Aporkalypse Now

Well: hello again, friends. I'm back from a glorious week in Long Beach Island, NJ. All I can say is: wow. Amazing beauty. Total peace. Tremendous enjoyment. You Jersey folks have been holding out on me! I've never enjoyed a vacation as much as this one. Along with my sister, her adorable boys, my mom, and two beloved cousins, I stayed in a beautiful beach house right on the Atlantic. A 35 second walk to the beach. A deck with deliciously comfortable chairs where we sat together every morning and chatted over breakfast in the ocean air, and had cocktails most nights. We even had a designated cocktail theme each evening (the cosmos were my favorite). My cousin JoAnn, a strong a courageous woman in her own right, also happens to be an amazing professional chef who cooked the most gorgeous and authentic paella I've ever eaten. Jeanine, my other cousin, kept me laughing - and more importantly - thinking, every time we talked. And best of all, I got to spend a week with two of my favorite people in the world, Connor and Ryan, who showed me that I could really enjoy the beach, and basically forced me to get on a boogie board for the first time in my life. "We know it's not fun for you," seven year old Ryan quipped while standing on the shoreline, "but it's really fun for us to watch you getting messed up by the waves."

I and my crazy awesome Italian family also managed to consume some form of pork every day, until we finally started calling our sojourn, "doing the Porkfecta." This was capped off by an insane late night conversation about Taylor ham which was presided over by my mother, who in her long ago and misspent youth was a huge fan of the stuff. I lived in Philadelphia for almost three years, never once had it. Perhaps it's because the packaging makes me think it has spent the past forty-plus years sitting in a warehouse. I mean, you just don't see design sensibilities or fonts like this anymore:


I'm not a great vacationer, not a summer or a beach person, but there was something truly magical about the week. Normally, when I go on vacation, I start counting the days until I get home. Unfortunately, I'm just not the kind of person who gets turned on by exploring the unknown or seeing new places - I mean, it's nice, I love the perspective change it imparts, but I'm a homebody at heart. I start missing my friends, my stuff, my routines. But this time, I really didn't want to leave. Maybe it's because this was the kind of vacation where I could kind of bring routine and the comforts of home with me - except that this time, those comforts revolved around reading out on the deck early in the morning, helping to defrost shrimp and cut up Jarlsberg for cocktail hour, heading out to explore the town with my mom, taking the boys for ice cream after dinner. When it was time to leave, all I wanted was to stay. More than that, I wanted to cry that this wonderful week was at an end.

One night while I was out on the deck, watching the changes in the sky as it darkened and listening to the sounds of the ocean, I started thinking about the word shalom. How it means not just peace but wholeness. This week was the first time in five years that I felt whole again, like the terrible business of illness and grief and bullies and struggle might finally be in the past. There was even a part of my heart that felt like missing my dad was okay, after all these years, because I could simply imagine him getting right into the surf on a boogie board with the kids, just as if he was there with us. And because he wasn't there, it was my job to go boarding instead. Because I am finally well enough. And because I wasn't afraid.

My comfort level in this sunshiny, beachy environment - normally hellish for me with my pale skin and my less than slender figure - may also have been helped by the fact that I found a swimsuit in which I not only felt comfortable, but downright gorgeous. I would have let anyone look at me in this suit, would have happily posed for the full figured edition of Sports Illustrated. I've rarely felt so pretty in something as revealing. As I said to my sister, you know you're feeling good about your figure when you start judging all the other overweight people in your head. Being down nearly sixty pounds does wonders for one's self-esteem, even with a ways yet to go.

Speaking of the figure wars, my latest fitting for the bridesmaids' dress took place last night. The seamstress is a genius; basically it has been transformed into the bionic garment. While the color, style and design have now conspired to make me consider posting a "wide load" sign on my rear end for the duration of the nuptials, the length, I have to say, is charming - tea-length with a little flounce at the bottom - seriously cute. Moving upwards, however, not so much. This dress is the total opposite of the swimsuit - I am going solo to this wedding because I think it is better to spare those you love. There is no male friend, hetero, gay, or otherwise, that I would force to endure the sight of me in this color. I thought getting a tan would improve matters. It has not. Now my skin looks greenish with an overtone of orange. But the fabric color itself - previously named electric hemorrhoid - has been upgraded, in honor of my family, to Taylor Ham. It is offical. I am the Haminatrix. I am the aformentioned pork roll. Glue some pistachios to it, and I'd be a freaking mortadella.

On a less self-deprecating note, I was fortunate to finish my vacation by attending the Paul McCartney show on Saturday night at CitiField. First of all, the stadium is unreal. I didn't mind Shea so much despite the concrete and the aroma of eau de beerdrinker that pervaded the place. But the new stadium is magnificent. I just hope it stays that way. Laura and I relaxed, after a full day of packing and driving and unpacking and playing with the kids, in a club-like lounge with great music and top-shelf vodka, for about an hour before the concert - it hardly felt like we were in a sports arena, waiting for the show to begin. The show itself afforded me the opportunity to sing, dance, cry, experience ecstasy in a way that I ordinarily do only in temple, and generally geek out to the music I've loved for so long. It's so strange to me how meaning in the music changes over the years. Even songs I don't love, like Helter Skelter, were cathartic in a different way at 39 than they were when I was a scared 11 year old listening to it in Ellen's upstairs bedroom and hearing about the Mansons for the first time. The concert also blew me away just by virtue of the sheer talent - hearing the person who wrote Yesterday and Hey Jude and Band on the Run and Let it Be sing them live, in the same key as they were written all those years ago. I can't even imagine having the talent to have composed some of the greatest music of all time, to be in the same environment with such a great gift. It's an experience I'll always treasure.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming. Until next summer.