Ala

Jewelry is not my thing especially when it comes to rings. Not only are they a cinch to misplace, they get in my way when I’m at the sink, in the shower or out in the garden which is why I can’t find them for the week following. Although at present my hands are naked, they have been clothed with a ring or two along the runway of my exotic life and could be still if there were a reason to pluck one from the safety deposit box where I have placed treasures, including several knock-your-eye-out finger encirclements, left to me by my mother.

When he was my fiancé, my first husband, the eventual father of my four children presented me with a small box and ring within. The stone was sallow and loose despite the four prongs that held it down and it glittered darkly. In fact, it was a fake, a stand in for the real thing, the perfect metaphor, though I had no way to know it at the time, for what my marriage would be. I wore it back to college and, for a while, pretended it was a diamond in the same way I pretended almost everything. In defense of my then self—a now unfathomable person— she lived, as did many others of that time, in the world of ‘shoulds’ and ‘musts’ hoping to please everyone, and thus never got the hang of pleasing herself. As that young woman I should love the young man who pursues me relentlessly, who loves me or says he does, whose friends say he does, whose brothers, aunts and uncles are eager for us to plight our troth, whose future mother-in-law, my mother, says to me when I want to break up with him,

“How could you do such a thing to that poor orphan? He loves you.”

Ergo I should love him, shouldn’t I? It suits everyone. Approval abounds. And then in the winter before the marriage planned for August I go all the way with him.

What? Do you mean you had sex?

Sort of and having performed this act not only should I love him but also I must love him otherwise how could I have done that? And now I had to marry him.

A month later the stand-in ring was discarded in favor of a 2.5 carat round cut diamond with diamond baguettes on the sides mounted in platinum. On my thin finger it was top heavy owing partly to its size and partly to the setting which was placed high up in a way I considered ostentatious; light came from underneath the stone; it floated in space rather as if it was on display. I was appreciative but embarrassed. I would have preferred something more modest. I disliked being set apart, longed to be exactly like everyone else but I pretended I was thrilled especially since the sight of mine was usually greeted with, “What a rock!” When I told my mother what I really thought—that it was too showy, she said, “You’re crazy,” According to her there was no such thing.

Poor girl—possessor of a lovely diamond ring not exactly to her taste. Fortunately I had a kind of distance toward myself. I knew this wasn’t something to obsess about but it was a better focus than looking toward the future when I was set to marry a man who bored me to tears, slumped like a rag doll when he sat down, wasn’t funny or a great dancer, didn’t give me the time of my life and nearly always failed to hold his end up in a conversation. Because he was so silent and unresponsive I believed he must be very wise. Certainly he seldom agreed with me or found anything I had to say of interest and I concluded therefore he possessed superior intelligence. Also I thought at the very least we would have a great sex life though I can’t say why and, of course, I was wrong.

I knew I couldn’t make it to August when mother said she planned to tie a ribbon on every blade of grass and where certain people related to my stepfather would be in attendance. My stepfather said he’d rather give me the ten thousand dollars my wedding would cost—please note this was the 50′s—and suggested we elope. Also I thought I might be pregnant. We took off for a three-night, two-day honeymoon in Williamsburg, Virginia.

I got my period as we were saying “I do.” but it didn’t matter—I had to marry him because we’d slept together. I had to be as true as possible to my standards—a rigid set of commandments constructed with the help of nuns, fundamentalist relatives, my mother and the romantic movies of Hollywood where the smiling bride on her way down the aisle at fade-out was almost always a virgin, madly in love and headed for bliss.

None of it described me and I never got the ten thousand dollars either.

The first glimmer of wondering, what did he pursue me for? entered my mind when he asked for twin beds at the hotel. Later I realized he wasn’t going to kiss me goodnight—I was, after all, bleeding, but he did, finally, without enthusiasm. He played eighteen holes of golf both mornings, then daily we had lunch, saw the sights, took a few pictures, had dinner, a sexless night, no cuddling, and I returned home the same untried near virgin I’d been before except now I had two rings, the newest a plain, slender platinum band.

Those rings accompanied me through twenty years of marriage though I only wore the diamond when I got dressed up, put on contact lens, mascara and heels and went somewhere other than the schools or supermarket. I soon loved my “rock,” forgot about size and setting and often soaked it in ammonia and water to remove residue and enhance its brilliant sparkle. Alas, the ring had to go when following the divorce and after the last child graduated from high school I was forced by my ex to sell the house, half of which was mine, and needed money for fixing up my co-op. It paid for five ceiling fans, and a new kitchen built on the cheap. I should have kept the ring. Its plain consort still hangs around in my jewelry box.

My second fiancé did not burden me with a floating diamond, a down-to-earth sapphire or for that matter an engagement ring of any description. When another ring of importance was placed on my finger it was a wide wedding band of gold and platinum. Handsome. I picked it out myself, by myself and paid for it, the perfect metaphor, though I had no way to know it at the time, for what my marriage would be. Several years later the ring was so tight I doubted I could get it off—and once I did with the help of Vaseline and my husband’s determined twisting—it was unwise ever to put it back. As for a replacement, it would never occur to him to buy one and, don’t look at me, I’ve been there, done that.

It is a given that you will marry the very person designed to cause you the most stress. Having been married twice and a participant in at least one long term relationship, I can go on record that anyone at all will serve–or is it just that I am truly impossible to live with? Some have put forth such a hypothesis–where they now lie buried is a mystery I won’t share until my upcoming tell-it-all potboiler “He Just Made Me So Mad” is on the shelves at your local bookstore.

What has upset me enough to write about? Answer: Everything-but to begin with—I do hope you’ll be in this for the long haul–timing—I mean timing as to when we should leave for a doctor’s appointment, a funeral, a wedding or a dinner party. When it comes to the last two my husband wears his why-do we have to go-to this damn thing for Chrissakes?-face. This means his disapproval is so great he won’t be ready on time. Moreover, he makes it clear that had he realized I came equipped with a plethora of friends who had marriageable children or gave parties, he would have walked off in the direction of the Hudson River smart as you please doing us both a great favor before the ceremony uniting us some years ago.Thus up until the last minute of our departure, he is mumbling and grumbling about having had to change out of his much loved ventilated sneakers and khakis.

When he finally joins me–I am the driver, by the way–but then we both want to live–it is already past time to leave, he asks how long we have to stay once we’re there–anything over thirty minutes is greeted with a protesting growl and then the demand of a commitment as to the exact time we will start for home. Mind you we haven’t even left the driveway and may well have an hour or more before we reach our destination. Were we in a court with a reasonable judge and I threw my pocketbook at him don’t you agree I’d be exonerated for cause? Your vote will be gratefully accepted under Comments. Thank you.

When it comes to funerals, he is perfectly agreeable–you might almost say –delighted to accompany me because it is a guarantee there will be some good cheese things to eat minus a whole lot of chit-chat. People are subdued and all he needs to do is look glum, be appropriately uncommunicative in the presence of the bereaved, pat many backs sympathetically, excuse himself to smoke his pipe as often as he likes, and after consuming as many delicacies as possible, make a fast getaway before anyone notices he has devolved into Elmer Fudd.

However, when it comes to doctor’s appointments this same individual wants to leave early–very early–nearly an hour early because it’s okay to arrive early–very early–nearly an hour early. It’s okay if he has to sit and wait on some uncomfortable chair because–please don’t ask me why–he’s happy as Saturday night to be there, and–you’re probably way ahead of me–I’m not. Mind you I want to be on time—not early—not late—but on the dot—the stroke of the hour—give or take a few seconds.

When he has an appointment, exasperated sounds start the day before as my husband demands a departure time from rather than to our hide-away. When the day arrives this inquisition continues:

“Are you ready yet, darling? he asks and asks with a one minute interval on either side.

“It’s early–we have plenty of time,” I might say–or “I’m almost ready. I just need to brush my eyebrows, find my sunglasses, charge my cell phone.”

He finds this strangely maddening and so by the time we are set to take off together—earlier than I prefer, later than he can bear—neither of us is speaking except in monosyllables. He turns off the radio set to my favorite station and, because he refuses to wear a watch, asks me for the time. I pretend I haven’t heard and, according to him, were we in a court with a reasonable judge and he threw his briefcase at me…

I have a thing about fire. Ask my ex-husband. The first time I had some money of my own, I put in a fire alarm system. He wouldn’t pay for one because he said, “Houses don’t burn down in Scarsdale.”

I already had an escape ladder, three fire extinguishers and a plan, sort of. We had one staircase and four small children. Of course I was insane during those years. This did not escape my husband’s notice.

“You’re crazy!” he would say.

He said it on Christmas Eve of 1963. It was the first Christmas all of my children were out of diapers—and I thought they were in need of a couple of pets.

“You’re crazy!” he said.

A golden retriever puppy and black and white kitty awaited me in the next town and after the children were asleep, I set forth on a snow and ice-packed road. As I neared an intersection, the car hit a patch of ice and pirouetted three hundred sixty degrees–slowly enough so that I could imagine my husband’s wrath if the car and I were totaled while on an unapproved mission.

My husband looked almost as irate when I returned and told me I needed to see a psychiatrist and then added, “but I’m not going to pay for one.”

A couple of hours after the pets were bedded down in the basement playroom and the presents, assembled and wrapped and I had joined my husband in bed, I heard my elder son’s voice in the hall calling to his older sister.

By now, everyone was awake except my husband. I threw on a robe and accompanied the two littlest down the stairs to what was to be much excitement and confusion. I suggested they just play with the pets and not unwrap presents until the sun came up and their father came down, but instead I put a medley of Christmas songs on the stereo to muffle any sounds that might penetrate the second story of our unburnable house.

As each gift was exposed, I took the paper and stuffed it into the fireplace. We were expecting guests for champagne at ten, others for dinner at four, and my husband would be in a far better mood if the nitty gritty of Christmas was out of sight upon his descent. I checked the damper. It was open. I lit the papers and, hurrah, the flames leaped up and out, Aargh, above and beyond the screen, scorching the mantle.

Not open.

I gathered my flock into the front hall and called up the stairs in the tone of someone announcing a delightful surprise.

“Fire,” I sang.

Pajama bottoms flapping, my husband sped down the stairs and into the living room; he had never moved this quickly before. By now the flames were subsiding while the smoke collected around the perimeter of the ceiling where it left a gray mark not to be painted till spring when we ‘d saved enough money. He opened the damper, the windows, the door, groaning, and shaking his head in disbelief.

Who could blame him? It wouldn’t do much good to explain –although I tried, and, in the telling, had a laughing fit–to the delight of the children and the mystification and disgust of their father who didn’t like laughing to begin with.

“You one crazy woman,” he pointed out without a verb.

Tears rolled down my cheeks, and I collapsed on the stairs while the children held the animals and danced.

My husband, a man of few words, muttered one of them several times, “Shit,” he said again and again, stepped over my body, climbed the stairs and disappeared into the bedroom.

My present husband builds a great fire but is on the surly side when one is requested. “A fire? We don’t need one and the kindling’s up in the corncrib,” he often says.

This time, the day after Christmas, he said, “Hell, the Abernathys won’t be here long enough to make it worthwhile.”

No question it would make the Abernathys feel welcome, something he was not entirely keen to do. I persisted and once logs, kindling and newspaper were perfectly piled and tucked around one another, he could hardly wait for the Abernathys to arrive and forthwith praise his flames.

Than he disappeared. As the Abernathy’s car came down the driveway, I called his name twice. And again. He didn’t answer so I did the sensible thing—I lit the fire. He had said it was good to go. Wonderful! The wood responded immediately. So gratifying. Flames leaped up and out, Aargh, above and beyond the screen.

My husband materialized—his face redder than the fire—choking out half his barracks dictionary. He bounded to the kitchen—he had never moved this quickly before—grabbed some oven mitts, returned to the living room, thrust his arms into the fire and moved the damper to the open position while shouting the other half of his marine-polished vocabulary in my direction.

Smoke filled the living room, somewhat disguising the scorched mantel, then moved up around the ceiling perimeters of several rooms where it left gray marks not be painted till spring when we’d saved enough money. We opened the front door to assist its departure only to discover the Abernathys standing there wreathed in gray. They coughed. We couldn’t invite them in or leave them on the doorstep and since the fire still smoldered we couldn’t go out for Chinese.

As I waved goodbye, I heard my husband, a man of many words, mutter one of them repeatedly before he disappeared into his office. “Shit,” he said again and again and again.

La plus que ça change, la plus que c’est le même–mot.

Now and again the furniture goes on attack and I’m done for. Tables hit me on the hipbone, chairs trip me, and our bed throws me over its side. I end up near or on the floor wondering what I’d ever done to them. I have bruises as proof so please don’t scoff like my husband. I am against scoffing and never do it myself unless I’m responding to the promise of an elected official. When I was young I thought such individuals were doing their best for the country and guileless as newborn pups—I truly thought they were next to God in their goodness and wisdom. So I’ve come by my scoffing at them the rocky uphill way. In all other regards I’m pretty much a believer.

For example: I believe for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows. You may believe the same— although I doubt either of us has a garden with enough flowers blooming to show for it. A true believer, as you know, doesn’t need proof. A true believer for good reason or no reason has embraced a philosophy or a point of view and will stick by it no matter what. And so, too, the true unbeliever. In fact there may be more true unbelievers than their antonyms. True unbelievers do not believe in evolution, global warming or leap year and some thus can be identified without confrontation when you ask them what day it is.

What difference does it makes what anyone believes or doesn’t believe? Either way whatever is or isn’t remains the same and at the proper time the Almighty, in whom I believe, will let each of us know what’s what and what’s not what. I can’t wait. Can you? Of course that implies I think my beliefs and unbeliefs will prove out, an unbelievable form of hubris for someone who purports to be reasonable, even sane.

On the other hand, what we believe or don’t believe makes a difference in the here and now, as you know perfectly well, because of what we do or don’t do to edify students, protect the shoreline and insure the integrity of the calendar. I can’t believe I had to explain that.

You may have run into the category of people who are neither believers nor unbelievers—they are the I-could-care-lessers. They are seldom interviewed or polled because they could care less. The extremists on the far right of this group are the I-don’t-give-a-s—tters and if you want my advice I suggest you stand back when you run into them because they really, really don’t, which means they could give you a surreptitious pop in the eye for which you probably don’t carry insurance. The extremists on the far left are the I-haven’t-the-faintest idea-ers. They often say, “Whatever.”

One redeeming quality of the latter category is that they are all non-scoffers since you have to believe or not believe in order to scoff. My husband believes what his nanny told him, which is you can’t take a bath until an hour past dinner for fear of drowning. I don’t believe it and yet, unless you count a half-hour laughing fit, I don’t scoff. Never. Oh all right. Twice.

I thought the inanimate objects in the house had given up their aggressive acts for the day, but a door that did not look the least bit menacing just flew back and hit me on the shoulder.

August 8th, 2007

I tortured my poor feet for a very long time. Ten years ago they refused to take me where I wanted to go in the shoes I wanted to wear. Since then I haven’t worn heels measuring even one measly inch. Moreover, I can only wear shoes deep enough to accommodate orthotics-plastic molds that match the bottoms of your-that is to say my-feet to correct their imbalances. Such shoes do not win awards for pizzazz.

Details of what I did to torture my feet were seized by the CIA to use against terrorist operatives Here are a few from memory:

I wore high-heeled shoes.

I wore high heels shoes with pointy toes.

I didn’t take off my shoes when they were killing me.

I never soaked them or gave them the time of day.

I just took them bloody well for granted as perhaps you are
now doing yourself.

My mother hated her feet. “They’re ugly,” she’d wail, holding them one at a time and giving them the full force of her most disapproving look before pulling on her panty hose.

“It’s all those years on my feet,” she’d say as if most people had an alternate way of standing and walking about.

“It’s all those years on my hands,” perhaps some woman gymnast is now complaining to a palm-reader looking at the calluses on her mounds of Apollo and Saturn.

“Look at these toes!” my mother would command as if I hadn’t already observed them a few hundred times.

The toe next to her big toe on each foot crossed all the way over its two sister toes and snuggled up to the littlest one. In order to put her foot into a narrow high-heeled shoe she had to force the rambling toe back to where it belonged while moaning and looking up at me for sympathy.

Finding shoes that both feel and look reasonably good to me and pass muster in the eyes of my mother, as well as my two daughters is daunting; my mother does not approve of anything clunky or flat. On my last visit to see her I noted she was in a bad mood the moment I arrived from the airport exhausted from carrying luggage and grateful that my feet were still willing to support me–never mind that I was wearing clunky black running shoes.

“Are you going to wear those?” she asked before I could sit down.

I changed into other shoes somehow more acceptable even though they held my travel-swollen feet as if in a vise.

“Now that’s better, isn’t it?” my mother sighed, flashing, for the first time, a loving smile. “I’ve been worried sick about you.”

My daughters have pretty feet that do not hurt-at least not yet.

Both often wear sling-back, high-heeled numbers destined, were it not for my daily prayers to the Almighty, to catch on something and throw them flat on their lovely faces. Whenever I’m with them something disparaging comes up about my appendages or, rather, what I have elected to put on them.

“Oh my Goddd!” one or the other will say. “Don’t you have any nice shoes?”

I reassure them that as soon as a good percentage of boomers require orthotics, attractive, even stylish, flats will appear in stores and I will be able to look fashionable and move about comfortably at the same time.

A frown crosses each face. What did I say? Oh dear, I completely forgot. They’re on the cusp—call it a foothold—yes, borderline boomers—and if they end up wearing orthotics—it will be, like so much else, all my fault.

If they were joined, our quiet little road would become a thruway for trucks and traffic from the middle of town to an area now less easily accessible. No one on our road wants that to happen.

Agreement ends there, and we’re nose up against whether or not to pave our dirt road or not, and some residents on our quiet, neighborly road are up in arms about it. Lengthy letters with words in UPPER CASE appear in our mailboxes claiming dishonesty and scare tactics on the part of those who prefer to keep our road unpaved. If paved, say the pavers, the road will be widened and safer for pedestrians, cars and the bus one neighbor would love to see scheduled to pick up her children by her driveway rather than at the end of the street. It is probable she is the only one who looks upon this as a positive outcome.

The others want to keep it unpaved because an elected official has said if it is paved, the thruway will, lickety split, become a fait accompli.

A town employee insists this isn’t true–so what it comes down to is—whom do you believe?

The non-pavers believe the first, of course, and the pavers, the second but no one actually knows what’s true.

Work is afoot by the non-pavers to have the town abandon the property between the two roads making the possibility of their marriage moot. If that happens, the non-pavers will join the pavers and everyone will be happy assuming the measurable amount of ill-will now floating around disappears.

I am counting on an amiable resolution so that I can continue to hope Israel and Palestine, the Shiites and Sunnis and any other dichotomy on the front page of the morning paper will—someday, somehow—achieve the same.

Yours, a non-paver,

Ever since Hollywood made such a mess of my book, “More Than You Want To Know About Me,”my life has been a closed pamphlet — and yet here I am writing an open letter just as if I didn’t respect my privacy and was about to let the calico cat out of the bag again. I am just so special and it really wasn’t fair the way Meryl Streep played me with a lockjaw upper Eastside NYC accent. I mean we never even met. “They” wouldn’t let me come out for a conference and a pedicure at the Beverly Hilton and if you’re at all interested – “they” are the director, the producer, the stars and that goddamn snotty little script girl who was sleeping with everybody (alternately I believe but you never know in tinsel-town) right after lunch on a daily basis. How, you may well ask, do I know these things? Well I have my sources and if I were to name names I wouldn’t have them any more now would I and then what? There have been rumors about my long term friendship with Dominick D. but there hasn’t been a murder connected with my movie yet so what our talking on the phone for two hours every night has to do with anything I’ll never know.

We’re just friends and he appreciates my brilliant, unique psychic predictions of future mayhem and — well I’m sorry to say — there is going to be another murder — big names, blood, a missing shoe and all that — and we’ve been going over the details. That’s ALL I’m going to say at this time. More later.

Disclaimer: Don’t worry–not a word is true.

You can’t go wrong with W—not when he dusts off his philosopher’s cap and gets to thinking big-time, chin in hand. This is a pose to take seriously because it’s not a pose—it’s what you would call the position of compassionate realism. See–he’s compassionate toward insurance companies and realistic toward health care because it’s clear health care is not necessary for children or it would be in the constitution.

Anyway, they can go to the emergency room for every ailment, big and small, and we will all be glad to foot the bill their parents can’t pay. True, it will be more expensive than underwriting their health care but it won’t be in the budget and it won’t offend our national philosopher.

Besides–what else can W do when it comes to choosing between the children of low-middle-income parents and the ceo’s of high-upper income insurance companies? Is it fair to judge him when the the future of our nation has nothing to do with the future of non-affluent children but, rather, the future of rich ceo’s?

You might argue that it won’t damage insurance companies if W supports health care for such children because if their parents can’t afford to buy health or any other kind of insurance how could it cut into insurance profits? But come on, people–get real! W is our very own philosopher-king-president (are we lucky or what?) and as such should be supported whenever he’s philosophically for or philosophically against anything.

I shouldn’t have to tell you this.

Although my Mother was nearly ninety-three when she died, she was never old enough to receive Modern Maturity, the AARP monthly sent to every member, like it or not.

“God damn it to hell,” she would shout when it arrived so as to be heard as far as the duck pond across from her townhouse in El Reno, Oklahoma and the cemetery down the block where her ancestors slept. The publication was so repulsive that several days passed before she could lay a hand on it. Then suddenlyshe would stub out her cigarette, rise from her prone position on the couch, pick up the despised magazine and toss it with extraordinary precision–considering she was not athletic, hated to walk or move about unnecessarily–from some distance into the wastebasket.

“I’m not mature enough!” she’d say and then, as if she’d heard a chorus of protestations. “No, and I never will be either. So there.”

She must have had her last cigarette on the evening of September 3, 2000, because the next morning I found her, via telephone which she answered as if nothing were wrong, by her bed on the floor where she’d fallen, following, as I later learned, a Transient Ischemic Attack (TIA). The only upside of this episode was that she never smoked again. Before this it was useless to protest her habit even though I found burns on tabletops and burned out cigarettes in ashtrays whoseinch-long ashes drooped menacingly. It also did no good to mention my throat got sore from second hand smoke.

“Why that’s not true, dear,” she said, disappointed at yet another confirmation that I had failed to inherit her good sense. “There’s no such thing as second hand smoke.”

One evening after I coughed and coughed twice more, she stood up, glared at me and said, “That’s just ridiculous and I don’t want to hear about it ever again.”

She was firm, confident, unyielding. I don’t recall her being in doubt ever about anything except once. After an evening when she said she’d had “a snootful,” a self-compliment because people who didn’t
drink were of no consequence, she wondered if she’d behaved quite as she should have the night before.

“Still” she said, upon a brief reflection, “I did it–so it must have been all right.”

When it came to politics or bias my mother never held back. At the height of William Jefferson Clinton’s undoubted scandal, my Mother said she had characterized the President to her younger sister, a woman as far to the right as she was to the left, as “that sweet, darling Bill Clinton.” Her sister allowed she wouldn’t be in touch for a long, long time.

“I don’t care one bit if she didn’t like it–that’s how I feel. Anyway,” she continued with accidental clairvoyance, “she didn’t have to make such a federal case out of it.”

The mini-stroke affected her profoundly, and, unable to be on her own any longer, I brought her home to Connecticut. Although she lasted another nineteen months I knew my mother had turned a final corner when she said nothing about the Florida ballot dispute or the ultimate determination of the election of 2000. As often as W appeared on the screen, I was never again to hear her say,”I don’t know what it is–but I just cannot STAND that man!”

A month after her death I went to get the mail across the street from the end of our driveway and found my Mother wedged in above the circulars, junk mail and bills, in a box. It was a shock despite the fact that I’d been expecting her. I thought she was going to be delivered by UPS, a dispatch I would have preferred as more dignified and less trivializing although there’s nothing dignified about having ashes delivered by any means, then to save, inter or sprinkle them, as I would do when I decided where. I thought it might be appropriate to take some to Park Avenue where she lived for many years although itdidn’t seem environmentally correct. What if everyone did that?

I could also have sent them down to Oklahoma where my mother was born, and where she lived fifteen of her last seventeen years. Courtesy of one of my many cousins, her ashes could go in the duck pond or around her parent’s graves. But mailing her again would have been “too macabre” as my mother liked to say–that always made me want to ask if there were such a thing as just macabre enough? Of course I knew full well that she just liked saying the word, glamorized with the “too” asin “too fabulous” while stretching out the second “a” in macabre for a bit longer than was endurable. It was also her way of not having to discuss something as unpleasant and, to us both, unlikely as her death.

She went so far, however, when lost for a more controversial topic, to remind me she did not want a funeral or a burial–that she wanted, never mind the disapproval it engendered among her siblings–my mother thrived on disapproval–cremation.I thought I might put her in the Atlantic Ocean where she’d sprinkled her husband’s ashes in 1980 off the Westhampton shore, their summer residence. That had to be the place because as soon as I thought of it I heard her come to life in my head and respond in five of the many voices that accompanied five of her many roles:

The baby, “Oh goody, swimmin’ with the fishies;” the grande dame, “Absolute perfection, darling girl;” the hillbilly, “Shucks, this old country gal’s not fussy;” the kindly gentlewoman, “Bless heart, what a sweet idea;” or herself, “Goddamn it to hell, I don’t give a shit!”

So my inimitable mother was reduced to ashes–as we will all be, one way or another, to be delivered–as we will all be, one way or another, back to earth. It is very ordinary. It is very strange.

If I remember correctly, wasn’t it the God of their choice (TGOTC) who backed their plan to take us down the high road of nation-saving and building? Clearly, TGOTC must be the old Testament God with an eye-for-an-eye mentality (Saddham tried to kill W’s father, for Pete’s sake). And, let’s be fair–doesn’t the Decider of yore have a tradition of overlooking, when He feels like it, just about anything including mendacity, incompetence even arrogance?

If He is, indeed, the One, He must be tickled to death to see his little earthling son, W (POTUS), give the Constitution of the United States (COTUS), outdated and irrelevant as it is, the finger? After all, there may not be a whole lot to laugh about in eternity, so He must find entertainment, however brief, whenever and wherever He finds it, since for Him this administration is around for only a nanosecond.

From His perspective to our moment in time.