Fat and Skinny Had a Race

Apparently the concept of “fat” has entered my five year old son’s awareness.

I blame myself.

He stretched out his Playdoh yesterday and asked me, “are skinny people stronger?” It seemed like a weird question. I answered, “Not necessarily. Muscular people are stronger.” Somewhere he had decided that skinny people were stronger than fat people. Now, I am not a person who talks constantly about their weight. I eat well, I exercise. He watches me do front and rear pushups, has seen me in exercise class. He mimics me doing pushups. He isn’t a big junk food eater (basically unless coaxed he is on a diet of air), and is clearly not at all fat. He has muscles in his legs that most would envy. He takes Tae Kwon Do twice a week, a ballet / tap class once a week and gymnastics. Fat just isn’t in this kid’s schedule.

But in the past week, two things happened. One was that we went to the doctor for a physical, and they placed his BMI in the 85th percentile, which was “not obese, but he has to be watched.”

Not to sound like a protective parent, but my son isn’t in the wildest of imaginations, fat. I know fat.  Intimately. I have been fat, in plain language, as a child. My brother? Moreso. In fact, I joke my family comes in two sizes: huge and anorexic. I look at his peers and he seems right in there, if not on the skinny side. I have tried to pry out of him what has given him said body awareness, but he remains mute on the subject.

He asked if I was fat.

Instead of my usual “I could probably stand to lose a few” answer, I said, “No, I’m muscular.” Which, as of late, has been more true than not.

He queried, “but what about the stuff on your belly that never goes away?”

Suddenly I remembered that as I was in the bathroom with him at a point, as he was brushing his teeth, I had pulled at some loose skin on my front and sighed that it would never go away. It’s the stretched out skin that many of us get while pregnant, and it’s true, without surgery it’ll always be there.

“That’s from having you. That’s not fat, that’s loose skin.” Tucking same into the waistband of my yoga pants, I asked, “do you think dad is fat?”

Now, dad’s work has been a little slow as of late and he spends more time in the kitchen eating cream puffs than at his desk doing estimates.  Thus, he has the dropping-of-the-pants-waist dilemma. The rest of him, in contrast, is stick thin. He would no more consider dieting and exercising than staying at a Best Western.

“Dad’s not fat. He’s muscular.”

I mulled this over. Now, with my stepdaughters, the approach had been both obvious and easy. Their mom was into health, both diet and exercise. I had been to work both for and with her and she had to work like an animal, toting heavy water cans two at a time (she was a horticulturist) and I would be sore for DAYS afterward. Even when the girls were young they would see me exercise, do walkathons, go on and off diets. They were both little tiny things that could eat pretty much everything and never gain an ounce, all clothing looked good on them. But they never once called me fat to my face. Amanda-bless her heart-didn’t even GET that I was overweight. When baggy jeans were in…the ones with the big bells (watching her run to catch up to a friend wan tripping over them was hilarious, once she got up and laughed at herself), she asked, “why are you wearing those old style tight jeans?”

“They aren’t tight, Amanda. I’ve just grown into them,” I countered.

When capris were in, Amanda repeatedly asked why I didn’t get a pair. Finally I had to break it to her that I was 5’0″ with heavy legs and they were just NOT a look for me.

So where does this leave me, aside from kicking myself that I had committed a faux pas with my son on the whole body image thing? At present, he’s had corn muffins and juice for breakfast and has not passed up on the occasional Nutter Butter. Not on his way to becoming a manorexic, yet. And I guess I’m no different from any other mom, in that I’m at war with the constant advertising for food and overly sexualized body images and things of that nature. But I will tell you that the loose skin of mine will NOT be mentioned in his presence again…at least not by me

Easter Sundae

In the middle of polishing off a package of hot cross buns (not uncommon at this time of year, don’t know how I manage not to weigh 500 pounds), I found myself stopping, and thinking, “Why am I doing this?” I wasn’t really hungry, my stomach hurt. I think the only reason I’d bought them in the first place was because I’d only had a single orange before I left for Eddie’s field trip at 9 and now it was almost noon and my blood sugar was dropping like a rock. Poor planning, especially since I know better, but at 9 all I could manage was an orange. Oh, and two cups of coffee.

Why? Why, why, why?

Because of Easter.

When I was young, Easter had a lot more meaning than the candy and toy packed basket left by the Bunny. Growing up in CT, the start of the Easter season meant that you could almost touch spring. The grocery store (Finast?) would start having the little wooden shoes with crocus bulbs in them, poking their heads up and blooming yellow, purple, red. Grass started to come up and turn green. The tips of the trees would turn greenish yellow, blush red on the maples. I’d give up chocolate for Lent (OK, not exactly the meaning but for me it was a sacrifice!). We’d get new dresses for Easter Sunday (inevitable freezing, though the dresses were definitely for warmer weather), and the family would all get together for lamb or ham, at someone’s house after church. We’d dye eggs and make a terrible mess, wasting God knew how many perfectly good hard boiled eggs (I liked them, not everyone did) because how much can you really DO with the eggs? We’d started out with my parents hiding the hard boiled eggs, but then the dog would eat them, so it was nixed as a tradition. We simply wound up throwing away most of the eggs. 

Strangely, the part of Easter I miss most these days (aside from my family, which has been cast far and wide) are the baked goods dad used to bring home from the Italian bakery. The Sicilian egg bread. The rice and wheat pies. He and I were the only ones who would really eat them; my grandmother would bake other pies for the dinner (lemon meringue, a fruit pie, maybe; coconut custard). He and I were the ones who ate the hot cross buns, because we liked the candied fruit. And the movies! If we weren’t having some kind of Star Wars film fest it would be “Barabbas” with Anthony Quinn, “Ben Hur” or even “The Ten Commandments”. The guys would sit around, bs and drink in the kitchen. The women would hang in the dining room, talking. The kids would either watch TV or go to someone’s room for music or, in the  case of one year, it was so nice outside that we all went to the baseball field and played baseball. In our Easter outfits.

When I got older, we brought my stepdaughters. We’d put candy and money in plastic eggs around the house, locking the girls on the front porch so they wouldn’t peek. Amanda would mope around, saying how she never won at anything, her mom got her foot spray for her birthday, and inevitably someone would clue her in to the occasional egg. Her sister ripped the house apart looking for eggs, unaided. One year they missed an egg; my dad found it in a pocket of his winter vest and called to ask if he could keep the dollar. I think one Easter was the time I decided the girls would never again see me drunk; I’d forgotten much of the evening (my brother was ladling out the Tom Collinses unasked from a large bowl), though I’d managed to get them to bed in pajamas and with teeth brushed. But they regaled me (as I was hung over and having to drive to pick up my grandmother) with stories of me licking the empty glass of Godiva chocolate liqueur, talking to the pixies in my closet, asking repeatedly who had put the board game away. My mother even remarked “I don’t think I’ve ever see you that drunk.”

“Can’t say the same,” I snapped. Good times.

Lots of memories of Easters past…Steve Hall popping in uninvited before he had to go to work at the jail, bringing his own Tupperware and packing himself a nice lunch from the leg of lamb leftovers. Me hemorrhaging in the bathroom with company over and a leg of lamb in the oven and willing myself to stop because I didn’t have a good window in which to go to the hospital. Going to the Boulder Inn in CT and not telling my parents so they wouldn’t feel bad. Lots of singing in church.

This year? My mom is going to be away, and my youngest step can’t come home, so it will only be the three of us. I’d say I’d go somewhere, but I’m playing a benefit on Good Friday. Eddie won’t be shorted. We’ll go to several egg hunts, without a doubt, and the Easter Bunny will be good to him.

It’s me. I could make all the goodies I’d want at Easter but it would be a waste, both of time and food. I made two egg breads one year and gave one to the neighbor, but the people in my home seem to have no appreciation for good homemade bread. I could make French toast  from it, but nobody eats that, either. And making a leg of lamb for three is kind of the same. We might as well go somewhere but even that makes me feel a pit in my stomach. Sucks to know what you’re missing. Which was apparently why I ate the damned fool hot cross buns. To fill the hole.

So today, I’ll eat a lot of fruit and vegetables, not punish myself for bingeing, and try and figure out what will feed the longing. Preferably with no calories.

Mange, Mange

When I saw the movie The Joy Luck Club (yes, mom, I did read the book), one of the scenes sticks out in my mind. One of the women brings back a boyfriend who isn’t quite “with” the whole cultural difference thing, and her mother, who has doubtless been wringing her hands over this encounter, presents her dinner serving with “this is my worst dish. Tasteless” or something like that. The boyfriend, hoping to be reassuring, replies, “oh, it probably just needs a little soy sauce…” and as he reaches over to try and assist in seasoning, there is bedlam as the family restrains him.

I totally got it.

Not that my family is self effacing or anything, but although I am not by any means remotely Chinese, I think we may be, secretly. Toward the end, the main character speaks to her mom about always being  jealous of the daughter of her mom’s best friend. The mom points out that when the crab was passed around the table, she, the one questioning her own worth, saw that one of the crabs was damaged, and that was the one she took. The woman of whom she was jealous took the  best one without a second glance.

And why, now, do I think of this?

I came home from my busy day and made pancakes and bacon for dinner. I got the bacon out first (about a pound of it) and served the initial pancakes to my husband and son while I made up the rest of the mix.

I brought out the pancakes. Immediately my husband took the best ones off the top, leaving the “first batch” of off-looking pancakes for everyone else. I gave my son a couple of them, as he is a slow eater (I had yet to eat) and followed up with a couple of more fit looking pancakes. My husband, in the meantime, had finished his one plate and came out to take more off the counter. Again, he took the best ones, pausing for a moment before going back to the dining room to say, “oh…are there enough?”

“I’ll be fine,” I said. I knew there would be plenty for everyone. But when I got back to the table, finally ready to eat, there wasn’t much bacon left.

“All that’s yours,” he pointed to the plate, mouth full. I noticed what was left was either over or under cooked. I took a pass.

I think you can tell a lot about a person by how they eat, but who can you credit for the programming? My husband was basically a beloved only child. How could he possibly have learned to see if anyone ELSE wants the best piece? I have a brother. My mom (God love her) wasn’t always be best cook, and generally you got what you got and if you didn’t like it, fill up on bread. One of my stepdaughters is easy to feed because she wanted the best done pieces of meat nobody wanted, and another puts ketchup on everything so she doesn’t care what she takes. Like my mother and father, I tend to take the first piece of a pie or lasagna, leaving the better looking pieces to everyone else.

So what makes a person only want the best piece or, better yet, only food off their child’s plate? And how do you communicate the right attitude from the get-go? Kids will get from an experience what they…get, I guess.

I do worry about my husband’s attitude toward the whole food issue, though. I thought I would be the nutty one…weird diet one week, pig out the next, people coming over and I do nothing but say “eat, eat” and throw food at them. But he and I got into a real fight one time because he wanted “steak for two” and I wanted the au poivre, and he groused all night about the symbolism. He also denies the fact that he told me I had “changed” in our relationship because now instead of drinking straight Bushmills now I had Makers Mark Manhattans. He used to give one of his kids the hardest time because she liked her meat well done and he thought everyone should have it rare. He almost lost a friend over that same insistence that everyone should eat the way he eats. It’s odd. I’ll be dieting and he’ll want something fatty, but he won’t eat anything light but he goes on and on if we don’t eat the same thing at meals.

So far, at 5, my son shows no sign of this. “We all must eat pancakes / buttered pasta.” Lol!!! “Dora fruit snacks for everyone or I’m not eating!”

I think maybe now that I’m out of my twenties and about to kiss my thrities goodbye the food thing matters less. My son had birthday party Sunday and apparently if I have the moms by themselves, all I have to serve are Doritoes…

Farewell, 200(hate)

In the interest of keeping my resolutions to myself, my blog entry will be a "to do" list. Not that I feel like doing anything in particular; I’m beat, lazy, kind of down, and last night, though not particularly late, was long.

Let’s see…things I have to do:

1. Clean out my car

2. Get that pesky bloodwork done that I’ve been meaning to do but things keep coming up and the fool medical profession is on a no-coffee kick

3. I’ve given up on the whole weight thing and now say I want to be less flabby and get my splits back

4. Take the darned Notary public exam

5. Make some dinero and get a hold of my finances

6. Write something every day (whew, even if I stop here I’m done)

7. Eat less sugar because it makes me nuts

Certain resolutions I have made can’t go on this blog because regular readers can be real yentas and bad news travels fast…

8. Make the playdates I have been meaning to make with Sue / Skylar, Stacey / Jayme, Mary / Mickey

Here I can say I remember last night’s dream had Mary in it; apparently she was running a marathon and we were both following the same uphill, long distance climb but she clearly knew where she was going and I knew the where but had no reason…I think that’s when I woke up because I know that searching for a bathroom in my dreams means I need to get up and pee.

9. Hmmm…I know there was more. I think it had to do with not going out to the grocery store without looking in a mirror to see if I look like heck and skipping out in my PJs

10. I think maybe I will walk the dog every day?

Sigh. So much to think about. Another mimosa and some Spongebob vitamins should do the trick.

The Christmas Bra

Yup. I’m up two more bras for Christmas. Thanks, mom!

I think maybe, once upon a time, I’d asked my mom for a bra for Christmas. A SPORTS bra. I forget which Christmas, but I didn’t get one. I got the usual…white, seven hooks in back, bullet shaped cups, lined, no underwires, heavy duty shoulder straps. In duplicate. No, maybe one was flesh colored. The Goodwill usually makes out where I don’t, in this area.

My mother had to tell me it was time for a bra. I think I must have been nine or ten. We were in Caldor’s and she says (in a voice loud enough to be heard all the way to Georgia, and we lived in Connecticut) “Why aren’t you wearing a bra? If you don’t start wearing one, they’ll be down to your knees by the time you’re twelve.” I never had a trainer; I just woke up one AM to find that my nightgown wasn’t fitting across my chest anymore (OK, so I’m a little clueless) and went straight to the big leagues. My family isn’t known for its flat chested women.

When I was a teenager, sexy lingerie became popular. You’d think, as she used putting away my laundry for me as an excuse to snoop, my mom would have figured I liked cute and lacy underthings as opposed to practical. But no dice. I hit college and still, every Christmas, I’d get granny panties up to my chin and a heavy duty bullet bra. I had a longtime boyfriend; I don’t know if the underwear was to deter the inevitable and act as birth control of whether it was punishment for being young and sexually active. Not that the boyfriend was a particular sex machine, but still.

I began to suspect something when my best friend from college became my sister in law and I still got granny panties and she got bikinis. I confronted my mother. 

“No granny panties for Jen? No bullet bra? What gives?”

“Well,” my mother responded enigmatically, “Jennifer doesn’t wear a bra.” 

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

So now I’ve been married ten years and have a child and this Christmas, I still got the bullet bra. After having and nursing a child, I have nothing left to PUT in the bra, but she apparently hasn’t noticed.

But I did finally get my sports bra. Even if it does have “CHILL OUT” embroidered on it. My mother confesses that she, too, feels the sports bras are more comfortable to wear than the sexy ones. Nothing like an underwire digging in to your ribcage as your bra deteriorates and the wire works its way through. I never hand wash my bras anyway. I do try and keep them hooked in the washer but often they hook on the edge of the washing machine and get bent and twisted out of shape, the hooks irretreivably damaged. I used to wear a 32 D. You’d think they’d see “D cup” and ditch the padding, but they must get confused by the 32. Padding doesn’t fare well in the machine but it does keep the men around me from telling me it’s cold in the room based on tricks of my anatomy.

So, off I go. Time to drop the white bra in the Goodwill box…

Dear Santa:

Dear Santa:

How are you? I hope that this year has been both busy and productive. hey to Mrs. Claus, the Elves and the reindeer. I have been very good this year. Here is my list:

I would like my own apartment. Period. End of story.

I used to love Christmas. Now it’s just a perpetual cycle of making things for others and cleaning up afterward. Sometimes I just wonder if it’s a form of mental illness. I bought the tree, discarded the netting, brought up the boxes for the lights and ornaments, put them on, put the boxes away, brought them downstairs and spend every AM making sure it’s watered.

Presents? Go, buy, wrap, put away, store bags they came out of the store in (or boxes if shipped) and hide them. Once unwrapped, rid myself of wrapping paper and extraneous packaging.

Cards? Take photos, buy photo cards. Put photos in photo cards. Buy stamps. Check and revise addresses. Write cards, mail them. Receive cards, Put them up, discard envelopes.

Food? Buy, cook, clean up after the cooking part and the eating part and store leftovers.

See? Been a good girl. Covered all the bases. But stick a fork in me, I’m done.

Granted, there’s that whole holiday thing where there’s the pressure that it’s CHRISTMAS and we should all just be happy, happy, although some family members aren’t getting along, etc. And for the most part that works, at least as long as Christmas lasts. Christmas, in spite of the song, doesn’t last twelve days. Only a few meals and pretty much anyone can get through one meal with a family member they don’t agree with, even if they are at the end of their emotional ropes, so to speak.

But post holiday? I know, I know, I do it to myself. But I don’t understand why my husband feels that once the holiday is over now he has his shot at sucking me dry for all he’s felt deprived of while I made Christmas happen.

You can’t explain anything to him, because he won’t listen. And that, my friend Santa, is WHY I want my own place for Christmas. One where if I choose to have people visit, I won’t have my son dumping all his toys on the floor the minute the doorbell rings, the dog desperately needing to go out and my husband with drink #7 bugging me through my son about the fact it’s not all roses for us anymore. Especially when I’m on the phone with someone who doesn’t necessarily need to hear the dysfunction.

I always say that I won’t overtax myself. But if I don’t get it done, who will? I know, Santa, then I shouldn’t worry so much about it. But while my son is young, I think that magic should at least be attempted, if not achieved.

Yes, my husband always asks “is there anything I can do?” Granted, I’d think he already has a full plate. Just looking around there is a ton of stuff that needs doing, and I find it exasperating that he doesn’t see this. But I say things like “just bring the dog food in from the car”, and it still remains undone. I don’t want to do the not so fun things that need doing, either, but they still need to be done. I hate that I’d have to make it “my list” when I know it doesn’t have to be that way. But frankly, I think it ranges further than that. Christmas Eve, I run around like a nut, trying to get the house cleaned, cook a meal, deal with presents. I don’t need him to request a haircut in the middle of all this and complain that I don’t stop dead to give him one. He did get a haircut, but from my beleaguered stepdaughter. He’d said he’d get a haircut from a professional, but apparently unless I make the appointment for him, bind him in chains and drag him there, he won’t do it. He’d rather be dependent on me for everything and, in the words of my therapist, “resent the hell out of me for it.”

Oh, Santa. Why do I do this to myself? Sigh.

Hope you had a Merry Christmas! See you next year.

Turkey, Anyone?

OK, so I’ve always been a bit of an overachiever…why be on a committee when you can lead it, for example? Or help out at your son’s dance class, plus be in a band, run a home, take fitness classes, have a social life.

Keeps me away from the cookies, right?

So I stuck my mom with Thanksgiving this year. My youngest step wasn’t coming in from CA, so I figured,  why not take a break?

Thank my lucky f-ingstars, because I missed Thanksgiving in its entirety.

OK, so thinking back to Thanksgiving week, I don’t remember Monday, Tuesday I did the fitness class / Eddie’s dance class / McD’sfor dinner / band practice thing, then Wednesday I did some small amount of work and popped over to Terra’s to hang out for a few before leaving for CT. We had an uneventful ferry ride, got to mom’s, she came with pizza (this night, of course, I had to have four pieces PLUS two glasses of champagne), the boyfriend came over, we hung out, went to bed.

In the middle of the night, I got up to go to the bathroom.

And then, I threw up.

I knew I hadn’t had much to drink (unlike many Thanksgivings past, when I became infamous for overdoing it and throwing up, but have been good the past few years) , and nobody else was throwing up, so I figured it was something I ate. The only thing I ate that nobody else had eaten was trail mix, so I thought “damn those freeze dried bananas!” , brushed my teeth and went back to bed.

I proceeded to follow that pattern all night long. Hot, cold, throw up, cursing the four pieces of pizza.

In the morning, Ed came out and found me on the couch. I told him “mommy is VERY sick.” When my mom woke up, I managed to drag myself to her bathroom, put a towel on the floor, and stayed there. I was too sore and weak to move; I didn’t even have the strength to get myself a blanket.

I slept most of the time. At different points the dog would lay on the floor by me, whimpering (until food was served; I’m convinced that if I died and my body lay there too long he’d eat me). Mom would come in every now and then to see if I was dead. Ed came in and read me a book. I think Jon got me a blanket. Eventually the dry heaves stopped, and I managed to crawl into bed. Ed would come in and switch my water bottle to the side of the bed I happened to be on. Oddly enough, the songs from my last show…all about food and alcohol…kept running through my head…”Food, Glorious Food” and “Honey Bun…” Perverse, right?

By the end of the day I managed to be upright, but still exhausted. I told my mom it was a great thing she had Thanksgiving this year, because if she’d come to MY house, it’d have been like Charlie Brown’s Thanksgiving…toast, cold cereal and Halloween candy.

The next day I was still beat, and without appetite, but I managed. And even went out to lunch with friends.

I came back, and Ed was throwing up, as was mom’s boyfriend. It was a very thrilling trip all around. I know there’ll be other Thanksgivings, but I did feel cheated. Sigh. It’s a silly thing, I know…we celebrate the desecration of a native people with the stuffing of ourselves and I felt cheated of a holiday. I am, of course, going overboard on the Xmas side, but I feel like I need to make up for what I missed, and…so I’ll probably get sick again.

Therapy. I need therapy. Apparently airborne doesn’t work!!!

Home Work

At the doctor’s office yesterday, I forget which magazine, there was a little blurb trying to sell a vacuum that said “husbands make an additional 7 hours of housework every week.”

Obviously, the person who wrote this has never met my husband.

My husband works out of the home. I should put work in quotes, because basically he works mostly walking around the entire house blabbing on his cell phone and wandering back and forth into the kitchen to get stuff to eat. If he needs silence, he takes the phone into the Master Bedroom and closes the door.

I can’t vacuum because he is either walking around on the phone or sitting in the Living Room watching TV. He often complains that he’s bored and I should sit down and chat with him.

Chat?

I am too busy cleaning up after him. If he comes in from a meeting, he takes his meeting clothes off immediately, slings them over a chair in the Living Room and there they sit. And why? “So they won’t get all messed up by the dog.”

I started moving them into the bedroom. He throws them in a pile next to the bed and complains he has nothing un-wrinkled or clean because they smell like unwashed laundry. The pile is next to the hamper. Open hamper, throw in dirty clothes. They will make it to the wash.

Dishes? Forget it. IF they make it to the sink, he rinses them and puts them on the counter, making the counter a wet mess. The counter is right above the dishwasher and right in front of the dish drainer, neither of which he deigns to use. If he bothers to carry stuff over from the dinner table when the meal is done, then I have to be the one to pack up the leftovers because “How is he supposed to know what to do with them?” And the really messy greasy pots and pans? He doesn’t bother. If I didn’t do them, they would sit there til doomsday.

He actually managed to pack for himself when we went up to CT for my grandmother’s funeral. Sort of. The day I was leaving in a panic, I got yelled at because he couldn’t find a garment bag. He had TWO DAYS to look for it after I left. Why he had to choose the time when I had to get out of the door to look for it was BEYOND me. He even cancelled meetings so he’d have free time. I don’t know why…he barely knew my grandmother.

His clothes that he packed are still in a bag, on the floor, two weeks later.

Sigh. I know, I should let him pick up after himself but I would go insane in the mess. And he thinks I am a lousy housekeeper? If that were true, maybe he would start taking out the garbage, cleaning the fridge, dusting, vacuuming, doing the baths. Keeps saying how if he lived alone his house would be pristine.

His office is pristine. He’s never IN it.

I’m willing to give the “his own place” thing a try. Then I’d have one less person to clean up after.

Boy “Friends” and Girl “Friends”

I was talking to my mom the last time I saw her, and we were discussing the fact that she wanted to take the Essex steam train’s dinner ride, going up and around the Connecticut Valley on the train, having dinner, enjoying views of the foliage. She’d planned to do this with her friend Leanne, but Leanne had been diagnosed with cancer within the past year, and was currently home and bedridden, on so many meds she was unaware of the date or who had come by. When my dad, and then Leanne’s husband had passed, they’d planned trips to the Bay of Fundy, weeks at the beach, a trip up to mom’s cabin in New Hampshire. Leann’s husband had been sick for a long time, and when her children were grown and gone her days were consumed with his care. When he died, although I’m sure in a sense, she felt horrible, she was free. She could now live, do things for herself.

Then the cancer.

Mom had grown up with her husband and his brothers and been friends with Leanne for a long, long time. She’d looked forward to this time, and she, still healthy, wanted to do these things. Now, she said, she wished she had another female friend her own age to hang out with.

My husband was privy to this conversation. “What’s wrong with taking Brice?” Brice being my mom’s squeeze. He calls her “sweet thing”. I do my best not to chuckle but it’s reeeeeeeally hard.

We both looked at him. I answered first.

“Your female friends are different. You act differently, can talk about different things. You can relax with them…it’s different than a date.”

I think he said something about the both of us being man haters. Then he added that I could come up, go with her.

“Jon, she wants a friend her own AGE. You know…you can talk about things with someone and have them understand because they were there,they get it. How things used to be when they were young…dating, the Mickey Mouse Club.”  Besides, I’m her daughter. A totally different thing, although these days we get along well.

I think, sometimes, my husband doesn’t get the concept of FRIENDS.

My dad had many friends. Mostly acquaintances, admittedly, but friends nonetheless. And his best friends? He used to say they drove him nuts. My brother said the same thing about his friends. And so on.

Jon used to have friends. But friendships require work. He has a few left but they’re the ones who do the contacting. I try and keep in contact with them myself, keep up some of his friendships. But it’s not easy.

I have friends of both sexes. Some of them should never meet and some of them would probably get on like a house on fire. I consider members of my family my friends and we talk regularly. Some friends I’ve known since Junior high, others from college, others I’ve met in singing groups or with the mom’s club or are mother’s of Ed’s friends. Some are my age, some older, some younger, sometimes by a lot. There are also the guys in the band and you know…the different things the different sets of friends talk about are interesting.

My husband once accused me of sharing my personal problems with my male “band friends.” I snorted. The band talk about sports, money and politics, basically. Sometimes they quote movies. Sometimes they talk about a certain hot babe they’ve seen at a gig. Past sexual exploits? To the “nth” degree. But feelings? Relationships? Not really. A snippet now and then but they’d rather talk about who they’re trading in Fantasy Football. Granted, I don’t think they even consider me female anymore. Two of them decided they were going to urinate outside with me standing 10 feet away. Hello? Maybe some day one of my guy friends will let me in on what’s so exciting about using the outdoors as your toilet.

My Mothers Club friends talk about parenting, kids, town politics, going back to work, our husbands. Light stuff.

My college and high school friends talk about getting old. Who is getting old, having kids, what they’re doing, what we’re doing. How young we look compared to everyone else we know our age.

And yet, I can’t imagine my life without my male friends OR my female friends. It’s like you need both to fulfill a need for both sides of your personality. Some might say I’m lucky that my husband isn’t a jealous person. He’s more jealous of my friendships in general than of the fact that maybe I’ve had a half hour conversation with Keith or that Gregg is texting me. The women haven’t always been understanding. Bassist’s wife was wary of me, but I didn’t have the least bit of interest in her husband, nice a guy though he is. At a Halloween party we played, we were on break, I was panicking about the fact that I was losing my voice, and talking to him I noticed that one of the ties to his pirate costume was in his drink. So I pulled it out. She flew across the room and told me “YOU don’t play with his ties. I get to play with his ties.” She’s finally lightened up, although in a reversal she told me at another party I was the Den Mother for the band and had to stop them if they tried to take their clothes off. Didn’t realize I was stuck with the Cub Scouts on the short bus.

For some unknown reason, Gregg (the keyboard player / photographer) decided he would send a picture of me sitting in the drummer’s lap (we’d been horsing around, waiting for the guy in the studio to set up so we could record) to the drummer’s e-mail address. Now, the drummer doesn’t use the computer, so his girlfriend gets the e-mail. Needless to say, she doesn’t know me and was less than thrilled when she opened the picture, not yelling and screaming, but HURT. The picture was taken in January and this was in like, April. What has he thinking? The guitarist’s wife and I are good friends, and I consider him a friend, but what do you know? We’re accused by the other members of the band of getting together for a threesome-he, his wife and I!!!! This started when Dwayne and I got together at my house a few times (with both his son and mine in tow) to practice songs for a kids show we did together. And Gregg himself is a big flirt, so his wife is wary of me. As it happens, he and I talk and / or text a lot, because we’re both communicators (and sometimes the other members leave me out of the loop and Gregg passes on info). Its all like “When Harry Met Sally”. And yet, I can go out with the band and my husband just deals with it. I have to sneak around to go out with my women friends!

Keith is my brother’s best friend. I’ve known him since he was 14. He went from being like ”Wayne” in “Wayne’s World” to Adam Sandler in pretty much anything he’s ever done. He and his wife have been trying for years to have a baby. When she finally got pregnant, he called me basically every weekend, to yak, with questions. He doesn’t get along with his sister, and my dad is dead and my brother is AWOL, so we’ve sort of become a brother / sister sub for each other. He calls when he’s alone with his new daughter, talking about how much he loves her, asking questions like “Is this normal? Should we or she be doing this?” We talk about my brother, my dad, the Patriots, the Red Sox. When my brother does his every so often thing of calling us all, we discuss our conversations. It fills a hole for both of us, I think. His wife isn’t jealous; she gets it. I like to talk to her as well. I don’t think I ever would have made it through the early months of motherhood if I hadn’t had my female friends.

Lately I’ve been realizing I’ve lost touch with “who I am” and my college friends of both sexes have gone back and forth with me, doing the memory lane thing on Facebook. What were my expectations? Was I a better person back then? A worse one? What were my hopes and dreams? I should be thoroughly rooted in the present with my eyes to the future but I think in order to stay on the path we need our friends to give us the parts that we’ve forgotten. My memory isn’t what it used to be.

Where to go from here. When you take those first steps, you know who you’re real friends are, and I am lucky enough to have them, both male and female.

What It Means to be a Man

Oddly enough, I get to hear many different versions of this, and some of them I don’t get.

You are NOT manly if:

You use cherry Chapstick (or any Chapstick, apparently chapped lips are manly).

You wear tight jeans.

You wear a turtleneck WITH tight jeans.

You wear a t-shirt under your button down shirt in cold weather.

You can dance (white men only).

You take dance LESSONS.

You can’t shoot a gun.

You sing and dance around the house.

You eat ice cream for dessert.

You have to pull over to pee on a road trip.

You smoke with your cigarette in the tips of your fingers.

You have a ponytail.

You wear a chain.

You cry (except when someone dies, your team loses or they close the old Yankee Stadium)

Your women friends lend you money.

You let your wife drive home when you’re bombed.

You DON’T let your wife drive home when you’re bombed.

Your wife makes more money than you do.

You don’t have a job that either makes a lot of money or puts you in danger of mortal injury.

You don’t follow a team in some sport.

You can’t take the cold in a hoodie sweatshirt.

You call AAA instead of changing the tire on your Hummer.

You listen to your mother.

You only pee in a toilet.

OK. A terrifying range from people of the male gender. But society seems to think you are not really a woman if you can’t do it all…and look beautiful doing it.

Which is scarier?