Philadelphia

Sometimes I just need to run away. For the past couple of years, however, the options were limited, since - let's face it - running wasn't realistic. Neither was walking, for that matter. But having hit some sort of watershed - whether it's the loss of 50 lbs, or the fact that the damn methotrexate is actually doing its job - I have the energy now, if not to actually run, then to just get away for a bit.

Too much is going on here. Another friend got laid off this morning. Too busy at work, grateful for my job but nervous about my issues with time management. I'm not writing, and not really exercising, which means my nerves are kind of shot. I've got some friends and family members in very stressful situations; facing divorce, caring for sick parents, looking for jobs, wondering if they're going to have jobs tomorrow...all those things, ironically, leave me wondering why I'm the lucky one right now. Is it because there's an unbeknownst shoe about to drop? Or have I already been through my craziness?

So I ran away this weekend. To Philadelphia, where I used to live. Where I had my first apartment, a huge, light-filled 2 room studio on Pine Street, with a big homey kitchen and a fabulous great room where I slept for 2 years on a pull-out couch. There was a lot going on then too - full time grad school, writing a book, exploring religious life, full time job, and two major transitional relationships...I was dating a real jerk who was never going to be the one and simultaneously hanging out with my so-called "best friend" - with whom the chemistry was painfully evident, a relationship so full of love and longing and questions that it nearly drove us both insane, which was, of course, half the fun.

It amazes me that I probably had even more going on in my life then than I do now - certainly some of the same elements are there. But now it feels like things are different. I'm sure part of it is the illness piece - looking back then I had no idea what I was in for now. I look at the cobbled streets and brick-lined sidewalks and remember the girl I was, the one with two parents, the one who walked with a quicker stride than anyone else, whose bag wasn't filled with seven different kinds of medicine for various nonsense. Back then, I had never taken a painkiller, never worried about getting through the day. My big worries were about the viability of source texts of female religious mystics, the suitability of certain Berenstain Bears titles for "story time" at Borders, and whether or not my best friend was going to let his unhappy, ill-timed, passive aggressive relationship go so that we could be together. (Answer? Religious mystics were not on the comps; the book "Berenstain Bears and the School Bully" ends with a trip to the school psychologist's office, and yes - he woke up - and yes, we were very happy for a while. but that's another post.)

In the meantime, I went back for the weekend. And I walked the streets of my old neighborhood again. I looked for that girl walking back to her apartment, looked for her coming from the direction of the Chef's Market, or from Rittenhouse Square, or the parking garage on Spruce Street. But I didn't see her. I wonder what I would have said to her if we'd run into each other. Would I have put a hand out to touch her arm, sat her down on a bench and tell her what was coming? Or would I have seen that million-dollar smile, the honey-colored bangs swept back from her forehead, the gleam of a novel-to-be in her hazel eyes, and just let her keep on walking?

Be My Valentine...or, maybe not?

So it's three days past Valentine's Day, which makes me happy only insofar as we are pretty much as far from next year's Valentine's Day as we can get. For many people, Valentine's Day is an expression of affection, of love and loyalty and romance. For others, it's a pressure cooker of expectations and fears and failures. And for people like me, it ranks somewhere on my personal hate scale in the neighborhood of bias crimes, stomach flu, and anything composed by Zoltan Kodaly. This is the holiday that comes in at number two on my list of Top Ten Most Hated Holidays, knocked out of the top spot only by my deep and abiding hate for New Year's Eve. But that's another post.

Valentine's Day rarely goes well for me. I had a decent one in 1988, when I received a white carnation from a dear friend of mine, which I carried with me the entire weekend as I was sitting for a scholarship exam at the college I would eventually attend. I got the scholarship, too. And I always believed it was because the carnation brought me good luck.

Since then, it's been pretty much downhill. It may be as a result of the fact that two of my most notorious breakups occurred either on, or as a result, of Valentine's Day deeds gone bad. It may also be that as a young admin assistant back in the 90s, I was heartily sickened by the fluttery coven of pink-suited sales managers whose roses I had to schlep from the front of the office to their desks. "For me?" they'd ask sweetly, as the whole damn sales group would flit and coo over to survey the new bouquet. And based on the floral content / presumed expense / sincerity of sentiment read aloud (with all the deep and dramatic sincerity of a wannabe starlet at an open call audition) from the enclosed card, you could practically see the Olympic-style judging going on in their faces.

I distinctly remember receiving a bouquet of my own one year - twelve long-stemmed yellow roses, my favorite flower. "Oh, but yellow roses only mean friendship," one of the coven declared dismissively. "I guess he doesn't really feel that way." It figured: if your gift, no matter how meaningful, didn't fit into their judging standard of red roses, chocolates, teddy bears and other consumerist cliches, it could only mean one thing -- to quote yet another consumerist cliche: He's just not that into you.

Then there was the year I was in grad school. I was really poor, in spite of my $425 a month studio apartment in Society Hill. So for the month of January, I scrimped and saved, eating lentil soup and ramen noodles as I prepped for my comprehensives, all so I could make a really expensive and exquisite dinner for my boyfriend. Things, at the time, weren't going so well with us. He wasn't really the nicest person in the world to begin with -- we'd struggled for all of our college years with issues of fidelity (him), the subsequent depression (me), substance abuse (him), and pressure to marry (me, both sets of parents). And I'd literally had my head in a book for the past three months, and when I wasn't reading I was working on my thesis, working on papers for my literary critcism and theory courses, or working at my job as the Borders Story Lady. So I planned a dinner, hoping to rekindle the warmth along with promises of significant romantic attention from me, just as soon as my comprehensive exams were done.

I remember the menu as if it were yesterday: lobster risotto (yeah, I know - it was, after all, B.C. - before converting), steak, stuffed peppers, with chocolate truffles for dessert. All homemade. He arrived late, stayed long enough to eat dinner, and as he was walking out the door to meet up at a South Street bar with his buddies, he paid me an unexpected compliment: "It was good," he said, as he wiped the chocolate from his mouth and put on his coat. "But you cut the peppers the wrong way."

I broke up with him shortly thereafter. I also thought a restraining order would have been a nice touch, but I didn't have the money for a lawyer at the time.

Then there was the Valentine Havdalah Disaster of 2005: It started fairly harmlessly, when my alleged fiance-to-be asked me what I wanted as a Valentine's gift. I picked out a havdalah set from Israel. I figured, hey, it was different, and it wasn't that expensive. But, again, things weren't all that great between us. We'd been fighting a lot; he hated his job, I adored mine; I had just gotten a big raise, he was struggling financially...it was one of those times. Which, incidentally, gives me great empathy for any person who is coping with a partner who thinks that they are worthless right now because they are jobless or under-earning or just plain defeated by the current economic crisis...it's not good, and it can kill a relationship stone dead. Just like it did in my case.

Here's how it happened: Valentine's Day arrived, with no sign of my havdalah set. Two weeks later, it still hadn't arrived. I asked my F-T-B what was up. And so the conversation went something like this:

Me: So, did you ever check on the shipping for the Havdalah set? It still hasn't gotten here.

FTB: Well, um, yeah. I know.

Me: So you checked on it?

FTB: No, I never actually got around to ordering it.

Me: What? You told me you ordered it two weeks ago.

FTB: Well, do you remember back in November, when I woke you up because I really needed to talk to you about my job situation?

Me: I think so? Was it when you woke me up at four in the morning, on the day I was moving to the new apartment?

FTB: Yeah, that's it.

Me: And we had just gone to bed at 2AM because I was packing? Which would have taken a much shorter time if you'd have helped me?

FTB: (sheepishly) uh huh.

Me: And we had to be up at 6AM for the movers? So I asked if we could talk later?

FTB: (raising voice) No, not exactly. You yelled at me.

Me: Well, that's not surprising.

FTB: You yelled at me! Your exact words were, "Are you still going to hate your job at 9AM? Because maybe you can continue your f*cking whining then."

Me: Yeah, that sounds about right I mean, you'd been talking about it for hours. And we really needed to get some sleep.

FTB: Well, be that as it may, I don't think you were being a very good girlfriend. So I decided not to get you a Valentine's Day present.

(pause)

Me: I see. I think we should maybe take a break.

*******************************************

And that was it. I broke up with the tool two weeks later. Which, I think, showed admirable restraint on my part. It would have been sooner, but unfortunately, I had other things to deal with, like my dad dying of a cerebral hemorrhage in the interim. It did, however, give me the opportunity to say, when FTB came crawling back, asking me to give him another chance: "Actually, my dad HATED you."

So, no, I'm not really a fan of Valentine's Day. I'd like to feel differently about it, but I don't think I ever will. Some of you might think it is just Single Girl Bitterness(tm) on my part, but I don't think it is that simple. I've been on all the sides of the equation, in love, out of love, feeling like I should be in love when I'm not, wishing I were in love but not really ready to open my heart, knowing that I probably do love someone but that I'm sort of useless as a partner right now, I have only this to say: I don't think I would want to be with anyone who would comply with a once-a-year tribute on a day when everyone else is saying the same exact thing. If I ever am lucky enough to be beloved of someone wonderful, and I feel the same way about him, then I really hope and pray that we will be best friends and lovers and everything imaginable to one another every day, and that I will know how to distinguish my own emotions and expectations from what the Valentine-industrial complex is telling me I ought to be feeling.

So this year I did the things I love most: I wrote for a couple of hours. I studied some Torah. I went for a walk in Manor Park and petted every friendly dog I ran into. I bought myself some ridiculously expensive French cheese and watched Law and Order. And breathed a huge sigh of relief that I didn't have anyone expecting the peppers to be cut a certain way, or for me to wake up in the middle of the night to listen to the same damn complaining about a situation he was doing nothing to improve. This year, I could just be me, with no one's expectations but my own. And isn't that a sort of celebration?

Birthday (I would like you to dance)

Today is the 39th - good Lord - 39th birthday of my best friend, Ellen. Which is crap, when you come to think of it, because Ellen and I met when we were 8 years old, and when I hang out with her, sometimes it seems like we are still 8 years old, and her little sister Michelle is still little, and we have our whole lives in front
of us, and there is still a chance for the Beatles to get back together.

Last time I saw Ellen was this past summer, when, as usual, she was the cool, trippy, funky, awesome, scholarly, adorable, geeky, loving person she has always been, except now she is an amazing partner to her husband Jay (another of the coolest people I've met, ever) and mom to Cory and Samantha, born some years apart but each one a unique and thoughtful and beautiful soul in their own right. One of the things I love most about my friend is that she is the least intimidating person I've ever known. She knows how to guide, and love, and reach out to people in a way that doesn't piss them off, or drive them away, or make them feel stupid. She just is. And as always, I'm scrabbling to keep up with her evolved soul, always getting trapped in the algae and deadwood of my own limits.

When we were kids, we had the good fortune - but not so good for Ellen - of having a lot of freedom. Certainly more than I ever had at home, that is. Because we were always hanging around at her house, and because her mom was rarely around, we ended up teaching ourselves about a lot of things. Like grief, when her beloved Sinjin died, but happy things too, like not really knowing how much you could actually laugh until you tried it (e.g., the Band Room, the A-School, the Young Ones) or how music could literally change the nature of your being, and the more you engaged with it, the more transformative power it possessed.

Because of Ellen, I had a magical - in the true sense of the world - childhood and adolescence. Our friendship has survived all these years because it is built on a foundation of memory and understanding and laughter and connection. And I know, that like her, when I get married someday, I'll marry a person who reminds me of that connection.

Recently I was at a party with other friends from high school and a number of them talked about how much they envied us, how they wished they'd had a friend like that, a relationship that survived against all odds and someone whom they knew always had their back, no matter what. It made me remember a day in the A-school, right before Ellen moved to North Carolina, where we cut in half the cardboard artwork we called "Sleepover." As we cut it, people around us cried, but we didn't. I think we'd always realized that it was just a symbol of what we were carrying inside. No matter what was to come - and the list includes a lot of unbelieveable items - losing parents, breakdowns, running away from home, crises of the heart, fire, flood, and finally ending up across the country from one another - we'd always be carrying that other half with us.

In Jewish tradition, the number 40 is binah - the word for wisdom. And since we are almost there, with thanks for the wisdom you've shared with me, and in hopes of someday being as amazing and evolved and full of peace as you are, I can only say in the words of our favorite band: I'm glad it's your birthday; happy birthday to you!