever-loving spouse suggested staying in Florida for a couple weeks just to make sure I hadn’t picked Covid up on board. 

Quarantining at Patty’s house in Florida sounded pretty great to me. 

But, as we walked the gangplank back into civilization, the texts started rolling in. My town of Teaneck had become an epicenter of the pandemic. Friends were in the hospital. Friends were on ventilators. Friends were working their jobs as doctors and nurses and educators and other essential workers, all doing their best just to stay one step ahead of what we were heading into. 

I was able to change my flight home for free and nabbed a first-class seat for 50 bucks. At that point, I knew life as we knew it was over. 

Despite the fear and chaos around us, once my spouse and kid stopped disinfecting everything I touched, we settled into a nice little routine. We saw more of each other than we have in decades, and I thought, hey, I can do this for a week or two. 

And, here we are. Almost four months later. If we'd been told way back when, that we'd be doing this for 16 weeks and counting, I would have been the one leading the chanters through different versions of "There's No Way." 

But, guess what? We did it. At least the lucky ones did. And we keep on plowing through, day by day. Walking our miles, zooming our friends, virtually book-clubbing, masking appropriately, eating our take-out from our favorite local restaurants, playing our Boggle, doing our jigsaw puzzles, posting our memes, eating our chocolate, and hoping that a year from now we will look back, barely being able to recall the pain. 

Breaking My White Silence

My son was 21 years old before I finally had “the talk” with him. 

No, not that talk. That talk had gone in one ear and out the other years before. 

This was the talk I never thought I’d have to have. The one my friends Heather and Angela and Katrina had with their sons long before the other talk. The one I used to say was unnecessary.

“Hey, Leo,” I said nonchalantly as I heard his keys jingle. It was pouring rain and he was picking up his posse and heading to a party in a neighboring town. “Be careful.”

As if those words ever made a kid stop and think. 

“You know you have a tail light out. The police could stop you. So make sure you’re, uh, you know, polite.”

“Right.”

As far as I know, he didn’t get pulled over. 

And of course, he didn’t get shot.

“You don’t get it," Heather has said to me on more than one occasion. “You don’t have black sons.”

“Yeah, but…”

There is no yeah, but.

Before I moved to Teaneck, New Jersey, I didn’t have any black friends. Actually, I had very little experience with anyone of any color other than my own. 

I was simply a product of my environment. I grew up in a white suburb outside of Philadelphia and my high school was filled with Jews, Protestants and Catholics, and those of Italian, Irish or Mayflower decent. That’s the extent of diversity I knew as a child. 

When I was twelve years-old I was babysitting for some kids in the neighborhood. I was busy throwing together peanut butter sandwiches when the cat, who was not allowed in the basement, slithered down the stairs. I didn’t know (or care) what the cat’s name was because I hated cats. So I just called it by its color, just as I would have called a Dalmatian, Spot.

“Here Blackie. Come ‘ere, Blackie!” I called and cooed.

“I’m coming! I’m coming!” 

The basement door flung open and a black woman stepped into the kitchen.

I screamed, having no idea that their cleaning professional was in the house and was doing laundry in the basement. I then spent a good ten minutes tripping over my words. And the next fifty years mortified that she would think I would ever, in a zillion years call her Blackie.  

Before I moved to Teaneck, I didn’t know any law enforcement officers either. Sure, groups of us were chased from Curtis Arboretum and Fort Washington State Park on a regular basis on Saturday nights.  And there was that one incident with Karen (there's that name) Shea when she yelled, “Yo, Pig!” out the window of my mother’s Ford station wagon as we barreled down Paper Mill Road. 

Sure enough, we got pulled over.

“What did you yell, young lady?” the police officer asked, after taking my license and registration from my shaking hands.

“I said, Yo, Peg!” always-on-her-toes-Karen answered. “I thought I saw our friend Peggy Haug.”

I spent the next two weeks scared to death that the officer would send a citation to my house or call my parents as he threatened.

He didn’t. But again, I was mortified. 

Ironically, if Phillip Pannell, a black teenager, hadn’t been shot and killed by a white police officer in 1990, we probably wouldn’t have moved to Teaneck. 

Teaneck was the first town in America to voluntarily integrate its schools and prided itself on blacks and whites living together in harmony. The shooting that brought Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to town left unanswered questions, split public opinion and incited protests and riots. My spouse was a police reporter at the time who covered the officer’s trial and later the town of Teaneck. Despite the polarizing effects the shooting had on the community, there was something about the character of the town and its people that shone through. We ended up buying our first house within sight of where cars had been overturned in the wake of the shooting.

Teaneck at the time was basically one third black, one third Jewish and the other third was a mixture of other races, including Caucasians. We were young and liberal, so we took the plunge and never for a second regretted our decision to live in a multi-cultural town.  

My kids were a minority in the Teaneck pubic schools and I only slightly exaggerate when I say my boys grew up without ever having a white friend. We’ve had kids of all shapes, sizes, colors and creeds troop through our house, sleep on our couches and ride in the old minivan to one sporting event or another. 

While my kids grew up without prejudice, they were also somewhat sheltered from racial discrimination.

When the daughter was in eighth grade, she had a friend who lived in one of those “rich, white towns” who wasn’t allowed to come to Teaneck because it was dangerous.

“You mean you actually sit at the same lunch table with the black kids?” the girl’s mother asked when the daughter explained how Teaneck worked. 

And, when the daughter went away to college in North Carolina, she lamented over the fact that she had no idea how much racism there was in other parts of the country. 

“Aren’t you glad you grew up in Teaneck?” 

“Absolutely,” she said. “But it didn’t prepare me for the real world.”

I didn’t grow up in the real world either. While it would be futile to apologize for the color of my skin, I probably should apologize for all the times I ran from cops when I was drinking warm beers in dark parks. But never once did I fear anything more than getting killed by my parents if I got caught. 

And that’s the difference. 

So, I did what I could. I tried to raise my kids with open minds, kind hearts and accepting souls hoping that maybe, just maybe, they would help change the world. 

“Are you marching on Friday?” my next-door neighbor, Kerri, asked from a distance as our paths crossed while doing our daily laps down Palmer Avenue. She was referring to an organized Black Lives Matter protest in Teaneck that was beginning on the road where Philip Pannell had lived 30 years ago and making its way through town. 

“Me?” I said somewhat aghast. “No, that is so not me.”

Kerri looked at me with an eyebrow raised above her mask. 

“What do you mean, it’s not you? You had more people of color in and out of your house than anyone I know. How can you not support this?”

I argued that I’m not an activist by nature. I don’t publicly campaign for politicians, I don’t post rants of injustice on Facebook, or display Hate Has No Home Here signs on my front lawn. I’m too afraid of doing the wrong thing and offending the wrong person. 

“You have to go,” the daughter said. “Think of Koree and Kris and Jordan and Jamal and Siddiq and Chris and all those other kids who look at you as a second mother. You have to do it for them.”

Still, I balked, thinking that my red-haired, gray-striped, freckle-faced, color-coordinated masked self would be screaming white privilege as I made my way through town with my other white-skinned friends. 

In, the end, I went. 

Joining a group estimated at 3,000, was as powerful a thing as I have ever done. While dozens lay their bodies down in an intersection for eight minutes and forty-six seconds, I was horrified at how long a time that was. And, realized that I will never, ever know what it’s like to live with the fear of that happening to me, or any one of my kids. 

But, it happens. 

So, for the Hargraves, Matthews, Williams, Jones, Kendrick, McDonald, Brown, Johnson, Patterson, Wimbush, and any number of other families I know and love, it is my privilege to march for you. 

If I'm Right, Are you Wrong?

“Sorry,  but I can't discuss this with you anymore because you don't seem to care if you get it and that makes no sense to me,” said my friend, who shall go nameless, lest she get even more annoyed with me. 

It, of course, is COVID-19. What else would it be? 

Her reaction came amid rapid-fire emails, mine declaring that I’d go to the beauty parlor tomorrow if I could, hers saying she doesn’t wear a mask when she’s walking.

“How can you not wear a mask?” I questioned incredulously. “I would be so embarrassed if someone like Lyn Familant yelled at me. For me, it’s as much for optics as protection.”

To which she responded, “That’s what I mean. You’re only wearing a mask for optics.”

“But you’re not wearing one at all.”

We went on like that for a while and then I moved on to thinking about my sister who lives in Charleston. She never stopped cooking at the homeless shelter or working at her estate sales job or shopping at the local Walmart. She doesn’t have multiple masks dangling from her rear view mirror, plastic gloves stuffed in her purse, or experience lung lunges after watching the news. She doesn’t watch the news. She lives alone and figures it would be more pleasant to die without knowing what hit her. 

I got a text from Don last week, asking if I’d be interested in a Thanksgiving cruise. Don is my new BFF with whom I drank heavily on our Corona Cruise in early March. The last ship that sailed to the Caribbean before we all got landlocked. 

“Though my ever-loving spouse is fully onboard, or at least resigned to my annual cruise," I answered. "I can’t go away on a holiday until I’m a widow. Or a divorcee. But, February 2021, sign me up.”

That’s less than a year away, another friend gasped. You are Insane. With a capital I. But, I’ve survived noroviruses, choppy seas, gypsies, and now COVID. I’m not alone on this one. The cruise forums are chock full of people champing at the bit to get back on the high seas. We’re a different sort, we cruisers. 

I have a friend who drove her aged car 450 miles to meet her new beau in an Airbnb. Again, no names, no shame. I cringed, not at the thought of infected sheets, but of her plan to never leave those sheets all weekend. I’ve obviously been married far too long. The same friend suggested getting my hair cut outside to lessen cross-germination. Said friend has long locks she can pull back or plop on the top of her head. She does not have hair that grows outward rather than downward, strongly resembling Bozo the clown. Thus, the beauty parlor would never be on her priority list. Nor would she ever call it a beauty parlor. 

Every year, four of us meet in Maine at our friend’s beach house in June. We’ve been holding onto the hope of being able to rendezvous in a couple of weeks.

“You’d get on a plane?” a friend admonished. “That's absolutely ridiculous. Maine will be there next year.” 

This is a friend who is deathly afraid of flying. 

My theory is, it’s probably safer now to fly or cruise or stay in a hotel because they are all so afraid of law suits, and (there's that word again) optics, that the physical spaces will be cleaner than ever. If I wear a mask and they wear a mask and I wrap myself in a scarf and I sanitize my hands every four minutes and don’t touch my face for a week…

Alas, it can still get into your system through your eyes. And hair follicles. And toenails. 

Well, I could always drive. But, the girls coming from Atlanta and North Carolina would surely contract the virus on their filled-to-overflowing puddle jumper planes and we’d all swap germs anyway. Though, if hydroxychloroquine works, it’s possible that an overabundance of bourbon and Tito’s would also do the trick. As the conversation grew more and more contentious, I admitted that it was a moot point and that we weren’t going anyway. Maine isn’t letting out-of-staters in. Or if we get in, we might never get out. 

I have a friend who has yet to leave her house. She has had food, and wine, delivered for the past 10 weeks, with no plans to set foot in Shop Rite. Ever again. I have a friend who doesn’t wear gloves in the grocery store because he said it doesn’t make sense. Another, a non-essential worker, wears an N95 mask. One who bleaches her kitchen regularly. One who volunteers at a food bank and several who courageously go to work every single day, because they are first responders. 

I have a friend who has vowed to go to the Jersey shore the day the beaches open. Another who will go to the movies because the seats these days are so far apart. I know people who have played golf since the get-go and one crazy soul who is sending around a petition hoping to convince the ultimate umpire to allow the high school baseball season to go on. 

I have a friend who is still hoping to get to that Elton John concert. Another who is keeping fingers crossed for a late July wedding. Some people have invited all their adult children home, including significant others, for the duration of the quarantine. And, others still sit six feet away from theirs in the driveway. I have friends who have not seen their grandchildren, and others who are babysitting so the parents can go out into the world.

I have a friend who had her elderly mother sneak out of her apartment, meeting in the woods behind her retirement community. I have a mother who won’t let anyone in her house, though she will sit ten feet away from my sisters and neighbors in folding chairs in her garage. 

Some out there haven't so much as wanded a mascara brush over their lashes, pulled on a pair of spanx, or color-coordinated their earrings. While others are primping to the hilt, just in case. Half the world complains about over-eating, over-drinking, and over-thinking while the other half exercises to excess, hasn't had a sip of alcohol since the farewell toast aboard the Celebrity Edge, and limits chocolate to a pound a day. 

Some people I know can’t wait to get back to their offices and others would rather lose their job than ever ride on NJ transit again. I have friends who love to zoom and others who roll their eyes at the mere suggestion of spending 40 minutes, or God forbid, more, trying to figure out virtual talking-in-turn etiquette.

I know people who immediately broke the rules and crossed county lines to quarantine in their vacation homes and others who won’t defy their governor and thus will lose a summer of rental income. I have friends whose kids have missed their graduations, weddings, and last great sports chances. One who had a had a small birthday party of 12 for her 20 year-old daughter and others who won’t sit in their neighbor’s backyard for a socially distant cocktail. 

I can tell you exactly who would stand in line for the grand reopening of the gym and who has cancelled their memberships. Forever. There are those who conduct maskless, multi-family visits on their front stoops, and those who claim they haven’t seen another soul in ten weeks. But, does the friend(s) they walk with count, if they're doing it responsibly? 

I talk back and forth with friends about whether we should get tested. Some say why bother if you’re asymptomatic. Some say that’s when it’s most important to know. One friend got the antibody test that came back negative, when it clearly should have been positive. One had multiple tests with multiple results. Some say if they knew they had antibodies, they could finally relax. Others say there's no proof that you can't get the virus again, so getting tested would just cause complacency. And, then there's the whole moral question of, if you're positive, but asymptomatic, are you really going to isolate for two weeks, or will you venture out, just that once? 

Despite what I say, I'm a rule follower by nature. And, if the rules aren't strong enough, my guilt takes over. The problem is, it's hard to keep up with the ever-changing rules. And harder still to keep track of which rules are yours and which are mine.

So, we all have to just agree to agree. We may be all right. But we may be all wrong. 

And, neither Dr. Fauci, President Trump, nor our hairdresser knows for sure.

Mothering in Place

“Happy Mother’s Day,” my friend Madge texted from Harrisburg this morning, three hours before I rolled out of bed. “Your kids are so lucky.”

Madge raised one lovely daughter and through the years was in constant awe of how I managed the masses. From afar, her perception was that I did pretty darn good. But, we all look good on social media and all sound great through the stories we tell.

Mothers don’t have it easy. We can’t help but compare ourselves to the bounty of perfect mothers out there. The mothers who cook dinner every single night and whose kids willingly sit around the table with them. Every. Single. Night. The mothers who spend hours finger painting, play doughing, and splashing in puddles without ever once worrying about the mess. 

There are those mothers who can do an ER run without having to call her best friend. And without saying, don’t drip your blood on the car seat. Mothers who get up in the middle of the night, at the crack of dawn, to answer a child’s cry without elbowing her spouse awake, so that he, who works 12-hour days outside of the house, will do the dirty work. Mothers who change the sheets every week, wash the towels every day, iron the wrinkles out of linen blouses. 

There are mothers out there who bestow flowers upon their daughters as they finish their cheerleading routines, buy lawn signs praising their graduates (back when kids actually graduated), and post videos of the cute little things their cute little kids said or did, or didn’t do. 

There are mothers who are fiercely protective, brag incessantly, and announce to the world that their kids are the strongest, smartest, and best human beings ever born. Mothers who make decisions with confidence and embrace their children’s decisions with calm. 

And, yes, there are mothers who have never, ever thought, let alone said out loud, the F word in conjunction with, or as an adjective to one of their children's names. 

I hear from many of those mothers on Mother’s Day. Bonnie and Angela and Claire and Theresa and Tracy and Karen (even though I always yell at her for sending wishes in a chain with 30 other mothers included). Texts go round and round to all the mothers in the UNC gang, the college girls, the church ladies. I get texts from Heather and Susan and Janice and Betty and Ann and Holly and Kathy. It’s a lot for someone who doesn’t even believe in the “holiday.”  

But, it’s messages from the kids who I’ve duped along the way that tug at my heart strings. The Oliva and Harleys, the Diana's, the Chris Joneses and Koree’s (I know it’s coming), the Mike Chiaradio’s. 

Every single year since I’ve known her, Liza sends me a text:  “Thank you for always being an example of a great mother.” 

I shake my head and smile, thinking please, please, don’t follow my example with Penelope, the most perfect two year-old ever. 

And Tanya, who was there when I woke up from my mastectomy, who visited me after I had my knees replaced, “Thanks for being an outstanding mother and giving me my sisters Max and Molly and brother Leo.” I’m thinking that typo was a dig at Max. 

I hear from Heather, the daughter’s oldest, bestest friend, who won me over twenty years ago and will be at the top of my list for the next twenty. Or forty, if I live that long. 

I always say that I had the perfect mother. The one who never meddled. The one who never yelled. The one who loved every single minute of being a mother. And still does. I’ll zoom with her later and she’ll pooh-pooh the praise and lament over all the things she thinks she did wrong.

But, perception is reality. 

And while I will continue to encourage my children to shelter in place, as long as it’s not my place, I will always and forever feel their pain, their joy, their heartbreaks, their hopes, their fails, their fun, and most of all, their love. 

Because apparently, I’ve duped them, too.