60th Year Journey

I am one hundred and four days into celebrating my 60th year with a penchant for surprise. Delight. Discoveries.

For the next two hundred and sixty rotations of the earth tilted and spinning on its axis I will meander happily in and out of my comfort zone ... adventuring precariously to the edge. Pushing the confines of the proverbial envelope. Expansive. Effusive. Awakened.

Come with me. You. You know you want to join in on the fun. And you know who you are. C’mon. Encircle your arms around my waist as we journey to my big 6-0 and beyond in tandem.

What a rush! Pistons charged. Adrenalin flowing. Imagine the possibilities. Our infinite possibilities. Transported from the sparkling white sandy seashore to mountain geysers to distant and ancient lands. And home again. Boundless joy. Boundaryless opportunity.

Fasten our seat belts. Place our tray tables in their locked upright positions. Close our eyes. Hold our breath. We are beginning our ascent. Accelerating. Climbing higher. Soaring. The world takes on a different shape, a swirling blue-green ball shrouded in billowy cotton. A new, longed for perspective. Shared.

Stroll with me into the soft lemony sunshine, cool crisp breeze propelling the journey, our journey, onward. You are out there. I just know it!

Run for the Roses

I woke up this morning with Kentucky on my mind.

The faint sound of my neighbor's lawn mower buzzed bringing with it the scent of freshly mowed grass drifted through the open window. I stretched my arm under the silky cool of my pillow arching my back into the new day and smiled. Sun streamed through the wooden slats of my window blinds. A gentle breeze stirred the pages of the book tossed casually on the bed stand. I sat up energized.

It's Saturday, May Day and Derby Day rolled into one. A vernal trifecta!

Hurry into my jeans and a long sleeve white tee. Race through my morning toilette. Brush my hair quickly. Grab a cardigan and twirl a lime green pashmina around my neck just in case the chill hadn't quite worn off. Open the front door to this glorious day. Pop the house key in my pocket. And head joyfully down the granite steps, water bottle and Bailey in hand.

This morning in my lovely Maine village near the sea is lemon-sweet perfection. A hint of warmth in the dewy air. Filtered sun streaks the newly green lawns in my neighborhood. The skies cloudless. Robin's egg blue. True spring weather. Real spring. The springs of my Kentucky. My childhood.

Wow. It hits me. Today is stunning. One of those gorgeous mornings you can bottle. Sell on eBay in January. My next door neighbor is pruning back her rose bushes reattaching the vines to the trellis. Ah, roses. Today is Derby Day! Three year old thoroughbreds racing for a blanket of roses. And the first jewel in the triple crown.

Back to reality. My stroll with Bailey. Sidewalks are busy. Alive with families pushing strollers. Toddlers in tow. Winter weary hibernators peeking out for a bit of verdance and warmth. Heading into town.

Bailey is decked out in her gentle leader leash. The one that keeps her from straining my back and wrenching her neck when she lunges at her doggy pals along the way. Her gait is jaunty. She's a happy girl this morning. We are going to a party. The smells of donuts and cotton candy are wafting through the air. She knows something is up. Her whole body wags.

Wooden poles ten feet high appeared overnight on the grassy lawn of the park nearby. Four of them. Each festooned with long satin pastel ribbons. A bouquet of colorful freshly picked blooms crowning each. Young girls in ballet shoes, white tights and flowing dresses gracefully weave the strands to the strains of Celtic music from a nearby boom box. Braided homages to nature. Wind. Waves. Earth. Fire.

This is what I love. Spring rituals. At Kentucky Home. My childhood school in the rolling bluegrass we celebrated May Day every year. You remember. Where Chesney and Edwina and Laurie and Jane and I joined our classmates in smocked pastel dresses, white anklets and Capezio mary janes fastened with buttons. Fresh cut flower ... tulips, rosebuds, daisies, iris, lilacs ... garlands circling our heads. Our long curls flying as we wove intricate patterns with the satin ribbons. Ritual dancing by each class from kindergarten all the way to the eleventh grades honoring our elected May Queen and her court of attendants in long white gowns with pale blue sashes.

The girls of May, the seniors, waiting not so patiently for the festivities to end so they could quickly change into Lilly sundresses and Pappagallo flats and scurry out to Churchill Downs for an afternoon of horse racing. Long legged fillies to the track. A cherished tradition coveted as we rose through the ranks from Lower to Upper School.

Back at home I scurry around doing odd chores until the NBC telecast of Derby festivities from Churchill Downs. Winsome. Nostalgic. The 136th Run for the Roses. The phone rings. My darling friend from Louisville is bringing a bit of bluegrass and mint into my living room. I relax into our conversation. A knock at my door. A dozen long stem red roses amid eucalyptus and baby's breath. My very own winner's blanket!

Inside the starting gates energy abounds. With a bell and a bugle we are catapulted into the first stretch. 3D knows just what to do. We round the curve and head into the sweet spring air.

Cheers to my old Kentucky home far away!

Earth Day 1970

It seems like I was everywhere during the heady, waning days of the late sixties and early seventies. I was. And, I wasn't.

But this time I was.

Forty years ago today.

Philadelphia. Dogwood and magnolia blossoms in full bloom. Us, too.

The first Earth Day. April 22, 1970. An environmental teach-in.

Propelled by a sense of urgency. Threats to the environment. The burning Cuyahoga River. Acid rain. Napalm deforestations. We were killing our earth. The penultimate wasting asset. Our home. Our neighborhood. Decaying before our eyes.

Our idealistic ... and ironically quite logical ... Woodstock Nation sensibilities threatened. Mocked by multinational corporations, crop dusters, aging coal-fueled factories and a brand spanking new interstate highway system luring Detroit's automakers to quintuple output. Trains, buses, monorails ... public transportation infrastructure be damned.

In short, the globe's natural resources were depleting rapidly before our eyes. Acid rain poured into our rivers, our streams, our fishing habitats. Life sustaining water contaminated. Shrouds of heavy yellow smog and gritty coal particles from factories raging uncontrolled polluted the skies. We were killing the planet. One neighborhood at a time. Single-handed. Headed for hell in a handbasket.

Unconscionable trade-offs. Corporate interests v the health of our unborn children's children's children. We’re simply not going to all wake up, sing Kumbaya around a cackling camp fire and tackle these problems.

Altogether some 20 million people – 10% of the U.S. population – participated in 1970 Earth Day teach-ins, marches, and rallies across the country. Nearly half were students. I was one of them. On the Earth Day organizing committee. Lured by the promise of saving our habitat. Our planet. Hand-in-hand, but of course, with brilliant, motivated, mostly good looking (if you could imagine their fresh faces sans beards) college boys from all over the east coast. My Briarcliff suite mate, Jill Gardner, dating Larry Rockefeller got us the gig. Weekly treks to either The City (New York, of course), Philadelphia or D.C.

A happening. Inspired by the Apollo 11 moon landing the prior summer. We were energized. Propelled by the Moody Blues in their lyrical, psychedelic ode to our children's children's children born from Native American wisdom.

[© 1969 Deram/Polydor. All rights reserved.]

So where are we now? These 40 years later? Same place. Same destruction. Greying hair and apathy. Good God. The more we changed, the more we stayed the same.

Treat the earth well.

It was not given to you by your parents,

it was loaned to you by your children.

We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors,

we borrow it from our Children.

~ Ancient Indian Saying

Our radical, forward thinking uprising morphed four decades later into an innocuous Hallmark greeting card.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Quinceañera

Three things stand out as I watched CNN in horror fifteen years ago today sitting with other moms on blue leatherette couches facing the room length picture window of an indoor tennis facility in Fairfield County Connecticut while my seven year old son was volleying in his beginner class on the other side of the glass.

1) The first thoughts racing across my screaming mind blamed a foreign, rogue nation lashing out at America's riches, ideals and freedoms.

2) In a flash, a nano-moment, our country lost whatever innocence regained over the fifty years since the end of World War II destabilizing our confidence.

3) The other shoe would surely drop. The world, my world, shaken by its roots indelibly altering the facade and ripping at its core.

A terrorist attack on American soil. Not an American territory. Not where we had interests. Piercing the heart of our country. Our values. Our pioneer sensibilities. A yellow Ryder truck, the one we use to move belongings from from our family homes to our first apartments, explosively detonating at that very moment when office workers placed steaming mugs of coffee on their desks to open the morning email. *BLAM* The entire front side of the glass and steel office building sheared off. *ZIP* In one quick motion as if it were the rind of a tangerine.

Wrong. Right. Right.

It would be six years until #1 was correct. An eye for an eye. Vengeance from these ordinarily passive, polite church going people. Dead man walking. June 11, 2001. The country watched in disgust. Oklahoma in vindication. Timothy McVeigh gazed diabolically at the camera perched above the gurney in the death chamber in Colorado where his executioners tightened the wrist and ankle straps and he glared directly into our souls haunting. Three months to the day later our worst fears realized.

A whacko revenging Waco. Undermining our complacency. The Murrah Building and the white brick YMCA across the street ripped apart by the seams. Inners exposed. Shrapnel, body parts, office furnishings, children's shoes and teddy bears buried in rubble. 168 innocents perished. Hundreds more injured. This city of nearly one million wounded gravely. The vulnerabilities of our nation exposed. Beirut comes to the heartland.

Oklahoma City. Known previously to me as a faster-than-fast drive-through. Jesus Christ Superstar blaring on the eight track. Orion's belt dimming in the pre-dawn sky. A cross-country college excursion. Once the cow town a pit-stop on the old Mother Road. Route 66 long since replaced by six lane I-40. Oil derricks silhouetted in the dark purple sky. Nary a tree in sight. One year after the bombing Charlie and I left our own shattered world in the rarefied northeast to resettle and reclaim our souls in the cross-roads of America.

So it is with a deep respect for my former neighbors on the edge of the prairie in the buckle of the Bible belt that I raise my glass in memoriam of that fateful day when the sky came tumbling down.

To the remarkable rebirth of that former dusty cowboy town into the booming metropolis that it has become ... and to its promising future held firmly in place by the strong moral fiber from which it is woven. Salut!

Feed Your Head

It was 1969. One of those days I will never forget. Ever.

We emerged one toke over the line from the shabby Astor Place subway station. The bowels of the East Village. Seedy New York. The skies buzzed purple. The bare trees of Tompkins Square Park ominous in winter sleek. We moved as a unit. Swaying up the concrete steps pushed forward by gentle swarms of long haired, tie-dyed, bell bottomed kids into a brisk November evening. The air pungent. Sweet, smokey scents drifting from brass pipes with primo pellets. Burning Moroccan resin. Loosely wrapped Zig Zag papers burning unevenly with Kentucky Blue passed freely among the throngs of ebullient hippies, students. Anyone under thirty really. Reefer madness. Nixon was cringing in la maison blanche. We were floating.

It was a happening. My first. 1969. A few months into the Woodstock Nation. I had just arrived from the innocence of a southern childhood. Delivered expectantly into a city a buzz with change. I happily traded color-coordinated Pappagallo skimmer flats paired with matching Lady Bug heather skirt and sweater ensembles for the new costume of the day. Fringed tan suede vest beaded the colors of the rainbow cropped mid-thigh swaying gracefully over slim Landlubber very low cut jeans, the sleeves of my silk blouse billowing as they slipped unfettered from the Indian poncho I had borrowed earlier from Christine Palmer. Hints of my gold hoop earrings peeked tantalizingly through stray locks that framed my fresh, eager face, my thick chestnut hair grazing my nubile waist. Nothing matched. I was ecstatic.

Here we were. In the thick of the burgeoning Woodstock revolution. My heart raced. My eyes blurred with this sea of young humanity flowing along the sidewalks toward Bill Graham's rock palace. The Fillmore East.

The Jefferson Airplane silhouetted by an enormous silver cinema screen stretching floor-to-the-tippy-top of the proscenium. Reflecting a liquid light show. Flowing psychedelic art. The kaleidoscope of intense color swirling blobs, pooling, morphing from indefinable shape to another whether my eyes were shut or not. My very own Elvis painting on the black velvet screen of my inner eyelids. Cool. I made my way up the stairs leading to the balcony. First row center.

White Rabbit on You Tube

Gracie Slick sang of Alice's Adventures into Wonderland. I hung on her every word. The nimble white rabbit luring me further into a trance. Lyrical comparisons to the hallucinatory effects of psychedelic drugs such as magic mushrooms and unknown liquids commingled and interspersed with the imagery found in the fantasy works of Lewis Carroll's stream of consciousness tales penned a century before. References in this fabled song so obvious to my very stoned self: the seductive hookah-smoking caterpillar, gallant White Knight, bitchy premenstrual Red Queen, wise Dormouse ... and experimenting Alice herself. My favorite childhood stories woven into my newly adult sensibilities. Or so I imagined.

What does this euphoric memory of my younger college age self have to do with anything? Caught up in the moment. High on life. The intensity. The promise. Oh yes. I do remember. So I still have a few active brain cells in my much-needed-to-be defragged hard drive. File drawers rusted sticky must be lubricated. Loosened up so the sparks can ignite cogent thought.

Yesterday morning's Health section in the New York Times featured an article touting the use of hallucinogens, the magic mushroom, psilocybin to be exact, in the treatment of despair. Doctors, not Timothy Leary of course, at Johns Hopkins medical school are conducting clinical trials for depression in cancer patients, end of life anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder ... and get this: addiction to drugs and alcohol. Now that's what I am talking about! Everything seems to have come full circle. Maybe that is what has kept me buoyed up all these years. Unburdened by substance abuse. No reaction to the mild terror I experienced in that marriage a decade and a half ago.

Cheers ... to acid flashbacks and psychedelic induced pyrotechnic light shows ... and to bona fide medical studies that might bring it all back again. This time funded by Medicare!

My Old Kentucky Home (School)

Periodically they float into my dreams. My childhood friends. Magically grownup but looking not unlike our 18 year old selves. Why impose the effects of aging on my nighttime memories? No Lancôme or Botox needed. No Lady Clairol. We are youthful and slender and quite lovely. Nubile versions of our older selves.

I cherish those nights when deep in slumber I find myself in animated conversation with Les Girls. My Besties. Soul-sisters in adolescence. So long ago. Across millions of miles. And, even more years.

Time melts. Remarkably we are oft engaged in frivolous girly behavior, preteen whims. Slumber parties with giggly sips stolen from the bourbon bottle on silver trays hunt tables in whomever's dining room. Lanz nightgowns. Barbie dolls decked out in garden party dresses and that black and white striped maillot ... waiting seductively for Ken. Grins of metal. But mostly we are our adult selves debating issues we never would have imagined in those daffodil-laced, chocolate milk-infused days. Long before we grew up. Mostly.

In the sixties we shared a sliver, a slice of our well lived lives. Kindred spirits brought together by proximity and the same small girls' school. Bound by fate. Nine month segments for thirteen years of shared classes, illnesses, giggles, pimples and dreams in that lovely old estate on Douglas Boulevard.

The sun shines lemon-yellow on the large grassy lawn where we jumped rope and came of age talking incessantly of boys from Country Day and St. X and our neighborhoods. Back where the trees bordered the campus and we snuck Marlboros and Salems behind the bushes out of sight of our chain smoking teachers. VW bugs and Pintos and Mustangs were parked haphazardly on the edge of the driveway around the circle.

Girls in pastel dresses skip around the Maypole draped with ribbons and a colorful array of tulips, jonquils, lilies and magnolia blossoms snatched in the dark of the night from pre-Derby gardens of our parents' friends. A warm Kentucky breeze blows lightly stirring wide-ruled notebook paper and mimeographed homework assignments from their blue cloth three ring binders tossed casually on the stone steps during recess. The white stucco home of our classes welcomes our innocence, prepares us for our futures.

Jane resplendent in white knee socks, navy clunky heels and mini skirt, sparkly blond hair in a Midge flip bouncing as she runs along the drive to the new building. Diane's colorful eyes kohled dramatically in Mary Quant shadow and Twiggy lashes roll annoyingly at Mrs. Wimp's concoction bubbling in the Petri dish. Laurie, presses her baby blue Pappagallo flats lime green trim on the clutch as she shifts her British racing green MG-B from 2nd to 3rd zooming the few short blocks from her home on Arrowhead to Taylor's parking lot to meet up with the Country Day boys for Friday night lights. Cecily and Chesney's graceful long limbs dance the night away in the yard, high on life and a few beers from Jack Fry's. Anne impishly checks out the scene from the rear-view mirror of my navy blue 1964 Corvair Monza exhaust fumes be damned.

So I had to see everyone. Had to. Our fifty-something selves. Jane and I planned a 40th reunion over one of those autumn weekends in Kentucky that reminded us of hockey games in Seneca Park and rehearsals for the junior play. We included anyone who had been in our class ... ever. Plus the boys from LCDS. Why not? We were forever friends after all. We hadn't skipped a beat. Some of us grandparents. Others still single. Childhood chums. What's four missing decades among friends? Nothing!

Cheers! To Cecily, Laurie, Abby, Anne, Diane, Jane, Chesney, Sissy, Cecy, Janey and Edwina ... and to the boys who made our school plays and Friday nights sparkle! With love xo

Birthday celebrations and anniversaries remembered

She sat reading, sleepily propped up in her bed cozy with rose covered boudoir pillows and down. It was late at night. Too late really. Captivated by the historic fiction she adores the pages flip slowly as the story unfolds. She stays up too late and misses half the next day slumbering. But this is her way. Especially now. Her time of solitude when TVs are off and the phones have been quieted. Alone time stolen from a zillion years ago in another lifetime actually when her brood of four slept quickly tucked into childhood slumber. The night shorter then somehow.

The January sky of deep navy velvet punctuated with glittering shines of a thousand diamonds cocoons the Maine night. Just beyond the slightly opened window a round moon casts sharp, twisty shadows of naked trees across snow meadows rolling to the sea. Lost in thought she feels a slight graze on her elbow and absentmindedly flicks off the summer lady bug nowhere to be found. A soft glow shimmers in the corner of her eye over by the chintz covered arm chair draped with her yesterday clothes. A bear hug slowly embraces her 85 year old body warmly, lovingly across a decade of memories lost. Willy has come home to wish our darling mother a happy birthday.

Cheers, sweet brother, visiting from across the clouds ... you are with us until tomorrow's tomorrow's tomorrow.

Renewals

My drivers license comes up for renewal in a few weeks. Groundhog's Day. A ritual which generally goes unnoticed every five or so years. Not for me. Since I earned my right to operate a car in 1967, I have registered as a driver in six states. Studied half a dozen manuals. Sat in motor vehicle offices for inordinate amounts of time waiting. That's 50% of the Northeastern states, my childhood home of bluegrass and horses where the flimsy yellow paper license could be altered with write-out and a Smith-Corona and former Southern speak-easys would pour bourbon and branch freely to underage drivers, Maine twice and Oklahoma. A new state to call home every 7 years of my driving life. That's about right. I move a lot. Chapters.

Five or so years into my gigs ... my ol' Kentucky home, a college apartment in Back Bay a block from the Boston Stranglers turf, a six-room second floor double-decker apartment in Cambridge near the lofty Victorians and yellow clapboard houses of intellectual power-brokers, a Carnegie Hill co-op in Manhattan a block from Central Park and two from Harlem, a garden home on the edge of the prairie scarily perched on a concrete slab guaranteed to fly skyward by a mighty twister and my lovely 160 year old expanded cape in my New England village and so on ... I start to itch. The familiar feeling wells up inside and my pulse quickens as I begin to imagine the possibilities. Fueled by wanderlust? Ennui? Lack of obligations? Unrequited dreams?

Yikes! Regardless of where I slip between the sheets at night or what propels me from place to place, the next time my license expires I'll be eligible to collect Social Security and to enroll in Medicare. Now that is an eye-opener. Wherever I am going, whatever I am going to do, I need to get my ass in gear. Time's a wastin' ... this auto is pulling away from the curb into the busy thoroughfare heading in a new direction. Buckle the seat belt, turn up the radio, wrap a brightly hued chiffon scarf over my thick chestnut hair so I arrive at my destination looking more like Bridget Bardot than Bridget Jones. Hop in or move aside. This girl's got plans.

Cheers! Until tomorrow.