Me Me Me

As an anal Virgo, I am usually well along with my Christmas shopping by now. Not this year! The older the kids get, the more complicated the task becomes. I feel a pang when I see that garish Toys R Us logo and think back to the years when my darling husband and I would drive to the burbs on a Friday night and buy all of “Santa Claus” in one marathon shopping session, then treat ourselves to dinner on the way home. Invariably one “must-have” toy would be out of stock and unavailable anywhere in the tri-state area, unleashing a nationwide search for said toy. But we would always manage to find Super Van City or the latest Star Wars Lego set before Christmas Eve. Boy, I miss those days!

Now our adorable offspring are old, with verrrry expensive tastes, but I refuse to say, “Okay, here’s a wad of cash — let’s eat Christmas dinner!” Everybody needs a pile of beautifully wrapped gifts to shake, admire and look forward to opening. Maybe THIS package will be “just what I want.” But it gets harder and harder to divine what that perfect gift might be. As for my DH? Forget it! He doesn’t want anything, and after 32+ years of gifting, it’s almost impossible to come up with new and exciting ideas.

Honestly, we should just can the whole exercise and donate the money to our church or to charity. But I LOVE Christmas and want to give everybody the most special things (hoping that I will get something nice myself, of course!). Now if only I can find the time to look for this year’s treasures…

“Christmas records” — nobody calls them that anymore. Only old fogies like me still think of holiday recordings as LPs with Andy Williams or Nat King Cole sitting in the snow on the cover. When I was little, we bought a Christmas compilation record every year put out by a tire company (Firestone?) that had Steve and Eydie singing “Let It Snow” alongside Robert Goulet and Carol Lawrence singing “Baby It’s Cold Outside.” Neither of those couples stayed together, by the way, but they sure could sing a nice Christmas duet.

Anyway, the point is that Thanksgiving has arrived, which means that I get to listen to Christmas music for the next month. ONLY Christmas music. Since the Hendersons are 21st century people, my vast collection of Christmas records has been loaded onto our nifty Bose sound system, and I can scroll down to find my favorites, such as Gloria Estefan, Mariah Carey, Amy Grant, Clay Aiken (don’t laugh! it’s great!) and last year’s obsession, Mr. Josh Groban. I try to buy a new Christmas record every year. Some fall flat (sorry, James Taylor) and some become instant faves (Michael McDonald of the Doobie Brothers). I also have old-school compilations cadged from the Firestone era and newer ones put out by Starbucks and Old Navy. I am a fanatic. Classics? Messiah? Sometimes. But nothing beats a great rendition of “Silver Bells.”

After all these years of being force-fed holiday ditties for an entire month, my kids are well-versed in the Christmas oeuvre and don’t mind having “Chestnuts roasting” as background noise when they’re home. The only problem is that the Bose system memorizes your “favorites” and spits them back at you randomly for the rest of the year. You have to teach it not to revert to Christmas mode, which takes at least six months, and I feel sad every time it tries to play a holiday song for me. “Not yet,” I tell it. “We can’t start until Thanksgiving.”

It’s official: I have gotten addicted to depositing the pickings of my brain here, which became clear as I got antsier and antsier at being unable to write for five days while busy working and taking a weekend trip to the south. “Who is reading your blog?” an acquaintance asked me recently in a fake friendly tone that implied she felt no one could possibly want to. I replied, totally sincerely, “Two people that I know of — one girlfriend and my daughter’s sweet boyfriend.” (Hi Matt!) But who cares? Like the Yankees of 1998, like Dancing with the Stars, like High School Musical 3, sitting at this screen is therapy. 

So…old friends. We saw a ton of them over the weekend as my college roommate got married for the first time at 54. She looked absolutely beautiful in a strapless satin gown. Strapless! I could never pull that off, but she did it and didn’t look a day over 35. I watched in awe and envy as the newlyweds and their local friends, who belong to a ballroom dancing group in Birmingham, glided across the floor in perfect form. I love to dance but never learned moves like I saw at that reception. One man was 80 and floated as sexily as a college student. Yeah! 

When you move far away, as my darling husband and I did at 22, you lose touch with people, so it’s a little surreal to look across a restaurant table three decades later at the guy who was the fraternity flirt, the basketball star, the sweetest girl in the sorority. Beyond that, to see two girlfriends of 50 years (!) and picture myself a little girl, eating black-eyed peas and cornbread in one friend’s kitchen and watching Dark Shadows after school with the other one. One of them remembers the song we sang at age five in the “dance revue” when we wore the fetching costume pictured at the top of my blog! Holy Toledo! 

Back on the plane, headed north, we were glad to have had a nice visit with my DH’s brother and his family and to have seen a dozen close friends at six different eating locations (three within the perimeter of one mall!) in two days. So when my precious trainer said last night, “Why are you so quiet? Are you mad at me?” I smiled wearily and replied, “I am talked OUT.”

I can hardly believe I have written more than 30 posts since September and this is the first time I have used this title. Honestly, this could be the theme of the entire blog, if I weren’t so determined to maintain an upbeat outlook. But sometimes, you’ve just gotta vent. And in the past 24 hours, I’ve been exposed to several of the millions of things that get on my nerves, so bear with me. Some of these complaints will mean nothing to you if you don’t live in New York, a city designed to test your nerves 24/7. But I do live in New York, so here goes.

WHY do people talk loudly on the subway? This morning, I was treated to a mother’s dramatic rendition of a children’s picture book — not dramatic enough, apparently, because the read-ees (two admittedly cute little boys) challenged each other to “see how many times we can say hi. HI! HI! HI! HI!” I lost count at 30. Mom kept reading — loudly. On tonight’s subway ride, a group of four young adults argued (loudly) the relative merits of neighborhood bars. HUSH, people! Some of us want to read in peace about greedy auto executives as we hurtle north beneath the ground!

WHY do sweaty bald men get into my personal space at the gym? Can’t they see that my precious trainer and I are busy discussing his love life while he tries to convince me to roll from side to side on an enormous red ball? Go grunt on the other side of the room!

WHY do people who are borderline ill come to the theater and proceed to make alarming noises involving the content of their throat, culminating in a coughing jag? Jeez Louise, stuff a Ricola in your mouth! Better yet, leave the room. Better even YET, stay home.

Wow, I feel a lot better now. Thanks for listening.

I have friends of many persuasions, politically speaking, and I’m always intrigued when I meet parents and children who end up on opposite ends of the spectrum. Is it a simple case of rebellion? Or did the kids carefully reason through their world view and announce one day, “Mom and Dad, I reject everything you hold dear.” Thank goodness that never happened in the Henderson household!

But how did I, who can remember when my hometown movie theater back in Alabama had a door marked “colored entrance” (it led straight to the balcony), and whose mother snatched off my black armband on Vietnam Moratorium Day in 1970, end up a liberal? Two words: Uncle Jack.

The much-loved and coddled youngest of 11 children, he grew up to be the family intellectual. He ventured to Scotland (!) to get a doctorate in theology. He marched in Selma. He had a framed picture of Martin Luther King in his office. (That last one was quite a bone of contention among his conservative older brothers.) He had a fabulous life partner, Paul, who told me I looked like model when I was a scrawny teenager. And Uncle Jack was a liberal. Oh yeah! And if he was a liberal, I wanted to learn about politics and be one too.

Uncle Jack, the baby brother my mother adored, is 82 now, still smoking like a chimney, still enjoying a daily vodka and tonic, still going strong. So are the outreach ministries he started at the Presbyterian church he served for many years in Washington DC. He’s larger than life! And his influence lives on, especially in me.

I don’t feel comfortable talking about religion, much less writing about it. I grew up in a Baptist church that expected everybody to profess and re-profess their faith and repent and rededicate their lives to Jesus every other week. It was belief fueled by fear. Never mind that it was segregated. Or that women weren’t allowed to serve as deacons! But I have great memories of Vacation Bible School, youth musicals and old-time hymns, and even having a “sleepover” at the pastor’s house the night Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. 

We’ve now been members of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church for almost 30 years. It is such a special place, both physically (the most beautiful all-wood oval sanctuary that feels like sitting on a ship) and in the way the community takes care of one another. Great preaching, friends of all ages, a spiritual anchor for the kids — what a fabulous church we have.

Fifth Avenue is emerging from three years of internal turmoil and transition just in time to celebrate the congregation’s 200th birthday with a banquet this weekend. I was lucky enough to compile an anniversary photo book that turned out exactly as I envisioned it, thanks to a super-talented young designer, Christie Repcheck. It makes me happy to have been able to give this gift to a place that has given me so much! Happy birthday, dearest church!

At what age does flirting become inappropriate? I’m probably way past whatever it is, but that hasn’t stopped my natural inclination to make nice with attractive men — straight, gay, married, single, young, old. Well, mostly young. And straight. And single. My darling husband understands this tendency in me and is secure enough not to mind it. He even refers to one handsome church friend who is sweet enough to flirt with me as “your boyfriend.” 

The more I think about my DH’s willingness to put up with my flirting, the more I marvel at it. Would I stand by while he sidled up to some 30-year-old chick and flashed his blue eyes and intelligent smile, while dazzling her with his ability to make conversation? I would be very unhappy to observe such behavior. I might even go so far to label it “gross.” A double standard? To be sure. 

But middle-aged women can get away with a lot, given the fact that nobody really takes our flirting seriously. It’s harmless. (Truly, it is.) Middle-aged men, on the other hand, frequently DO pick up 30-year-olds who would be plenty happy to become their trophy wives and give them a trophy child or two to dandle in their old age. Um, over my dead BODY!!

There you have it, then: I can proceed with my innocent flirting, and my darling husband doesn’t get the same privilege. So far, he doesn’t seem to mind.

Any weekend in which I get to see both of my children is a great weekend — and this one was doubly great because we gathered in Nashville to watch our budding actor give a fabulous performance as a Cockney-accented gangster in a pinstriped suit in Vanderbilt University Theatre’s production of Alan Ayckbourn’s farce Role Play. The play earned a standing ovation, and our star’s sweet sister, who has been busily raising money for Georgia U.S. Senate candidate Jim Martin (donate so that he can win the runoff! www.martinforsenate.com), and loving aunt shared the evening with us. 

Parents influence their children in a million ways, and if we’re lucky, they learn from our mistakes and do a better job with the next generation than we did with them. Lord knows they are aware of their parents’ neuroses, as our adorable son demonstrated after the show when he compared me to a character who goes ballistic over a missing fork before a dinner party. (This comparison was not very complimentary, as his girlfriend pointed out. He didn’t see the problem. HA!)

But… one child working in a national political campaign and another one acting and majoring in theater? It’s almost too weird. I was an intern for my congressman, a long-serving Alabama right-winger; I argued feminist politics with his chief of staff in the summer of 1975, and the congressman liked me enough to come to my wedding a year later with his wife (who sported a very distinctive Bride of Frankenstein hairdo), causing a splash in my hometown. Today, I work at Broadway.com and see an average of three shows a week. Meanwhile, my darling husband starred in plays throughout high school and had a summer internship in college at the Georgia governor’s office. It’s enough to make me hum the theme from The Twilight Zone.

Truthfully, I don’t expect our baby girl to stay in politics and I sincerely hope our baby son pursues his other major, elementary education, and not theater as a career. For now, though, it’s fun to see them putting their own spin on things we love.

There’s nothing I can say about last night that’s not cliched or glib, to borrow Tom Cruise’s favorite term. I am thrilled and exhausted, having cast my vote (along with half the people in my apartment building) at 6:15AM, worked all day, celebrated until 1AM, then went back to work for a full day, including TWO plays. No wonder I’m about to pass out! 

The main thing I feel, besides relief, is a lot more safe. The Supreme Court is safe for at least four years. The environment is safe. The right to choose is safe(ish). No jokes about “bomb bomb Iran.” A commitment to getting out of Iraq. A pledge to rejoin the international community. A Vice President with knowledge of the world. And do you know who the hero of the past few weeks has been? Colin Powell. His endorsement of Obama was so beautifully expressed, so calm and rational. Obama’s a Christian, but so what if he WAS a Muslim? Yes, Colin Powell! Tell the truth!

And furthermore, you go, Chris Buckley! I can’t bring myself to offer David Brooks an imaginary hug, but in my current “We Are the World” frame of mind, maybe I should ask David and Peggy Noonan to join the scintillating Maureen Dowd and me in a campfire circle for a chorus of “Kum Ba Yah.” (Sorry, William Kristol, you don’t get to sing with us.) See, I’m hallucinating! But it feels so good. 

As I enter election withdrawal, I may need to ask my darling husband to read me a bedtime story, maybe a CNN version of Good Night Moon, which has already spawned the hilarious parody Good Night Bush. “Good night moon. Good night room. Good night Anderson Cooper jumping over the moon.” zzzzzzzz

My precious trainer called me “surly” tonight, and I was a tad peeved. He was giving me a backhanded compliment in noting that I had been cordial when the gym manager came over to engage us in chitchat. (I hate interruptions during the hour I spend with my PT.) “You weren’t at all surly,” he said, in the tone I used when praising my preschool children for sharing or being patient. “You were very pleasant.” Hey! I’m plenty pleasant a huge percentage of the time!

The fact is, girls are raised to be people pleasers, and boys are raised to do whatever the hell they want. Do you think most men worry about whether their co-workers like them? They do NOT. Women, on the other hand, attach a huge percentage of our self-worth to other people’s approval and whether everybody ELSE on earth is happy. Our own happiness? It’s hard to make time for that.

The best thing about getting older is that you care less and less about other people’s affirmation. You know whether your work is good, whether you’ve done your best and whether you enjoy someone’s company. It’s easier to cut through life’s nonsense and concentrate on people and activities that really mean something to you. You can be pleasant (not surly!!) because it feels good, not because you crave a pat on the head.