Me Me Me

I got my first pet when I was 25 years old. Isn’t that a tragic statement? Imagine all the unconditional love and deep understanding I missed out on in the first quarter-century of my life, simply because the amazing Mary couldn’t stand animals of any kind. In my second quarter-century, the Henderson family has included two pairs of cats. Kappa (named for my sorority) and Fuzzy were in our lives when the kids were born. After those two beloved kitties went to heaven, the lovely Kiki (named for Kiki Dee of “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” fame) and Rosie became part of the family. They have been outstanding pets. And now they are old — almost 15 and 14. And when cats get old, they get verrrrry expensive and time-consuming.

Just as I began the mourning period over my son’s imminent departure for college, the Lord decided to make me feel needed. It seems that Rosie, our morbidly obese (sorry, Ro-Ro) feline child, had developed diabetes and would need an insulin shot twice a day, morning and night. My initial reaction to this news was a Kathy-style freak-out session in the vet’s office that stunned the nurse into silence. Two. Shots. A. Day!?

Well, we did it, and lo and behold, Rosie got better (though, alas, no thinner). But about the time the shots ended, the Lord felt I needed a new challenge. Skinny Miss Kiki developed a thyroid condition that would require tossing a pill down her throat twice a day, morning and night, for the rest of her life. Easy, right? Not when your cat is a mind reader! Never mind reaching for the pill bottle: This one can sense the very moment you THINK about the pill, which sends her scurrying to the one spot under the bed that no human arm can reach. Fun times, Keek!

Now that we are empty nesters, it is a royal pain to box up two ancient cats and take them with us every weekend, even if we’ll only be gone 36 hours. I’ve found one friend who can cat-sit and administer meds, but the logistics of that aren’t simple either. So when these girls go to heaven, it’s tempting to say that we’ll be finished with pets. But how could I be happy without a sweet furry friend to greet me at the end of the day?

When we moved into this apartment, my adorable daughter was three years old and ready for her first “big girl” room, decorated in preparation for the birth of her baby brother. She had flowered Marimekko curtains, a pink comforter on her trundle bed and a game table and two little chairs. When she turned four, we marked her height in pencil on the back of her closet door, a ritual we repeated every year until she was 16 and stopped growing. 

Now that pretty and smart baby girl is a college graduate with an apartment of her own in a city far away. It’s time to get the magazine clippings of Mischa Barton and the Olsen twins off the wall and create a proper guest room. As an enthusiastic amateur decorator, I embraced this project with gusto, repressing feelings of regret as I placed stacks of snapshots of my baby and her high school friends into a shoebox for storage and tossed assorted high school Latin and Spanish notebooks into garbage bags (oy, what a fabulous education this child had).

The walls have been painted (with a strict warning NOT to eliminate the penciled growth chart on the closet door), the carpet is being delivered Friday, and a brand new set of Pottery Barn bedding is ready to be put on a double bed salvaged from my childhood home. When my angel comes home for Thanksgiving, her room will be unrecognizable from the days when we played Barbies together on the floor. And I am sad!

We’re just back from Nashville, where we saw our adorable son play Howie the Milkman in Our Town, his first big college theater production. He was fabulous (of course!), showing off a gift for physical comedy in his handling of Bessie, the imaginary milk-wagon horse. How did we get such a beautiful, talented boy? The gods were smiling on him this weekend as Vanderbilt’s football team beat Auburn in a “hell freezes over” type of game. My darling husband kept reminding me not to yell out the “f” word, since it’s not as commonly used in Nashville as on the streets of Manhattan. (Perhaps it won’t surprise anyone to learn that I am a SORE LOSER — even vicariously — and when Auburn loses, it’s best not to be around me for a couple of hours.)

But back to Our Town. It’s a play that’s easy to make fun of, especially the folksy ramblings of the Stage Manager. Paul Newman, rest in peace, couldn’t make much of the part on Broadway, even though he got a “great man” Tony nomination. But the simplicity of a bunch of college kids doing the play on an empty stage brought out the most charming aspects of Our Town, particularly the notion of not appreciating life as it’s being lived. That’s a daily danger in the hyper-fast world of New York, where you’re on the go every second, crossing off items on your mental to-do list as you rush to the next thing. Nobody takes a breath. You’re too busy! 

I rarely cry in the theater, and I was too intent on my baby’s performance to lose myself in Our Town, but a number of young people in the audience began sniffling during the last scene in the cemetery. All I could think was: Wait till you’re 50! That’s when time REALLY starts to fly. Blink, and a couple of years have gone by. So, in keeping with Our Town’s lack of scenery, I am raising an imaginary glass to toast the fine work of Vanderbilt University Theatre, and to remind myself to try to move beyond what Simon Stimson (the drunk choir director in the play — love him!) calls the “ignorance and blindness” of daily life.

If a list was made of the least likely people to be found in a gym, I would be at the tippy-top. Let’s start with the whole notion of naked women in a locker room. NOOO! I don’t want to see that, even with blinders on. Please, ladies, keep your clothes on! Also, as I have previously noted, I am easily bored. The treadmill? After five minutes, my brain starts screaming, “Get me off of this thing. NOW!” Then there’s the matter of strength and endurance. I don’t have any — at least, I didn’t until I met my precious trainer two years ago. 

My trainer is a young and adorable actor, an extremely hard-working child who designs 45-minute exercise programs for his clients and then spends 15 minutes stretching their limbs in all kinds of disgusting ways. Truly, this dear boy earns his money the hard way. But I am lucky that he has chosen personal training as his survival job, because somehow, under his influence, I find myself exercising (while chatting with him about many fascinating topics) twice a week. And I shower at the gym! Yes! Never mind that I enter the shower stall fully dressed and emerge wrapped in two towels — I’m there, which would have been unimaginable only a few years ago.

I met my precious trainer when I became transfixed by the sight of my ancient-looking arms in the glare of a Bloomingdale’s dressing room. “What are your goals?” this sweet boy asked me when I met him for a “fitness assessment.” I wanted to say, “Fix my nasty arms!” but I think I said something a little less alarming. Alas, there’s nothing he can do about skin made leathery from five decades of excessive tanning. But you know what? Although I will never wear a sleeveless dress again, underneath that saggy skin are a couple of pretttttyyyy nice guns. The area Bette Midler dubbed “underarm dingle-dangle” has firmed up. I’ve come a long way since feeling like I might upchuck the first time I got on the pull-up machine. Now if only I’d started a decade ago, since 40 is the new 30 — but 50 is 50 forever.