The Stuff Legends Are Made Of

 

My three sisters and I grew up perched beneath the pedestal listening to our larger-than-life father retell story after story. So many of his narratives revolved around his athletic prowess which amused, impressed and made us ever-determined to chase sports dreams of our own. 

 

Of course back then, Title IX was in its infancy and there were no Olivia Dunne’s making millions off of NIL deals. And so, our lofty aspirations hit the ceiling with landing a spot on the high school team.

 

My father, George, was a standout athlete at Ambler High School, as was well documented by many varsity letters and a scrapbook filled with news clippings from the Ambler Gazette and the Philadelphia Bulletin. One of his favorite tales to tell was when he broke his nose playing basketball. He delighted in the fact that he bled all over the brand new gymnasium floor at Springfield High School but refused to come off the court. Because of course in those days, you didn’t have to. 

 

My father was captain of the basketball, football and baseball teams and went on to play baseball and football at Dartmouth College. There was the story that ended with him kicking his helmet into the stands and another had him playing baseball against George Bush the elder – who was then nothing but another George – once the Georges had returned to their respective colleges after the war. 

 

In his grown-up years, my father was an avid, year-round, weekend golfer, taking off only when the greens were covered with snow – and on Christmas – the one day of the year my mother prohibited him from playing. Over the course of 50-plus years on the links, he boasted three holes-in-one. Whether it was luck, skill or cosmic alignment, it still looks good on the resume.  

 

Having never spawned that coveted son, his four girls were raised to watch, play and care deeply about sports. We banged tennis balls against the back of the house, hit plastic golf balls across the front yard, jogged with the dog around the block, shot baskets in the driveway, swung at a tether ball hanging from a tree in the woods, played four square on the street, ping pong in the basement, and softball for the Wildcats, a team coached by none other than my father. We consistently watched the Phillies, the Sixers, the Eagles and every golf tournament that was ever televised. In high school I played lacrosse and field hockey and even played in college for one full week. 

 

Beyond playing softball with the financially-famous Ron Insana and David Faber when we all worked at CNBC, and infamously striking out Bianca Jagger (yes, that Jagger) at my ever-loving spouse’s company softball game, I hadn’t played an organized sport in decades. Unless recovering from hip and knee replacements or sidelined with other surgeries, I have always walked, bicycled and dabbled in heart-pumping cardio conditioning at the local gym. But other than being Apple watch fitness buddies with my sister, daughter, niece, and friend Ann, I hadn’t  competed with anyone but myself in a long, long time. 

Though I was internally hesitant last summer when my friend, Robin, asked if I wanted to round out her pickleball foursome, I responded with a resounding YES! After all, I was an athlete. How hard could it be? 

 

I loved the game immediately and thought I was oh, so good. I could land a serve into that far back corner, keeping it in bounds by mere centimeters, most of the time. I was able to hit the ball out of the air, and go back-and-forth, back-and-forth, until the other team slammed it over my head. I could often keep the score straight and loved watching my heart rate rise on my aforementioned watch.

 

We were taught the basics by Rita, a patient and knowledgeable coach who went on to become a favored off-the-court chum. We played outdoors until the temperatures plummeted and Rita encouraged us to seek out an indoor facility. Playing with random strangers in a weather-controlled environment would surely help us reach our pickleball potential.

 

Robin and I found a place to pickle and we headed with confidence to bergenpickleballzone, signing up for Low-intermediate Open Play, where 18 people rotate in and out of games for an hour-and-a-half. We clearly weren’t beginners – after all, we had played at Overpeck Park a good fifteen times – so figured Low-intermediate was exactly where we belonged. If we proved to be too advanced for the rest of the group, we’d humbly move to a higher level. 

 

With my brand new paddle in hand – a very fun and fashionable one, I might add – I strutted my way onto the court. It didn’t take long before the eye rolls and loud sighs confirmed that I was definitely not where I was supposed to be. Suffice it to say that those sighs and eye rolls were not in response to perfectly executed spin shots or awesomely extended volleys. 

It took me a couple of weeks to muster up the courage to return. But when I did, I signed up for a string of instructive clinics run by the very accomplished, not to mention supportive and adorably lovely Cindy. One of her gifts is being able to divvy us up into groups without the less-skilled realizing they’d been teamed with the even lesser-than skilled. Her classes gave me the courage to sign up for another open play session. But I’m no masochist, so this time I joined the beginners. And while I was clearly not one of the top players, even my self-deprecating self admitted I was not the absolute worst.  

 

Still, I internally reeled. “How can I be so bad at this? I’m an athlete!” 

 

To which my past responded, “Or are you?”

 

And so I looked at my life through the lens of hindsight. It’s a full truth that as a high school hockey goalie I prayed that the ball stay on the other half of the field way harder than I ever prayed when lying on a gurney awaiting my double mastectomy. Full disclosure, when I was Junior Junior (not even Junior) Golf Champion that summer, it was because there were only two other kids in the tournament and one of them forfeited. And I have to confess, the reason I didn’t play basketball had nothing to do with being too short, but rather being too short of breath running those suicide sprints. 

 

Putting aside my past, my genes, my pride, I’m determined to keep pickling as long as my limbs allow. I’ll play with the best and worst of them – those who have inflated egos or deflated senses of self, those who were former tennis players or are current bake-off champions, those who roll their eyes when I swing and miss and those who laugh at themselves when they do the same. 

I may not be the stuff legends are made of, but the fact is, I am who I am . And who I am became abundantly clear when I paid my monthly membership dues, unabashedly clicking the Senior Discount button. 

 

 

What's that word ...?

 “Decoy!” I texted my friend Assunta. “The word is decoy.” 

This was a while ago, back when Taylor Swift attended her first Kansas City Chiefs’ game. I was somewhat surprised to be having this conversation because most well-adjusted people my age don’t engage in speculation about the rich and famous whom we will never, ever meet nor should ever, ever profess to know. I’ve always considered Assunta well-adjusted. She was the daughter’s middle-school Creative Writing teacher, is married to a musician (not of pop star ilk), and is a member of my cerebral book club. So, a two-sided Taylor Swift conversation with one of the aforementioned cerebrals was an unexpected treat. 

 

The banter had to do with Matty Healy (IYKYK) and whether that relationship was real or “what’s the word – you know when you do something to throw someone off track?” 

 

I looked at her, baffled. After all, she was the English teacher. I was just the writer. 

 

“You know what I mean, when it’s not real, like you're trying to divert attention.”

 

I knew exactly what she meant but had no idea what the word was.

 

But I eventually remembered. 

Decoy.

 

Back in the day when child-rearing was all consuming and I consistently had ten thousand things swirling through my mind – who gets picked up from practice at 6 pm, when are parent-teacher conferences, where is the away baseball game, who needs poster board for a science project, when is the first college essay due, whose birthday is tomorrow — I kept an excel sheet. Color-coded. Of course that didn’t help unless I had the document right in front of me.

 

So, so, so many times I’d bolt out of the car after a pick-up or a drop-off or a circular journey around town hooked on a particular task that needed immediate tasking.  It was usually nothing terribly earth shattering – rather something along the lines of tick medication that I was already two months behind in administering. I’d put “tick, tick, tick” on repeat but by the time I hit the kitchen, the tick had tocked and a thousand other thoughts had taken precedence. I knew there was something I was forgetting, but couldn’t for the life of me remember what it was. 

 

Much later, after opening a kitchen cabinet, I would find the tick meds stashed next to (if not on top of) the Fiestaware and would thump my palm to my forehead, “Duh. That’s what it was. The dog.” 

 

When I commiserated with my mother she answered with a smile that said, clear as day, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

 

All too often I’ll get something in my head that I absolutely must have. Like NOW. But by the time I click into Amazon, I have zero memory of what was essential just moments earlier. Which is why I end up with seven new items on my porch the following day. Same thing with social media. A particular person will pop into my mind and I think – hmm, I wonder if they’re home from vacation yet? I’ll go to check their page and poof – the very essence of that individual has completely disappeared, sending me off to look up random elementary school friends instead. 

 

I have a zillion note pads and sticky notes within a pen’s reach at all times. In the car, at my desk, on the kitchen table, next to the TV, on my bedside table, even in the bathroom. I’ve tried eco-consciously typing into my phone, but it’s too hard to remember where I put my reminder. On any given day I might stash it in Notes, put it on a voice message or in a text sent to myself. Not that I don’t forget where that scrap of paper went, but it usually resurfaces – in the pocket of my jeans, in a random desk drawer or crumpled in my cross-body bag along with my Amazon returns receipts – and always enough days, weeks or months later that I wonder why it was ever something I needed to write down in the first place.

 

I can deal with the brain blips. But it’s the evaporating words – the words that are the way I make my (meager as it may be) living, the way I make my friends (and enemies) the way I process my neuroses and the way I save myself from total implosion – that cause me the most pain. And because I am of a certain age, I’m constantly wondering if younger others are scrutinizing me even more closely, looking for signs of my imminent demise. 

 

I rely heavily on my thesaurus and have been known to google “what’s the word for when you forget words” only to get a response like this: 

When this happens, language scientists use the terms "anomia" or "anomic aphasia" to describe the condition, which can be associated with brain damage due to stroke, tumors, head injury or dementia such as Alzheimer's disease. 

And so I keep googling until I get a less dire diagnosis.

If the inability to recall words, phrases, or names is a temporary but debilitating disorder it is known as lethologica.

Not that I'll remember, but it's nice to know there's a word for it. 

I thought when I lost my mind I’d have no idea what a particular item is. Like I would wonder why it’s in my house and for what purpose. Instead, I can describe the object to a T (tee?). It’s that thing that I spend half my day in front of, you know the machine that turns my thoughts into words, that brings out the arthritis in my fingers, that houses my bank accounts, blogs, Christmas present lists, phone numbers, recipes, you know – that thing that sits on my desk. 

 

You mean your computer?” my 98 year-old mother responded.

 

I try to keep my mind sharp by playing multiple word games a day. Though, believe me, I know the real word for that – procrastination. I play Words with Friends, Boggle, Word Wipe, Spelling Bee, Wordle, the maxi and the mini New York Times Crossword puzzle every day. The NYT crosswords get more difficult as the week progresses. I can only finish Monday and Tuesday puzzles without help – though every now and then I can get through a Wednesday. To enhance my doing of nothing, I’ve started on the crossword archives. Just today while doing an April of 2020 (Monday) puzzle, the clue read “Band on the Run” band. I know this. I know it is Paul McCartney. And his now deceased wife, Linda. It’s not some obscure rapper or new-to-the-scene rocker. I lived this era. I saw them in concert. But couldn’t for the life of me pull the name of the band out of the recesses of my brain. 

 

“If I’m like this now, what’s it going to be like when I’m your age?” I moaned to my mama.

 

“Who are you again?” she asked. 

 

“I forget,” I answered. 

 

The difference being, she was kidding. 

A Different Sort of College Reunion

 “Did I ever tell you the story about (fill in the blank)…” I begin.

“Yeah, you did,” comes the quick response. 

 

And yet, I forge ahead and retell my tale. I see the eye rolls, I really do. But in my heart I believe some stories are worth telling more than once. Or twice. Or three times. 

 

Such as this serendipitous story of a friendship that almost didn’t happen.

 

When the daughter left for her freshman year at the University of North Carolina, the ever-loving spouse and I dropped her off, danced a little freedom jig and drove the old minivan 500 miles home to experience life with a mere two kids at home. 

 

A few weeks later the daughter called to ask if we’d be coming for Parents’ Weekend. ALL her friends’ parents would be there and I would definitely LOVE them. Naturally, she had already connected with all of them, and noted that she was the ONLY one whose parents had yet to take them all out for dinner. I somewhat doubted the accuracy of that statement (after all, she’s my daughter … plus the fact that one friend hailed from Denver, one from Cleveland, one from the western wings of New Jersey and one from Asheville – which though closer -- was still a good 225 miles from campus).

 

“Absolutely not,” I answered maybe a little too quickly. My entire life's purpose has always been to make and keep as many friends as I possibly can, but I just wasn’t feeling it this time. Maybe it was that I had just been diagnosed with breast cancer or perhaps I’d simply aged out of my need to befriend people who would only be in my life for four short years.  

 

I did visit once that year (not on parents’ weekend) and listened with half an ear to how great all the parents were, along with declarations that I would regret not getting to know them. 

 

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Sophomore year, I drove the daughter back to school with the old minivan chock full of uber-important possessions and lugged box after box up to the second-floor bedroom while the daughter took multiple hug-breaks with friends she hadn’t seen for oh so long.   

 

And that's when I met the parents. 

 

“I told you,” the daughter texted me under the table at a group dinner that night.

 

“You’ve got to come meet Sandra and Stephen!” Carla, the Denver girl’s mother proclaimed. “They live on Franklin Street.” 

 

“Who are Sandra and Stephen and why would I want to meet them?” I asked, thinking, here we go again.

 

Sandra and Stephen are pillars of the Chapel Hill community, not to mention alumni, sports enthusiasts, cheerleaders and, hands down, the warmest and most welcoming people I have ever met. But at this point, it was just hearsay. I hadn’t yet met them.

 

The story of Sandra and Stephen began when Lauren and her parents were flying from Denver to Chapel Hill freshman year. At the gate, a chirpy blond-haired woman befriended them, surmising that Lauren was heading to UNC for college.

 

Sandra and Stephen were in Denver visiting their grown son and his family and were returning home to Chapel Hill on the same flight. 

 

“Call us,” Sandra said, handing Lauren her number. “We’ll be your surrogate grandparents while you’re in college.”

 

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

But there was something about Sandra and Stephen that warranted that first call. And the second. And the hundredth. 

 

Sandra and Stephen live in a big, beautiful house on the main street of town, an easy walk from campus. And because they are the warmest, most welcoming people in the world, they opened their home to all of us parents, inviting us to stay there, singly or en masse, whenever we were visiting our children. I mean, who does that? 

 

For the rest of their college days, the five girls and the parents (me included) scheduled yearly weekend visits at the same time so we could all hang out – Sandra and Stephen’s serving as home base and party central. 

 

I often think that as much as I loved my parents, when I was in college, they and their friends were the last people I would want to spend a weekend with. But times have changed and clearly we are way cooler than our parents could have ever hoped to be. These girls are either really good actors or actually enjoy hanging out with us.

 

And just like that, it was graduation day. We rented out Sutton’s, the iconic Franklin Street drug store / eaterie, which features photos of the likes of Michael Jordan (and our daughters!) hanging from the ceiling. One of the fathers surprised us all by hiring the Clef Hangers, UNC’s renowned a capella group, to serenade us with their songs like Pharrell’s Happy, making us weep.

 

We wept with joy, pride and yes, sadness. Because it was over. That beautiful four-year (or as I’m always reminded, in my case three) unique, intergenerational friendship. We knew the girls would always be friends, there’s something about consuming kegs worth of beer that seals the deal. After all, I still get together with my freshman friends, almost half a century later. But the parents, would we really keep our vows to keep the embers burning? Would we ever go back to Chapel Hill? Would we attend the girls’ weddings? Would we know their babies? 

 

Yes. Yes. Yes, And yes. 

 

Since their graduation in 2014 we’ve gotten together almost every year – mostly in Chapel Hill, though we did deviate for Julie and Joe’s wedding in Asheville and Lauren and Rob’s in Denver. And yes, we love the significant others as much as we love the girls, well.. almost as much. But when 2022 came and went without a full-out reunion and we were well into 2023, we knew we had to make it happen. It would be so easy to allow bulging bellies, newborn babies, plummeting back accounts, stressful jobs, over-extended travel budgets, and just plain, old, ordinary busy lives to serve as perfectly appropriate excuses. And before long it would be another year, then a decade, then two and our Chapel Hill friendship that is so uniquely wonderful would be marked merely by holiday greetings, occasional zoom calls and texts with multiple emojis that would ebb and flow over the rest of our lives. 

 

Or, we could just not take no for an answer.

 

Two weekends ago, nineteen of us reunited at UNC. The “kids” who are now 31 year-old adults, along with their spouses, a soon-to-be-spouse, the six-month-old Tate and 22-month-old Theo got dibs on Sandra and Stephen’s house and the parents were relegated to a local hotel. 

 

We ate, we drank, we did trivia, we visited the old stomping grounds, we watched the Heels suffer their first football loss of the season. We celebrated Sandra’s milestone birthday, the birth of the boys, the new baby brewing, but most of all, we celebrated 13 years of friendship (12 in my case, because well, you know…). A friendship that almost didn’t happen. A friendship that could so easily slide into a fond memory. A friendship that reminds us of what we learned long ago in Sunday School, or less long ago during Pi Phi initiation, or just from long years of living: 

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers; 

for by this some have entertained angels unawares. 

 

Hearts in the Right Place

“Let me get this straight,” said a friend who clearly did not know the great lengths I’ve gone to do the right thing. “You went all the way to France to play cards?”  

I’ve driven through the night, surviving not one, but two, blown out tires (and a ride with a trucker to get a new spare) on the dark and windy Skyline Drive, all to see John Prine and Bonnie Raitt somewhere way down deep in Virginia. I’ve attended three parties in one night in far-flung locations so I didn’t have to choose between friends and lovers. I transferred colleges not for the curriculum but for the proximity to the school and friends I was leaving behind. I chose to go on a cruise as the world was shutting down with Covid. I went on a round-trip late night date to DC with my future spouse, who was merely a fling at the time, so he could drop a resume off at The Washington Post. Then later that year, when the fling was flung, drove to Florida for the same purpose. I walked out of the hospital after a hysterectomy and went directly to the Little League field. I promised I would, and did, dance at a wedding three weeks after a double knee replacement. We took two cars to the daughter’s college graduation, then I drove 511 miles home in the middle of the night with the youngest so he could play in the next day’s baseball game. Perhaps craziest of all, I traveled to Myrtle Beach for a cheerleading competition – on an overnight chartered bus filled to the brim with sleepless, screeching teenagers.  

 

I spend a lot of time and energy debating whose feelings and I should or shouldn’t hurt, weighing the perceived importance of doing or not doing and over-analyzing the very real financial impact of the decisions I may or may not make. But I didn’t have to think twice about flying to France for the annual Hearts Tournament. After all, this is what we signed up for. 

 

Forty-odd years ago I landed my first “real” job. Though TV Guide magazine looked good on a resume, none of us were there to build our careers. We were in it for the perks – the four-day work week and the age-appropriate co-workers who became core friends. There were just a handful of us who actually worked there but our group quickly grew to include significant others, downstairs neighbors, law school classmates, Bacchanal buddies and their scientists and a random artist met after a Mummer’s Parade mugging. 

 

Before we knew it, we were all hanging out in Fishtown (we were cool long before Fishtown was), drinking beer (lots and lots of beer), watching Phillies games, feasting in deliciously inexpensive South Philadelphia restaurants and renting a beach bungalow for six weeks each summer. 

 

The card playing part of our friendship began innocently enough – just a bunch of drunks sitting around a sticky oil-clothed table in Brigantine, filling the hours between steaks on the grill and sunrise with a friendly hand of Hearts. But competitive forces brewed beneath the surface and before long, Jim was recording not just wins and losses but hours played. And believe me, there were many.

 

After a few years, the Brigantine community caught on that despite the fact that we were hard-working, full-fledged adults, we were light years away from quieting down at a reasonable hour. Our landlord was asked to no longer rent to the loud group of communals and the Brigantine Beach House became just one more memory. 

 

That’s when we decided to make the Hearts Tournament a real thing. Nancy and Eddie found the perfect trophy on a trip to Mexico – a shadowbox full of skeletons playing cards – and Jeff, our favorite artist, later created a stained-glass base. We vowed to play once a year. For the rest of our lives. 

 

And so we have. There’s about a dozen of us who play, some with more fervor and stamina than others. Some are die-hard competitors, some come for the food alone, some would rather socialize than play, and some still can’t win for losing. Whoever claims the trophy gets to display it in their own home for the year, but then has to host the next tournament. Which means providing snacks, dinner and of course, breakfast for those who spend the night. And many someones always spend the night. There’s also a loser’s trophy which has taken up semi-permanent residence in Teaneck. 

 

In August of 2022, Donald won the tournament. In September he and his wife, Theresa, sold their worldly possessions and moved to Rennes, France. With the trophy. 

 

A few weeks ago, as required, 13 of us gathered on a rooftop in Rennes for the annual Hearts Tournament. Theresa and Don were hands down the best hosts ever, though Bob and Nicole have done a pretty good job in their Pocono palace. But hey, this was our first transatlantic tournament so they get killer kudos. 

 

We spent four days in Rennes, then another three in Paris and saw tons of noteworthy sites and ate pounds of noteworthy baguettes and croissants. But nothing could hold a candle to The Official Hearts Tournament Almanac of Fact and Ephemera, a bound booklet gifted by our esteemed host that documents our highs and lows over the years. Suffice it to say that Donald’s witticisms make my words sound like garble and we laughed our way through his truisms, exaggerations and as the Big Guy would say, blatant lies. But there wasn’t a non-constricted throat in the house as we read his tribute to Young Ed whom we lost in 2019 to a cancer as rare as he was. 

 

Spewed during the course of a good game of Hearts are recurring words, questions and sentiments that include: 

 

“Whose got the bitch?” referring to the Queen of Spades which is a card you mostly want to avoid.

 

“He’s shooting!” referring to shooting the moon, which means taking all the hearts plus the aforementioned bitch, and if done successfully is a good thing.

 

“Remind me how to play,” referring to me. 

 

“What round are we in?”

 

“What time’s dinner?” 

 

But the most loaded question of all, “Have hearts been broken?” 

 

A week to the day after returning from our fun-filled France adventure, one of us – the zen-est of us all, the one who walked just as many kilometers as the rest of us, the one who voluntarily took the recycling around the corner and filled the water bottles at the grocery store, the one who is neither the youngest nor the oldest, the one who doesn’t drink, the one who is loved just as much as the rest of us (or more) -- suffered what they call the WidowMaker heart attack. The one where there’s a total blockage of the main artery. 

 

Spoiler alert: Thanks to the would-be widow’s quick thinking and expert driving skills, he made it to the hospital in time and we were all spared the ultimate heartbreak. But it kinda gets you thinking. 

 

In over four decades of friendship, we’ve all had our share of pain, sorrow and suffering. We’ve seen each other through divorces, deaths, layoffs, joint replacements, cancers, relocations, tournament losses and ironically, a fair amount of heart surgeries. 

 

Have hearts been broken? 

Sooner or later, the answer is always yes.

Which is perhaps why this tradition has become so important. Both the biggest losers (arrow emoji over my head) and the strongest winners (star next to my ever-loving spouse's name, knowing that comment will make Donald's blood boil) understand that in the end, Hearts is not about the cards in your hand, but the people at your table. 

Ta Da!

“Don’t use the kitchen while I’m away,” I warned the ever-loving spouse when I traversed to Traverse City a couple weeks ago.

“Why not?” he asked, incredulously. 

 

“Because,” I blathered. “It’s not ready.”

 

He rolled his eyes and complied. At least I think he did. I wasn’t here. 

 

Almost three months to the day after the first sledgehammer exposed rotted beams behind the walls (due in full to our ignoring a years-long shower leak), the new kitchen was complete. 

 

Except, of course for a litany of minor misses and that would never have been noticed had we not spent our golden years’ nest egg on the renovation. There were a couple biggish things, like the new, supposedly in-stock refrigerator that inexplicitly hadn’t yet been delivered and the wrong sized microwave that had been delivered, but all-in-all, it was ready to go.

 

But I wasn’t. 

 

It seems that I didn’t want to actually use the kitchen. I just wanted to look at it and revel in the clutter-free counters, the shiny cabinets that actually close (soft-close at that), the junkless junk drawers, the yet-to-be-smudged stainless steel dishwasher, the custom pantry void of expired food, the crumb-free silverware tray, the beauteously wallpapered powder room with a gasp! chair-height toilet seat. 

 

I wanted to invite the world in to see the one room in our house that was clean and bright and looked like a high-end Airbnb listing. For some reason, my spouse actually wanted to move the pots and pans back into the drawers, put food back into the cabinets and maybe even cook a dinner in the new oven. 

 

“You do know,” I said, relaying my sister Emily’s advice from when we moved into our first house eons ago. “That wherever we put things now is where they’re going to stay for the next 20 years. I just want to be a little more intentional in how I put the kitchen back together.” 

 

Another eye roll. Another take out dinner.

 

But finally, the new refrigerator came, the old one moved to the garage, the old-old one to the dumpster. My sister, Nancy, was coming to hang wallpaper in the powder room that, as in many 95 year-old homes, opens right into the kitchen, and I knew I would get more than an eye roll if I hadn’t done made any headway.

 

And so on the Thursday before Labor Day, I began unloading the boxes and boxes of kitchen paraphernalia that I had so deliberately labeled and stacked in a corner of the basement. In no time at all, the kitchen was back in working order.

 

That very afternoon our neighbor, Jim, rang the doorbell with a baggie of fresh-caught tuna in tow. 

 

Excited for my inaugural meal, I asked how I should cook it.

 

“A little bit of oil, sear it for a few minutes on each side and you’re good to go.”

 

I hadn’t cooked in quite a while and perhaps went a little overboard on the oil. Maybe a lot overboard. Because that oil sprayed and splattered onto my new zellige tile backsplash, dripped beneath the unblemished burners on the stainless steel stove, splashed onto the unsullied granite counter top and turned the hood’s shiny grease filter a nice shade of yellow. 

 

But the tuna was delicious. 

 

Over the course of the renovation, not to mention weeks (months) before, I fretted and fussed, waking up in the middle of the night panic-stricken that I had actually chosen to do this. My poor sister, who can do this kind of thing in her sleep, was the receiver of most of my angst (not to mention thousands of texts). Naturally I couldn't unleash my full fears on the ever-loving, after all, I was the one who begged for this. 

I worried obsessively if my hardware would look okay, if the tile floor would break too many glasses, if the rustic purple backsplash was too purple - or too rustic - if the left-placed toilet paper holder would prove bothersome, if the in-cabinet trash would eternally smell, if the wall color was too light, too dark or too out of fashion, if the mid-century modern clock matched the décor, if, if, if…..

 

I still turn to my right instead of my left to flick the light switches on and off, walk to the wall for the trash can that is now tucked seamlessly within a cabinet, and haven’t yet broken my habit of leaving doors and drawers ajar, despite the help of soft-close hinges. But the counter tops are still clear, the table devoid of anything but random newspapers that can be stacked and recycled in seconds and I smile every time I walk into walk to the kitchen, still shocked by its transformation. 

 

Like driving a new car, it all gets easier after that first scratch and like birthing a baby, you realize (eventually) that it was worth the pain. Then one day as you're roasting that chicken and smiling because the ice-maker still works, you start to wonder what exactly it was that made you over-obsess. Then in the course of a conversation with a friend who asks how bad it was, you answer with muted memory, "Oh, it wasn't bad at all." 

And that's the day you call the contractor and say, "We were thinking of redoing the basement..." 

              

Long Live

 

 

Full disclosure. I am tone deaf. I prefer listening to books over music, I generally can’t identify a song until well into the lyrics and I immediately lower the radio when riding in a car with my offspring.  

 

But I’m certainly not a music monk. I’m first on the floor when Burning Down the House pops into a playlist (earning wide-eyed stares for my offbeat flailing), I belt out every word (off-tune) to Piano Man as it plays in the 8^th inning at CitiField and I smile with nostalgia whenever I hear Peaceful Easy Feeling (another story for another time). 

 

As a youth I went to just about every concert $7.50 could buy, rotating between the Spectrum, Tower Theater and the TLA in Philadelphia. It didn’t really matter who was playing, it mattered who was going. Which is why I was just as likely to attend a Beach Boys as a Deep Purple concert.  

 

Back in 1991 as a pre-parenting last hurrah, my music-loving spouse and I went to New Orleans for Jazz Fest. In 2012 I saw John Prine at a small venue in New Jersey and last month listened to a slightly known band play under the stars at a small town festival. And that is just about the extent of my musical ventures over the past 32 years. 

 

Which may lead one to wonder how – and more importantly – why – a woman who has aged out of middle age, ended up at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, screaming with the Swifties last Saturday night. 

 

I have loved Taylor Swift since I first heard You Belong With Me on CD repeat in the minivan as I carted the daughter from soccer to softball, from gymnastics to cheerleading, from sleepovers to boyfriends’ houses (not one in the same). I have always been somewhat star struck, googling the rich and famous and later having “informed” conversations about their lives. But that’s more likely a search for “what did Francisco Lindor name his second daughter,” than a full-out follow on all forms of social media – which is what I do with Taylor Swift. I know her mother’s Great Dane is named Kitty, that she is exactly one month older than I am (the mother, not the dog), that her brother went to Notre Dame and her grandmother was an opera singer. I know which of her exes made their way into her songs and who her favorite friends are. 

 

The daughter and I exchange texts about her as if she is someone we actually know. 

 

“Did you hear Taylor might be back with Joe?”

 

“Rumors. All rumors.”

 

“It’s so sad. She really loved him.”

 

Yes, I am well aware that what I know about this pop icon is absolutely nothing.  

 

Fast forward through the eras, through boyfriends and breakups to last November when tickets went on sale for Taylor Swift’s first concert tour in five years. 

 

“I’m going,” I announced.

 

Along with millions of others, I registered online for a presale code. Unlike the multitudes, I didn’t really understand what this was all about. After all, most of my concert tickets had been purchased from a booth in the back of Korvette’s department store in the Cedarbrook Mall.  I was asked to list four choices of venues and I typed in New Jersey, New Jersey, Philadelphia and on a whim, Los Angeles.

 

I got the code, a feat unto itself, I later learned – for the LA show only – and was instructed to go online in the early hours of November 15 to get in the queue which could possibly, but my no means guarantee me being able to actually purchase tickets. 

 

It didn’t take long for me to realize the ridiculousness of the whole scenario. Was I really going to fight for a concert ticket at my age? Would I even be able to survive in a mega-stadium with 70,000 other humans? And in what world did it make sense to fly across the country to see a pop star, whom yes, I professed to love … but come on. 

 

And so I bagged the whole silly idea. 

 

If you recall, the day tickets went on sale, Ticketmaster crashed and the world went mad. I self-praised my good judgment for not attempting to battle the masses. But. Mid-afternoon I got an email saying that the glitch was fixed and west coast ticket sales would open back up at 6 pm. I had finished my Wordle, had chopped the spouse’s dinner shrubbery, Jeopardy wasn’t on for another hour, so what the heck? I logged in. Again, I know nothing of queues and spinning circles, but it soon –  and I mean within mere minutes – became clear that I was about to score. I texted the daughter. 

 

“Hey, it looks like I’m going to get tickets for Taylor Swift. You in?”

 

“Mom. You’re NOT getting tickets. My friends and I have been online ALL day. It’s not happening.” 

 

Three minutes later, I sent her a screen shot of the two lower bowl, right-behind-the-VIP-tent seats that I had purchased for a small fortune. But, I reasoned, amortized over all the years of not going to concerts, it was a pretty good deal. 

 

Anti-hero no longer. I was the MAN. (See what I did there, fellow fans?) 

 

When we checked in to the hotel last weekend, the aging desk attendant greeted us with a grin, “You girls here for Taylor Swift?”

 

“Uh, duh,” I said. 

 

He laughed.

 

“No, really. We are going.”

 

When he realized his ageist faux pas, he tried to dial it back. He earnestly asked what I was going to wear, referring to the fact that “everyone” dresses up for the show, picking one of Taylor’s eras to commemorate. 

 

I am not a dresser-upper. Not for nothing. Not for no one. 

 

But this was different. I was going to be totally out of my element, not to mention my peer group. And while I would never lie about my age, and don’t care (that much) how wrinkled I am,  I do have this inexplicable need to stay agelessly relevant. So for weeks I had run the gamut of choices through my mind – I could wear a shiny bodysuit, a fringe-filled skirt, a blazer and Louboutins, a ball gown, a top hat, a folksy, floor length dress, or just call it a day with bright red lipstick. 

 

I finally decided that I best related to one of her lesser-hits and had the song title custom printed onto a t-shirt: 

 

this is me trying

 

More perfect words were never worn. 

 

As we walked into SoFi Stadium I felt an overwhelming … something. My throat got a bit tight and my eyes a tad watery. I looked around at all those jubilant faces, mostly women, mostly less than half my age, and I was overpowered with … something. 

 

As is typical, I engaged random strangers in conversation.

 

“Mom, read the body language,” the daughter quipped. “They doesn’t want to talk to you.” 

Oh, but they did. With in minutes I was gifted two friendship bracelets (a line in one of Taylor’s songs morphed into the making and exchanging of bracelets at concerts) even though I didn’t have any to trade back (you have to draw the line somewhere.) I gave the daughter a smug smile. Like all my other sentimental bracelets, they’re going to stay on my wrist until they fall off. 

 

“But how was the SHOW?” my spouse asked after I gushed about the malls being stocked with Taylor outfits, the airplane filled with concert-goers, the city alive with pre-concert electricity, the little girls in front of us passed out from overload.

 

Oh yes, the show. Well the actual show was amazing. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced. Three hours and fifteen minutes, 44 songs filled with theater, dance, style, lights, effects, conversation and pure joy.  There were multitudes laughing, crying, singing, shrieking, hugging and swaying. Not that I have any 21^st century comparisons, but to me the concert was a spectacular spectacle. 

 

But Taylor Swift is more than the show. So much more.  

 

Which brings me back to the why. 

My spouse, who can identify Taylor Swift’s voice but really only knows “The Romeo and Juliette” song because Richie belted it out in one of The Bear episodes, mocks my idol mercilessly. 

 

“Is she going to sing another mean song about one of her boyfriends?” 

 

“Mean? Are you kidding me. She’s the nicest person in the world!” I protested. 

 

Granted, she does sing a lot of songs about her past, present and future love life. And while I will forever remember the guy at that party with whom I had an hours-long conversation after which I deemed him to be the one (you guessed it, he didn't call) and falling in hopeless love with the one who later became my ever-loving spouse, her tales about newfound and unrequited love are not why her songs resonate with me. 

 

I used to think it was because she started out as a Pennsylvania girl growing up in the exact town where we traveled for our very first of hundreds of baseball tournaments. Or because she’s a kind human, a self-proclaimed people pleaser, a masterful marketer and an absolute genius of a writer.

“There’s no way we’re going to get through this concert without sobbing,” the daughter warned me as we headed for the show.

That's when it hit me.

 

My love for Taylor Swift wasn’t all about me.

 

As a three-time mother, I think I can vouch for the fact that living through an offspring’s pain hits us twice as hard as it does hard as it does the child. And three times harder than it ever hit us when we went through it ourselves. Of course said child will roll their angsty eyes in denial, but once they’re in our shoes, they’ll know we’re not lying. Every heartbreak, every mean girl, every dashed dream ricochets through a mother’s body and soul, over and over, long after the slashes have turned to scars. 

 

Taylor Swift has perfectly penned the story of our lives. Mine, the daughter’s, and the millions of other hopeful souls in the world. But of course that’s the magic of a master storyteller – somehow everyone believes that the tale was spun specifically and solely with them in mind. 

 

As smoothly as it all went, as amazing as the experience was, as much fun as we had, I know that I don’t ever need to go to a stadium concert again. 

But I promise you this. Some thirty years from now when I'm well into late-stage old age and the daughter's the age I am now, we'll be the first in line when Taylor Swift announces her residency show in Las Vegas. 

Long live all the magic we made. 

A Wedding Story

“You know you can say no,” a random woman I befriended at the beauty parlor snorted after I overshared that I was going to my 87^rd wedding that weekend. 

I may actually be under-estimating the number of weddings I’ve attended in my life. All I know for sure is that when we moved across town 17 years ago, I dumpstered all 63 (I counted) wedding invitations that I’d been saving since 1980. In hindsight, I would have been better served purging my Aunt Mary’s china (boxed since her death in 1988); half, or even a quarter of the 10,000 books that overflow EVERY room in our house; or at the very least, the 30 lidless-Tupperware containers that tumble to the floor on a daily basis. I’ve often wished I had kept the invitations, if for no other reason than to solve the myriad memory-slipping debates:

 

Was Susan’s wedding at the same Long Island venue as Allan’s? Was Jack’s reception really at The Fort? How many years have Peggy and Pat been married? What was Peter’s ex-wife’s maiden name? 

 

As it stands, I have to trust the memories, some hazier than others, as I recollect the many, many nuptials I’ve witnessed. There was the wedding at the St. Regis Hotel on a snowy December night, the picture-perfect August afternoon at Trentadue Winery in Sonoma and the Phoenixville church where the white tuxedos got stained by bird seed (an early attempt to be eco-conscious). There was the fully-masked ceremony on the Puget Sound, the lavender farm in Wiscasset, Maine, the McGuire Air Force Base-d event in New Jersey, the beach bash in Fort Lauderdale and the love shack on the Ocean City boardwalk. There was the VFW hall in Chippewa Falls, the Holiday Inn on the highway, the Pearl S. Buck house in Perkasie, the manor overlooking the Hudson River and the New Orleans courtyard wedding complete with a brass band. 

 

I was at a wedding that was evacuated when the fire alarm blasted in the midst of the I-do’s, one at which the groom’s drunken mother slid her way across the dance floor, one where the bride’s father took the stage to play drums with the band and many, many featuring a maid of honor who interjected inappropriate college memories. I’ve witnessed couples as they connected through the love of Jesus Christ, by the power of God, beneath a Chuppah, in the eyes of an unnamed higher power and by online-certified BFF officiants. I’ve heard both original vows that evoked audible sniffles and biblical pronouncements wherein the wife promised to obey her husband, only to defy him (good for her) before the first dance. I’ve seen ugly crying from mamas who can’t let go of their sons, fist-bumping fathers who are happy to get their daughters off their phone plans and siblings whose distaste for their new family member is palpable. 

 

I’ve been to weddings held in backyards, barns and beaches as well as formal fetes thrown in country clubs, repurposed mansions and skyline ballrooms. I have drunk from both kegs and champagne flutes, been served wood-fired pizzas and food-truck fare as well as oysters on the half-shell and chateaubriand. Not to mention the many, many, many plates of rubberized chicken francese, twice-baked potatoes and green beans sprinkled with slivered almonds.

 

And while so many weddings seem to fade into one another, there’s always a reason why I keep saying yes. 

Last weekend's reason was Anthony.

 

I’ve known Anthony almost as long as I’ve known my own kids. And because he’s not my kid, I’ve been able to enjoy his antics and adventures with minimal distress. Anthony is that kid who drove the family car, booked a solo trip to Italy and took a plunge into the Hackensack River all by the age of 12. Born into a family of older brothers and multiple mischievous cousins, he navigated his childhood operating way beyond his years. 

 

Because he’s not my kid, I’ve been able to simply shake my head over his impulsive decisions, roll my eyes at every transfer of school or job or state, and pretend to love even the most dubious pieces of body art that he started penning long before his peers. 

My ever-loving spouse (aka Coach Dave) and I spent a lot of time with Anthony in his formative years. As team mom for the Titans baseball team, this kid was with whom I consulted about hotels and flights and sprinter vans.

 

Meanwhile, he was the one riding shotgun in Coach Dave’s 20-year-old, un-air-conditioned, Toyota with the hand-cranked windows, never missing a tournament that offered the opportunity to show off his cannon of an arm. Anthony would orchestrate the four-or-more-to-a-room sleeping arrangements, putting himself in the best possible position to sneak out and roam the hotel corridors once Coach Dave settled into his snoring.

 

Anthony is fun and fearless, and (thus far) has managed to land just this side of the law. Which clearly has less to do with his behavior and more than a little to do with the many cops and multiple angels that constitute his extended family and friends. 

 

Among those angels is his father, Phil, who died after a long and gnarly illness when Anthony was 12 years old. Phil was a beloved father, husband, coach and friend and the world took a big hit when he passed. He has remained very much alive in the hearts of all who knew him and more than one of us have wondered if Anthony would be the Anthony we know and love if he hadn’t lost his father when he did. And most of us agree that some of Anthony’s life choices are better off viewed from heaven. Anthony grew up to be his father’s mini-me, more so than any of his siblings. So it was only fitting that, though his two older brothers who both had their weddings in different Julys, Anthony was the one who managed to get married on his father’s actual birthday.

 

Anthony is now a married man so I wouldn’t want to dwell on any past and fleeting romances. But suffice it to say, when I met Jacqueline a couple years back at a Yankees-Mets game (“we” won, Anthony lost), I knew that she would be his bride. 

 

“Be nice to her,” I said to Anthony. “Do NOT screw this up.” 

 

And to Jacqueline, “God bless you.”

It’s impossible to describe Anthony in mere words. He’s more like an experience. And no matter how long you've known him or what adventures you've shared, the take-away is always the same. There's absolutely no point in trying to figure out what makes him tick. 

 

Last Saturday, over 200 people gathered for Anthony and Jacqueline’s wedding. From the tearful father-daughter dance exuding mutual adoration to the sob fest that ensued when Anthony took the floor with his mother, (“No!” the mother insisted earlier that week, “I’m NOT going to cry.”). From the piped-in cloud-like smoke to the photo booth to the sparkling fireworks and thrones upon which the bride and groom perched. From the abundance of gourmet food and free-flowing bourbon to the spot-on toasts and heart-felt love. From the cascading stairways and crystal chandeliers to the marbled hall and spectacular floral arrangements . From the dozens (literally) of bridesmaids, groomsmen, Bible readers, grace givers, flower girls and ring bearers to the authentic Italian music and hand-held flags – this celebration was Anthony and Jacqueline personified. 

 

“Such a waste of money,” a jaded divorcee grumbled when I recanted the magical evening. 

 

While I’ve never wallowed in excess cash, and cringe at the mere mention of wedding costs in relation to my own offspring – should they choose that path – trust me on this one. However many dimes were put into this event, not a single one was wasted. 

 

A wedding is fun and festive and full of friends and family who (hopefully) support the couple. It’s a living testament to who you are and from where you came. It’s the coming together of two separate families complete with all their quirky ways and the commingling of two sets of life-long friends and influencers. If you pay attention, you can learn an awful lot at a wedding.

 

What I’ve learned from decades of wedding-going is that some couples were destined to be together and others should never have swiped right. Some marry despite a slew of objections and others marry because of them. Some marry for beauty, others for money. Some marry for security, others for escape. 

But whatever the reason, weddings are fueled not just by love and joy, but by an overwhelming sense of hope. Hope that the relatives will behave. Hope that friends will have fun. Hope that there’s no wardrobe malfunctions, that the dance floor rocks, the sparklers spark and the shrimp stays fresh. But most of all, the celebration is filled with hope that the love couple gets their storybook ending. 

 

There’s nothing particularly remarkable about Anthony and Jacqueline’s story – after all, swooping in on another guy’s gal is perfectly acceptable – at least once the dust settles and broken hearts heal. But there definitely was something extraordinary about their wedding day. Beyond the pomp and circumstance, there was an overpowering emotion that coursed through the hearts of every one of those 212 guests. Whether it presented itself in a sigh of relief, a high-five, a smile, a check, a toast, a tear, a hug, a blog, or a thousand heart emojis, the sentiment was the same. 

Anthony and Jacqueline's story is far from over. Still to come are plenty of suspenseful scenes, massive amounts of dramatic content and tons of character development. As friends, family and angels watch the plot twists unfurl, we'll all share wistful smiles. Because we know that each and every one of us is responsible for a paragraph, a page or a chapter in their much deserved happily ever after.